Update 0.30.1 — Isometric View, UI Overhaul & Diplomacy Expansion
It's been a while since our last update on the 15th of February — here's everything that's landed since then. The two headliners this time: a brand new Isometric camera view, and a big visual overhaul of the core UI (Notifications, Empire view, Settlement view, New Improvement and New Unit screens all got reworked). Alongside that: an expanded diplomacy/treaty system, AI personalities, and a long list of bug fixes and balance tweaks.
Highlights
- New Isometric camera view, with its own rotation controls, compass HUD widget, and tuned zoom/pan behavior.
- Major UI redesign across Notifications, Empire view, Settlement view, New Improvement and New Unit screens.
- Diplomacy expanded: treaties now have expiry dates/states, a pending treaties screen, and a new "Surrender and join nation" (ChangeAllegiance) action. Multiplayer can now terminate treaties directly.
- AI personalities: a new dormant AI personality model now feeds into AI decision-making, and the AI can perform difficulty-gated flanking maneuvers.
- Undo/Redo in the Map Editor now supports Units and Rivers, not just tiles.
UI
- Encyclopedia book icon now lights up on hover; click it to open the Encyclopedia.
- New Season progress bar, with matching Encyclopedia entries for seasons and bad weather.
- Load Game screen now has a filter-by-name input.
- Mute button added to tutorial windows (replacing the old click-anywhere-to-mute).
- Pending treaties screen added to the Diplomacy UI; treaty proposals now have input fields plus Accept/Reject icons.
- Garrison button added directly on controlled settlement tiles.
- Added a "quit to desktop" button.
- Added a confirmation dialog when starting a New Map (Simple/Advanced) so you don't accidentally lose Map Editor progress.
- Language selection moved to its own Settings tab.
- City name now shown in the header of the Build Improvement screen.
- Fixed several text sizing/margin issues (unit stat text, settlement inspector, objective lines).
- Fixed the Encyclopedia and Terms of Service being unable to open in certain states.
Gameplay
- Units now automatically return to the nearest settlement when low on food or HP.
- Added a tutorial warning when settling with non-Peasant units.
- Deer now have proper behaviour and animations that react to game speed; geese no longer fly through the sky during season transitions.
- Boats now float on water instead of clipping into it.
- Storm cloud particle opacity is now configurable; season-inappropriate weather effects now clear properly on season transitions; added a warning when idling on a tile with an active weather effect.
- Fixed the NonSettling nation trait incorrectly disabling settling for player nations.
- Rebalanced cavalry combat calculations and Spearmen vs. Cavalry matchups.
Multiplayer
- Lobby settings now lock once a player clicks Ready.
- Added a Defeat screen for multiplayer matches.
- Fixed AI diplomacy responses not syncing correctly between clients.
- Fixed traders incorrectly joining armies while trading on a settlement tile.
- Fixed boarding/disembarking transport ships in multiplayer.
Graphics
- New Isometric camera view.
- Fixed mountains appearing too dark.
- Fixed cliffs displaying the wrong texture; added correct seasonal textures for cliffs and mountain connectors.
- Fixed a grass pixel-fighting/sampling issue.
- Added an ambient occlusion pass.
- Fixed a water rendering bug.
- Fixed bridge models disappearing when a fortification is built on a bridged tile.
Input
- Expanded gamepad support: right stick can now be used for primary input detection, B button skips campaign cinematics, and the cursor now auto-hides when using gamepad or keyboard.
- Replaced the game speed number label with a clickable 1–5 speed selector.
- Added middle-mouse-button panning to the Map Editor.
- Enabled zoom scrolling in the New Improvement and New Unit screens (Escape to leave them).
- Camera can now move closer to the ground without clipping through terrain; pan/zoom speed now scales with camera height.
Editor
- Undo/Redo now supports Units and Rivers.
- Drag-to-move for units/armies.
- New scriptable event actions: ChangeAllegiance, RemoveUnitFromTemplate, StopUnit, StopUnitOnTile, CreateEventLogEntry, SetNationTaxes.
- Added DuplicateTrigger for quickly copying triggers.
- Fixed the Reveal Tiles and Highlight Target Tile actions.
- Mineral placement now defaults to a random mineral type instead of a fixed one.
- Units can now be marked recruitable/not recruitable per faction directly in the editor.
- Map Editor save now reuses the existing file path instead of always prompting.
Bug fixes
- Several crash fixes.
- Fixed the Recruit button staying greyed out after taking control of a settlement.
- Fixed the unit inspector/action bar showing the wrong state after loading a save with a unit selected.
- Fixed broken movement for previously garrisoned units.
- Fixed embarked units failing to heal while within your own borders.
- Fixed enemy units becoming invisible when fog of war was disabled.
- Reduced fog of war update latency from 1000ms to 100ms, and destination tiles now reveal immediately on movement.
- Fixed Food Gathering buttons/icons not refreshing correctly in isometric view and on zoom.
- Fixed the ship transport (UnitCargo) panel being hidden behind the HUD.
- Fixed selection/target markers rendering behind rivers and ocean.
Audio
- Added voice language selection, independent of text language.
- Fixed dialogue audio overlapping — previous speech now stops before a new message's voice line plays.
- Fixed the fortify sound effect playing incorrectly while a unit/army is mid-move.
- Added audio feedback for when prospecting isn't possible.
- Voice SFX now preload at startup to reduce audio hitching.
Localization
- Added 453 missing Swedish translations.
- Added French localization for several scripts, including the Vosges dialogue.
- Updated localization for the Helvetii Migration and Ambiorix's Revolt scenarios.
Technical
- Console history now persists between sessions.
- General performance improvements to how the game world looks up units and entities.
- Additional stability and crash fixes across the board.
Planned development
- New Combat-focused tutorial highlighting flanking, unit advantages and siege mechanics.
- More historical campaign scenarios following Caesars gallic campaign.
- Continue iterating on the Isometric view and UI redesign based on feedback.
- Expand AI personality behaviors further.
- More diplomacy and treaty options.