More capable crews and smoother sailing

Rowing now depends on the ship and the hands available aboard. Larger oared vessels need larger rowing complements, and shorthanded ships show fewer working oars. Crew assigned to the oars cannot also fire weapons from the deck.

Sailing and visibility

• Ships meeting a riverbank retain motion along the bank in the direction the bow is pointing, rather than stopping solely because their old momentum was bankward.
• Improved clearance around tight riverbank corners while hauling upstream.
• The wind triangle gradually gains contrast while the bow stays pointed into the wind. Turning clear of the wind restores its normal appearance; reduced-motion preferences are respected.
• A subtle outline reveals your ship where foreground scenery or another vessel would otherwise hide it. It disappears when the ship is unobscured.
• Reduced CPU work for weather particles, pixel lines, river geometry and offscreen carts, without simplifying their simulation or artwork. Local sailing benchmarks used about 7–8% less average frame CPU time; results vary by machine and scene.

Menus and tutorial

• Main-menu choices, including Credits, fit together in short desktop windows using two columns. Keyboard and controller navigation follow their visible positions.
• After the tutorial's combat tips, you can sail onward while the defeated canoes finish sinking.
• Fixed the tutorial-reset confirmation appearing behind the captain-menu tabs.
• Fixed Hazard's Status view before a wager has been placed.

Reliability

• Fixed NPC placement errors at the edge of the local chart.
• Fixed a reserve-ship identity problem when applying older background updates.
• Fixed treasure-rumor translations involving multiword place names, and improved colony-departure, papal-news and closed-port localization.
• Allowed more time for large world-data downloads on slow connections, while retaining a timeout for stalled loading.

These changes apply to the full game and the demo. Ship-specific rowing and crew allocation are shared by voyages, the sailing tutorial, duels and historical battles.