Community Build: Major Update (0.5.4229)

Hoi! We updated both the game servers and the client yesterday — everything should now be back online and running smoothly!

To celebrate, I have also put together a cumulative update summary below and uploaded the latest client. A ton of new features, fixes, and tweaks have been added since the last version shared here (v0.5.3751), so if it’s been a while, you’re in for a treat!

If you'd like more consistent, bite-size updates, or don't want to miss the updates on the single-player version, consider joining our Discord, where I’m more active. Alternatively, we have a newsletter for milestone community polls and major game updates.

Here’s a glimpse at what’s changed since version 0.5.3751:

Gameplay & Vibe

• More Animations:
  • Company Animations & Banners: Company animations have been improved and now loop smoothly. Units also proudly display properly drawn banners, which respond to wind direction. Their banners and some uniforms now reflect the owning player’s Coat of Arms base color (while enemies and allies remain colored according to the Friend-or-Foe scheme).
    
  •  All Castles now proudly display banners, and updated the visual offset of culture-specific castles on hilly terrain. 
  • Added new (WIP) Labourer animations for Ecclesiastical Fiefs covering both exclusive variants: Monks and Winegrowers.
  • Woodcutters now have higher-quality animations.
    
  • Updated the Rain effect.
  • Updated Edge of the Map visuals – No more ugly dark borders, the edge now blends into the starry sky! ;)
    
• Historical Data Availability:
  • View Past Reports: you can now review past reports — and rumors — depending on game’s settings. This applies to all report types, making it much easier to trace events that unfolded while you were away, or to finally shed light on incidents that had remained without a known culprit.
    
  • Feudum Statistics: You can now view historical data for key indicators of a given feudum on a chart, covering a timeframe based on your game’s settings. This feature is still a work-in-progress and not yet optimized — but I wanted to give you a glimpse of what’s coming, and not only to feudums, but also for other entities. Feedback is most welcome!
• Major Economy & Resources rebalance:
  • Food and Timber are now treated as more abundant, lower-value resources. Labourer output (Fishermen, Herdsmen, Farmers, Hunters), Production Line demands, and market expectations have been all adjusted accordingly.
  • Farmland territory increased by 20%, with matching expansion of related labourer slots.
  • Labour Policy Presets: Save and load your labour policies across feudums — or even different games— as long as the rulebooks are compatible!
  • Default Ruleset Tweaks: Numerous balance changes and rule adjustments have been made to economic, military, and diplomatic settings based on extensive, community-driven testing & feedback — affecting the default ruleset going forward!
    
• Population Dynamics:
  • Food rations matter more: with food now more accessible, reducing rations will cause stronger public backlash. Rations also have a greater impact on both Social Wellbeing and Public Health.
  • Morale, Health, and Stability systems rebalanced, with additional pressure levels introduced for finer control.
  • Health bonuses from freshwater access are now more detailed.
  • Morale & migration penalties from hostile presence have been reworked to be less punishing and more progressive.
  • Stability changes: Morale and Unemployment modifiers are now more granular, and unemployment is slightly less punitive.
• Strategic Warfare changes:
  • Improvements now play a greater role in combat — their level and type significantly affect battlefields, and can heavily alter the default terrain modifiers.
  • Virtue gained from winning battles and clearing raiders has been significantly increased.
  • Unit Edges and stats were rebalanced for more variety.
  • Military Can Claim Territory Now!
    A new tactic modifier has been introduced. Units using a stance that allows claiming can attempt to establish control over unclaimed tiles, even far from their main territory. However, they cannot initiate combat and are more vulnerable to surprise attacks. If disrupted and unable to resume their activity within a timely manner, their claim progress will be lost — so bringing escort troops is highly recommended.
• Alliance Victory Conditions: Victory conditions for alliances now scale based on the number of members. A full alliance must meet the original victory thresholds, while smaller alliances need to reach proportionally lower goals — with a slight penalty to keep things competitive.
• Gossip & World Rumours: Various in-game events can now spark rumors that spread across all courts, based on game session settings. These whispers aren’t always accurate or complete, but attentive lords and ladies may still find them useful.

QoL and UX Improvements:

• Command Queue Highlights: The map now visually highlights command targets, when hovering over the queued commands, for better clarity.
• Improved map highlights – Company and garrison area of control now highlights only the surrounding tiles, manors are highlighted when creating a feudum, and unit swaps between two locations are now also explicitly highlighted on the map by direction, among other refinements.
• A new Color Theme setting lets players choose how Company and Castle flags appear in-game. Currently: Friend or Foe (based on diplomatic status) or Mixed (based on CoA/affiliation). A fully heraldic CoA-based system is coming soon.
  
• Command Dialogs Overhaul – Various fixes for improved stability and usability across nearly every command dialog, eg:
  • Open command dialogs now update correctly with each new tick.
  • Abandon Tile – Now highlights the tile when issuing a new command, not just in view mode.
  • Manage Company – Tactics are now sorted by localized name, with "Normal" always listed first.
  • Train Unit – The spawn point highlight now dynamically updates if the target garrison is destroyed or rebuilt.
  • Create Feudum – Now displays neighboring manors that could block the command.
  • Manage Unit Command – Now also supports cherry-picking multi-selection with CTRL+click (SHIFT+click remained for continuous selection between two units). If multiple units were selected and one of the selected units is clicked, the clicked item will be the only one that stays selected (instead of the previous behaviour were all items were deselected)
  • Diplomacy Dialog – Clauses and Standing Popups have been updated, additional tooltips were added, and several instances have been rephrased for better clarity.
• Company Path now draws from the previous command, not from the company's current position, if there is a previous guard or move command. And you’ll now only see the last x (moddable setting) ticks of movement paths for Companies you don’t have favorable diplomatic status with.
• Better Command Queue naming
• Better tooltips – eg. for unit edges, company edge cases, various soft error cases, diplomatic entries, etc.
• Region Jump (Wasteground): The jump-to button will now cycle through all Wasteground tiles, making navigation much smoother. (Community-requested!)
• Tile Info Cards: Tile cards now conveniently show the battlefield modifiers of constructed improvements for both attackers and defenders. Tooltips for Improvements and Terrain now visually display Battlefield Widths along combat modifiers, improving strategic clarity. (Community-requested!)
• Diplomatic Proposal Timeouts: Data type changed to allow for larger thresholds. (Community-requested!)
• Discord Integration has been updated to use the latest Discord API.
• Garrisons: no longer receive their defensive bonus if they are fighting on a different tile.
• After-Battle Reporting: All participants now get updated unit compositions and stats, even if they died before the end of the battle.
• Charting has been optimized for smoother, faster performance (UX comes next!).
• Animation System Overhaul: Major backend improvements — better caching, smarter selection, and more automation. This makes it much easier to add new animations going forward.
• Farmland UI: Improved layout and tooltips for farmland-related UI elements.
• Claiming-related hints and error messages have been revised for clarity and consistency. Minor flow tweaks included.
  
• Commands now show (next to costs) if Administrative Reserves can be used on them.
  
• Several company tooltips have been clarified or updated — including clearer display of Line of Sight (LoS) and Area of Control (AoC) mechanics.
  
• Chat: You can now copy messages from the in-game chat. (Note: scrolling is disabled over copy-paste areas.)
  
• Badge Lists: More usable space for the company, feudum and diplomacy lists.

Bugfixes

• Fixed missing or outdated text in the military tile claim dialog. (Community reported – thanks!)
• Fixed a bug where Garrisons didn’t receive terrain + improvement defense bonuses when attacking. (Community reported – thanks!)
• Fixed an issue where the Battle Card displayed the defender's terrain bonus for the attacker if they were a Garrison. (Community reported - thanks!)
• Fixed Garrison Defense bonus incorrectly showing on the Battle Card when the Garrison was not actually defending. (Community reported - thanks!)
• Fixed a visibility issue where a Company could be seen through. (Community reported - thanks!)
• Fixed a bug where Company animations could get stuck and also show incorrect combat strength. (Community reported - thanks!)
• Fixed an issue where transfer unit command highlights didn’t show targets on mouse hover.
• Removed the misleading “Feudum created” world rumour when a new player joins.
• Fixed a division by zero error in the battle display under rare conditions.
• Fixed a bug where generic labourers were shown in animations even if the terrain had no labourers.
• Fixed and optimized animation lookups, and added robust error handling to prevent animation failures.
• Fixed misleading warnings during Lay Claim when the tile was unclaimable or the player was over the claim limit.
• Fixed various typos in labourer-related localizations.
• Fixed a missing localization string for the highest Morale level, and updated fallback logic for better matching when localization entries and system levels don’t align.
• Fixed Battlefield Width tooltips ignoring the Minimum Width setting.
• Fixed misaligned Ecclesiastical Fiefs when placed on hill tiles.
• Clarified some localization strings related to the Feudums list.
• Fixed an issue where the highlights for transfer unit commands did not show the target on mouse hover.
• Fixed: Company animations now loop properly.
  
• Fixed: Garrisoned companies were shown as Companies in specific case.
  
• Fixed: Companies’ armor tints now age correctly over time.
  
• Fixed: command dialogs no longer blocks interaction with the top-left side of the command queue.
  
• Fixed: Advisory comments can no longer be clicked through (e.g. during claiming).
  
• Fixed: Reports were not showing correctly (were cut too soon) due to an incorrect setting (regression).
  
• Fixed an issue with Economy Report's sprite lookup
  
• Fixed: The Farmland Settings's top (land distribution) handle was not interactive.
  
• Fixed: Command costs over 99,999 are now displayed properly without breaking text layout.
  
• Fixed: In a specific case, a design-time placeholder text was shown in the Diplomacy dialog.
  
• Fixed: Some tile tweening issues.
  
• Fixed: Tweening error when the Welcome Message was closed abruptly.
  
• Fixed: Various server-side issues.
• Fixed a bug where the construction command in the queue displayed the wrong time estimate before it was submitted to the server.
  
• Fixed a bug where animations would not change to a different worker type.
  
• Fixed a regression bug of worker animations not dimming based on tile age.
  
• Fixed a bug of the company display not dimming with tile age.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Steam auto-login setting was not saved.
  
• Fixed a bug where the game server's name was missing from the communication panel in some cases.
  
• Fixed "Train Unit" command: When changing priority, the item selection now properly follows the item, not the slot.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Train Unit" command highlighted the wrong tile.
  
• Fixed a bug where Encounter Strategies were displayed as unset in View mode of the Manage Company command.
  
• Fixed a bug where previous company paths were not cleared from the map when clicking the second move command in the queue.
  
• Fixed a bug where the construction indicator was shown on the wrong tile and the under-construction display was missing.
  
• Fixed a bug where the command submit button didn't work if the command card was not active.
  
• Fixed a bug where the command submit button's state icons weren't always visible.
  
• Fixed a bug where the client let a defeated player to send in commands (client validation error).
  
• Fixed various edge-cases on command dialogs.
  
• Fixed various spelling mistakes.
• (Additional fixes on backend)

Enjoy the update and let me know what you think! :)