What's new in the November 2023 beta
Last month's beta was a major new feature release, so this month we dialed things back and worked on improving the polish of the game.
The first thing to note is the new Holy Roman Empire screen. HRE elections have been in the game from the beginning, but have always been completely opaque. We all know that the winner is (more or less) whoever has the best relations with the electors, but who can check all the contenders?
Now all the information is accessible in the new screen. Get to it by clicking the missionary button twice (the missionary button now toggles between missionary and HRE modes):
The interface shows:
1) The current emperor (roll over the shield to see current bonuses, or click on it to jump to the emperor's capital).
2) All current electors and their relations with the emperor. Supportive electors (relations at least +100) are shown in gold, while all others are in white.
3) The current electoral support of all eligible countries. As we can see in this screenshot, if Karl I of Austria were to die today, Bavaria would be the new emperor.
Click on a country to see where its support comes from.
Another interface improvement has to do with rebels. For the first time, it is now possible to see what a rebel faction will do:
Some factions can declare independence, some can't; some can defect, some can't; some can overthrow the government, some can't. All this is now visible when mousing over the rebel faction's shield in the province screen after they have captured a province.
As a side note, we've also added a new on_capital_capture event for all pirate factions. Since pirates never declare independence or defect or overthrow the government, they can sometimes take a one-province minor's capital and just stay forever. The new on_event gives the country a chance to pay a ransom in exchange for the ability to retake their capital.
Another small interface improvement, which you probably didn't even know you wanted, is the new information dot in key sea zones:
This dot appears in the info window for any sea zone that has either a strait or a naval chokepoint.
Another side note: naval chokepoints have never worked properly in FTG (!). We discovered and fixed the issue while testing this feature, and now chokepoints are fully functional. Good luck trying to sneak a landing fleet past English navies in the Channel any more.
We've also given modders the ability to randomly generate admirals and generals in this patch, so we now want the ability to differentiate between scripted leaders, event-generated leaders, and default commanders. In the unit window, you'll see the difference easily:
Default commanders are still white text with no asterisk.
On the map, the mouseover for units now shows scripted leaders with gold names while event-generated leaders have white names.
That's about it for interface changes.
You might also notice that we've spent a lot of time fine-tuning the AI's money management. The AI is now allowed to mint money to pay for colonists or merchants if it judges that the reward is great enough (e.g. grabbing a gold province first or monopolizing a rich colonial center of trade). It is also now allowed to disband troops or ships during peacetime if it has too much (previously the AI never disbanded except if troops were exiled with no way to reach them). The AI should also get less "stuck" over the course of long game sessions without save/reload; most of its plans now come with an internal expiration date, so it will be forced to re-evaluate at regular intervals.
There's also the usual crop of modding features and bugfixes, but those are detailed in the changelog.
Finally, along with a ton of database work by mandead et al, we have included an astonishing 227 new event pictures, which you'll see over the course of your games. Here's a sneak peek of a few of our favorites:
Full changelog since October:
Enough talking - go download it!
Or come talk about it with us in the FTG Discord server.
Or don't do either. I'm not your boss. The only rule here is that you have to react to this post and put your feedback in this thread.
Enjoy, and happy Thanksgiving to our American friends!
Last month's beta was a major new feature release, so this month we dialed things back and worked on improving the polish of the game.
The first thing to note is the new Holy Roman Empire screen. HRE elections have been in the game from the beginning, but have always been completely opaque. We all know that the winner is (more or less) whoever has the best relations with the electors, but who can check all the contenders?
Now all the information is accessible in the new screen. Get to it by clicking the missionary button twice (the missionary button now toggles between missionary and HRE modes):
The interface shows:
1) The current emperor (roll over the shield to see current bonuses, or click on it to jump to the emperor's capital).
2) All current electors and their relations with the emperor. Supportive electors (relations at least +100) are shown in gold, while all others are in white.
3) The current electoral support of all eligible countries. As we can see in this screenshot, if Karl I of Austria were to die today, Bavaria would be the new emperor.
Click on a country to see where its support comes from.
Another interface improvement has to do with rebels. For the first time, it is now possible to see what a rebel faction will do:
Some factions can declare independence, some can't; some can defect, some can't; some can overthrow the government, some can't. All this is now visible when mousing over the rebel faction's shield in the province screen after they have captured a province.
As a side note, we've also added a new on_capital_capture event for all pirate factions. Since pirates never declare independence or defect or overthrow the government, they can sometimes take a one-province minor's capital and just stay forever. The new on_event gives the country a chance to pay a ransom in exchange for the ability to retake their capital.
Another small interface improvement, which you probably didn't even know you wanted, is the new information dot in key sea zones:
This dot appears in the info window for any sea zone that has either a strait or a naval chokepoint.
Another side note: naval chokepoints have never worked properly in FTG (!). We discovered and fixed the issue while testing this feature, and now chokepoints are fully functional. Good luck trying to sneak a landing fleet past English navies in the Channel any more.
We've also given modders the ability to randomly generate admirals and generals in this patch, so we now want the ability to differentiate between scripted leaders, event-generated leaders, and default commanders. In the unit window, you'll see the difference easily:
Default commanders are still white text with no asterisk.
On the map, the mouseover for units now shows scripted leaders with gold names while event-generated leaders have white names.
That's about it for interface changes.
You might also notice that we've spent a lot of time fine-tuning the AI's money management. The AI is now allowed to mint money to pay for colonists or merchants if it judges that the reward is great enough (e.g. grabbing a gold province first or monopolizing a rich colonial center of trade). It is also now allowed to disband troops or ships during peacetime if it has too much (previously the AI never disbanded except if troops were exiled with no way to reach them). The AI should also get less "stuck" over the course of long game sessions without save/reload; most of its plans now come with an internal expiration date, so it will be forced to re-evaluate at regular intervals.
There's also the usual crop of modding features and bugfixes, but those are detailed in the changelog.
Finally, along with a ton of database work by mandead et al, we have included an astonishing 227 new event pictures, which you'll see over the course of your games. Here's a sneak peek of a few of our favorites:
Full changelog since October:
Enough talking - go download it!
Or come talk about it with us in the FTG Discord server.
Or don't do either. I'm not your boss. The only rule here is that you have to react to this post and put your feedback in this thread.
Enjoy, and happy Thanksgiving to our American friends!
Last edited:
- 12
- 4
