What’s new in the June 2023 beta
In the last beta patch, we focused on adding new features. This one is more about polishing those features and improving the player experience.
Engine Changes
First off, province buildings no longer give you nothing but a mysterious “increases your tax income” text. Instead, the building confirmation screen now shows exactly what the effects will be.
This is not simply a list of what effects the building is defined with. The game actually simulates that building and reports what the income effects will be. This means that, for instance, building a manufactory might increase your tax income because the revolt risk is decreased, and promoting a bailiff might decrease your tax income because the revolt risk is increased.
This information is useful enough that we didn’t leave it tucked away in the confirmation screen. It’s also available from the buildings notifier:
You’ll note that we don’t show effects from governors. This is because governors all have exactly the same effects regardless of the size or wealth of the province, so it would just clutter up the notifier.
The AI also has been upgraded to make use of the new simulation system, so it will not be spamming bailiffs to quite the same extent. And it will be more strategic with its courthouse developments.
Next, rebel popups have been improved and reworded to explain what rebel faction has spawned and what their aims are.
Not a good day for the British Empire
And pirate raiders are a new rebel type, which can sometimes appear naturally in port provinces, but will usually spawn by random events:
We have added a number of new pirate raider factions in this beta, including Barbary Pirates, Indonesian Pirates, Somali Pirates, Victual Brothers, Wokou Raiders, and Caribbean Buccaneers.
Pirate raiders are a nuisance and can be strong fighters, but they’re not going to defect to another country or declare independence.
On a related note, nationalist rebels have been tweaked to only appear in non-core provinces. We also fixed several bugs with the new rebel system, thanks to our great community on the forums and on Discord.
We also have the usual crop of new modding features. This time we have a new trigger “no_dynastic = yes/no” which allows targeting countries that are or aren’t marked as no_dynastic in religions_special.txt. We used this trigger in many existing random events, which means you’ll no longer get “Noble Families Feud” when you’re playing the Papal States or the Knights of St. John.
We’ve also added two new random targets for event commands: -11 or “random_same_religion”, and -12 or “random_same_religious_group”. These targets only work on countries. They also override the built-in geographic limitation in some commands: for example, “command = { type = dynastic which = -1 }” only targets nearby countries, but “command = { type = dynastic which = -11 }” may target any country of the same religion anywhere in the world (as long as we have discovered their capital).
If you’re building complex event triggers, especially in random events, you might have wished there were an easy way of seeing which countries the trigger would apply to at any given time. Well, so have we. The new console cheat “triggercheck <event_id>” will highlight all such countries.
Finally, we have an oft-requested new modding feature: the ability to specify music playlists by tech group and not only by country tag. Full details are in Modding.txt in the music folder. The game also will now attempt not to play the same track twice in a row (shoutout to drbilton’s Twitch streams - go catch him next time he’s live!).
Now I’ll let mandead talk about the text files.
Database Changes
Firstly, some new geographical regions have been added to make the Geographic map mode a little less blocky and to help with fine-tuning AI exploration. Because geographic regions can be used as triggers, this also allows us to focus certain events and rebel types to specific areas of the map. A number of random events now use areas, regions and continents as triggers, and our aim is to add more of these in future; it's also a great utility for modders.
Speaking of random events, the June beta includes 40 new ones to add a bit more variety to your playthroughs. These cover a wide range of themes and regions, and work much like the old EU2 ones, so - RNG gods being in your favour (or not, depending) - you can hope to see a few of these pop up in your games. The triggers for a number of existing events have also been improved.
New historical event chains covering the sale of the Neumark (Küstrin) and the Thirteen Years' War have been added, both involving the rivalry between the Teutonic Order and Poland - something not given much emphasis before now. There are also a couple of new interesting historical events for Novgorod (and one for Sweden), giving it a bit more historical flavour and allowing it to better decide its fate. We felt that Novgorod was an interesting but much-overlooked country to play as - especially compared to Moscow - and that it deserved a bit of TLC. They now start in a somewhat stronger position and have gained both a province (from Sweden) and a port (in Arkhangelsk), as well as some tax buffs. There is also a new strait between Arkhangelsk and Obdorsk, allowing Novgorod to explore (and potentially colonize) Siberia, and they have - at long last - received a leader file, including an historical explorer.
Though there are various scenario and database changes, one worth mentioning here is the fact that Calais has undergone something of a face-lift: it is now english culture, has an increased tax base, and produces cloth instead of fish. The reasons for this are both gameplay and historical (a good combo), and in short Calais was not considered 'foreign' and was never a hotbed of rebellion, in addition to being very wealthy due to the textile trade there. This means that the province is now richer and easier for England to hold, but once it does fall (in game terms, owned by France) events will fire for England and France, changing the culture to french, reducing the tax base to what it was before, and switching the good type back to fish. These changes are already in place from the 1617 scenario onwards.
For another underplayed underdog, the Republic of Genoa has received some colonial claims and greek culture, allowing it to better hold the territory it starts with and stand a better chance at posing a serious threat to its great rival Venice. However, if after 1492 Genoa has lost all of its colonies and its Kerch CoT has moved to Istanbul, an event will fire cruelly depriving you of your claims and second culture. Venice has also had greek restored to it, providing it with a little more colonial stability.
As for France, we've toned down their early aggression somewhat and removed a few starting claims, which they will now regain once they've won the Hundred Years' War. Another factor here is the addition of occitan culture, something that's been discussed before but has finally been added for testing. The idea here is to make France somewhat less homogeneous and all-powerful without resorting to artificial nerfs; occitan culture allows us to achieve this by accurately reflecting the fact that even during this era, the Crown's control over the south of France was never as secure as it was in the north, and indeed a separate 'culture' existed there. This also allows for the possibility of occitan cultural rebels, and means that states like Auvergne and Navarra can have occitan culture but not french.
Finally, the Age of Timur scenario (1399) has received some balance tweaks and the addition of around 20 new events for a variety of countries, helping to provide some more historical content for the first twenty years of the game.
...oh, and we've updated the AGCEEP mod once again, including the addition of the old Fantasy Granada scenario (which has been improved and expanded) and a number of community bug fix reports.
Full changelog since April's beta:
Enough talking - go grab it now! As usual, extract onto either a clean 1.2 installation or the previous beta.
Post feedback in this thread.
In the last beta patch, we focused on adding new features. This one is more about polishing those features and improving the player experience.
Engine Changes
First off, province buildings no longer give you nothing but a mysterious “increases your tax income” text. Instead, the building confirmation screen now shows exactly what the effects will be.
This is not simply a list of what effects the building is defined with. The game actually simulates that building and reports what the income effects will be. This means that, for instance, building a manufactory might increase your tax income because the revolt risk is decreased, and promoting a bailiff might decrease your tax income because the revolt risk is increased.
This information is useful enough that we didn’t leave it tucked away in the confirmation screen. It’s also available from the buildings notifier:
You’ll note that we don’t show effects from governors. This is because governors all have exactly the same effects regardless of the size or wealth of the province, so it would just clutter up the notifier.
The AI also has been upgraded to make use of the new simulation system, so it will not be spamming bailiffs to quite the same extent. And it will be more strategic with its courthouse developments.
Next, rebel popups have been improved and reworded to explain what rebel faction has spawned and what their aims are.
Not a good day for the British Empire
And pirate raiders are a new rebel type, which can sometimes appear naturally in port provinces, but will usually spawn by random events:
We have added a number of new pirate raider factions in this beta, including Barbary Pirates, Indonesian Pirates, Somali Pirates, Victual Brothers, Wokou Raiders, and Caribbean Buccaneers.
Pirate raiders are a nuisance and can be strong fighters, but they’re not going to defect to another country or declare independence.
On a related note, nationalist rebels have been tweaked to only appear in non-core provinces. We also fixed several bugs with the new rebel system, thanks to our great community on the forums and on Discord.
We also have the usual crop of new modding features. This time we have a new trigger “no_dynastic = yes/no” which allows targeting countries that are or aren’t marked as no_dynastic in religions_special.txt. We used this trigger in many existing random events, which means you’ll no longer get “Noble Families Feud” when you’re playing the Papal States or the Knights of St. John.
We’ve also added two new random targets for event commands: -11 or “random_same_religion”, and -12 or “random_same_religious_group”. These targets only work on countries. They also override the built-in geographic limitation in some commands: for example, “command = { type = dynastic which = -1 }” only targets nearby countries, but “command = { type = dynastic which = -11 }” may target any country of the same religion anywhere in the world (as long as we have discovered their capital).
If you’re building complex event triggers, especially in random events, you might have wished there were an easy way of seeing which countries the trigger would apply to at any given time. Well, so have we. The new console cheat “triggercheck <event_id>” will highlight all such countries.
Finally, we have an oft-requested new modding feature: the ability to specify music playlists by tech group and not only by country tag. Full details are in Modding.txt in the music folder. The game also will now attempt not to play the same track twice in a row (shoutout to drbilton’s Twitch streams - go catch him next time he’s live!).
Now I’ll let mandead talk about the text files.
Database Changes
Firstly, some new geographical regions have been added to make the Geographic map mode a little less blocky and to help with fine-tuning AI exploration. Because geographic regions can be used as triggers, this also allows us to focus certain events and rebel types to specific areas of the map. A number of random events now use areas, regions and continents as triggers, and our aim is to add more of these in future; it's also a great utility for modders.
Speaking of random events, the June beta includes 40 new ones to add a bit more variety to your playthroughs. These cover a wide range of themes and regions, and work much like the old EU2 ones, so - RNG gods being in your favour (or not, depending) - you can hope to see a few of these pop up in your games. The triggers for a number of existing events have also been improved.
New historical event chains covering the sale of the Neumark (Küstrin) and the Thirteen Years' War have been added, both involving the rivalry between the Teutonic Order and Poland - something not given much emphasis before now. There are also a couple of new interesting historical events for Novgorod (and one for Sweden), giving it a bit more historical flavour and allowing it to better decide its fate. We felt that Novgorod was an interesting but much-overlooked country to play as - especially compared to Moscow - and that it deserved a bit of TLC. They now start in a somewhat stronger position and have gained both a province (from Sweden) and a port (in Arkhangelsk), as well as some tax buffs. There is also a new strait between Arkhangelsk and Obdorsk, allowing Novgorod to explore (and potentially colonize) Siberia, and they have - at long last - received a leader file, including an historical explorer.
Though there are various scenario and database changes, one worth mentioning here is the fact that Calais has undergone something of a face-lift: it is now english culture, has an increased tax base, and produces cloth instead of fish. The reasons for this are both gameplay and historical (a good combo), and in short Calais was not considered 'foreign' and was never a hotbed of rebellion, in addition to being very wealthy due to the textile trade there. This means that the province is now richer and easier for England to hold, but once it does fall (in game terms, owned by France) events will fire for England and France, changing the culture to french, reducing the tax base to what it was before, and switching the good type back to fish. These changes are already in place from the 1617 scenario onwards.
For another underplayed underdog, the Republic of Genoa has received some colonial claims and greek culture, allowing it to better hold the territory it starts with and stand a better chance at posing a serious threat to its great rival Venice. However, if after 1492 Genoa has lost all of its colonies and its Kerch CoT has moved to Istanbul, an event will fire cruelly depriving you of your claims and second culture. Venice has also had greek restored to it, providing it with a little more colonial stability.
As for France, we've toned down their early aggression somewhat and removed a few starting claims, which they will now regain once they've won the Hundred Years' War. Another factor here is the addition of occitan culture, something that's been discussed before but has finally been added for testing. The idea here is to make France somewhat less homogeneous and all-powerful without resorting to artificial nerfs; occitan culture allows us to achieve this by accurately reflecting the fact that even during this era, the Crown's control over the south of France was never as secure as it was in the north, and indeed a separate 'culture' existed there. This also allows for the possibility of occitan cultural rebels, and means that states like Auvergne and Navarra can have occitan culture but not french.
Finally, the Age of Timur scenario (1399) has received some balance tweaks and the addition of around 20 new events for a variety of countries, helping to provide some more historical content for the first twenty years of the game.
...oh, and we've updated the AGCEEP mod once again, including the addition of the old Fantasy Granada scenario (which has been improved and expanded) and a number of community bug fix reports.
Full changelog since April's beta:
Enough talking - go grab it now! As usual, extract onto either a clean 1.2 installation or the previous beta.
Post feedback in this thread.
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