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:
June 2023
===========================
Engine changes
- Interface:
- Add estimated income to player building notifiers (except governors which have the same effects in every province).
- Add estimated local and national effects to the player building confirmation box for all building types.
- Rebel popups now have different text per type. Each rebel type has customized text explaining what the rebels are after, and pirates also have customized text showing that the citizens are being raided and not taking up arms themselves.
- Add text describing movement attrition in attrition rollover
- Fix sign of blockade attrition in attrition rollover
- Modding:
- Add no_dynastic trigger
- Add -11/random_same_religion and -12/random_same_religious_group event command targets. Both are valid only on countries, not on provinces. Both override the geographical distance limitation that is hardcoded into country randoms for certain commands.
- Add "triggercheck <event_id>" cheat to highlight countries for which the given event's triggers would succeed.
- Add the possibility of creating music playlists for tech groups. See Music/Modding.txt for more details.
- Privateers generated by event no longer cost money.
- Other:
- Add "pirates" rebel type. Pirates will only spawn in coastal provinces with a port.
- Nationalist rebels now only spawn in non-national provinces.
- AI will now use the new building estimations in its own building calculations, especially regarding revolt risk. There should be less bailiff spamming and a few more courthouses.
- Game will now try not to play the same music track twice in a row if possible.
- Bugfixes:
- When a leader with type "privateer" becomes active, the game will no longer also spawn privateers in the same port or sea zone.
- Fix bug with controlchange/ownerchange not resetting properly when a game is exited to the menu, then a new scenario is started.
- Fix alliance chance between religious enemies to be a 15% penalty instead of 15000%.
- Fix acceptance chance display when force-annexing.
- Fix load/save of fantasy scenarios from last beta.
- Fix rebel armies occasionally being negative in last beta.
- Fix revolt "value = TAG" event command added in last beta to correctly spawn the desired rebel faction.
- Fix hang in last beta when a "revolt = no" entry in revolt.txt is being considered by nationalist rebels for liberation.
- Fix crash when natives burn a colony in last beta.
Database changes
- further updates to AGCEEP 1.60 (see AGCEEP readme)
- added Korea as a new region (split off from China) in Asia
- added Joseon (localized as Korea) as a new area in Korea
- added Socotra and Somalia as new areas in East Africa
- added Canarias as a new area in West Africa
- added Dzungaria as a new area in Central Asia
- added Assam and Burma as new areas in Indochina
- added Steppe and "Russian North" as new areas in Eastern Europe
- added Hansa, Lotharingia and Switzerland as new areas in the Holy Roman Empire
- added an event sequence for the sale of Küstrin (LAT/BRA)
- added an event sequence for the Thirteen Years' War (POL/LAT)
- added a couple of events for the fall of Calais (ENG/FRA)
- added a couple of interesting historical events for NVG
- added a couple of events for if NVG/MOS capture the other's capital
- added an event for the Swedish-Novgorodian Wars (SWE)
- added an event to form Lotharingia (LTR)
- added an event to form/unify the HRE (HEI) as ARL, GER, ITA or LTR
- added a random event for Wild Jurchens raiding MCH's neighbours
- added a random event to restore PAP if Rome is owned by another Catholic country
- added about 40 new random events
- added about 20 new historical events for the Age of Timur scenario
- added four new flavour events for ENG
- added a couple of new random religious events to become Sikh or Jewish under certain conditions
- added a new random religious event for Hussite and Lollard states to become Protestant, Reformed or Catholic if they haven't converted by 1550
- added an option C to the 'Protestant influence in North America' random event to become Lollard if ENG is
- GEN now begins with claims on its historical colonies and greek as an accepted culture in 1399/1419/1453
- added an event for GEN to lose its claims & greek culture if it no longer holds at least one of its claims after 1492 and event TUR_3352 (The Economic Reforms of Mehmed II) has fired
- VEN now begins with greek as an accepted culture in all scenarios, which should better help it hold its colonies
- added formosan as a new native culture for Taiwan (689) and set its default religion to pagan
- added occitan as a new culture in the south of France in order to make FRA less homogeneous/all-powerful and allow for occitan cultural rebels
- added a new default AI file for ARG so it will try to annex minors holding its cores
- added army and navy name lists for KOR and VIN
- added a leader name list for ATL
- added some new leaders for KOR and LAT
- added a leader file for NVG
- added a new strait and GFX between Arkhangelsk-Obdorsk so NVG can explore Siberia
- added new pirate raider types: Barbary (BRR), Indonesian (INR), Buccanners (PRR), Somali (SMR), Victual Brothers (VBR) and Wokou (WKR)
- changed the default pirate raider type to use R06 tag; can now spawn anywhere so long as LAND policy is 3 or above
- added some colony name lists for DAN/NOR/SWE/FIN and NVG/RUS to avoid random names for historical colonies in Scandinavia
- changed Arkhangelsk (269) to a coastal province and added port GFX; bumped its fort and population levels in later scenarios
- buffed province income for Arkhangelsk (269) and Novgorod (274) to better represent their wealth from the fur trade
- changed Ingermanland (275) to produce iron instead of fish
- changed Calais (382) to produce cloth instead of fish; now starts as english culture and with a higher province income to reflect its textile revenues
- general province income and manpower buffs in the East Indies to better reflect the immense wealth of the region and make colonization by Europeans more desirable
- added a monarch file for KUS
- added KUS to the 1546 scenario (representing Brandenburg-Küstrin)
- slightly buffed HAB relations with German minors in 1546
- updated monarch files for LIT and NVG
- tweaked FRA starting cores/claims across all scenarios so as to better guide AI wars
- updated event FRA_3104 (The End of the Hundred Years' War) to give claims on your internal vassals
- moved some of FRA's cores over to claims in revolt.txt
- KEF and KRE can now revolt until 1821 and without a fixed religion/culture
- updated several historical pirate events with new pirate tags
- updated country colours for ANH, CIR, KUS and MEC
- updated default policy sliders for NVG so it's less of a punching bag
- updated the SWE and NVG AI files so they colonize the frozen north
- updated a number of AI and scenario files with additions to geography.txt
- updated provinces.txt with the new geographical areas
- renamed Jylland (309) to Jutland for consistency with other province names (to match what's written on the map)
- added French localization
- minor improvements to English and French localization
- general balance improvements to the 1399 scenario
- various minor scenario tweaks/fixes
- buffed ENG starting gold in 1399/1419
- bumped Calais (382) up to a small fort in 1453
- added some more paganism to northern Manchuria and Chengdu in 1399
- downgraded CAS/POR colonial cores to claims in 1399
- downgraded CAS core on Granada (444) to claim in 1399/1419/1453
- TIM now begins with a temporary casus belli on STE until Timur dies
- EPI now begins with albanian as an accepted culture in 1399
- NAV now begins with occitan as an accepted culture in all scenarios
- AUV now begins with occitan culture in all scenarios
- PRO now begins with occitan culture and italian as an accepted culture in all scenarios
- ARG now begins with maltese as an accepted culture in all scenarios
- SPA now begins with maltese as an accepted culture in 1492
- CAS now gains maltese culture with event CAS_3556 (Viva España), and will lose it if it gives independence to KNI in event SPA_3156 (The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem)
- KOR now begins with a fleet in all scenarios
- RUS now begins with a fleet in the White Sea in 1546
- general buffs (and a starting fleet) for NVG in all scenarios
- added KOR to the 1773 and 1795 scenarios as a vassal of CHI (previously they were just owned by CHI outright)
- updated some default city names in Scandinavia (thanks to DrBilton)
- updated various database and scenario files for the new cultures
- various grammar/typo fixes
- added triggers to POR_3272 (King Sebastião's Expedition to North Africa) and RUS_3411 (The Sacking of Moscow)
- added sleepleader commands to a couple of KOR events
- moved Smyrna (478) from TUR to KNI in 1399
- moved Küstrin (313) from BRA to LAT in 1419; now sold by event
- moved Artois (379) from HAU to BUR in 1419
- moved Savolaks (273) from SWE to NVG in 1399/1419/1453
- added POR claim on Tangiers (732) in 1419
- disabled the HRE provinces in all Fantasia scenarios
- changed Protestant/Reformed to Lollard in Fantasia to resolve a revoltrisk issue caused by a missing system flag
- general starting buffs to ATL in Fantasia Imperium
- added all income and manpower additions from events between scenarios (1399-1795)
- updated various random events with the new religions and 'no_dynastic' trigger
- fixed an issue with the CAS/SPA AI trying to colonize Mauritania instead of Canarias specifically
- fixed a load of countries having medieval infra/trade tech values in 1701
- fixed some CHI core weirdness in later scenarios
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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