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v2.05 - Personal Guards, Graphics and Bugfixes

Released 6 August 2026

Hi all!

I'm finally ready to release 2.05 and it is out of beta (with quite a lot more changes added since the beta began). The main feature in this patch is the personal guard, and I've also spent a lot of time rebalancing things, fixing bugs, improving performance and getting the game looking as good as it can (for instance, it now has much better lighting and more realistic rivers). From here I'm going to start work on the two major expansions that I have planned - I'll keep you all updated with more information and dev diaries on these two.

Cheers,

Joe

Personal Guard

  • Form a Personal Guard from the Military screen.
  • Choose companies when founding, replace them later, and track recruiting per company.
  • Imperial courts get a larger guard (double the normal household roster).
  • The guard is named after your ruler.
  • If the guard is wiped out, you can re-found it.
  • Guard composition has its own screen rather than sitting in the general formation template list.
  • The tutorial walks you through founding and using the guard. For the Kyrnos war you get a proper field army and fleet instead of relying on the guard alone.

Food production and logistics

  • Food is reworked around Grain, Meat, and Fish.
  • Farms, Pastures, and Fisheries can develop into bakeries/mills, fumaria, and fish salteries where the resources allow.
  • Granaries and horrea improve storage and blunt seasonal food losses.
  • Armies and navies aim for about six months of carried supplies; forced march doubles consumption.
  • Food logistics move surplus through the realm and subjects. The Economy Food tab shows production, consumption, reserves, and the realm balance.

Controller support and Steam Deck

  • Gamepad controls for camera, selection, orders, pause, and game speed.
  • Right-stick virtual cursor for UI, with controller button glyphs.
  • Default gamepad bindings for world search (L3), map-mode cycle (D-pad), screen cycle (RB+D-pad), and camera look/tilt (RB+stick).
  • Steam Deck uses a compact HUD (top bar, screens menu, map modes) sized for the small screen.
  • Deck defaults apply a larger UI scale and denser world glances automatically.
  • Tutorials, tooltips, and help prompts show live key and controller glyphs instead of mouse-only wording.
  • Text fields open the on-screen keyboard under controller / force-controller mode, including Windows desktop force-controller setups.
  • Map picking and province hover stay aligned when UI scale does not match the viewport buffer.

Population and economy

  • Population growth is tied more tightly to building capacity. Fed growth and starvation matter more; overcrowding comes from capacity, which civic buildings improve.
  • Faction and settlement screens show monthly population projections, including subjects.
  • You can relocate population from subject settlements, not only your own.
  • "Treasury dampening" is now called leakage. Corrupt Masters of Economy make surplus leakage worse, and the gold tooltip explains it more clearly.
  • Hold Shift (5x), Ctrl (10x), or Ctrl+Shift (50x) when changing trade amounts and other quantity steppers.
  • Subject economies are more stable.
  • Settlements next to friendly province territory no longer count as enclaves just for missing roads.
  • Sell amounts on the economy resources table are green; buy costs are red.
  • Resource stockpile table headers fit without pushing buy/sell off-screen.

Rebellions and politics

  • New rebel types for food shortages and related pressures: urban rioters, rural rebels, army mutineers, and religious rebels, each with their own goals.
  • Rebel goals show on the faction sidebar.
  • Rebel factions get clearer names (for example "X's Rebels").
  • Borrow from the senatorial aristocracy: take a loan, repay it, or repudiate the debt. Interest is 5% of the outstanding principal each month. Offers scale with one to three months of projected recurring revenue.
  • Make Promise gives a one-year deadline to address a power bloc grievance (was much shorter).
  • Designate Heir no longer blocks people who cannot serve as governor or general.
  • Province succession eligibility is enforced more consistently.
  • Subject relationships cannot form cycles.
  • Foederati Council rebellions free subject tribes: break the subject bond, defect auxiliaries, muster levies, and count tribal strength.
  • When a political rebellion ends, its subject provinces go back under the parent instead of becoming free independents.
  • Western Rebels keep their scenario display name and start with a much larger treasury (50,000 gold).

Provinces, missions, and events

  • Ten new peacetime and crisis governor missions: tribute, grain stores, walls, roads, markets, personal guard, rebels, harbour, barracks, and tribunal.
  • Province play has more local court and settlement events. Choices can affect imperial standing and recall threat the way missions do.
  • Failed unrest missions no longer reissue immediately. Cooldowns start from when the mission resolved, and failed types wait longer before coming back.
  • Provincial event images show correctly again (follow-up events no longer open with blank hero art).

Tutorial

  • The introduction campaign guides you through the full run, with clearer objectives, army and fleet selection, and diplomacy steps.
  • Tutorial constraints and highlights hold up better after save/load.
  • Ask to Lead works on the tutorial patronage bloc as intended.
  • Himmelsvolci alliance and fleet spotlights are more reliable.
  • Tutorial army selection, fleet highlights, and Personal Guard flow are more reliable.
  • Map, pin, and time-control tutorial prompts use the same live input glyphs as the rest of the HUD.

Characters and portraits

  • Historical ruler records and portraits are richer in places (including more Rephsian history).
  • Culture and religion populations show proper names in settlement data.
  • Religion adjectives are available for naming and description.
  • Character epithets localise correctly, including scenario-authored ones such as map starting rulers; your portrait refreshes after succession.

Combat

  • Units have an attack speed, shown in tooltips and military panels.
  • Foot archers must stand still to shoot. Horse archers can still fire on the move.
  • Very small armies no longer get free damage floors and inflated morale. Broken field armies collapse sooner, and leaderless formations fight worse.
  • Unit tooltips are clearer when recruiting: costs, combat stats, and help for damage, armour, and where units can be raised.
  • Unit names and descriptions revised across the board.
  • Missing unit portraits filled in.
  • Units being raised or in transit show portraits and cleaner construction tooltips.

Military, map, and orders

  • Expand and demote military command relationships more clearly in the UI.
  • Right-click embark works reliably, with clearer movement and embark feedback.
  • Right-clicking a hostile settlement with embarked armies lands them and continues into a land siege, and starts a blockade when the port allows it.
  • Besieging armies stay outside the settlement rather than stacking on top of it.
  • River crossings apply movement penalties correctly.
  • Only the front item in a building queue is under construction; the next job starts when the current one finishes.
  • Ruined buildings can be rebuilt.
  • Subject armies label more clearly.
  • After a battle, armies and fleets snap back onto navigable land or sea so retreats and resumed orders can path again.
  • Survivors no longer stay combat-locked after a fight; stalled retreat remnants re-engage and embark/retreat goals snap onto the nav graph.
  • Coastal armies no longer get stuck on isolated land-navigation pockets that cut them off from the rest of the graph.
  • Click the army or fleet mesh itself to select it, not only its world glance. Click a battle to open it.
  • Merge targeting works when you click the unit under the cursor.
  • Garrisoned armies stay visible on the map. Embarked armies still ride the navy.
  • Map army mannequins follow culture: imperial, barbarian, or desert.
  • Recruit Barbarian Warband success text uses the swords icon.

Diplomacy and peace

  • Independent realms can no longer be wholly annexed or surrendered outside rebellion total conquest. Only subject factions use full annex.
  • Peace screen header is simpler: war name and war score.
  • Peace settlement selection on the map toggles and clears more reliably.
  • AI peace demands seed from owned land (including subjects), not temporary occupation deep in enemy territory, and only push a couple of road hops inland from that border.
  • External politics treaty UI and war-goal text work more reliably.
  • One-time treaty gold is capped to what the paying faction actually holds.
  • Treaty negotiation lists scroll when they fill the window instead of overflowing.
  • Breaking a treaty still finds the right agreement after daily tribute or trade amounts change, and the break UI is clearer.

World search and controls

  • Press Ctrl+F (rebindable) to search the campaign for factions, settlements, armies, fleets, and characters. Fuzzy name matching and faction links included.
  • Map-mode and HUD tooltips show your live key bindings, not fixed defaults. Tutorial world search uses the same bindings.
  • PageUp no longer over-tilts the camera when zoomed out.
  • WASD pan works immediately after starting a new game instead of fighting the capital focus camera.
  • Grab and grabbing-hand cursors use the game gauntlet art instead of the Windows system hand.
  • UI scale tops out at 130%.

World map and presentation

  • Lakes are treated as real water for terrain, routes, and navigation.
  • Rivers carve the land, sit wider and lower, and stay visible when zoomed out.
  • River beds pick up rock clusters for channel variety.
  • Terrain materials, grass, rock, and water presentation refined.
  • Fog of war edges feather more cleanly.
  • Foliage density is adjustable in terrain settings (with quality caps so ultra tiers do not run away).
  • Campaign camera stays above water.
  • Ground cover culls at the distances the assets were authored for.
  • Season effects show in the date tooltip.
  • Difficulty effects show in settings.
  • Main floating chrome has soft drop shadows so it sits clearer over the map.
  • Cinematic notification scrolls have soft drop shadows under the parchment and rollers.

Settlements and policies

  • Open settlement sidebars refresh each day and when modifiers change, not only during sieges.
  • Unrest bars match the breakdown tooltip instead of lagging on a stale cache.
  • Scenario starting policies apply as the established stance at game start, without mid-game reform unrest or opinion hits.
  • Realm history and campaign outcome graphs count settlements you fully control (including subjects), not ones held only by occupation.
  • Settlement building lists and formation templates can be searched; building category counts show how many are built.
  • Settlement modifier tooltips are clearer.

UI and quality of life

  • Initial setup welcome and clearer first-run flow, with UI scale preview.
  • Floating windows (unit catalogues, candidate pickers, and similar) can be dragged.
  • Nested tooltips stay open when moving between parent and child help text.
  • Glossary terms in building effects and similar rich text show proper hover help.
  • Propose Marriage candidates are prioritised, searchable, and the modal stays open while you inspect people.
  • Pause/play stays in sync with the game. Opening the ESC menu keeps the campaign paused until you close it.
  • Campaign mouse cursors (attack, embark, and so on) show correctly over the map and world glances.
  • Multi-line notification bodies (peace offers, demand lists, and so on) keep their line breaks, and decision offers show the text immediately.
  • Settings category headings use proper localised labels.
  • Military sidebar roster layout is clearer.
  • Top bar layout and action overlap fixed.
  • Battle action icons restored.
  • UI button sounds restored.
  • Campaign music resumes correctly after loading a save.
  • Campaign history UI updated.
  • World glances composite more cleanly, scale better with DPI, and large city glances are smaller.
  • Building browser and formation template rename controls are more reliable.
  • Army and settlement plates stop vanishing or blanking after battles, zoom, or faded settlement frames, and army plates return as soon as combat ends.
  • Sidebars stay clickable when a full-screen overlay is open above them.
  • Leaving a campaign clears settlement and army glances so they do not sit over the main menu.

Campaigns and content

  • Sicily campaign seasonality crash fixed; some awkward Lords of Sicily wording cleaned up.

Localisation

  • Many previously hardcoded English strings now translate: army and fleet names, titles, treaties, map legends, Steam Workshop errors, convoy details, character death and recruitment effects, input names, and more.
  • Culture name particles, regnal names, and faction ethnonyms handle articles and links more cleanly.
  • Translation catalogues refreshed across supported languages.
  • Scenario map epithets that were missing from name tables now localise with correct article casing.

Performance and stability

  • Campaign frame stalls reduced, including expensive fog-of-war shadow work and hitch spikes from court validation, strategic AI review, and month-end pathing.
  • Faster campaign save loading.
  • Sea and land route pathfinding is cheaper.
  • Simulation finishes cleanly before saving, and resets properly when loading a save.
  • Saves reload through a full level travel path more reliably; campaign state persists across reloads more cleanly.
  • Tutorial and military post-landing siege/blockade targets survive save/load.
  • Stale battle escape and destroyed unit data no longer pollute saves.
  • Crash reports can attach saves.
  • Cyclic subject hierarchies, load flashes, and several UI redraw glitches fixed.
  • Several WebUI freezes and maximum update depth loops fixed (glances thrash, empty catalogue deltas, garrisoned flags sticking after armies leave, advisor and tutorial spotlight state).
Next: v2.0 - Provinces and Modding →