UI Additions
With the new 1.37 free update providing a plethora of new modding capabilities, especially regarding UI, we’ve of course made quick use of that to add more quality of life as well as gameplay enhancements once again! Similar to the Mod Spotlight we had about our UI update, I will now be outlining the fancy new things we’ve added - and which we will add in the near future! Game Rules Something I really liked about Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3 is the Game Rules screen, where you are able to change certain things about how a campaign will behave, especially in regards to key historical events; which is why we’ve designed our own Game Rule system that will be shipped as part of our 1.13 update!
Here, you can determine things such as which Mission Trees AI will pick, whether you want to remove certain nations for the sake of performance, or whether you want to increase the chance of a Dutch nation spawning, or perhaps the chance for a Iberian Union of Castile and Portugal to occur!
Custom Macrobuilder
Next up, is something I’m personally really happy about: the Custom Macrobuilder
Since we started adding more QoL features, it has sometimes started getting a bit hard coming up with a good place to put them when there wasn’t an obvious place, like with the Advisors Court. For those cases, we now have our own Macrobuilder, accessible with Shift+B! In the current Steam version it only includes an Upgrade-All-Buildings tool, but in the future it’ll contain much more!
Miscellaneous
Apart from these key additions, we also have made some miscellaneous changes, such as changing all our previous UI work to use the more performance-friendly window system introduced with 1.37 (although this isn’t visible to players), and also reworked other features like the Caliphate to no longer use workarounds, but have fully custom Bubbles and Windows!
Achievements
And, last but not least regarding UI, we have our achievement system! To elaborate a little, we’re using a reworked triggered modifiers screen to display the achievements, in order to have them in a list, while we recreated the triggered modifiers screen using scripted UI, which then has page buttons! This was done both to have a smooth experience with achievements, but also to reduce the lag some of our triggered modifiers were previously causing! The result is that the player has both a vanilla-equal achievement screen, as well as an improved triggered modifiers screen!
And finally, the best part - you get Steam Achievement popups! And while they may not be actual Steam achievements, just faux popups, they still do feel pretty dang good to look at!
Of course, even that isn’t nearly everything we’re up to regarding UI, but a lot of the things we’ve started work on (such as further custom macrobuilder tabs, colonization changes, siege changes, and fully new gameplay related UIs) are so early in progress that there isn’t much to show off yet (1.37 is new after all), so keep in touch with everything new through our teasers! But for now, just have this! Can you guess what it is for? ;)
Aragon
When 1.13 was first announced to the public, our first showcases were the Iberian trees. However at the time we did not have Aragon ready, and we only had a few research notes on them. Since then though we’ve fully implemented not only an Aragon tree, but tons of setup changes to their ruler, army, as well as diplomatic situation to make their experience more unique.
First things first, you will notice that Sardinia and Sicily are now on the map! Whilst both were de-jure part of Aragon at the time, however, considering their position between the kingdoms of Naples and Aragon, plus the fact that we like seeing more nations on the map, they are now junior partners of Aragon.
Another change that you may notice is that the army of Aragon looks a little different. They now start with 3 artillery regiments, the reason being was that Aragon thanks to their ruler, Alfonso V de Trastamara, were able to amass the most impressive artillery force of the time, which was used against King Rene of Naples in 1441. However you should be careful with these units, as you’ll not be able to recruit additional artillery regiments until military tech 7.
In order to represent a few other vassals and allies of Aragon, there are now new events for the subjugation of Stephan of Herzegovina, as well as Skanderbeg joining your court should Albania be wiped out from the map. This will make Aragon’s starting position quite opportunistic but also hard to maintain.
Lastly, Aragon starts with a new disaster, the War of the Remences, which some of you may know from the vanilla tree, however we’ll get on that later ????
Whilst this tree is not as big as Castile, it will get expanded later when you form Spain, allowing you to gain the Castilian colonial missions. Now, besides that? What differentiates Aragon from Castile? Considering their position in the Mediterranean, their several conflicts with the Italian merchants, as well as their conflicts with both the Mamluks and the Ottomans, they would be even more mercantile and naval focused than their Castilian counterparts, with most of their missions revolving around securing trade in the Mediterranean. Some territories as well were a part of Aragon, like Athens, Corsica, and even parts of Provence, so we’ve tried to be as accurate to these ambitions as possible. In addition, like other nations wishing to control Egypt and potentially the trade in Asia, Aragon can also construct an early Suez Canal, although it will be costly to do so.
Whilst some are focused on the Mediterranean, there are also missions for the situation in Iberia, as well as some interaction with your vassals, such as Navarra and Castile, who you will be able to get through existing vanilla content, although Iberian Wedding has been reworked in 1.13 to require the Castilian Civil War.
Before we get onto the branching missions though, let’s speak about Aragonese flavour. Considering the Catalan dominance not only in Eastern Iberia, but also the entire Mediterranean, we’ve decided to focus more on that part of their content. There were a few underutilised effects as well as designs we wanted to try out, and Aragon fit in perfectly for them, such as further customization for your flagship, with modifications that offer drawbacks in exchange for a more specialised fleet, allowing you to pick your loan sizes, as well as encouraging the player to maintain trade power in both Genoa and Venice nodes. Some parts of the tree focuses on Alfonso V’s being a patron of the arts, which we may or may not expand later.
Now, let’s look at the spiciest part of the tree.I said before that the War of the Remences is a new disaster for Aragon. The reason being is because we wanted to look more in-depth to the opportunities this conflict caused, as well as showcase the difference between the Catalan nobility and the peasantry
So, what does this disaster have to offer?
Let’s start with the basics. Like War of the Roses or the Castilian Civil War, this disaster can only fire in the age of discovery, and like both of these, you can completely avoid them should you plan your steps correctly, although you lose out on future buffs by doing so
In order to completely avoid the disaster in the Age of Discovery though, Aragon starts with a new privilege that they must get rid of. That privilege being the “Ius Maletractandi”, better known as the Evil Customs of Aragon which allowed the Nobility to mistreat their peasantry, leading up to the War of the Remences.
Now, when the Disaster fires, if you want to prevent the worst outcome, you must get rid of the privilege. The reason being is that Catalonia will slowly start gathering supporters to create their own independent nation, autonomous from the laws of Aragon enforced to them. What’s worse is, Good King Renes of Provence still remembers his defeats in Italy and would most likely try to convince the Catalan people to declare him their king. The French as well would be able to intervene on the side of Catalonia, although Aragon can grant them the fort of Rousellon for support.
When you’re finally done with the disaster you will unlock the branching missions. Depending on how you complete or how you avoid the disaster, the missions will branch to either dealing with the numerous kingdoms in Iberia, or creating a peasant republic that will liberate every peasant in Iberia!
The British Isles
The recent few weeks, our development diaries have been focused on showcasing the new mission tree English/British mission tree. Alongside that, we have been developing a new mission tree for those who wish to play as the Angevin Empire. The entry point to this mission tree is the event “Second Treaty of Tours” fired by the mission “The Culmination”:
Here’s the mission tree that gets unlocked:
Now, the mission tree for Angevins is a heavy Work in Progress, so I’ll focus on the general gist of it!
The core new feature of our new Angevin content is the process of integrating the french estates and eventually forming the Angevin Empire. While a lot of the missions seem available to you from the get-go, plenty of them are guarded by a check for having enough of “Francien Integration.”
Francien Integration is a new government mechanic coming with the 1.13 update for the Angevin Empire.
It is essentially a bar measured from 0 to 1000, slowly ticking up. As the bar fills up, more of your missions unlock and the color of the two nations is brought closer:
Here’s the colors of England & France two-thirds into the integration process.
Once the bar fully fills up, the decision to form Angevin Empire is unlocked.
To allow a lot more gameplay possibilities with the new government mechanic, we have also (re)created an estate representing your french subjects, the aptly named “Francien.”
The estate currently has 11 privileges, giving you plenty of choice to work with, here’s 3 of them:
To briefly tackle the question of the mission tree, the mission tree is split into 3 subtrees, the latter two being of rather familiar scheme, representing the outward and inward ambitions of the two states, while the first one is dedicated entirely towards the unification of the two states.
As the mission tree is a heavy Work-in-Progress, I won’t go into detail, but here’s some interesting rewards contained within the mission tree:
And to make it easier to manage your realm across islands and continents alike, we’ve made it possible to create a brand new artificial strait crossing - The Channel Tunnel! With it first being proposed in 1802 and attempted in 1880, only failing due to political reasons and not practical ones, we’ve determined it to be no less fitting for the era than the Suez Canal!
Since it is a tunnel, it obviously cannot be blockaded, but for that, we came up with a rather elegant solution to allow you to still keep the island safe from crossings, if the need arises:
This also means that the artificial strait has 3 possible states:
- invisible/nonexistent, from the start of of the game until it is first built
- active, after it has first been built, and anytime it’s built after that
- inactive, whenever it is demolished after it was first built
The latter two look like this - green lines being the active one, red circles the inactive:
Additionally, The Channel Tunnel has a counterpart monument in Calais, which always matches the development of the main unit in Kent - so it’s just for show and for applying the modifiers.
