Patch 1.244 - Religion, Military, Compliance

v1.244 Patch Notes

The biggest update yet. Military command has been rebuilt from the ground up, character loyalty replaced with a proper compliance system, organised religions get bishops, and there are now victory conditions. Plus a mountain of diplomacy, economy, and UI work.

Of course since there are so many changes for this update there are bound to be some bugs - please let me know if you run into any and I'll fix them up ASAP. I also didn't get around to finishing the Qwen 3.5-based event models and modding tools, but those should be ready to go in a few days.

New Features

Compliance

Loyalty and opinion have been merged into a single Compliance score (-50 to +50) that governs how willing a character is to follow your orders. It pulls from their personal loyalty, what they think of you, patronage ties, whether your reputation leans toward honour or dread, power bloc happiness, and situational modifiers like being a new ruler or imprisoned. Characters range from Eager to Defiant, and defiant leaders will act on it - refusing orders, undermining you, or outright rebelling. The full breakdown shows up in the loyalty map mode tooltip.

Military Command Overhaul

You can now delegate command of armies to subordinate generals through a proper hierarchy. A dynamic cap on top-level commands means you can't micromanage everything yourself - you'll need to trust your generals. Delegated commands follow one of four doctrines: Concentrate (stay close, reinforce battles), Screen (fan out toward threats), Garrison (hold nearby settlements), or Independent (pursue their own targets). Commanders' personality traits affect how well they follow orders - an ambitious general might ignore a recall, a timid one won't engage unless cornered. The map shows the hierarchy with new line visuals: striped lines for delegated commands, colour-coded by range.

Rank tooltips break down per-level buffs and effective radius. Armies and fleets are now named by culture and commander rank with a 3-tier naming system, and you can merge armies together. Level 2 and 3 commands have monthly gold upkeep.

Clergy & Bishops

Organised religions now have a clergy system. Whichever faction has the most followers of a faith becomes its leading faction and gets to appoint bishops across the map. A new Clergy tab on the Faction Overview screen lets you see all eligible lands, assign or dismiss bishops, check religion share, or auto-fill every vacant seat. Bishops feed into the event system too, so they'll show up in narrative events.

Victory Conditions

Three tiers of victory give the campaign actual goals:

• Default - survive to year 1000

• Extended - survive to year 1100 and hold all six core domains, directly or through subjects

• Ultimate - hold all eight domains and convert your entire realm to your state religion

A victory sidebar tracks your progress with dynamic condition rows for each tier.

Diplomacy & Politics

• Counter-Offers - you can now propose and receive counter-offers during war and peacetime negotiations instead of just accepting or rejecting

• Seize Territory - forcibly take provinces from your subjects, at the risk of rebellion

• Transfer Territory - move provinces between subjects

• Vassal Subversion - destabilise enemy subjects to trigger civil wars from within

• War Ransoms - pay and demand ransoms for prisoners during active wars

• Dynamic Faction Names - factions now display context-aware names with their government type

• 10 new ambient diplomatic opinion modifiers make faction relationships more varied

• Merchant Rights - new treaty type for luxury trade bonuses, replacing the old Trade Agreement (now called Supply Agreement)

• Tax Rate Policy - controls vassal tribute with per-vassal adjustments

• Marriage proposals are now restricted to factions within your diplomatic network

• The hard AI war cap has been replaced with a time-based declaration cooldown

Characters

• All character stats recentered around 0 with a -15 to +15 range, so positive and negative values actually mean something

• Characters form opinions of each other based on traits, plus 10 new opinion modifiers covering age, reputation, power blocs, ruler culture, imprisonment, commander status, and patronage

• New interactions gated by your ruler's honour or dread reputation

• Cunning-gated intrigue interactions can be initiated through proxies

• Patrons and clients now get passive bonuses, with new "ask patron" interactions

• You can recruit fresh courtiers from the character selector, which now has faction, culture, and religion filters

• You'll be notified when dynasty members die

• Minor character notifications are muted by default to cut down on noise

Military

• Raiding Overhaul - proper naval raiding with settlement-hopping and hostile territory engagement. AI factions actually raid now, sacking settlements and generating pillage notifications and refugee unrest

• AI Military Overhaul - the AI military planner has been rebuilt to use autonomous commands, evaluate wars and peace properly, handle overseas transport, and manage levies

• Battle Pacing - battles are significantly slower with a float-based morale system and reduced pursuit casualties, so morale actually matters before one side is wiped out

• Manual Formation Control - you can now set formations, issue flanking orders, and use waypoint movement during battles

• Overcrowding Attrition - too many friendly armies in the same area causes attrition

• Military tooltips show current/max strength, army queue widgets show population cost, and navy tooltips show carry capacity

Economy

• Auto-Sell - set resources to automatically sell when your stockpile exceeds a threshold

• Resource Decay - all resources decay over time, so you can't just hoard forever

• Trade Income - rebalanced to be comparable to taxation, making trade routes worth investing in

• Corruption - now scales with distance-to-capital and compliance tier, with a detailed breakdown tooltip

• Empire Build Queue - a new panel groups queued buildings across your realm

• New settlement interaction system for governor, bishop, and general actions

• 12 settlement modifiers are now visible in the UI

UI & Quality of Life

• Sortable table widget used across the economy screen, clergy panel, and diplomacy screen

• Diplomacy screen split into internal and external faction rows

• Settlement sidebar reorganised with tabs

• Camera tilt with PageUp/PageDown

• Separate brightness and gamma settings

• Observer mode to watch the map without playing

• Province tooltips consolidated into rich text with live religion/culture conversion rates and pressure sources

• Religion and culture pie chart tooltips show conversion rate and where the pressure is coming from

• Relationship tooltips show mechanical details with glossary links

• Building effects show inline icons and glossary links

• Disease map mode shows starvation as striped overlays

• Opinion modifier rows have dual positive/negative bars, sorted by value

• Greyed-out interactions now tell you why they're unavailable

• Inline concept icons scale to match surrounding font size

• Option to continue playing after the tutorial ends

• Debug short IDs and SetDate cheat for testing

Content

• 15 new encyclopedia pages covering provinces, foederati, governors, court, espionage, sieges, and more

• Religious buildings with dedicated icons

• Kyrnian culture for the Kyrnos province

• Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian, and Romanian language support

• New event artwork and a "meeting" loading screen

• Power blocs are now first-class entities in the event system

• Histria tutorial factions have named court characters that show up in events

• Tutorial expanded with command hierarchy, bishoprics, Kyrnos leader capture, unrest management, and rebellion delay

Modding

• Cultures and religions no longer need Blueprint classes - AngelScript-only definitions make them much easier to mod

Balance Changes

• Compliance recentered around 0 with doubled loyalty/opinion weights for more meaningful character dynamics

• Character stats rescaled to -15 to +15 - you can tell at a glance whether someone is competent

• Corruption reduction from buildings cut by 3x

• Distance-to-capital has a stronger effect on unrest

• Peasant rebellions happen less often (per-faction cooldown) and only field tier 1-2 units

• Barbarian factions get direct gold income and tribal economy modifiers so they're more competitive

• Battles are much slower - morale actually matters before armies get wiped

• Trade income brought up to par with taxation

• Resource decay prevents infinite stockpile accumulation in long campaigns

• AI factions now have internal power blocs

• Rephsian AI expansion restricted to historically appropriate domains

• New rulers start with a -15 compliance malus that fades over 5 years, making succession a real danger

• Imprisoned rulers impose -20 compliance on all subjects

• Removed automatic heir designation - succession is contested

Bug Fixes

Military

• AI raiding levies no longer consumed by garrison assignments

• AI re-calls levies after armies are wiped out mid-war

• AI makes peace after fully occupying an enemy faction

• AI armies actually advance toward enemies during wartime instead of idling

• AI peace deals no longer create border gore

• AI naval transport and overseas war planning fixed

• Navy pathfinding no longer cuts through land on stitch segments

• Armies garrisoned in the capital no longer join rebellions

• Army movement speed no longer reduced when zoomed out

• Army/fleet names fixed for levies, foederati, event-spawned forces, and missing regions

• Navy naming no longer produces redundant or broken names

• Command radius plane matches actual buff radius

• Doctrines cascade correctly through the full command hierarchy

• Hierarchy lines refresh immediately when doctrines change

• Command hierarchy no longer assigns children outside buff radius

• Enemy army radii no longer visible when zoomed in

• Embarkation landing sites check ocean connectivity

Diplomacy & Politics

• Peace negotiation strength bar uses full faction strength

• Treaty option tooltips show correct values and formatting

• You can grant and request passage rights in the same treaty

• Annex faction goal shows actual war score cost

• New vassals join their liege's existing wars

• Vassals released when their liege faction is destroyed

• Subject leaders properly recognised for compliance

• Settlement selection for seize/transfer respects faction ownership and rebellion state

UI

• Settlement sidebar no longer redraws every day tick

• Sidebars no longer get stuck closed after animation race conditions

• Event widgets no longer overlap

• Province tooltip flicker eliminated

• Rich text double-buffered to prevent flicker on updates

• Building browser zoom fits all buildings; shift-click shows multiple categories

• Building browser gold check uses the player faction

• Economy screen resource amounts use darker, more readable colours

• Settlement finder unrest sort no longer freezes

• Foederati and templates populate correctly in military overview

• Character stat tooltips explain unknown stats and how to reveal them

• Glossary links navigate to the correct encyclopedia entry

• Court appointee portrait opens the character sidebar

• Confirmation dialogs no longer show raw localisation keys

• Province tooltip hidden over water

• Map mode buttons no longer deselect unexpectedly

• Bishopric map mode labels update on religion switch with better colour differentiation

Performance

• Daily and monthly tick performance optimised

• Multiple hot paths identified and fixed via CSV profiling

• Military overview command hierarchy built synchronously to avoid hitches

• Peace negotiation refresh hitch reduced

• GetAllActorsOfClass replaced with cached registries throughout

• Character sidebar opening hitch eliminated

• Fog of war updates faster and works while paused

Other

• Default anti-aliasing changed to FXAA to avoid TAA ghosting

• Saved anti-aliasing and graphics settings apply correctly on startup

• Camera Z tracking smoothed at all zoom levels to eliminate mountain jitter

• Temporary traits now expire correctly

• Settlements no longer produce wrong resources

• Fog of war respects the disabled flag

• Building upgrades that were actually downgrades from their predecessors fixed

• Dead characters removed from patron/client lists

• Religious persecution opinion restricted to characters within the realm

• Master of Diplomacy court bonus and court combat bonuses now actually do something

• Various crash fixes from player reports

• Instant build cheat skips all costs correctly

• Building max level enforced in encyclopedia placement mode

• Screens are per-faction when switching in observer mode