Nova Patria Weekly Update

Ave Patricians!

Another week of steady progress across the Empire. This week’s updates focus on world animation, smarter logistics, and continued improvements to UI clarity and stability - refining how Nova Patria looks, feels, and flows as your cities grow.

Here’s what the team has been working on:

🎨 Art & Visuals

The world continues to come alive with more animation and visual polish:

• Spring Tiles - All remaining variations are now animated

• Water and Coast Tiles - Animated across the map (more to come)

  Steam post imageSteam post image

• Adjusted world animation speed for a more natural feel

• Improved dock and bridge highlight colors to better match seasonal changes

• Increased transparency of city borders to reduce visual clutter

Additional visual polish:

• Scaled down Tier II house sprites to better fit within tiles

• Fixed City Label sorting issues so they are no longer obscured by building details or alerts

• Ensured rails render above borders for clearer network visibility

🧠 UI / UX Improvements

Several updates were made to improve clarity and usability:

• Improved formatting of Storage Building Connections tooltip for easier readability

• Enhanced Storage Building resource selection behavior:

  • Resources now intelligently shift to available slots instead of being released unnecessarily

• Refined Tech Tree Benefice slider alignment

• Fixed formatting issues with flavor text quotes

⚙ Gameplay & Simulation

This week brings meaningful improvements to how resources and trade behave:

Smarter Resource Flow

• Improved resource scrap logic:

  • Producers closer to consumers are now less likely to scrap resources

• Traveling resources behave more intelligently across the network

Smarter Trade Routes

• Updated trade route logic for carts and trains:

  • High-value, longer-distance routes are now considered more fairly

  • Replaced strict distance filtering with a gradual scoring system

This leads to more efficient and realistic distribution across your empire.

🚀 Performance & Stability

Several improvements were made to ensure smoother gameplay and faster loading:

• Prebaked distance and resource range caches on load:

  • Eliminates slowdown in the first several minutes of gameplay after loading a save

• Fixed loading screen progress bar reaching 100% prematurely

• Improved startup stability and prevented temporary “app not responding” behavior during launch

🖱 Input Improvements

• Prevented tooltips from triggering accidentally from camera drag

🛠 Bug Fixes

A number of fixes were applied across systems:

• Fixed storage building visual paths not clearing after closing window with right-click

• Fixed city data sorting errors in simulation logic

• Fixed various graphics and UI inconsistencies

• Fixed alignment and readability issues in text and tooltips

Each week continues to refine Nova Patria - enhancing the visual experience, improving the intelligence of its systems, and ensuring the simulation runs smoothly at every stage of your empire’s growth.

To everyone following development and sharing feedback - thank you! Your continued support helps shape Nova Patria.

If you’re interested in becoming a part of our community, whether as a playtester or enthusiast, and follow development more closely, come hang out with us on Discord:

https://discord.gg/jPsPvhMSYv

More soon!

Ad victoriam, - The Nova Patria Team