Nova Patria Weekly Update

Ave Patricians!

Another week of progress across the Empire. This week’s work focused on resource range clarity, construction flow, UI polish, world animation, and economic balance - making Nova Patria easier to read, smoother to control, and more responsive as colonies grow.

Here’s what the team has been working on:

🎨 Art & Visuals

The world continues to gain motion and polish:

• Added remaining animated coast sprites, beach coast sprites, and river mouth sprites

• Improved steam particle positioning for:

  • Tier II Houses

  • “Leo Vaporis” upgraded train

We also fixed several visual issues:

• Fixed animated world sprite sets not updating properly when freshwater changed dynamically in some instances

• Fixed animated building visual bugs caused by compression

• Improved how aqueduct sprites are used during aqueduct construction

🧠 UI / UX Improvements

Global Resources & Wealth

• Wealth UI now includes the denarii symbol

• Global Resource tooltips now include colored + / - indicators for clearer cumulative breakdowns

• Wealth tooltip formatting improved with better indentation and additional City Upkeep information

• Fixed Global Resource tooltip display issues where zero values used green instead of red

Tech Tree & Tech Progression UI

• Tech Tree connection lines now better visualize research progress

• Fixed queued tech color not clearing properly when switching research

• Increased Tech Complete window height for larger descriptions

• Added a dedicated Tech font icon and integrated it throughout UI and tooltips

• Save files now show unlocked Tech count using the new icon Steam post image

Goals & Perks

• Goals & Perks selection now allows clicking the whole item, not just the checkbox

• Tooltips repositioned below items for better readability and consistency

• Fixed Total Wealth goal text still showing 500k instead of 1 million

• Goals/Perks diamond icon now appears in relevant tooltips

🏗 Construction & Planning

• Added Resource Range Preview Border

  • When constructing or hovering over a building, the game now shows the maximum possible resource range achievable with roads

  • This appears alongside the active resource range already shown

• Added resource range tile highlights to economy resource heatmaps

• Construction now auto-unselects a building after placement

• Network demolish now locks the cursor to valid demolish positions

• Network construction tooltips now reposition dynamically to avoid covering the area being built

• Added an option for storage buildings to spawn without default storage resources selected Steam post image

⚖ Economy & Simulation

We continued refining the game’s economic pacing:

• Lowered tax rates revenue

• Significantly lowered City Upkeep costs

• Increased Benefice / Monastery Upkeep costs

• Overall goal: make the early game more forgiving while making the mid-to-late game more challenging, and budgeting more interesting

We also improved storage and resource behavior:

• Storage buildings now better evaluate whether closer storage buildings can actually reach the destination before withholding resources

• Fixed cases where buildings storing a resource with none available displayed incorrectly in heatmaps

⚙ Performance & Optimization

Heatmap performance received a major improvement:

• Heatmap updates now use queued, incremental refreshes

• This replaces immediate full redraws and should make heatmap interactions much faster

🛠 Bug Fixes & Polish

• Fixed Wealth UI tooltip spacing and alignment

• Fixed Tech Tree Benefice tooltip trigger behavior

• Fixed production bonus tooltip translation and pluralization issues

• Fixed resource dropdowns staying open when opening the main menu

• Fixed bullet-point tooltip text wrapping in Tech Tree and Quickstart Objectives

• Improved save/load icon sizing and positioning for population, denarii, techs, and time icons

• Changed “empty storage selection” to “missing storage selection” for clearer wording

Each week continues to bring Nova Patria closer to the experience we’re building toward: a deep, readable, and rewarding simulation where every road, resource, and city decision matters.

To everyone following development and sharing feedback - thank you. Your input continues to help shape the Empire.

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