Master of Command : Update v1.4.0 « Scorched Earth »

Update v1.4.0 "Scorched Earth"

Philosophy Behind this Update

This update reworks much of the game’s pacing in battles and campaign. For battles, we’ve made charges less extreme, and melees slower. Ranged combat has also slowed down, as accuracy has been reduced on muskets as well as morale damage from volleys. For the campaign, the overall goal was to slow progression in the early-to-mid game, and speed up the late-game which can often drag. Because of this change, you can expect it to take longer to build up your army. At the same time, we’ve lowered the amount of units the AI is fielding proportionately to the player. This should have the effect of making the battles a little smaller and thereby delaying the introduction of the large 5 brigade battles which can often be time-consuming. The 6th brigade used in Act III’s HQ army has also been removed as a result of these changes.

Besides pacing changes, we’ve upgraded the AI personalities introduced in our last update (defensive/balanced/offensive) to now feature 9 distinct personality profiles that not only have their own unique behaviors, but also some small bonuses that synergize with their strategies. For example, there is a new “Gustavian” personality which attempts to close in, fire a devastating volley, and charge your lines quickly. This personality comes with a slight charging and move speed buff to make this strategy more effective (similar to how the player can get doctrines, the AI can now get 1 doctrine each battle).

The larger aim with this update was to make battles feel less repetitive and less grindy, especially later in a run. Right now, progression for both the player and the AI ramps up too quickly, which causes large, time-consuming battles to appear too often earlier in the game instead of being saved more for the end. This becomes especially noticeable in Act 3, where nearly every battle can turn into a long slog because progression was maxed out in Act 2. In a future planned update, Act 3 will likely be reworked even more to feel faster and more decisive so it does not overstay its welcome.

Another major focus was reducing how extreme combat becomes in the late game. Stat scaling can reach absurd levels and destabilize balance, leading to situations like one-charge routs or volleys that instantly shatter units. It should now be both harder and more expensive to build a large army equipped with top-tier items, you may need to make sacrifices between focusing on quality or quantity.

*Note that Sweden will be added in our next update which is planned to drop in June.

WARNING

This update will break your saves, you can roll back the game version by right-clicking and going to properties, then to « betas » and then selecting the April version to roll the game back to. Alternatively, when you load a save you can click « Show Outdated Saves » and proceed at your own risk.

AI Overhaul

– There have been 9 new personality profiles added, each has their own unique fighting behaviors and a unique AI “doctrine” given to the army which gives them certain buffs/debuffs. Each nation has their own preferences to which personalities they will use (such as Prussia preferring Frederickian doctrine), but they can use all of them in order to give the game more variety. And each personality has their own offense/defense preference with different thresholds to utilize those stances.

Aggressive Profiles

Sobieskian Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on cavalry and high resilience. Its weakness is low ranged damage due to poor infantry accuracy. 

This army is likely to be aggressive; it may defend if it has a large artillery advantage.

Gustavian Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on delivering close-range volleys followed by devastating infantry charges, while maintaining high mobility. Its weakness is prolonged engagements due to slower reload speed. 

This army is very likely to be extremely aggressive; it may defend if it has a slight artillery advantage.

Hildburghauser Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on highly mobile assault columns and attrition warfare. Its weakness is envelopment due to higher flanking damage received.

This army is very likely to be extremely aggressive; it may defend if it has a significant artillery advantage.

Balanced Profiles

Maurician Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on powerful, accurate volleys that can shock targets and break them quickly. Its weakness is low morale, with units being more susceptible to breaking under heavy pressure. 

This army is unlikely to be aggressive; it may defend if it has a slight artillery advantage.

Saxe Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on command and control, with large officer command radiuses and high morale. Its weakness is increased officer death chance in units with attached officers. 

This army is likely to be aggressive; it may defend if it has a slight artillery advantage.

Frederickian Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on wide flanking maneuvers, covering a large section of the battlefield with thin ranks and rapid firing to overwhelm the enemy. Its weakness is prolonged combat due to low stamina.

This army is likely to be aggressive; it may defend if it has a large artillery advantage.

Defensive Profiles

Daunian Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on artillery and range superiority. Its weakness is mobility and responsiveness to flanking.

This army is unlikely to be aggressive; it may defend even without an artillery advantage.

Blandian Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on disciplined infantry volleys and sustained ranged combat. Its weakness is hand-to-hand combat due to lower infantry melee skill. 

This army is unlikely to be aggressive; it may defend if it has a slight artillery advantage.

Munnicher Doctrine

This doctrine is focused on the use of cover and greater effectiveness around officers. Its weakness is vulnerability to being surrounded due to increased flanking damage. 

This army is unlikely to be aggressive; it may defend even without an artillery advantage.

Other AI Fixes

– Fixes to the AI where sometimes an artillery or infantry unit would go idle if it couldn’t find a valid path to a target

– Fixed the bug where during HQ battles the AI’s personality would show as a white box instead of using a proper icon

– Improvements made to the defensive AI posture where they should shuffle around less often

– Fixes made to the AI where in trying to avoid sitting in a river they’d sometimes get into a loop of running back and forth over a river

– The “defensive,” “balanced,” and “offensive” personality profiles have been removed from the game.

– AI light infantry now have a bias toward using fieldworks so that they are less susceptible to being charged down by the player so easily. I also removed the bias they have toward preferring “footwear” items because they move so quickly that they advance too far ahead of their main line.

Act III Update

– Act 3 has two new mission types, “Capture” and “Rescue.” The Capture mission only appears on enemy territories and has you taking forts and seizing convoys. The region will be full of the new “marauder” armies detailed below.  The Rescue mission only appears on friendly territories and has you securing battlefields and dismantling slums. It is also full of the marauder armies detailed below.

– All settlements in Act 3 no longer start off pillaged

– Most patrols of Act 3 replaced with a new army type, “Marauders.” Marauders are larger than patrols, they burn down settlements, and have higher amount of loot than patrols. There are only 2 marauders in Act 3 instead of the typical ~7 patrols you’d find in Act 3. This means fewer but more meaningful battles, especially since by Act 3 the battles tend to be larger and take longer. I found it tedious previously to get through Act 3 when it was full of many patrol armies that took a while to fight. You can expect about 2 patrols and 2 marauders in Act III, but we will keep an eye on your playthroughs and adjust this ratio over time.

Campaign Changes

– Global replenishment rate has been slowed down slightly, you need to recover a little bit longer after bloody battles

– Replenishment gain from drilling increased from +40% to +50%

– Shops have more thalers in acts 2 and 3 by about +150 so that selling off goods isn’t as tedious due to shops running out of cash

– Ammunition costs are +20% higher at shops (the cost itself hasn’t changed but the amount of ammunition you get for the same price has decreased)

– Manpower costs are +10% higher at shops

– Shops at settlements now store more food and ammunition to buy from by about +20%

– Cash gain from “plunder” for fighting battles has been increased in Act 1 and 2 but remains the same in Act 3.

– The amount of loot you receive from battles has been reduced in all cases except the HQ fights. At the same time, we increased the chance of higher quality loot drops

– Cannons are now more likely to be part of loot drops from battles

– Ammunition and manpower gain from prisoners has been decreased by -5%

– Item slot costs increased by 20%, from [50][100][150][200][250][300][350][400] to [60][120][180][240][300][360][420][480]. This is a minor change but makes it slightly harder to max out units’ item slots, mainly in the late game.

– Brigade slot costs increased, from [0][300][600][1200][2400] to [0][500][1000][2000][3500]. We’ve reduced the AI army sizes as well (as seen in the bullet point below) making larger armies rarer until the end of the game. It should be completely viable to end Act 1 with only 2 brigades of high quality or 3 brigades of low/mid quality.

– All AI armies have been reduced in size, most noticeably in Acts 2 & 3. The final HQ of Act 3 no longer has reinforcements of a 2nd HQ battle and has just 5 brigades instead of 6. The result should be less large-scale battles until the very end of the game, making the fights less of a grind especially going into Act 2.

– AI armies run away slightly less frequently than previously

– You can now stack doctrines you already have when you get to Act 3

– Number of patrols in Act 2 reduced slightly. The battles are long and now that the AI has the personality profiles, the fights are tougher and time-consuming. And because Act 3 has been made slightly easier, the player does not need to take so many fights in Act 2 in preparation.

– Raiding speed slowed down by 1 day

– “Auxiliary Barracks” condition at settlements which let you recruit local troops only had a 1% chance of appearing because I had lowered the weight in the last update. I increased the weight slightly so it’s a 5% chance, compared to the ~9% chance of any other condition appearing.

– Major change made to the HRE. Mustering costs 4 thalers per regiment in army instead of 5. Mustering reservist gain per day is now 20 per regiment daily instead of 25, however you can use the updated “Extended Training” doctrine to negate this debuff. Mustering also now gives you a recruit with 2 veterancy per brigade you have open instead of 1 veterancy. This is because opening brigade slots is much more expensive now, and the mustering buff falls off in effectiveness late-game. So this change should make mustering more viable toward the end of the game now, where mustering with a full 5 brigades would get you a level 10 veterancy recruit who can instantly get promoted up to a musketeer status.

– Raiding takes an extra day on both villages and cities. Cities provide 1 additional loot item when raided successfully

– The raiding and suppression missions no longer require raiding 5 settlements but instead just 4 (especially since raiding takes longer)

– Pushed back all three Act HQ times by +10 days to give players more time to develop their army since progression has been slowed down

– Players on the harder difficulties were earning about 20% more thalers than players on regular difficulty due to the “Inaccurate Reports” modifier which adds additional enemy units to fight. We have adjusted the inaccurate reports to no longer provide additional loot bonuses.

Combat Changes

– Global morale damage has been reduced by about -10% making combat slightly slower. Artillery morale damage has not been affected, so artillery will still cause the same morale shock as it did previously.

– Combat effectiveness buff from morale is now 5-10% instead of 10-20% because morale doesn’t go down as quickly as it used to. Stamina also only provides 5% combat effectiveness buff instead of 10% when you have very high stamina. These changes were also made because it was too easy to get your combat effectiveness to such a level that your stats start overflowing.

– A new formula has been applied to morale damage which diminishes it at higher values. This means if an insanely high amount of morale damage is stacked all on one unit, it will no longer instantly shatter the unit, but will still reduce that unit’s HP and max morale value as per normal. This has been done to prevent strategies that revolve around stacking many items/skills that improve morale damage and accuracy and focus-firing down units to shatter them in a single volley. This also prevents melees from being exploited where sending in several units at once can cause ridiculous morale damage from each charge impact.

– Rivers and marshes now reduce stamina slightly more than they used to while being crossed in battle

– Charge impacts now deal less morale damage for the charging unit and defending unit to make melees slightly less decisive. The amount of kills was never too extreme in melees, but the morale shock could end up being way too high if the player stacked lots of cavalry with very high charge skill.

– Charge impacts are now slightly more deadly for the charging unit and defending unit.

– Charge momentum is built slightly slower making it less effective to cycle charge (pulling out and charging repeatedly).

– Charge momentum is depleted much more slowly on the impact of a charge. The effect of this is simply that you can’t pull out of a charge as easily, you must wait for the momentum bar to deplete fully before being able to pull out. This makes cycle charging harder (which was necessary to do since charges are less impactful).

– Because charges deal less damage, we reduced the stamina cost in charging from -10 to -6.

– Melee damage is now 3 times slower compared to before giving you more time to react to melees before they’re over.

– Fire flanking damage has been slightly increased due to muskets going down in accuracy (now rewards flanking more but frontal combat is less decisive).

– Free fire now only deals -30% less morale damage instead of -35% morale damage compared to volley fire making it more viable.

– Attack column formations take slightly less morale damage when fired upon compared to a thinner line formation.

– Troops in open order now suffer 1.5x charge damage received instead of 2x making them less vulnerable to being charged down so easily.

– Hills provide 20% cover now instead of 30%. Just seemed too easy to stack items and cover effectiveness while on a hill and naturally get very high amounts of cover.

– Any effect that specifies “melee damage received” now also includes charge damage received. This should make the French King’s Household scale better in the late-game, where previously if the enemy stacked hussars (high charge damage) they could wipe out one of your royal cavalry units on impact even if they had the melee damage received buffs.

– Sprint speed of the general is now slightly faster

Unit Changes

– All unit prices have gone up by +50 thalers. The AI fields fewer men and so the player should not create such a large army so quickly.

– We’ve decreased the minimum reload value slightly so that it’s not as hard to reach fast reload speeds; a higher reload skill should now result in slightly faster firing speeds.

– All recruit prices have gone up by an additional +25-50 in addition to the aforementioned increase

– Provincial cavalry for all nations have been strengthened slightly

– French “Volontaires Dragoon” has been redesignated to light cavalry and has had its stats updated.

– All HRE Imperial cavalry (provincial, hussar, daragoon, cuirassier) charge skill increased by +5

– HRE Saxon Tartar Cavalry charge skill decreased by -5

– All HRE Kreis Infantry have +5 more morale (with exception to the imperial recruit who is still very fragile)

– Higher tier HRE Kreis units now have normal replenishment speed, including their grenadiers and cuirassiers, letting them suffer a lot of casualties and recover quickly. 

– Saxon tartar cavalry has been given slow replenishment

– French Irish units now field larger battalions for fusiliers and grenadiers (1400/1200 respectively) however have had their speed, stamina, and melee decreased by -5

– All Prussian Freikorps infantry have +5 more accuracy

– British Foot guards have had their accuracy increased by +5 and reload by +5

– Increased the weight of Saxon and Imperial recruits up to “5” instead of “0” so there’s a chance of mustering them in Act 3. This is especially because of the change made to mustering which increases their veterancy massively, making it easier to instantly promote your mustered recruit up to a higher tier unit in the late game.

Nation/Composition Changes :

Some army compositions were strengthened to better withstand the early game battles which now are tougher due to the AI personality system.

– All compositions now start with +25 more thalers just to give slight compensation for the price increases

– All compositions now have a new stat called « recruitment bias » which you can find on their doctrine preview. The biases change the frequency of the types of troops you can find at settlements to recruit from. This makes each composition have more of a focus. For example, it’s now much easier to properly roleplay the Saxon Army under the HRE due to their « dominant » Saxon recruitment bias. Both mustering and traditional recruitment will lean heavily toward Saxon troops.

BRITAIN

We recommend playing the Subsidy Troops for a new British run this update

– British national doctrine subsidy increased to +10 thalers a day instead of +8 since the brigade costs are higher. Its new brigade penalty cost is now just +20% instead of +25%. You’ll also be able to go for a new doctrine called “Mass Mobilization” which can reduce your brigade cost by -10% if you’re trying to play wider.

– British Expedition “Granby” officer is now confident (boosts morale) instead of meticulous (boosts infantry accuracy). This way he can later be specialized as a cavalry general instead of having two conflicting traits (since his first trait buffed cavalry and his second had buffed infantry).

– British Hanoverian Corps now starts with a Hanoverian Musketeer in its first brigade instead of a landmiliz. Its officer Karl Wilhelm von Braunschweig now no longer starts as a level 0 (which was a bug)

– British Subsidy Troops now start with a Brunswick Grenadier instead of Brunswick musketeer since it was a linear upgrade. Its Hessian Grenadier was replaced with a Hessian Musketeer so that the player can now upgrade the Hessian into either a veteran musketeer or grenadier. The Subsidy recruit was replaced with a Subsidy Jaeger since Britain had no light infantry in any starting compositions. The “Blue Coat” bonus has also been slightly reduced to be a -50% discount on item slot costs instead of -70%. Its malus has been slightly reduced as well, instead of making reservists cost +50% more, its now just +35%.

AUSTRIA

We recommend playing the Border Troops for a new Austrian run this update

– Austria’s Border Troops composition now starts with a Grenzer Grenadier instead of a Grenzer Recruit. The Border Troops’ light infantry range buff has been reduced from +30% to +25%, we found it slightly too exploitable at the higher amount. The starting chevaux de frise item was buffed in its stats so it should make your troops equipped with this item sturdier.

– Austria’s Hungarian Vanguard now starts with a good light bayonet and the shepherds axe has been improved to good quality as well in order to make the two starting infantry recruits stronger in melee. Its +25% charge damage buff has been reduced to +20% instead.

PRUSSIA

We recommend playing the Freikorps Volunteers for a new Prussian run this update

– Prussia’s Freikorps Volunteers now start with a Veteran Freikorps Jaeger instead of a regular Freikorps Jaeger.

RUSSIA

We recommend playing the Cossack Host for a new Russian run this update

– Russia’s national doctrine of raiding 100% faster has been reduced to raiding 75% faster (in part due to cities now providing +1 additional loot when raided). We also lowered the malus from a +15% food consumption penalty to +10% instead

– Russia’s Imperial Army now starts with a Dragoon instead of a Reserve Musketeer in order to give them a little more offensive power. The Russians can be very slow to control and so this should give players a little more mobility early on.

– Russia’s Observation Corps has had an Observation Musketeer replaced with an Observation Fusilier to better defend its artillery in the early game. The Observation Corps cover effectiveness buff has been reduced from +50% to +30% as it was too easy to max it out early on.

– Russia’s Cossack Host has been changed to fully mounted like it initially was on launch. It has a don cossack and 3 regular cossack cavalry. It also now starts with an additional lance to replace the gold brooch it originally had. Its doctrine malus has been increased to losing 5 thalers per regiment daily when not in forced march/raiding stance from originally 3.

FRANCE

We recommend playing the Lower Rhine Army for a new French run this update

– France’s national doctrine reduced to a -20% brigade cost discount instead of -50% since the brigade cost was raised so high.

– France’s Lower Rhine army has had a Royal Recruit swapped out for a Royaux Grenadier to better play into its melee focus. Its starting cash has been reduced by -100, and so has its starting food to compensate.

– France’s House of the King army’s bonus for melee damage reduction has been reduced from -25% to -15%. Its malus has also been changed from +10% infantry cost to -10% replenishment speed. The nerf was made to their melee damage received since melees go on longer now and they benefit from this more. Melee damage received as a stat is also much more powerful now since it also reduces charge impact damage. Their malus was changed to give the player an additional challenge once they’re fielding a big stack of heavy royal cavalry since this composition can be so powerful.

HRE

We recommend playing the Saxon Army for a new HRE run this update

– Mustering stance has been greatly improved. It’s cheaper, replenishes your army faster, and most importantly it now provides 2 veterancy per mustered recruit per brigade you have instead of 1

– HRE’s Saxon Army has had its Veteran Musketeer changed to a Saxon Grenadier and now starts with a basic pallasch sword

– HRE’s Auxiliary Corps has had its Bavarian Musketeers upgraded to a Veteran Bavarian Musketeer.

Doctrine Changes:

– New “Reformed Commissariat” doctrine which reduces item slots by -25%. Allows you to mitigate the increased item slot costs.

– New “Trained Reservists” doctrine which increases army replenishment by +25% which also lets you mitigate the decreased replenishment speed.

– New “Mass Mobilization” doctrine which decreases brigade and reservist cfosts by -10%, also letting you mitigate those price hikes.

– New “Prepared Positions” doctrine which boosts cover effectiveness by +15%, but lowers Move Speed by -5%. This is helpful for the Observation Corps who had their cover effectiveness decreased by -10% this update.

– Human Wave Attacks (buffs charge damage) now reduces morale by -5% instead of replenishment by -10%

– Salary Reductions (discounts recruitment cost) now reduces replenishment speed by -20% instead of morale by -5%

– Extended Training now gives the HRE +25% more reservists mustered per day instead of being useless (Extended Training gives a drilling buff which the HRE can’t use). This should compensate for the lowered reservist muster gain and also work as a good synergy for the Saxon army who already gets a reservist muster buff.

– Updated all three of the “Proficiency” doctrines (infantry proficiency, cavalry proficiency, artillery proficiency). Previously, each proficiency boosted veterancy gain for its respective type and reduced veterancy gain for all opposite types. For example, cavalry proficiency increased cavalry veterancy while lowering artillery and infantry. Now, the malus has been removed and replaced with a recruitment bias. So if you take cavalry proficiency you’ll gain the veterancy gain buff as well as a recruitment bias for finding more cavalry units at settlements.

– Most doctrines which provide combat effectiveness now provide -5% less of it (it was too powerful to stack them). This includes: “Light infantry Tactics” which is now +10% CE instead of +15% for light infantry units, “Soldier King’s Legacy” which is now +10% CE instead of +15% for all heavy infantry units, “

– British Grenadiers’ malus is no longer Heavy Infantry cost +10% but instead Heavy Infantry replenishment speed -10%

– The difficulty modifier “Absent Quartermasters” slows down replenishment by -25% instead of -30%

– Cadenced Marching doctrine now gives +10% infantry stamina and +5% infantry speed instead of just +5 infantry stamina, +5% infantry speed

Map Updates :

– New map based on the battle around Leuthen

– New generic map that has sprawling farmland and hills

Item Changes

Many items had a pass over their price and stats. I only noted the most significant changes. Some items also now have a third effect instead of just two. Furthermore, many weapons are now less potent at higher levels to make them less impactful on how powerful a unit is. We were finding it too easy to stack many excellent-tier items/weapons on a unit and making them overpowered.

– Canister shot deals slightly less damage and consumes slightly higher ammunition

– Buckshot provides -5 less accuracy (due to the quality of life change that lets you define certain ammo types as default it means it’s less micro-intensive to utilize the specialized ammo types)

– Buck & Ball provides -10 less accuracy

– Artillery gunners implements now provide a stamina buff in addition to reload

– Cylindrical ramrods provide higher reload bonuses

– Entrenching tools now boost stamina instead of reducing it

– Elevation screws are now considered a “field implement,” which means it’s not mutually exclusive with the other artillery equipment anymore.

– Spontoons now provide slightly higher morale

– Water buckets are no longer mutually exclusive with the other artillery equipment

– Tompions now cost much more

– Tow Worms now provide less accuracy but higher reload

– Field Engineer staffs’ main bonus is now range instead of cover, the result being better low-tier engineer stats

– Commissars now buff reload skill and reduce ammo consumption instead of buffing veterancy gain and ammo consumption

– Drillmaster no longer reduces morale but now reduces morale damage received (buff)

– Marksmans’ accuracy buff is now lower but instead of a debuff to reload it provides a slight max range buff

– Surgeon no longer reduces attrition (any item that had attrition reduction has been reowkred) instead it restores casualties and boosts veterancy gain (idea being that you’re preserving the lives of your veterans)

– Foreign musicians now provide better morale damage received buff

– Regular cartridge boxes and limber chests now slightly buff reload

– Large cartridge boxes and limber chests no longer reduce move speed, just provide a large ammo consumption buff

– Haversacks now provide morale and move speed buff instead of morale and stamina.

– Large haversacks now provide morale and stamina instead of morale and lowering move speed

– Large canteens now provide stamina and morale instead of stamina and lowering move speed

– Full gaiters now buffs morale and move speed instead of move speed and stamina (differentiates from half gaiters)

– Sturdy shoes now massively buffs move speed instead of being a cheap objectively worse version of the gaiter items

– Sturdy boots for cavalry now boosts stamina instead of move speed

– Blanket rolls no longer reduce attrition and melee damage received but instead reduce melee damage received and boosts stamina

– Greatcoats no longer reduces melee damage received and attrition but instead melee damage received and boosts morale

– Stiffened jackets no longer reduces stamina but buffs it, making it a good choice for light cavalry instead of defaulting to the breastplates

– Breastplates no longer reduce move speed as its secondary effect but now very slightly reduces fire damage received

– Iron skull caps no longer reduce stamina

– Medicinal herbs no longer reduces attrition but boosts morale as its secondary effect

– Cheese secondary effect replaced from morale to be move speed buff instead

– Tea accuracy reduces but reload skill increased to make it an all-rounder item

– Friesian horses provide slightly less melee damage

– Basket hilt swords no longer tank your accuracy as their secondary effect but now slightly reduce your reload

– Saxe treatise now gives slight melee and morale buff instead of a huge morale buff and tiny melee buff.

– Bland treatise now provides accuracy and veterancy gain (mirroring the new Blandian personality theme of shooting)

– Frederick treatise reload buffed

– Puysegur treatise now provides max range and melee skill instead of reducing fire damage and buffing accuracy

– Charles XII treatise now slightly reduces reload instead of massively reducing it

– Santa Cruz (light infantry) treatise now reduces fire damage received and buffs accuracy instead of providing accuracy with move speed

– Clairac provides cover and morale instead of cover and max range

– Coehoorn now provides max range and reload instead of accuracy and cover (artillery doesn’t really need cover)

– All melee weapons’ stats have been updated, and many swords now affect both morale and stamina. We also made the penalty on bayonets slightly higher for reload/accuracy since it’s now easier to make your bayonets on/off by default using the camp quality of life change that allows you to define your default equipment for deployment.

– Guns no longer provide +4/+6 accuracy per good/excellent tier, and instead provide +2/+4 accuracy per tier. That said, the reload stat has actually been increased per tier from +2/+4 to +3/+5. Higher-tier weapons have gone up in price by about +20 thalers

– All items that provide cover effectiveness now provide -5% less of it per tier of item (so 15%/20%/25% seen on the engineer is now 10%/15%/20%.

– All deployables have had reworks. Chevaux de frise now provides some melee resistance in addition to charge resistance. Previously, charge resistance just helps deal damage back to the attacker but now they will actually reduce the amount of damage being received.

– Delft carbine was using the wrong stat for its melee, it has been fixed (reduced the melee it provides by -4)

– The Charles XII treatise now reduces reload skill instead of accuracy so that you can focus on delivering one powerful volley before charging in as the Swedes would do earlier in the century.

– All bronze and special artillery have gone up by +100 thalers in price

– Gold tier items can be found more commonly in Act 1, letting you play into quality builds more easily

– Some items which weren’t appearing much at all at shops (such as grenades and carbines) now appear more often to help create more variety

– Jaeger rifles made slightly less rare

– Because the “melee damage received” stat also reduces charge impact damage, I’ve debuffed all items using this stat since it is considerably more powerful

– All items that reduced attrition have been reworked since attrition reduction is not very useful. This has made blanket rolls and great coats much more valuable (they now buff morale and stamina respectively)

Officer Trait Changes

– Spartan reduces melee damage received by -10% now instead of -15%, but boosts stamina by +15% instead of +10%

– Prudent now only increases combat effectiveness by +5% while in command radius instead of giving all units a permanent +5% CE at all times

– Legendary now gives +5% combat effectiveness instead of +10%, but I buffed its officer death chance up to -20%. So your officer should be safer when taking the skill, but you aren’t getting as much CE due to how powerful it’s been stacking it.

– Elusive now provides +10% cover effectiveness instead of just +5%, as the trait felt weak.

Encounter Changes

– The star fort encounter is more common on the fort-style encounters in acts 2 and 3

– Slightly lowered the chance of negative encounters spawning on the “Slum” encounters, which players sometimes avoid due to a high frequency of negative encounters

– Lowered the weights of all encounters that give you free units. Now that units are more expensive, I don’t want the primary way of building your army to be memorizing certain encounter types that disproportionately give you free units.

Quality of Life / Visual Changes

– You can now set the bayonet and ammo types as being default-equipped at the start of a battle. In this case, we can see the ammo type button (to the left of the disband/upgrade buttons) is highlighted meaning my Prussian Musketeers will enter battle with their buckshot rounds pre-equipped. The bayonet icon is not active (and the image shows it holstered) which also indicates I’ll enter battle with my bayonet off.

– You can now pay to remove officer traits, but it is expensive and becomes increasingly more expensive if you’re removing traits on higher tier units.

– We now display on hover over the morale and stamina maximums instead of just the current value. So now you’ll see 60/60 morale for example instead of just 60 morale.

– When an officer dies on a shattered unit, we now display “Officer Killed”

– Cover effectiveness is now displayed on the tooltip alongside an explanation of what it does

– Move speed is now consistently displayed as a slash so you can see the walk speed / run speed.

– Fixed a UI bug where certain HQ battles were showing a white box in place of its personality icon

– Fixed an issue with the Observation Corps tree where you couldn’t fully zoom out to click confirm upgrade

– Tooltips were updated on artillery to show you if they consume more ammunition due to being a higher quality gun (represents higher maintenance on better guns)

– The snow overlay animation in winter campaigns is now slower and less distracting

– New icons added for the different stances

– New animations implemented while using those stance icons

RAIDING

FORAGING

FORCED MARCH

– Flag previews on the mission selection now have little flag poles instead of black boxes containing the flags and the arrows have been updated to better match the map.

– Uniform fixes to some of the colors of the HRE troops. Also swapped it around so that the foot guard does not use the flower on the cocked hat, and instead the British veteran foot does.

Localization Changes

– Many translation fixes, more coming in a hotfix on Monday, particularly for Russian and German

– Many English fixes for consistency in the game like for example, “Shoot-and-Scoot” doctrine no longer says “Reload speed +10%,” it now correctly just says “Reload +10%” since it’s buffing the reload attribute of units and “Reload speed” is inconsistent naming.

Optimization Changes

– Improvements made to the melee optimization, should be less laggy

Modding Spotlight

– Napoleonic Wars mod, this one may not be up to date for this update so if you want to play it I would recommend going into the game’s properties and rolling the update back a previous version until the author has had time to update it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3667640866

– No recruitment bias. This is good if you aren’t a fan of that recent change!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3704427896

– This is a pretty cool custom script that was made for auto-skirmishing. I haven’t tested it too much yet, let me know how you guys like it!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3698941833&searchtext=

– This is « MoC Remastered » which is by one of the playtesters. It adds in a ton of new units if you’re interested.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3685838368&searchtext=

Conclusion

That’s all for now guys! It may not seem like a lot of new content/mechanics compared to our previous « major update, » but we spent an immense amount of time rebalancing the whole game and overhauling the pacing. We still have some more work to do, so expect a few more patches before our next major update. The next major update will introduce Sweden as a paid DLC alongside some new free content. Thank you for all the support, we’re excited to see what you think of the Scorched Earth update!