Posted January 25, 2021 by BobbyTwoHands
Version 16! Implying the existence of version 15, which was an internal-only bugfix build we used to get the Steam version working.
The primary update change here is the Masque of the Red Death, lifted wholly from an Edgar Alan Poe short story. It's a spirit of disease, able to spread a lethal plague which, once started, spreads on its own, devastating human populations and military forces. It has two main strategies associated with it. Firstly the disease itself, which can weaken a nation before you launch a military attack, or even eradicate smaller-population settlements (such as those in the far north or south where the starting population is low). Secondly the political implications. It has the ability to give anonymously single dose of the cure to the nobles, forcing them to vote on it.
As per a user suggestion, (shout out to nyotas), the nobles can now be corrupt, which changes how they vote. It makes them very selfish and self-obsessed, and voting on disease responses will bring out the worst in them. They will vote to protect themselves, rather than vote to help the nation, and will grow angry if the other nobles don't support them. The disease brings hard decisions to vote on, such as whether to quarantine or whether to treat the already sick, and corrupt nobles won't consider the good of the nation, only the good of themselves. This is especially true in the case of a single-use cure, which can easily start a civil war, if deployed well. The merchant can now cause corruption, funding decadent lifestyles and holding lavish parties which cause even the most honorable ruler to fall into sin. Ideally in the future, the Inquisitor (if we decide to add them), can also play off corrupt nobles.
Various other changes are also introduced. Deep Ones get a new painting, and now cause infiltration, making them very useful for coastal cities, but a bit weak otherwise, so a good second choice to support any plan. Winter's Scythe gets a new ability allowing them to attack entire bloodlines, so anyone of the same House (same heraldic background and last name) can be harmed, providing they live north enough. UI polishing and improvements, the society screen now allows you to select a noble in Hierarchy view to partially hide the others, so you can see stuff even if it gets cluttered. Nations should be a bit smaller, to avoid blobbing giant empires. All agents can now change their identities, to remove exile. Enemy agents are bit more personal, and you'll find yourself with specific characters who hate individual agents of yours, and follow them around the map. Societies also have a history popup, so you can quickly see why a nation is so huge, and how the last election went. Character UI improved with an election predictor, so you can at-a-glance see how likely any given character is to get elected, and how much of the vote they'll get, to aid in political planning.
All in all, a bunch of stuff should be brushed up.
Game should also be in development mode, so better error messages should be produced, if you get this bug which seems to be turning up. We can't reproduce it on our machines, and we believe it has to do with Unity not liking certain hardware, but we don't know what the deal is yet, so don't have a solution. Hopefully if we can get some error messages back we can know more.
Anyway, hope you enjoy