Esteemed Despots,

What a ride, and what a toll on my delicate nerves. A beta release + the influx of a huge number of new players, a poor logistics implementation, etc. That was a bad combination. But now it's over, the bugs have been squashed, strange choices remedied, oddities swept in under the carpet. Stable V66 is now released, praise be the Astari.

that means that the default branch on steam will be updated to V66, and your V65 saves will not work. To continue playing those, you must manually check out V65 as a beta in the steam client.

As always, I planned for V66 to be perfect, however under scrutiny, many issues has been revealed. That means that I will continue to patch the game with a few more mini-versions. The gamechanger here is that I will not break saves, I will just rebalance things. And the patches will be smaller, more frequent and narrower in scope. The rough plan is this:

• Make maintenance great again and make sure upgrades to buildings is not a one-time cost for the player.
  
• Make services more costly if maintenance isn't enough, especially the late game ones.
  
• General love to fulfilment modifiers and race diversity.
  
• Admin to replace organization. Still focus on < 12 region kingdoms. Law and health rework in order to make this the primary late-game pushback, but still give you tools to mitigate them.
  
• Further work on the difficulty progression, by making early game more forgiving, and increase difficulty at higher populations.

After a lot of work, I feel that the basic diplomacy is stable. That means I can add layers to it, to make it more fun, immersive and engaging. I want “stories” generated through your journey, and make your AI counterparts feel alive. There's also a problem with opinion and the threat modifier. The plan is to sort of hide this modifier, so that you'll be under the impression that they love you, but as you grow, you'll be targeted for backstabbing. Also make the traits of the rulers more impactful, so that you'll use diplomacy more. I can also work with adaptive difficulty, trying to figure out how much pushback to give you for the best experience.

Fix movement, friendly fire, etc. Balance the actual fighting. I'm still bent on making battles be about breaking the enemy, not killing them as in most Hollywood inspired games. My best total war experience comes from a mod called “Rome total realism”, which had just that. I don't want it to be about your clicking skills, I want it to be about your tactical planning skills.

I'm sure there will be 1-2 more of these mini-versions.

I also have a guy helping me in my effort and to organize stuff. His username is Vanir, and so far, he's doing one heck of a job. Right now he's scouring suggestions from all corners of the world, which will all be considered. And he's a machine when it comes to testing. I'll also put him on balancing, we will see if he's up to snuff.

As you see, 1.0 is still a bit illusive, but I'm thinking it should probably be Q1 of 2025. A reminder is that 1.0 will contain the major feature of proper nobilities and their rooms, the throne room, and professional soldiers parading the streets. The main idea behind nobles is to tap into that “story telling” mechanics that are in other games. I'm still debating with myself and others, if we really want this, or if it will just be an annoyance, as you try to optimize your city. We will see. I've also saved a bunch of low-hanging fruit in terms of content.

Final note, I want to thank everyone for testing the beta, which is 98% of all players. Just please be thoughtful that in the beta of and EA title, made by a solo fool in his garage, there is bound to be bugs, strange features and balance issues. If you find something that annoys you, chances are it's not intended to be that way. But I have no idea of knowing unless you let me know how you feel.