Old World Update: National Ambitions and Launch Offensive changes

Main Branch 1.0.76988 Release 2025-03-26

Headline Changes

• New National Ambition system introduced to allow earlier selection of your final ambition

• Launch Offensive changes

• Continent is now the default map script

• AI and performance improvements

Design

National Ambitions:

• The final ambition is now called a National Ambition and may be offered early, after a player has completed 5 ambitions

• The offer is triggered soon after the player reaches 70% progress towards one of the national ambitions

• National Ambitions are not used for tier counting purposes i.e. they do not make regular ambition offers harder

• All National Ambitions are listed in the Encyclopedia under their own category

• Added new National Ambition '+250 Food, Iron, Stone, Wood and Money per turn'. This replaces the previous ambition to stockpile 2000 of each resource

• Added new regular Ambition 'Control 4 Hamlet class improvements'

• Adjusted ambition threshold calculations and ambition events to allow a greater variety of ambitions to be offered

Launch Offensive changes:

• Offensive effects do not apply to the leader unit

• Cannot launch offensive when on cooldown

• Leader unit goes on new launched offensive cooldown

• For team games, bonus orders from the offensive go to the unit owners

Continent map script changes:

• Continent is now the default map script

• Added new Extreme Terrain suboption 'None' and made this the default

• Tribal Lands placement option removed

Other design changes:

• Critical hits on cities are no longer possible

• Stun is now possible when attacking a unit in a city without any HP left

• Panic and Fireship effects now cause units that cannot retreat to become Disarmed instead of Stunned

• Enlisted units by a Zealot leader now return to full health

• Hidden units now always ignore ZOC

• Money Boost tech card moved to Coinage

• Free Trireme and Free Dromon tech cards removed

• National ambitions now offered at 70% completion instead of 75%

• National Ambitions event enabled in no events mode

• Fire shrines now have adjacent modifier to any improvement in the Mine class (now also affects Laurion Mines)

• Commander leaders always grant +10XP per turn to all units (previously units had to be idle)

• Free improvements are now allowed on resource tiles with a generic improvement ping. Placing a free urban improvement on a resource removes the resource without harvesting it

• Adjusted ambition threshold calculations so a greater variety of ambitions gets offered

• Events where the AI offers Truce on breaching a city now trigger when the city is captured instead

• Can no longer build roads and improvements in territory of an ally

• Water tiles no longer need to be adjacent to land in order to transfer them from one of your cities to another

• Units that earn XP past the maximum level convert that XP to training

• Ezana's Evangelist trait only gives new units Christianity/Adept in city where he is governor (Wrath of Gods)

• 7 new events relating to Calamities happening to other players (Wrath of Gods)

• Reduced other religion opinion penalty duration for Venerate mission (Wrath of Gods)

• Increased chance of Scrub appearing on new Arid tiles on Ebbing Sea map from 2% to 10% (Wrath of Gods)

• Eruption and Earthquake intensities tweaked (Wrath of Gods)

• Made Calamities less common on the Rare and Very Rare settings (Wrath of Gods)

• Wrath of Gods scenario now uses a customized map script with more Volcanoes (Wrath of Gods)

Programming

• Rendering API change: Linux / Steam Deck now default to Vulkan. Windows supports Vulkan with a command-line switch -force-vulkan

• Epic Mac build now runs natively when run outside of the Epic launcher, i.e. using alternative launcher such as Heroic

• Improved UI responsiveness when cycling through workers

• Performance improvements

• AI combat improvements

• Improved AI use of Launch Offensive

• Improved AI order predictions when planning moves

• AI is more aggressive in moving towards enemy cities when at war

• AI more likely to place ranged units in forest when defending its territory with a Tactician leader

• AI fort building now less common

• AI tries harder to delay using anchored units so that land units don't get stranded

• AI now less eager to build some wonders that are not very useful (e.g. Jebel Barkal without world religion)

• AI cares a little more about culture

• Invading organized tribes are less timid

• Added ALLOW_CITY_CRITICAL_HITS to globalsInt, for use by modders

• Mod manager no longer fully loads installed maps when fetching subscription info

• Unit XP overflow into training uses TRAINING_PER_XP for consistency

• Buildable projects now use a ProductionType such as YIELD_CIVICS. Non-buildable projects do not require this

• iCivics has been renamed to iCost in project.xml

UI

Setup screen changes:

• Removed Options Preset dropdown from Simple setup and added Event Level

• Added Reset Options button to Advanced and MP setup screens

• Added difficulty mode to Advanced setup screen

• Simple setup settings are saved separately from advanced setup settings. Going back and forth between Advanced and Simple screens retains only nation and dynasty settings

• Entering the setup screens with a premade map that restricts nation choices stored in the options file will no longer keep that map choice, to ensure all nations are shown

• Enabled DLC no longer gets reset every time

Other UI changes:

• Selected characters now appear in the upper right side of the screen and Ambitions in the upper left

• Added Net Yield Change to specialist build tooltip, which takes modifiers into account and subtracts yields for any replaced specialist

• Popup text minimum scaling reduced

• Removed background UI blur when events are active

• EffectUnit links now also include the effect icon by default

• Timeline screen slider is now disabled while advancing by season or by year

• Clarified City Site Number help text

• Wonder legitimacy bonuses now named per culture tier to differentiate them

• Can now queue the same tile multiple times without the unit executing the queued moves

• When the last tile in a move queue is right-clicked, the unit executes the queue

• Flipped luxury panel buttons

• Tweaked alignment for scenario-specific goal info

• Archetypes now shown in line of succession panel

• Strategic resource icons for unit production shown on city categories when available

• Temporary unit effects now show the remaining turn count on their icons

• Changed all happiness/discontent yield displays to use relevant icon instead of signed text

• Added worker list to tile tooltip when multiple workers are stacked

• Selecting a character centers the camera on job-relevant city or unit

• Research UI is now always shown regardless of selection

• Added reminder for pillaged tiles

• Added ability to hide improvement tooltips by holding CTRL

• Timeline now shows map terrain changes over time

• Timeline now shows current revealed-not-visible state for borders when it is set to show the current turn

• With a land unit selected, hovering over a water tile in anchor range will show "Must end move on land tile"

• Network games are now paused automatically when the game is over

• Cannot surrender a multiplayer game if you are the last player remaining

• World tile text now shows over city UI

• Unworked wonders show Requires Worker text with worker selected

• Right-click toggles tab panel menus off if already open

• Improved unit strength tooltip text

• Updated premade map descriptions

• Removed some of the yield breakdown from the specialist tooltip and added modified total yield

• Removed line break from event option tooltips that start goals

• Removed 'New Event in Wizard' button from Event Browser

• City links that do not open the city screen now pan the camera to the city when clicked (i.e. tribal raid notifications)

• Starting a game using a parameter string no longer updates the options file with the game's settings

• Added custom savegame prefix to standalone scenarios

• Added more promotion and effectUnit information to encyclopedia

• Updated credits

• Updated Shapur's dynasty description to clarify that Strike applies to melee and ship units (Wonders and Dynasties)

• Plague flies are only shown on units with the Plagued effect. Plague fog effect is confined to city territory (Wrath of Gods)

• Wildfire visual effect is less extreme (Wrath of Gods)

• Improvement pings are no longer removed by an occurrence rendering a tile impassable (Wrath of Gods)

• Boosted plague fog visibility (Wrath of Gods)

• Boosted volcano animation speed (Wrath of Gods)

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed Korean text sometimes not displaying

• Fixed text autosizing issues

• Fixed popup text not updating immediately after changing scaling

• Fixed assert when removing player ownership from a tile with a religion attached

• Fixed forest on lake tile in Middle East map

• Fixed bad city border preview on Old World Map by removing an urban tile to the west of Pella

• Fixed a threading issue that could cause server-side exceptions

• Fixed unit queuing bugs

• Fixed units not being selectable through overlays

• Fixed some UI elements not updating properly after undoing initial found

• Fixed occasional opinion arrow misalignment in event popup

• Fixed city recommendation assert

• Fixed workers and ships in cities with no defenses not taking damage from attacks

• Fixed clicks on parts of the UI selecting map elements behind them

• Fixed Continents map script bug

• Fixed Caravans being unable to travel through anarchy territory

• Fixed improvements being repairable inside hostile territory

• Fixed unit health bars appearing incorrectly for some attack previews

• Fixed the Ignore Map Nation Starts option not working on some maps

• Fixed Family Seat founding bonus not showing in the setup screens and in game before player has founded their capital

• Fixed Road To overlay not updating when changing mouseover tile

• Fixed flickering issue when hovering over build recommendations on some parts of the screen

• Fixed bug where AI could still win in some cases when player achieves victory on the same turn

• Fixed goal threshold bug incorrectly making ambitions invalid

• Fixed Barbarian Horde MP achievement not working in hotseat

• Fixed Greek and Assyrian capitol buildings not being shown when adjacent to rivers

• Fixed Allow Negative Cognomens option appearing when no characters option selected

• Fixed Free Court Minister encyclopedia entry with null icon

• Fixed encyclopedia prompt showing on traits with no encyclopedia page

• Fixed encyclopedia null references

• Fixed succession law preview tooltip showing wrong law

• Fixed Courtiers Added stat not increasing when recruiting an existing foreign courtier

• Fixed Organized tribes not healing

• Fixed some AI bugs

• Fixed research UI not updating immediately when yield rates change

• Fixed Carthage scenarios giving a lower-tier victory than earned if one of the goals was completed indirectly

• Fixed Portrait Editor loading issue

• Fixed portrait models potentially obscuring each other

• Fixed unit cycle tooltip sometimes not locking

• Fixed ship building on a tile that has turned to land

• Fixed nested link issue in governor candidate tooltip

• Fixed team color intensity slider

• Fixed map timeline GIF palette not representing border colors correctly

• Fixed citrus grove configuration

• Fixed ZOC display exception

• Fixed pillage notification links selecting units

• Fixed some dropdown appearance issues

• Fixed autobuild cities not repairing upon being founded with a damaged settler

• Fixed bug in effectCity help text yield breakdown

• Fixed occurrence effects after a new city has been founded

• Fixed sporadic disconnections in network and server games when one or more player slots are open

• Fixed pathfinding for hidden units

• Fixed AI bug that caused it to sometimes move units back and forth between the same tiles

• Fixed null pointer if an init phase EffectPlayer, i.e. from difficulty mode, uses miReligionOpinionChange (only affects mods)

• Fixed aiUnitTraitConsumptionModifier help text bug (only affects mods)

• Fixed repair yield purchase for Stateira (Wonders and Dynasties)

• Fixed Flood not displaying correctly in some cases (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed Calamity level showing on in-game difficulty mode and game parameters tooltips, if the content is disabled in the current game (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed calamity postprocessing profiles overriding postprocessing settings from graphics settings i.e. Motion Blur (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed some rendering issues when terrain changes height (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed calamity effects being removed from rivers too early in some cases (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed eruptions displaying on volcanos obscured by fog of war (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed double legitimacy penalty when abandoning a Demand (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed trees removed from building improvements not being counted for demands (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed issue where some global calamities that target tiles were instead targeting all tiles (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed Wrath of Gods scenario victory event not triggering when next victory becomes impossible (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed Wrath of Gods scenario duplicate victory threshold events in some cases (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed Hurricanes not displaying correctly in some cases (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed wrath generation issues casued by Undo / Restart Map (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed mid and major raid Occurrences being invalidated (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed Calamities causing city sites to become impassable (Wrath of Gods)

• Global Occurrence fixes (Wrath of Gods)

• Text and event fixes