Old World February Update: Engine and rendering upgrade

Main Branch 1.0.82189 Release 2026-02-18

Headline changes

• Major Unity and rendering system update

• Improved graphics performance and memory optimization

• Unique Unit (UU) tech bonus cards are now unlocked through culture instead of tech

Known Issues

• Portrait Age Interpolation is not working and has been disabled regardless of the player setting

• Fog of War can flicker on and off following movement in some cases

• Unit models and banners can fail to display consistently during AI turn

• Free promotion icon partially hidden

• Cycling to a stacked unit can show their icon behind other units

• Volcano display issues

Design

• Unique Unit (UU) tech bonus cards are now unlocked through culture instead of tech

• First tier UU bonus cards have had their cost increased from 100 to 200, give 2 units, and require a city with Strong culture

• Second tier UU bonus cards require a city with Legendary culture

• Zealot leader general now performs a Heal action after each kill, instead of being able to Apply Enlist

• Fervent (Piye's unique trait) now enables Apply Enlist as a leader general, at a cost of 100 civics (Wonders and Dynasties)

• Ballista strength reduced from 6 to 5

• Carthage city founding bonus reduced from 200 to 100 civics

• Founding Christianity no longer requires ownership of a Jewish city, now requires 3 Jewish cities globally

• Engineer promotion and general trait allows road building instead of bonus against siege/ships

• Added new national ambition - Control three of each Legendary Improvement

• Changed Control Six Legendary Cities national ambition to Control Five Legendary Cities

• Send 20 luxuries is now a tier 9 ambition instead of a national ambition

• Disciples can now clear vegetation

• Cannot build an improvement that removes vegetation if the unit cannot clear the vegetation

• Traders no longer get a court merchant when founding their seat

• Prevented building improvements on Marsh, except for Farms with Centralization

• All fresh water sources supply fresh water to their own tile in addition to adjacent tiles

• Remove Free Silk and Free Ebony bonus tech cards

• Moved Free Porcelain bonus card to be unlocked by Coinage and reduced tech cost accordingly

• Free Porcelain and Free Perfume bonus cards now give 2 instances of their luxuries

• Autonomous Rule project is removed when a city is breached

• Characters cannot give birth more than once a year (relevant for non-yearly turn scales)

• Free laws that replace an existing law do not increment the law change count

• Raiders can capture empty cities and city sites

• Adjustments to Family Archetype character tendencies:

• Champions have more Zealots and less Heroes

• Riders have more Heroes and less Zealots

• When randomly assigning archetypes, characters with governor effect traits are much more likely to be assigned a governor archetype, and similarly general archetypes for characters with general traits

• Killing Raiders now contributes towards goals to kill units of their original tribe

• Raiders are less stubborn about raiding, if the shortest path is blocked, and will hit opportunity targets instead

• Doubled Master/Elder Scribe money per Citizen, to +2/+4

• Anchoring and Unlimbering states are not interrupted by attacks that apply new cooldowns (i.e. Immobilize, Stun)

• Killed civilian units now count for Assyrian orders, Hero Leader Training, Epics Culture, etc

• Units can pass through hostile civilian units, as long as they don't end their movement on their tile

• Families and Religions suffer -40 opinion for 20 turns when their Workers and Disciples are killed

• Improvements to Carthage campaign persistency

• Increased maximum effect of god opinion on religion opinion in Wrath of Gods scenario (200 -> 500)

• Reduced Tribal raid range in Wrath of Gods scenario

• Disabled Venerate mission for and demands being given by Abandoned god in Wrath of Gods scenario

Programming

• Unity updated from 2022.3 to 6.3

• Graphics code converted to Unity's Universal Rendering Pipeline

• The URP upgrade improves graphics performance, letting the game render with fewer draw calls and use fewer shader variants

• Many UI optimizations

• Memory leak fixes

• Improvements to Safe Mode

• AI border expansion tweaks

• AI law value correction to avoid frequent changes

• Better AI legitimacy evaluation

• AI builds slightly fewer units

• Updated unity packages (relay and lobby replaced by multiplayer services)

• Added Latin supplemental characters U+100 to U+17F to Avalon, Trajan and Judson assets, to assist Polish translation mods

• Added support for bonus cards to use bonus names in tooltips (affects mods only)

UI

• Families are now shown before Religions on the tab panel

• Swapped Worker Filters and basic actions panels on Selected Worker UI

• Valid Improvements, Rural, and Urban worker filters show improvements valid anywhere in the city rather than just for current tile

• Restart Game button renamed Reroll Game. This keeps the same map and preserves nation/dynasty of random AI opponents but now rerolls the random seed

• New Map button renamed to Reroll Map. This button is not shown for games on predefined maps

• End Turn button can now always be clicked on your turn, will cycle to required items if needed

• Added hotkey for suppressing tooltips (hold Ctrl + X)

• Added hotkey for extending turn time (Alt-E)

• Added Reset option when editing hotkeys

• Added Unimproved Resources overlay to Overlay Customizer

• Character XP is now shown when they have upgraded at least once but progress to next level is 0

• Added Peak Legitimacy and Peak Legitimacy per Leader to Hall of Fame (requires regenerating HOF for existing games, won't display on very old saves)

• Added on-map icon to units that have been disarmed

• Updated ZOC help text

• Enabled gold cost to buy yields for recommended improvements tooltip

• Added color-coding for Send/Return text in Luxury Management

• Improved consistency of city build production cost tooltips

• Trait opinion of leader now shown in trait tooltip even without advanced help text

• Pagan religions are shown in the Adopt State Religion menu even without Divine Rule, with explanatory text

• Yields from disciples on improvements are shown when disciples are selected

• Anchor mission help text includes water control range

• Condensed enlist ability help text

• Greyed out effect for dead character portraits applied more consistently

• Improved Settler Found City tooltip

• Cities with zero yield are included in the nation yield breakdown

• When a non-server network game has disconnected human players and the turn timer is counting down, a warning is displayed next to the turn time

• Improvements to Citrus resource, Grove, Ruins and Alter of the Aten models

• Improvements to Luxury Management display, especially when no luxuries available

• End Turn button now always active, clicking it will cycle to decisions preventing turn from ending

• Free improvement bonuses now show as normal event popups first

• Place improvement overlay not shown while bonus event is active

• When placing free improvements, ctrl+click is required to replace existing improvements

• Games with custom victories are skipped for unloaded scenario mods in Hall of Fame

• Improved fidelity of shadows on high settings

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed Valid Improvements worker filter

• Fixed map generation sometimes placing trees under water

• Fixed Hall of Fame display for scenario custom victories

• Fixed units passing through hostile civilians cancelling under construction improvements

• Fixed Dynasty being displayed as "default" with selected Archetype

• Fixed starting a game with more instances of a nation using a preset leader than existing dynasties for that nation

• Fixed hotkeys not triggering unit cycling

• Fixed per citizen generic specialist help text

• Fixed Timeline screen display issues

• Fixed Marshes affecting display of adjacent tiles

• Fixed Rebel units from events sometimes not being assigned to a player

• Fixed some popup scaling aspect ratio issues

• Fixed exception during loading of incompatible asset bundles

• Fixed Coastal Rain Basin boundary mountain range

• Fixed Hardwood Forest player start position issues

• Fixed missing clutter materials on Honey groves

• Fixed opinion graph hover exception

• Fixed hotkey assignments sometimes incorrectly being labeled as conflicts

• Fixed inaccurate opinion sometimes showing in city governor tooltip for Grand Viziers

• Fixed some Chinese text localization issues

• Fixed stun, immobilize, and panic effects sometimes being applied to units inside cities

• Fixed events that kill units not incrementing stats and goal counters

• Fixed temporarily hidden unit pathfinding

• Fixed some AI unit movement cases where it would trip over itself when there were units in the way

• Fixed some minor AI combat issues

• Fixed audio bug that occurred when only one music track was enabled

• Fixed some unit panel icon issues

• Fixed some tribal events incorrectly remaining after tribal elimination

• Fixed Caravan mission button saying that there are no players when out of orders

• Fixed some cases where city effects were not displayed

• Fixed boundary tiles in Caucasus on the Old World map

• Fixed character opinion load/save bugs

• Fixed family seat icon data bug

• Fixed State Religion reminder not opening submenu

• Fixed build specialist tile highlights not showing with border expansion

• Fixed Foreign Marriage mission in No Events mode

• Fixed temporarily hidden units sometimes still being rendered for other players

• Fixed village upgrade turns and improvement help text with Lighthouse

• Fixed Bulwark Cuirass UI issue

• Fixed Unyielding Banner reassigning general to non-player units

• Fixed scores not updating after effectPlayers change

• Fixed event decisions not getting restored after clearing selection

• Fixed tutorial videos not showing in the encyclopedia on Linux

• Fixed missing theology info on tech tooltips

• Fixed bonus yield text bug

• Fixed Unit Seen notification not firing if unit becomes visible mid-move

• Fixed Default Governor bugs

• Fixed Peaks adjacency requirement being ignored by Clerics on Sand tiles

• Fixed Encyclopedia display issue

• Fixed Research UI not showing after renaming landmark

• Fixed MP games with one human team getting stuck after victory

• Fixed Ask to Declare War mission helptext

• Fixed tile tooltip to show improvement defensive modifier in neutral territory

• Fixed overlay customizer issues

• Fixed load/save error that was possibly invalidating replay data

• Fixed scenario selection getting cleared when moving to MP setup screen

• Fixed Occurrence effects not being removed when ended by an event/bonus (Wrath of Gods)

• Fixed Veneration jealousy penalty being applied to both religion and god in Wrath of Gods scenario

• Fixed tech helptext not listing non religion-based project unlocks in Wrath of Gods scenario

• Fixed Carthage scenario 3 load/save bug

• Fixed ModManager panel trying to update when not active

• Text and event fixes

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