Welcome back time travellers, 

Do not miss the chance to meet the team behind Stargate: Timekeepers and discover all the details of the creation of the stealth video game of one of the most loved tv series. 



We would like to thank all the fans who have been supporting Stargate: Timekeepers since its launch. 

The team has been working relentlessy to deliver you the best possible gaming experience and please let us know what you think of the game. Your feedback is essential to keep improving the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1523650/Stargate_Timekeepers/

Since the release of the DEMO version of "Touhou Gensou Mahjong", we have received a great response.
Thank you to the countless people who have played the game, wishlisted it, and provided us excellent feedback.

It will take us a little more time to complete the game, but we hope you are looking forward to its release.

Now, we would like to inform you about the future of this demo version that was released in conjunction with the Steam Next Fest.

• We will continue to release the DEMO for a while longer, since the purpose of the DEMO is to find bugs in the communication battle, new features, etc. Online matches are also possible.
  
• However, additional BGM will be temporarily closed at the end of the festival, and only BGM that has already been implemented in the current Switch version will be available for selection.

After the festival period, you will not be able to listen to the Touhou Arranges by Mr. Sakuraba, Mr. Abo, Godspeed, and Shinra Bansho until the completed version.
Please enjoy this DEMO versions during the festival.

We thought we’d let you know about seasonal content for Quilts and Cats of Calico. We’ve got a pretty cozy plan and we’d like to share it with you. The short story is…


Throughout the year, there are plenty of beautiful, colorful, and joyful occasions around the world worth celebrating. We want to give those events some love and we want to give you an opportunity to celebrate those in the game while sewing your quilts. It just so happens that one such event is just around the corner, and starting now and until July 4th, you’ll be able to revel in the mysterious charm and eerie serenity of summer, with the Summer Solstice content. In this case, though, we’re pretty sure the cats would prefer to call it the Summer Pawstice. You know what? Let’s call it that to avoid any unnecessary scratches.

Each of the events will come with its own, unique set of decorations that will include a seasonal background, as well as a set of new decorations for the Cat Editor. The background will let you feel the unique spirit of each of the events with every quilt you sew, and the oh-so-ever rowdy felines, adorned with the new decorations, will surely prove to be a fun addition, as well.



All around the year and all around the world, there are numerous occasions that call for celebration. And while we can’t possibly cover all of them, we chose some that we feel come together as an interesting and diverse package. Here’s the list of the events:
- Lunar New Year
- Valentine's Day
- Sakura
- Easter
- Ramadan
- Summer Solstice
- Halloween
- Christmas/Holiday

Both the backgrounds and decoration items will be available for a set amount of time, covering the corresponding celebration. And last but not least, and maybe best of all is that each and every one of these updates will come as a free, temporary in-game seasonal feature!

We hope you’ll celebrate all of these lovely, vibrant times of the year with us (and the cats).

Here are the details of the new features, changes and fixes mad in today's patch!

New features:

• Story Mode Hint System - Players will have the ability to skip to a later stage of a puzzle or match in the story mode after failing it. There is a possibility to choose from 3 states of completion of the puzzle/match.
  
• In-game cat swapping - Players will now have the option to change cats used in the game to any of their created custom cats by clicking on cats' portraits.
  
• Story Mode - Optional mini-games are now indicated with a blue exclamation mark.

Bug Fixes:

• Objectives window is no longer missing a title in story mode games
  
• Glyph for exiting Online Challenge pop-up added
  
• Minor tweaks to props present on game boards
  
• Exiting the challenge will no longer go back to Main Menu but will instead go to Online Menu
  
• Cats will no longer be possible to pet through UI elements
  
• Game no longer freezes after achieving 99+ points
  
• Three digit points value will now be properly scaled and displayed
  
• Frank is no longer incorrectly called "Commander" in his end game puzzle
  
• Closing full tile bag view will now only happen when player presses the designated button, instead of accepting RMB (or its equivalent)
  
• Leftovers of D-pad navigation disabled
  
• Eye icon showing which board the player is looking at will now correctly display when joining an ongoing online game
  
• Minor fix to how refreshing market tiles in solo mode was working
  
• Profanity filter will now work when choosing online nickname
  
• Players will now have the ability to use various alphabets, instead of just the latin one, when choosing an online nickname

Misc:

• Photo of Cylke the Cat added to credits
  
• Small tweak to Online Challenge generation algorithm
  
• Some localization updates
  
• Pressing RMB while holding a tile will now take it back to player's hand instead of placing it back on the board

Take care, stay safe and cozy, and see you soon!

P.S. As always, feel free to join our Discord server to chat about your strategies, high scores and more, cats included. If you feel like there’s not enough adorable cat pictures in your life, the Discord server is also the place for you.

• Изменены цены улучшений для крипто-кликерав

Hello everyone!

Put it in your calendar, our Early Access release should be in Mid-August! We’re 97% sure we’ll make that, so while the odds are very good it’s not completely impossible that we’ll still need to reschedule.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

What can you expect from the Early Access version of the game? We’re glad you asked!

Generally, we think the game is in great shape with plenty of polish already! There are so many improvements over the first game that shapez 1 now feels more like a prototype for shapez 2.

In no particular order, there are:

• Multi-layer factories
  
• Trains
  
• New research system
  
• Fluids
  
• Blueprint library & toolbar
  
• Lots of quality of life improvements
  
• Crystals
  
• Pins
  
• Multiple progressions,
  
• Customizable map generation,
  
• Mirrorable buildings,
  
• Platforms
  
• Undo/redo
  
• So much more!

We also have a very high quality standard that we want to meet, so we have invested a lot of time in optimizing the user interface, onboarding & tutorial and making sure you have a smooth experience!



We are now aiming to launch in Mid August. This is around 97% confirmed so while we are pretty certain, please don’t be mad if we have to reschedule it!


Generally, we think the best time to get started with the game is already during Early Access. During Early Access, we will be mostly working on adding big new content iterations every few months that justify picking up the game again. We will of course release hotfixes and so on, but we believe fewer, bigger releases make more sense than more numerous smaller increments. Less frequent releases also allow us to work more effectively on bigger updates.

For these bigger updates we want to try more experimental things like new game modes with bold changes that we didn’t want to try for the main game mode. However, we will decide what to work on based on surveys that we’ll run after the release! After all, we want to work on things you actually care about!

Of course there may be issues (minor bugs, unfinished or non-optimised visuals, etc) but we’re not using Early Access to put out an unfinished game for testing - for us Early Access is a way to get feedback and show our commitment to updating the game!

We want to make sure that you can make an informed decision about whether to jump in with the Early Access launch, so here’s an overview of what to expect…


We are happy with how the game design is going. The overall progression and balancing feels very nice already. Obviously this is always an on-going part of development and we will continue to fine tune based on your feedback.

We also got way more done than initially planned - if everything goes well, we will launch with 3 progression modes - Normal, Hard, Hexagonal. This does depend on how the final weeks leading up to the launch go, but we’re hopeful!

We have invested a lot of time to make sure the belt placement & general UI/UX is as smooth as possible. There might be an initial learning curve, but after that it should feel pretty natural - even elegant!



We are also currently working on doing the same improvements to the Space Belts & Trains and are confident we’ll get that in for the Early Access launch as well. A few minor things might not make it, but we have them tracked and will do our best to fix them as soon as possible.

The game is very stable and you shouldn’t see much in the way of crashes. However, it’s not impossible that you will encounter some issues with DirectX 11. If that does happen, you can try switching to Vulkan or DirectX12. We don’t do anything vastly different to other Unity games, so if you can run most Unity games fine you should not run into any trouble with shapez 2.

We are also still planning improvements to our input system for people who want to use exotic configurations or rebind modifier keys like ‘Shift+C’, which will cause issues in the initial Early Access release.

We are already very satisfied with the rendering performance, and we are constantly improving the simulation performance, with the ultimate goal of simulating around 500k-1 million buildings well. To put that in perspective, you need about 15k to complete the game, and currently we can simulate around 100-200k.



Rendering performance is another area we will continue working on, but with average setups you should already enjoy smooth performance. However, on low end setups, you might have to reduce the graphical settings to achieve your desired frame rates, since additional effects or very detailed 3D geometry can drag down the performance. There are also some individual animations which are not yet optimized for performance (like the vortex animation), causing unnecessary high GPU load. These will of course be improved.

Also, every setup, driver, OS is different, and we need more data from players to optimize the game for all the different combinations, so please let us know if not everything is running smoothly for you yet!

Already vastly improved since the demo, there are even more big improvements planned for the Early Access release. We don’t know exactly how far we’ll get with this by the time of the release, but we will of course be working to make things even better throughout the Early Access period. In fact we are already working on a new “Operators Badge” mechanic that will also improve this, but more on that later!

We initially thought wires would not make it into Early Access, but a fun weekend of prototyping them changed that! The wire system has grown quite a bit but never got the attention it deserved, which is why there are a few issues we still need to iron out. So to be clear, they are fully functional, but lacking a lot of quality of life features.

Our patrons are already building Make Anything Machines with them, even for crystals. There’s around 25 wire buildings, although that number is inflated by logic gates and simulated buildings.

Here’s what we still need to polish:

• Update order is not deterministic, so you might run into issues when you build memory cells or attempt to build a CPU with wires.
  
• The art is placeholder, so don’t expect anything fancy - and there are issues like buildings not showing where exactly which output goes (i.e. where does the fluid input go and where does the shape go) making them harder to use than they should be.
  
• There is no tutorial or knowledge panel entry for wires yet, so you are a bit more on your own on them. However, they are also in no way required to complete or enjoy the game.
  
• The Vortex does not output the current shape signal yet, so if you want to build a MaM you have to manually input a signal.

Some wiring and a XOR Logic Gate. Signals are represented in light green (active), green (connected but inactive), dark green (not connected) and red (conflict)

There are a few areas (mostly visual and audio) where more work is needed or placeholders are still in use and we don’t have final assets yet. These will be updated and added during Early Access.

This is a technical issue and we will need to refactor a good chunk of the game before we can implement something like an ‘L’ shaped pipe and actually split the pipe up into two structures. Right now every building can only have 4 outputs (right, left, up, down) and we would need 2 more (upper, lower) to support this. This is a lot of work however, so it won’t be there for the Early Access launch and may even take until after Early Access.



There are a few items in the game that simply didn’t get their art pass in time, so they might have placeholder visuals or at least don’t live up to our standards on release:

• Pin pusher
  
• Crystal generator & Crystal shapes
  
• Space pipes (They just re-use the space belt visuals for now)
  
• 2-Layer Conveyor Lifts
  
• A rare visual glitch with shapes on splitters - this one is actually a tricky logic issue, but we’re working on it

We have a few items on our todo list for blueprints which probably won’t be done by the time we launch into Early Access.

• Blueprints don’t support icons yet, and there is no preview in the library, making it harder to distinguish than necessary.
  
• The blueprint toolbar configuration is not saved when you exit the game (a minor issue, but still).
  
• Blueprint placement indicators of platforms could be further improved, for example computing & showing arrows on notch inputs / outputs to make them feel more like buildings again.
  
• Placing huge blueprints is slower in performance terms than required right now - once placed, they should run fine though.

Most buildings from the demo in the game have sound, but we didn’t get to add sound to the new mechanics like fluids, trains and wires yet. Sound in general is something we want to improve during Early Access.

The game already supports custom progressions (there’s even a community created editor!) but it only works by copying a JSON file to the appropriate folder. Later we want to integrate Steam Workshop support and add the ability to create Code-Based mods - this is something we’ve prototyped, but it’s not ready for release yet.

That should give you all the info you need to tell if you want to join our Early Access! See you again in two weeks!

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team


X / Twitter YouTube Discord Reddit TikTok Patreon

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4174352435291228979

Hello everyone!

Put it in your calendar, our Early Access release should be in Mid-August! We’re 97% sure we’ll make that, so while the odds are very good it’s not completely impossible that we’ll still need to reschedule.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

What can you expect from the Early Access version of the game? We’re glad you asked!

Generally, we think the game is in great shape with plenty of polish already! There are so many improvements over the first game that shapez 1 now feels more like a prototype for shapez 2.

In no particular order, there are:

• Multi-layer factories
  
• Trains
  
• New research system
  
• Fluids
  
• Blueprint library & toolbar
  
• Lots of quality of life improvements
  
• Crystals
  
• Pins
  
• Multiple progressions,
  
• Customizable map generation,
  
• Mirrorable buildings,
  
• Platforms
  
• Undo/redo
  
• So much more!

We also have a very high quality standard that we want to meet, so we have invested a lot of time in optimizing the user interface, onboarding & tutorial and making sure you have a smooth experience!



We are now aiming to launch in Mid August. This is around 97% confirmed so while we are pretty certain, please don’t be mad if we have to reschedule it!


Generally, we think the best time to get started with the game is already during Early Access. During Early Access, we will be mostly working on adding big new content iterations every few months that justify picking up the game again. We will of course release hotfixes and so on, but we believe fewer, bigger releases make more sense than more numerous smaller increments. Less frequent releases also allow us to work more effectively on bigger updates.

For these bigger updates we want to try more experimental things like new game modes with bold changes that we didn’t want to try for the main game mode. However, we will decide what to work on based on surveys that we’ll run after the release! After all, we want to work on things you actually care about!

Of course there may be issues (minor bugs, unfinished or non-optimised visuals, etc) but we’re not using Early Access to put out an unfinished game for testing - for us Early Access is a way to get feedback and show our commitment to updating the game!

We want to make sure that you can make an informed decision about whether to jump in with the Early Access launch, so here’s an overview of what to expect…


We are happy with how the game design is going. The overall progression and balancing feels very nice already. Obviously this is always an on-going part of development and we will continue to fine tune based on your feedback.

We also got way more done than initially planned - if everything goes well, we will launch with 3 progression modes - Normal, Hard, Hexagonal. This does depend on how the final weeks leading up to the launch go, but we’re hopeful!

We have invested a lot of time to make sure the belt placement & general UI/UX is as smooth as possible. There might be an initial learning curve, but after that it should feel pretty natural - even elegant!



We are also currently working on doing the same improvements to the Space Belts & Trains and are confident we’ll get that in for the Early Access launch as well. A few minor things might not make it, but we have them tracked and will do our best to fix them as soon as possible.

The game is very stable and you shouldn’t see much in the way of crashes. However, it’s not impossible that you will encounter some issues with DirectX 11. If that does happen, you can try switching to Vulkan or DirectX12. We don’t do anything vastly different to other Unity games, so if you can run most Unity games fine you should not run into any trouble with shapez 2.

We are also still planning improvements to our input system for people who want to use exotic configurations or rebind modifier keys like ‘Shift+C’, which will cause issues in the initial Early Access release.

We are already very satisfied with the rendering performance, and we are constantly improving the simulation performance, with the ultimate goal of simulating around 500k-1 million buildings well. To put that in perspective, you need about 15k to complete the game, and currently we can simulate around 100-200k.



Rendering performance is another area we will continue working on, but with average setups you should already enjoy smooth performance. However, on low end setups, you might have to reduce the graphical settings to achieve your desired frame rates, since additional effects or very detailed 3D geometry can drag down the performance. There are also some individual animations which are not yet optimized for performance (like the vortex animation), causing unnecessary high GPU load. These will of course be improved.

Also, every setup, driver, OS is different, and we need more data from players to optimize the game for all the different combinations, so please let us know if not everything is running smoothly for you yet!

Already vastly improved since the demo, there are even more big improvements planned for the Early Access release. We don’t know exactly how far we’ll get with this by the time of the release, but we will of course be working to make things even better throughout the Early Access period. In fact we are already working on a new “Operators Badge” mechanic that will also improve this, but more on that later!

We initially thought wires would not make it into Early Access, but a fun weekend of prototyping them changed that! The wire system has grown quite a bit but never got the attention it deserved, which is why there are a few issues we still need to iron out. So to be clear, they are fully functional, but lacking a lot of quality of life features.

Our patrons are already building Make Anything Machines with them, even for crystals. There’s around 25 wire buildings, although that number is inflated by logic gates and simulated buildings.

Here’s what we still need to polish:

• Update order is not deterministic, so you might run into issues when you build memory cells or attempt to build a CPU with wires.
  
• The art is placeholder, so don’t expect anything fancy - and there are issues like buildings not showing where exactly which output goes (i.e. where does the fluid input go and where does the shape go) making them harder to use than they should be.
  
• There is no tutorial or knowledge panel entry for wires yet, so you are a bit more on your own on them. However, they are also in no way required to complete or enjoy the game.
  
• The Vortex does not output the current shape signal yet, so if you want to build a MaM you have to manually input a signal.

Some wiring and a XOR Logic Gate. Signals are represented in light green (active), green (connected but inactive), dark green (not connected) and red (conflict)

There are a few areas (mostly visual and audio) where more work is needed or placeholders are still in use and we don’t have final assets yet. These will be updated and added during Early Access.

This is a technical issue and we will need to refactor a good chunk of the game before we can implement something like an ‘L’ shaped pipe and actually split the pipe up into two structures. Right now every building can only have 4 outputs (right, left, up, down) and we would need 2 more (upper, lower) to support this. This is a lot of work however, so it won’t be there for the Early Access launch and may even take until after Early Access.



There are a few items in the game that simply didn’t get their art pass in time, so they might have placeholder visuals or at least don’t live up to our standards on release:

• Pin pusher
  
• Crystal generator & Crystal shapes
  
• Space pipes (They just re-use the space belt visuals for now)
  
• 2-Layer Conveyor Lifts
  
• A rare visual glitch with shapes on splitters - this one is actually a tricky logic issue, but we’re working on it

We have a few items on our todo list for blueprints which probably won’t be done by the time we launch into Early Access.

• Blueprints don’t support icons yet, and there is no preview in the library, making it harder to distinguish than necessary.
  
• The blueprint toolbar configuration is not saved when you exit the game (a minor issue, but still).
  
• Blueprint placement indicators of platforms could be further improved, for example computing & showing arrows on notch inputs / outputs to make them feel more like buildings again.
  
• Placing huge blueprints is slower in performance terms than required right now - once placed, they should run fine though.

Most buildings from the demo in the game have sound, but we didn’t get to add sound to the new mechanics like fluids, trains and wires yet. Sound in general is something we want to improve during Early Access.

The game already supports custom progressions (there’s even a community created editor!) but it only works by copying a JSON file to the appropriate folder. Later we want to integrate Steam Workshop support and add the ability to create Code-Based mods - this is something we’ve prototyped, but it’s not ready for release yet.

That should give you all the info you need to tell if you want to join our Early Access! See you again in two weeks!

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team


X / Twitter YouTube Discord Reddit TikTok Patreon

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4174352435291228979

Ship of Heroes has always been a story MMORPG, and in the past, we have published about the backstory, the major characters, the setting and the many challenges that humanity faces in the future. We decided a few years back that providing character voices for our NPCs was much superior to text-only, which is used in many older MMORPGs. In fact, quite a few older MMOs now have player-created voice-over plugins, because voicing the story is a widely popular feature in good MMOs. We’re keeping the text and the speech bubbles for those who like them, but the voices convey a lot of nuance.

Our first set of voices for Ship of Heroes received mixed reviews when we rolled it out a few years ago. People loved the voice idea, but they wanted some improvements to be made in the voices themselves. Since that time, we’ve looked at quite a few options. Today we are announcing that we have replaced the old voices with much superior new voices, giving a real improvement in the quality of the story telling. We’ve also expanded the total number of spoken lines, and the number of individuals speaking, to improve immersion.

In the video that accompanies this newsletter, you can hear a few of the new voices. Many dev teams wouldn’t actually show a video without explosions or combat, just to illustrate an upgrade in storytelling mechanics. But we’re really pleased with this upgrade, and we thought we’d share it with you today.

The accompanying video is a scene from the story arc that introduces mages and magic aboard the FHS Justice. This arc has a lot of politics in it – players get different results and hear different dialog depending upon how they play the arc. There is also an element of discovery in the arc. So, the voiced lines give the players clues to what may be going on in the background between the senior mages who lead factions within the magical population of the ship. Again, the voices are important to telling the story in a subtle way.

We think the player-character should have an important role in the story. If you save the world, when you return to your mission contact, they should say “Great work, you saved the world!” The voices make this much more real. Voices also help the player understand why they need to save the world in a way the written text struggles to deliver.

In an MMO, other characters matter to the story as well. In a good story, the other heroes, and the NPCs are doing things while you progress through your challenges. The voices and dialog help to convey this complexity.

Hearing the bantering dialog we often put into the game makes the NPCs seem more real. This is another huge advantage of having NPC voices for the dialog.

We’re continuing to polish our content and add features to make Ship of Heroes even more fun to play. Stay tuned for more updates in the near future. And please don’t forget to wishlist us on Steam! It will help us enormously when we launch.

Technical Notes:

1. When your team takes a mission from a mission contact, everyone on the team can hear the dialog (not just the team leader) and can see any associated text pop-ups as well. All of you are getting the mission together, and the voiced discussion, questions and answers, make a lot of difference.

2. Settings in the menu allow players to select what they hear: sounds, music, voices, or any combination, or none at all.

3. The hero’s name is written in the text, but not voiced to avoid mispronunciations.

4. Adding player avatar voices is under consideration for after launch, but we will want to take the pulse of the community before we offer up this kind of upgrade.

We just uploaded a small hotfix for the demo.
Thanks to everyone for reporting all the bugs :)

- Updated Localization
- Sir Bunalot now starts correctly with +10 max health
- Fixed bug where Melimons bombs dealt more damage based on your strength

Cheers & Thanks
Stray Fawn Studio

Hey everyone, our first update from Roadmap of 2024 is here! Around the World update, brings new languages to BIG SHOTS! Now, more Rookies from around the world can enjoy bug-smashing experiences in their own languages.

You can find the new languages in the Hangar Settings menu!

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Dutch
• French
• German
• Italian
• Korean
• Spanish

• Conqueror of All Maps Trophy: Fixed an issue with the trophy not working on PlayStation - this trophy now should work as described!

• Subtitle Readability: To improve subtitle readability, we have added a bit more delay between voice lines depending on the languages, giving you more time to read them.

As always, thank you for your support Rookies! 🫡 Keep your eyes on the horizon for more updates in the future!

Greetings fellow map-starers! I am Lufthansi, one of the narrative designers on Victoria 3, and I’m here to talk about the upcoming map and pop setup changes for Sphere of Influence. Since there’s quite a few of them, let’s just jump straight into it.

The lands of Iran and Turan have gotten a much needed facelift for the upcoming expansion.
Say goodbye to the conspicuously modern-looking looking Afghanistan (bar Wakhan dongle) of 1.6, and say hello to your new best friends in the region: the emirates of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat. These three Pashtun realms will be the main contenders for the struggle to unify Afghanistan under one banner, though the Uzbek khanates of Maimana and Kunduz might give them a run for their money.



To their immediate south, the Khanate of Kalat’s influence in the region has grown considerably, with an enlarged Makran now starting as a Kalati vassal, standing in for the plethora of local Baluchi tribes that owed the Kalati Khans their allegiance.
Further east, the Sikh Empire’s borders have been redrawn to better reflect the situation in 1836 and the Nawabate of Bahawalpur has been established on the left bank of the Sutlej river. In the Eastern Hindu Kush, Chitral emerges as a new power, representing both itself and dozens of smaller statelets and tribes such as Hunza and the yet-Islamised ‘Kafiristan’.

In Central Asia proper, borders have been polished and shifted around slightly, with the most notable addition being the establishment of a decentralised Turkmen area, representing various Turkmen tribes outside Khivan control, chief among them the Tekke.

Persia has seen its starting territories further reduced, losing control of more of its coastline to Arab and Baluchi rulers and having to contend with a new vassal: the influential Sheikhdom of Muhammara, conveniently parked right on top of the country’s major oil reserves. (Surely nothing bad will ever come of this). Oh, and Persia is now blue (dabadee dabadi).



In terms of state regions, there’s quite a few new ones, and we have tried our very best to toe the line between what is historically appropriate and what is recognizable to the modern eye. The state regions represent a mixture of historical provinces, borders, and cultural areas, so while the initial setup might look alien to some, to all you Durand line fans out there, I say: ‘fear not, there is still a way’.



The old pop setup of Persia and Central Asia included many oddities, like the vast majority of Persian Jews and Armenians being slaves for some reason. This has now been rectified, and pop numbers and cultures for the entire region has been reworked, working off a motley collection of primary and secondary sources of varying trustworthiness as well as a good pinch of creative licence. You will also find three new cultures added to the region: Luri, Mazanderani, and Chitrali, each with their own accompanying country/releasable.

Another big change this patch will come in the form of a map rework to the Russian Empire and its surroundings. A whole lot of new states have been added to the game, and even more remoulded to better reflect the international, cultural, and administrative divisions of the time.



Accompanying this state rework is another pop setup change. Primarily based on downscaled and modified data from the 1897 census, it adds a number of new cultures to the game, such as the Mordvins, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Udmurts, and the Buryat.





The Baltic Governorates under General-Governor Carl Magnus von der Pahlen will also make their debut in this patch. Starting as a German-cultured puppet under the Russian Empire, it is there to reflect the unique cultural and political situation of the three governorates of Estonia, Livonia, and Courland.





Of course, no map rework is complete without a slew of new releasables to populate it. I’m not going to list them all here, so feel free to look around and identify your own favourites!

Sphere of Influence will also see the arrival of a much requested religion, namely Confucianism. Confucianism will start out as the state religion of China, Korea, and Vietnam, though they all retain large Buddhist minorities. (In Vietnam’s case with the Buddhists making up the majority of the population.) Due to a change in the countries’ law setup, China and Vietnam will both start out by tolerating their Buddhist subjects, whereas the Buddhist practitioners in Korea will be persecuted by the state, representing Korea’s historical anti-Buddhist movement.



To all those still grieving the loss of Noongar some patches back, I bring good tidings: Noongar is back, and it brought some friends! Wati and Miring together help reduce Anglo control over the Outback, better reflecting the limited control settlers then enjoyed over the country’s interior.



North America is also getting a bit busier, with the addition of the Seminoles of Florida (at long last), the Salish and Bannocks of the Western Plains, and the Athabaska of Alaska.



The addition of the Seminole is also accompanied by a new starting Journal Entry for the United States, ‘The Seminole Wars’, detailing the grim conquest and eventual displacement of the Seminole peoples of Florida by the United States.



Some other changes include the beautification of the Southern Bessarabian strip ceded as part of Romania’s ‘All for One’ Journal Entry, and the addition of more straits around the Tierra del Fuego to sort out some colonisation wonkiness, which would cause some individual island provinces to not be colonised by either Argentina or Chile.





Well, that’s all for now! I hope you are all as excited for Sphere of Influence as we are! See you all in the next developer diary where WHO WILL DO WHAT?

Editor's Note: We left this because it's funny. But next week the ‘WHAT’ our diary will be is the Changelog for 1.7 and Sphere of Influence, and the ‘WHO’ is writing it is Mikael! With that, have a Happy Thursday all!