Fall of an Empire

Campaigns, start dates and victories 7

Tribal realms, clans and warbands (Warpath) 8

• – Barbarian and tribal factions are unlocked in the Grand Campaign for Warpath owners.
• – Tribal politics run through the Clans screen. Leading families have their own compliance, succession backing, regional governorships and specialised warbands (infantry, riders, siege or fleet).
• – Warbands belong to character holders and are mustered by family into a host. When a holder dies, their warriors pass to kin or spark a succession fight between rival claimants.
• – Killings between clans start feuds that keep rival families from mustering into the same host until you pay blood-price or force a reconciliation.
• – Tribal realms hold unbuilt countryside under its land name until they have the culture development to raise a settlement into a town, with an animated timber construction site on the map and a prompt to name the new city.
• – Empty tribal land defends itself with local fighters, and armies can occupy unsettled land or build occupation forts to hold it.
• – Neighbouring tribes of the same culture group can form tribal confederations, share wars, build cohesion, and challenge for leadership or independence.
• – Tribes and kingdoms can raid with warband hosts and levies for four times the previous plunder, while paying a quarter of standard army upkeep.

Pagan worship and religion 5

• – Clicking any religion name in sidebars, tooltips or character lists opens a painted Religion details window showing its clergy, faiths and pantheon.
• – Pagan faiths have full god trees with major and lesser deities, holy seats and map relics.
• – Pagan realms can favour a god or the whole pantheon, and seasonal festivals, wars, raids, winters and deaths trigger rite events where you can pay gold or people for timed blessings and oaths.
• – Borgutian charity is now controlled by a Charity policy slider, so pagan realms no longer pay alms or take unrest for withholding them.
• – Priests and sermons in Warpath events can convert local populations, and main-campaign faiths now use proper follower names (such as Borgutians and Wodanites).

Cultures, names and hybrid cultures 7

Feudalism, provinces and subjects 7

• – Kingdoms can adopt feudalism, replacing tribal hosts with regional forces and hereditary duchies that can be granted to nobles or revoked through diplomacy.
• – The Military screen adapts to your government, showing a Regions view for feudal realms where dukes raise local troops and manage crown land.
• – Independent standing-army kingdoms can adopt imperial administration at 85 Development before proclaiming an empire.
• – Imperial laws now set provincial war rights, army raising and court appointments, and provinces track Imperial Standing through tribute pledges, settler exchanges and intrigue.
• – Appointing a regional governor starts a Governor Focus bonus in that settlement that ramps up over time, replacing the old one-off governor interactions; changing the governor or losing the town resets the ramp.
• – Foederati subjects have Low, Medium and High autonomy levels controlling their monthly subsidies, local building, expansion and call-up into imperial wars. Rephsian-majority tribes can offer to become foederati while keeping their land.
• – Subject rebellions now distinguish between a limited revolt (for land, autonomy or independence) and a full war for the throne.

Military, battles and sieges 9

Diplomacy and peace treaties 7

Economy, settlements and events 8

• – Monthly food deliveries now feed a town's civilians for the current and next month before armies can take supplies, and garrisons cannot eat a town below its civilian reserve. The settlement food bar shows the civilian reserve separately from army supply.
• – Stationed armies share the town's daily mobilisation limit when replenishing so they do not strip the town of civilians, and empty settlements stop workshop and natural production until people return.
• – The treasury tax breakdown shows net settlement tax after local expenses rather than gross receipts, and religious buildings that previously asked for an unused "Cloth" resource now use Clothes.
• – Stores fill luxury shortages mid-month, and the Western Rebels start with more gold, grain and legions.
• – Delayed follow-up events cancel cleanly if a required character has died or the settlement changed hands, and event courtiers must be at least 16 years old.
• – Event options always display their gold cost (greying out choices you cannot afford) and scale costs with realm income.
• – Interaction, spy, governor and event result notices now name the exact people and factions involved and state the exact opinion, Dread and gold changes.
• – Characters born on 29 February now age normally in non-leap years.

Map, UI, audio and performance 9

• – Campaign water uses a new GPU ocean simulation with coastal breakers, foam and depth-based colour, without white-dot sun flicker on high quality or ocean patches showing through the paper map when zoomed out.
• – Campaign terrain adds baked sky occlusion in gullies, beaches, rock relief, distant forest canopy bands, and seamless fog-of-war volume tiles that fade in smoothly with zoom.
• – Faction map labels curve smoothly inside owned territory without shrinking or bending sharply at borders.
• – The Victory map draws on a fast canvas overlay that stays locked to the map while panning and zooming instead of freezing on complex borders.
• – Dismissing a notification, event or tutorial prompt keeps the game paused if you had paused it yourself.
• – Unit order cues, battle and siege loops, and camera zoom ambience now respect the Effects Volume slider, and opening a settlement plays city ambience.
• – Sidebar tooltips open beside the panel instead of covering the next row down, tooltips split Effects and Requirements into separate sections, and screens keep their previous content visible while refreshing instead of flashing empty.
• – Switching language refreshes all open UI screens, encyclopaedia pages and phonetic place names immediately, with full Vietnamese support added.
• – Saved games read from disk once and wait for terrain loading to finish before applying, cutting load times and fixing zero-unrest caches after loading.

Changes 10

• – Hi all,
• – Fall of an Empire: Warpath is now live and ready to purchase, alongside the free Patch 3.0 update for everyone.
• – Patch 3.0 contains all the underlying overhaul work and base-game systems (the DLC just unlocks the barbarian content). Everyone gets authored three-tier campaign victories for every faction, dynamic cultural place names, hybrid cultures that can merge and become your court culture, empty land and occupation forts, the new religion window, and major fixes to sieges, battle pacing, and town food reserves.
• – Warpath unlocks all barbarian and tribal factions in the Grand Campaign, the new 897: After the Empire start date set in the fractured realms after Rephsian collapse, and a new Warpath Tutorial campaign. Playing as a tribe gives you clan politics and blood feuds, family-owned warbands, tribal confederations, pagan pantheons with relics and sacrifices, unbuilt lands you can raise into cities, and the ability to reform into a feudal kingdom with hereditary duchies.
• – Since it's new, I've put the base game on a 50% discount and given Warpath 10% off for launch.
• – Because 3.0 overhauls a lot of map and faction systems, I'd recommend starting a fresh campaign rather than continuing a 2.07 save.
• – It's been a lot of work getting this DLC ready to go, so I would like to thank everybody who helped test it, you've all been a lot of help.
• – Enjoy the update and DLC! As always let me know if you run into any issues and I'll fix them ASAP.
• – Cheers,
• – Joe