What is different in 1.3?

[FactionHeir]

Noticed two more things:

1. With selected priest, you can now tell a region's religion rating (your own religion). Good that it finally got implemented from M2TW

2. Anti-cavalry stake barriers (deployment) are now completely invisible. In fact, I was wondering why my infantry were climbing stuff in the midst of nowhere. I found out the hard way what it was when my general went over it a bit later.
I think its problematic that they are don't become visible even after you impale yourself or your infantry walk over it.

[Sheogorath]

I think it's just ENEMY anticavalry barriers that are invisible.

This patch REALLY needs a hotfix.


A few things I've noticed that have remained the same:
1. The AI can still bypass interception, apparently whenever it feels like it.

2. AI armies still retreat away from their own territory and, usually, into yours. This results in some extremely annoying chases where the AI traipses around your territory for years sacking everything in sight and, when it gets lucky on occasion, taking a city you didn't garrison because it was fifteen provinces behind the lines.

3. Agents still can't cross the Hellespont. Easy to solve, but somewhat annoying.

4. While the AI has stopped spamming singleship traide route raiders, there are still a lot of fleets from a single nation in fairly small areas. Fortunately the AI no longer parks ships in choke points.



Something else I've noticed, Scholars can't challenge other scholars to duels. I seem to recall that in previous versions gentlemen and scholars could both duel, but only with equivalents from other factions. As in: no Scholar vs. Gentleman duels.

[FactionHeir]

Nope, scholars could never duel anyone. However, if you hover your mouse over scholars (at least when I was playing as UP), it will tell you that they can duel

And barbary states and savoy still single ship raid my trade route as spain.

[Sheogorath]

Huh. Oh well.

At least they've fixed artillery's limber/unlimber issues. It's nice that they do what I tell them now :P

[FactionHeir]

Most of the time, still borks up a bit when you do it in quick succession.
And of course they still fire parting shots, which may well decimate your own ranks.

Also, is it just me or does double click attack/run not work as smoothly as it used to do in 1.2? I find that my units always end up walking when I clearly double clicked.

[Sheogorath]

Yeah, it seems pretty unresponsive now. I suspect it might have something to do with the performance issues. I just use the run button most of the time now.

On the issue of those issues...

It seems the latest Steam update screwed something up. I get horrible lag when exiting ETW and the only way to get rid of it is to contro-alt-delete and force Steam to quit that way. Rather annoying since it takes a few minutes during which nothing responds, or responds very slowly.

Anybody else having that issue?

[FactionHeir]

Tried offline mode?

[Marquis of Roland]

2. AI armies still retreat away from their own territory and, usually, into yours. This results in some extremely annoying chases where the AI traipses around your territory for years sacking everything in sight and, when it gets lucky on occasion, taking a city you didn't garrison because it was fifteen provinces behind the lines.

I defeated an Austrian stack and it retreated into Venetian territory. Austria and Venice were NOT allies. Venice doesn't do anything about the 3 Austrian units using their region as a base to raid my territory; they'd pop in, raid Graz or Trieste, and they're back in Venice all on the same turn. I have a trade agreement with Venice so I don't want to attack them.

Finally after 5 turns of this, the Venetians finally declare war on Austria and wipe out those 3 units.

Invisible stakes pissed me off to the point where I never attack an army that can fortify. I've played 1 battle vs. Venetians where I literally played it 4 times to map out all the invisible stakes. It took like 2 hours.

WHEN are they going to fix the light infantry bugs? It's gotta be like the easiest frickin' thing to fix yet it managed to slip past 3 major patches and all its hotfixes? Crazy.

PLUS:
Why did they change 1st rate cannon range back to 400?? 1.2 fixed it by changing to 500 like the rest of the ships but now its back to 400 again??? Why would you "unfix" something you already fixed??? LOL

[FactionHeir]

AI seems to also get massive amounts of cash in 1.3. France can field 3 full stacks with just 4 American and 1 European holding (Saxony, producing 1.1k in taxes) without breaking a sweat.
And before you ask, no, they are at war with just about everyone and have 0 trading partners (and no European port either)

In 1.2, it would be bankrupt by now.

[Durallan]

Ironically however those full 3 stacks are most of the time entirely in europe and all if not most of their american holdings have little to NO troops guarding them!

[Mailman653]

US campaign seems to of gotten an extension. I recall it ending in 1810, now it ends in 1825.

[FactionHeir]

It seems that any emerging faction from the destruction of another faction becomes Rebel rather than an actual faction:
Example: Pirates, Quebec, United States.
Seems like CA broke something "fixing" the pirate re-emergence.

Artillery no longer autochanges targets when they have never been given a target on fire at will. Very annoying when you got them on canister and they keep shooting at an enemy way out of range!

When a faction declares war on you, the diplomacy text now reads as if you were the one declaring war on them and they are surprised about it....

Similar thing with selling my military access, they will claim that they don't want to give you access to their land...

Merging units and automatic cancelling of retraining as a result works fine now. Disbanding units undergoing retraining and recouping costs of retrain of a reloaded game and that has since seen battle still not working.

Square formation now ridiculously effective against cavalry even when the infantry has no bayonets at all. Charged my guard cav into a unit of line and lost all of them.

AI will not accept peace under any circumstances it seems (unless you are unreasonable and give them just about everything you have).

The new jag formation for irregulars is rather annoying: When I drag out a position of Frontiersmen or guerilla, they usually overlap quite a bit even though they shouldn't, resulting in a lot of additional FF casualties. Quite tedious having to move them one by one and ensre they don't ever overlap.

[Slaists]

AI seems to also get massive amounts of cash in 1.3. France can field 3 full stacks with just 4 American and 1 European holding (Saxony, producing 1.1k in taxes) without breaking a sweat.
And before you ask, no, they are at war with just about everyone and have 0 trading partners (and no European port either)

In 1.2, it would be bankrupt by now.

I can second that. At least on VH AI now seems to have HUGE cash injections. Playing as French I was blockading ALL British ports in Europe (zero trade for them), but they still could afford 6 full stacks (many featuring colonial line infantry + artillery) running around North America. They even could afford to replenish those stacks after they were depleted from fighting...

Bottom line: post 1.03, economically, it does not make any sense blockading the AI on VH. You should still blockade though, for it stops the AI from building ships and raiding YOUR trade...

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Actually it does. It provides you with some extra cash providing that you raid their trade and not block it completely. In my current Spanish campaign I am fighting the British in North America. The British had a lot of stacks over there, but have lately difficulties with replenishing and reinforcing their stacks. In Carolinas they had three against my two and when those were defeated they were without units to stop my push to the North.

In Germany I am fighting Prussia and since the initial onslaught is over the only thing that stops my march to the East is the fact that I need a stack to pacify Berlin and that Sweden just declared war on me. All the Prussian lands east of Berlin are without units to defend them.

On a side note.
Just before Sweden declared war on me I saw to small fleets carrying two stacks near the coast of Portugal. I really hoped that Sweden wouldn't DoW me because my six dragoons in Madrid were no match to two stacks. Sweden started a was but forgot to move its ships so was able to destroy them. During Sweden's turn I intercepted a third fleet carrying a stack. If the AI would be able to handle its invasion forces it would have caused enormous problem for me.

[Slaists]

Actually it does. It provides you with some extra cash providing that you raid their trade and not block it completely. In my current Spanish campaign I am fighting the British in North America. The British had a lot of stacks over there, but have lately difficulties with replenishing and reinforcing their stacks. In Carolinas they had three against my two and when those were defeated they were without units to stop my push to the North.

In Germany I am fighting Prussia and since the initial onslaught is over the only thing that stops my march to the East is the fact that I need a stack to pacify Berlin and that Sweden just declared war on me. All the Prussian lands east of Berlin are without units to defend them.

On a side note.
Just before Sweden declared war on me I saw to small fleets carrying two stacks near the coast of Portugal. I really hoped that Sweden wouldn't DoW me because my six dragoons in Madrid were no match to two stacks. Sweden started a was but forgot to move its ships so was able to destroy them. During Sweden's turn I intercepted a third fleet carrying a stack. If the AI would be able to handle its invasion forces it would have caused enormous problem for me.

I do not see any cash injection if I blockade a port. If a port is blockaded (and I had sloops sitting in ALL British European ports), there is zero trade with that port. Raiding a trade route does provide cash injection. But the trade (ports) have to be active for raiding to work.

On a different note:

VH strategy difficulty is definitely different (from 1.02) now... Playing as Britain I am desperately trying to scrap some cash, while the AI seems to have almost unlimited resources. It would appear, the AI does not value trade at all at least on VH. Most of my trade partners are almost constantly blockaded and they do not seem to be eager to do anything about those blockades. Bottom line: trade is very, very unreliable as a source of income post 1.03 at least on VH campaign setting.

[al Roumi]

WHEN are they going to fix the light infantry bugs? It's gotta be like the easiest frickin' thing to fix yet it managed to slip past 3 major patches and all its hotfixes? Crazy.

Don't get me started, what about behaviour of units on fort walls or in cover behind the "garden" walls? That's still broke.