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Patch 1.00.201 - Performance and Visuals


Hi everyone,
Today we have another patch for you! We’ve been closely tracking your feedback and are doing our best to act on as much of it as we reasonably can. Thank you for continuing to send your feedback our way — it helps us improve! Our primary focus remains on improving performance and stability, as we feel these areas must be handled first and foremost. After that, we work to address as many other areas as possible. Once performance reaches a good state, we’ll be able to shift our focus and make more improvements in the other parts of the game we also want to improve and are excited to enhance.

This patch brings further improvements to performance and memory usage, addressing one of the main causes of the issues you all have reported. More improvements are still in the works as our team is working on bigger changes that take a bit longer, but we still expect this update to already improve many players' experiences.

In addition to this, we’ve made a range of improvements to in-game visuals and camera controls. You can now zoom out further - a very popular request - and we’ve improved the smoothness of the game's camera movements.

Due to the popular demand, we’re also introducing two new utility buildings: the Large Water Tower and Large Power Substation. These will allow you to distribute more power or water in an area without needing a large number of lower-tier buildings. Though we've also given those lower-tier water and power substations a small boost to their output.

Finally, we’ve made several balance changes, such as increasing stockpile limits across the board and making the resource output of regions much more impactful.

[h3]Next big update in May[/h3]
We’re continuing to listen to what you like and what you don’t as we plan for future updates. We have a big one planned for May, and we hope to share more details soon. To give you an idea, you can expect a major boost to the performance, as some of our long-term efforts will bear fruit. Additionally, there will be significant visual updates to the World Map and the ability to queue movements for naval units.

We’ll talk more about that update soon, but for now, here’s today’s changelog - we hope you enjoy the changes!

With regards,
- Overseer Team

[h3]Full changelog - 1.00.201 [/h3]
Performance & Stability
  • Optimized road system (road is split into chunks with frustum culling and LOD implementation, to lower RAM usage and improve rendering)
  • World map databases are now streamed to improve memory management and lower RAM usage. This helps with a number of potential crash-to-desktop issues
  • Improved and optimized action lines on the world map to improve memory management and lower RAM usage.
  • Optimized trees, grass and terrain details to improve performance for Africa: (Cairo, Douala, Kampala, Lake Tana, Gaborone, Gqeberha, Mauritius, Tsauchab River, Bissau, Dabou, Lake of Fetzara, Senegal River)
  • Optimized trees, grass and terrain details to improve performance for South America (Salta, Salvador, Santos, Bogotá, Cumana, Paramaribo, Achao, Rancagua, Villa Carlos Paz)
  • Optimized trees, grass and terrain details to improve performance for Arctic circle (Fort Churchill, Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Yellowknife)
  • Removed a number of barely noticeable (if at all) objects from maps to improve performance and reduce memory usage
  • Supporter pack DLC assets are now also streamed to improve memory management and prevent crashes


Camera & Visuals
  • Changed camera zoom distance to allow greater zoom out, as frequently requested by players
  • Tweaked environment (nature) sound effects
  • Improved city builder view: New skybox
  • Improved city builder view: Adjusted depth of field
  • Improved city builder view: Tweaked fog drawing distance in all weathers
  • Improved city builder view: Adjusted buildings draw distances and LOD setup
  • Improved city builder view: Adjusted shadows render distance
  • Improved camera behavior in city view so it’s smoother
  • Tweaked reflection maps for both day and night time
  • Tweaked ambient SFX crossfades and volume


Gameplay
  • New building: Large Water tower as an improved version of the Water tower
  • New building: Large Power substation as an improved version of the Power substation.
  • Increased distribution output of the normal Power substation
  • Increased distribution output of the normal Water tower
  • Greatly increased region resource output for better conquest rewards
  • Changed input resource amounts for the Battleship. It now requires 200 Steel, 50 Rubber and 50 Electrical parts
  • Warehouse global stock limit bonus raised from 500 to 1000
  • Base global stock limit raised from 2000 to 3000 per resource
  • Base local stock limit raised from 100 to 300
  • Added more information to the Needs and Luxuries tabs for the housing info panels.
  • Removed a lot of unnecessary information from being displayed for the housing info panel when there are no residents
  • Added several missing minimap building markers (airport, water purification plant, electric factory)
  • Prague map moved over to the Central Europe region. Only affects new game starts.


Bugfixes
  • If a water deposit was already depleted (and save) and/or almost depleted, it will now be infinite as intended
  • Tweaked the behavior of reflection probes (used to create reflections) to prevent a potential issue with rendering pink objects as part of the reflection

Hotfix

Evening governors!

We only have a small hotfix for you today, to plug a rather big exploit related to the trade deal screen. Nothing else. Thank you for your attention!

We continue our work for the next update!

Overseer over and out

Mixing Civ 7 and WW1, one struggling strategy game is mounting a major comeback

The bar for strategy games is extremely high nowadays - Civilization 6, the original Frostpunk, and Cities Skylines 1 set such superlative standards that even their own sequels have struggled by comparison, with Civ 7, Frostpunk 2, and CS2 still fighting to win back players. Kaiserpunk, too, has had a tough time on Steam. Released on March 21, while user reviews have slowly become more positive, it still bears the ignominious mark of an official 'mixed' rating, owing to criticisms about performance and presentation. Ambitious and original, Kaiserpunk may still require improvement, but it has a lot to offer. If you've stayed away from it so far, a transformative new update might be enough to draw you in.


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Big Performance Update

Patch 1.00.101

Hi everyone!

Based on all your feedback and comments, we are rolling out another patch today, filled with fixes and improvements for Kaiserpunk. We continuously read your feedback and input, working as quickly as we can to address and implement your suggestions. As always, thank you for sharing your input—it truly helps us.


In this patch, we’ve focused on performance and stability first and foremost, resolving many common issues reported and improving performance across the board. A lot of the optimization work targets both performance but also a lot of reported crashes. It’s a big first step, but there’s more to come. We’ve also made some improvements to the visuals in the game, most importantly making night time more readable. Furthermore we’ve also tried to address as many balance, UI issues and other popular requests from you in the community as we could for this round, but there’s plenty more we want to address in the next update.

Please see the full changelog below.

[h2]Changelog - 1.00.101 [/h2]
Performance & Stability
  • Optimized maps in North America (terrain, trees, grass, details) to improve performance in early game: New York, Norfolk, Washington, Reno, Salt Lake City, Seattle, El Marques, Jacksonville, Monterrey, Anchorage, Juneau, Tazlina Lake, Whitehorse, Chisasibi, Fort Severn, Lac Nemiscau, Mary's Harbour
  • Optimized maps in Europe (terrain, trees, grass, details) to improve performance in early game: Antwerp, Berlin, Bodensee, Dublin, Edinburgh, Limerick, Lisbon, Liverpool, London, Munich, Southampton, Valencia, Athens, Burgas, Palermo, Zagreb, Kyiv, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stavenger, Stockholm
  • Optimized maps in Asia (terrain, trees, grass, details) to improve early game performance: Kunming, Okayama, Seoul, Xiamen, Bayingolin, Dushanbe, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Yakutsk, Yelizovo, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Mount Talang, Palu, Singapore, Sintang, Izmir, Muscat
  • Optimized maps in Australia (terrain, trees, grass, details) to improve early game performance: Auckland, Christchurch, Port Chalmers, Sydney, Danau Tigi, Goodenough Island, Pellew Island, Perth
  • Optimized tutorial map(s) for improved performance
  • Optimized memory management on a number of panels to prevent or reduce 'garbage' buildup
  • Optimized memory management on the Load save game panel to prevent memory issues when a large number of saves exists
  • Streamlined objects instantiation to lower RAM usage including: Maps database, Building models database, Story dialogues databases. Other databases will receive the same overhaul over time.
  • Optimized blueprint (planning) models to reduce memory usage (VRAM). This is only the first step.
  • More will be done for the upcoming update(s)
  • Added a Texture Quality option to the Video Settings
  • Fixed a bug that manifested as logging a single error/warning too many times which could impact performance somewhat
Gameplay
  • Water treatment facility lowered from development level 8 to 6
  • Water deposits are now always infinite
  • Added screen edge camera scroll to the world map (previously already added to the City Building view)
  • Adjusted lighting for improved visuals
  • Improved lighting dynamics in regards to day/night change and weather changes
  • Added the option to manually type in numerical values in several more places
  • Burgas map is now linked to Carpathia as the starting region, as requested by players
  • When a region is a part of a peace treaty negotiation, the appropriate continent icon is shown, instead of a placeholder generic "compass" icon
  • Improved overall user experience on the peace treaty panel
  • Improved tooltip on the garrison that now shows if it is "being upgraded"
  • Added the number of empty housing slots on the individual resident class header tooltip
  • Any changes to the development database (buildings shuffled around the development levels a bit for example) will now be properly mirrored when loading the game
  • The Breakthrough slider is no longer interactable
  • Per class taxes on the population screen are now properly updated
  • Disabled some shortcuts during the tutorial, while they're not needed
  • Fixed a couple of non-localized labels
  • Improved billboard textures on rocks in the arid biome
  • Fixed a faulty sprite on the Population statistics screen
  • Fixed the starting camera position and rotation on the Juneau map (Alaska)
  • Fixed bug where default flag wouldn't carry proper information on a new game start

More patches will follow, with further improvements and fixes. We’ll continue to read the input you provide us and keep you posted on new upcoming updates.

Thank you!
Overseer Team

Patch Notes 1.00.005

Greetings commanders,
today we have a bigger patch for you that will hopefully adress some of the pressing issues some of you have been facing. We still have plenty more fixes and changes in the pipeline and we continue to go through all feedback we receive and we can't thank you enough for it! It truly does help!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
Additions
  • Added visible hotkeys added to the Dashboard for easier and quicker access to full-screen panels
  • Added the option to have infinite resource deposits (only applicable to new game starts)
  • Added keybindings for the Dashboard Panels
  • Added camera zoom in/out speed slider in the General options
  • Added camera speed slider (using the keyboard) in the General options
  • Added screen edge scrolling, which can be toggled in General options (World Map will be included soon too)
  • Added screen edge scroll speed slider in the General options
  • Added keybinding for HUD actions (Demolish, Copy, Move, Repair, Planning)
  • Added a formatted tooltip to the garrison on the region info panel
  • Added a naval link through the 'Suez canal'
  • Added a naval link through 'Panama canal'
  • Stock Overview Panel can now be sorted by column and ascending/descending
  • Added several missing info columns to the Stock Overview Panel


Adjustments and Balance
  • Nerfed garrisons; they still pose a challenge when upgraded
  • Buffed the AI; as the last change made it a bit more passive than intended
  • Nerfed all storyline effects (penalties primarily)
  • Increased the Minimize/Maximize Header button in the HUD so it's more visible
  • Tweaked the Change weather and Change time of day button visuals to make them more noticeable
  • Weather and time of day is now non-dynamic by default (only affects new game starts). You can still manually change it to whatever weather and day/night status you want.


Fixes
  • Optimized tutorial loading to prevent possible crashes (reduced memory allocation)
  • Fixed an issue that would occur when an army unit reached its maximum level; the error ocould caues the game to crash
  • Fixed a potential crash when loading saves (the save was basically corrupted, but it will load now)
  • Fixed several potential crashes when autosaving; the crash was due to undefined renderers in traffic objects
  • Fixed numerous instances of Unity 'overloading' the log file that would cause the game to stutter
  • Fixed several issues that could potentially cause the game to crash seemingly at random after several hours of playing, even on high-end computers
  • Fixed an issue that would cause the game to crash on exit, resulting with a massive game log
  • Fixed a potential issue that could cause the game to crash during trading
  • Fixed several tooltips
  • Removed unused UI buttons on the Town center info panel


Incoming
We have also made great headway on a bunch of items that will roll out soon, here's few apetizers.
Resource overview panel so you can monitor resources on-the-fly, right on the HUD
Map performance optimizations (will likely roll out over more than one update)
Further performance optimizations