Fire & Maneuver news & patch notes

Unfortunately, we can not afford to continue working on Fire & Maneuver. We can not continue its development. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41BEtu1c5BU

We're thrilled to announce the release of our latest update, packed with exciting improvements, bug fixes, and optimizations to enhance your gameplay experience. Here's a breakdown of the key changes across different aspects of the game: Campaign Enhancements: -Refined the zone of control mechanics based on the presence of corps on specific tiles. -Addressed loading issues with game files in campaigns. -Ensured the last balance update for units aligns with the unit roster in the campaign. Battlefield Improvements: -Fixed the echelon charging bug that affected how units charge during battles. -Optimized AI battle orders for more strategic and efficient gameplay. -Balanced AI difficulty levels for a more challenging and rewarding experience. -Resolved units hovering on the battlefield, providing smoother gameplay. User Interface and Audio Updates: -Added a music panel with skip and pause buttons for better control over the in-game music. -Introduced Army presets, allowing players to save and load their preferred army configurations. -Optimized UI loading for quicker and smoother transitions. -Updated the Credits page to acknowledge all the talented individuals involved in the game's -development. -Enhanced Main Menu and Lobby Room Panel UI for a more intuitive and polished look. -Fixed audio-related issues, including random music selection, Main Menu music loop, and missing audio in UI elements. Game Performance and Stability: -Addressed map-related issues, such as bridges, trenches, and units getting stuck. -Optimized overall battles and menus for faster loading times. -Improved unit loading processes, resulting in improved game performance and faster gameplay. Multiplayer Fixes: -Corrected AI color errors, ensuring the AI receives the appropriate color representation. -Resolved movement bugs that caused units to get stuck on tiles. -Fixed host-client discrepancies in charging and movement mechanics. Note: We also wanted to let you know that we've made adjustments to the AI behavior, making them more defensive in battles, ensuring challenging encounters that will test your strategic skills. We're dedicated to continuously improving the game and providing you with the best possible experience. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to your feedback as we strive to make the game even better. Update your game now and immerse yourself in the enhanced gameplay, refined user interface, and optimized performance. Enjoy the experience and keep conquering the battlefield!

This Friday's update will introduce a range of improvements and fixes to the game. In the Campaign mode, cloud fixes and AI balance updates have been implemented, while reinforcement troops have been fixed and merit purchase gain increased. Map information has also been corrected, and tooltips added to perks. In battles, duplicated arrows have been fixed, friendly fire issues resolved, and AI behavior improved. Smoke effects have been visually updated, and the hit-points and cohesion of units can now be viewed. Weapon fixes have been made for the Caucus Campaign, and cavalry movement has been fixed in the Campaign mode. The update also includes changes to the audio and visual aspects of the game, with new music tracks added and sound effects updated. Tooltips have been added to the map list, and the faction balance improved in the Campaign. The main menu and UI have also received fixes and improvements, with tooltips added to perks and leadership icons added. Finally, the update includes various bug fixes, such as issues with movement cost text, tile connections, and negative XP. The full changelog is shown below. Changelog: Campaign: Cloud fixes AI balance updates Reinforcement troops fixed Merit purchase gain increased to 65,000 when purchasing highest tier Credits updated Tooltips added in the map list Faction balance improved Manpower going below zero fixed Tile connections fixed Added tooltips to perks Issue reloading turns from save Movement cost text added Mini-map position fixed Nations text added Fixed fatal error for Campaigns based on internal network settings Supply cache sorting orders fixed Leadership icon added UI fixes for the unit info detailed view Negative XP fixed Battles: Duplicated arrows appearing fixed Friendly fire fixed AI unable to use bridge fixed Incorrect multiday battle percentages fixed Improved AI melee retreat logic Smoke Effects visually updated AI charging improvements Globe slide increased Multi-day redeployment fixed Bridges in Saarbrücken fixed Attack order fixed Destroyed buildings fixed Friend fire fixed for the AI AI now uses open battery Charging bugs fixed Interception fixed Players no longer spawn on the same side Hotkey added for reserve cycling Ai behavior more defensive Square formation now greys out for 4hp units, making it clear that smaller units can not form square Audio: New music tracks added: Kaiserjäger March - Austrians Inddo di Garibaldi - Italians Sekfat Marsi - Ottomans Marche Slave - Russians Battle Hymn of the Republic - Union 5 additional Generic Tracks added New sound effects added to battles New ambience audio added to battles Deployment audio added in battles Sound effects added to the right audio channel for the options settings Unit callout added for: German Landwehr Hungarian Honved Buffalo Soldier Guard Rifles Redshirt Mountain Guns Greek Volunteers Sepoys Quotes added Visual: Map information corrected in the map list view Smoke Effects visually updated Map trenches updated Alstadt walls updated Flags fixed Polearms removed from Late Imperial UI fixes for the unit info detailed view Performance feature added to Post Processing Main Menu: Map line in China fixed Ai names fixed Policy UI fixed Balance Changes: Efficiency +5 Points Anti Personnel -10 Points 3 Speed -10 Points France: Mitrailleuses +10 Points Britain: Gatling Gun +10 Points Russia: Gatling Gun +10 Points Ottomans: Rifles to 2 limit Rifles to range drill Rifles to replace disorganized for breakable Imperial Guard to replace disorganized for breakable Mounted rifles to receive range drill Mounted rifles to replace disorganized for breakable Dragoons to lose disorganized Gatling Gun +10 Points Austria Hungary: Mitrailleuses +10 points Italy: Carabinieri cohesion from 3 to 4 15cm Howitzer range from 3 to 4 USA: Buffalo Soldiers to receive melee drill 12 Pounder Howitzers range from 3 to 4 Gatling Gun +10 Points CSA: Regular Cavalry removed melee drill 12 Pounder Howitzers range from 3 to 4 Gatling Gun +10 Points Imperial Court: Westernized Cavalry add efficiency and disorganized Swapped Choshu & Satsuma stats, choshu to go from 6 limit to 4 limit Tokugawa Shogunate: Line Cavalry cohesion from 3 to 4 Gatling Gun +10 Points Other: Timer greyed out when option is set to none Event in the Imperial Boshin war fixed Updated price of 4lb Horse Krupp Removed Polearms from Late Imperial Fixed empty units not appearing in the Campaign Overall, this update is set to significantly improve the gameplay experience, with many long-standing issues resolved and new features and improvements added.

We're excited to announce the release of the Boshin War DLC for Fire and Maneuver!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2315550/Fire_and_Maneuver__Expansion_Boshin_War This new expansion takes place in Japan during the Boshin War, a period of civil war and political upheaval that ultimately led to the end of the samurai era and the formation of the modern Japanese state. Players will have the opportunity to command new Japanese and Imperial forces, including samurai, imperial soldiers, and powerful artillery units. The DLC features a brand new campaign with multiple branching paths, as well as new scenarios and battles set in the unique terrain of Japan. The Boshin War DLC features two new factions: the Shogunate and the Imperial Court. The Shogunate represents the forces loyal to the last Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who sought to preserve the feudal system and maintain his power. They field highly disciplined and professional troops, including samurai warriors armed with traditional weapons such as katana swords and yari spears. Represented in game as the ferocious tiger: https://i.imgur.com/irumvaR.png The Imperial Court, on the other hand, represents the forces of the Emperor, who sought to overthrow the Shogunate and modernize Japan. They field a mix of conscripted peasants and samurai who have adopted modern firearms and tactics. While lacking the traditional martial prowess of the Shogunate, the Imperial forces make up for it with sheer numbers and a willingness to embrace new technology. Represented in game as the graceful crane: https://i.imgur.com/UxOjB3Q.png In addition to new units and maps, the Boshin War DLC also includes quality of life improvements, balance changes, and bug fixes based on player feedback. We've also added Japanese voicelines and a new user interface tailored to the setting of the Boshin War. The new soundtracks that have been added to the game further enhance the immersive experience of this pivotal moment in Japanese history. We hope you enjoy this exciting new addition to Fire and Maneuver, and we look forward to hearing your feedback as you lead your armies to victory in the Boshin War!

- AI deployment is now more varied and random, artillery won't deploy in bunches - Malakoff fort now has colliders so troops look like they are on top of the fort instead of sinking inside - Added an exit sound effect when closing the armory - Merit gain from scenario battles is fixed - Missionary Ridge scenario spawns corrected - More charging improvements with the AI - General campaign bug fixes - General AI bug fixes - Matchmaking fixes, ranked mode fixed - DLC Shogunate Faction added - DLC Imperial Faction added - DLC Japanese music added - DLC Japanese maps added - DLC Japanese campaigns added - DLC Japanese scenarios added

- Units charging past their movement speed is fixed - Map fixes, some forests weren't showing up as "bogged down" tiles. - Fire-at-will tooltip fixed - Lens dirt turned down significantly - Chromatic Aberration in campaign will stay disabled when you turn it off now - AI will charge far more often now, previously the function was accidentally turned off - Japanese faction descriptions fixed - Fixed an issue where players who played a custom match couldn't play ranked battles - Fixed campaign battles freezing the game - Spelling error fixes in campaign - Fixed cursor tile modifiers - AI will no longer deploy in line formation, only to take an entire turn just trying to switch to march column - French AI in the Franco-Prussian War is more aggressive, they will push into Germany if given the opportunity - Splashscreen freezing fix

Streaming Now! https://steamcommunity.com/broadcast/watch/76561198038894498

Balance Changes: - The purpose of these changes is to make weapon upgrades a more conscious decision for players. Auto-equipping an army with the most expensive equipment should require larger sacrifices. Limitations and the prices of weapons also now change depending on the time period, which should make the Age of Glory and Age of Rifles require completely different army compositions and strategies; smoothbores will be much more common in 1850s scenarios. 5 Cohesion heavy units are also more expensive, making the prospect of fielding armies completely comprised of heavy, range-drilled, breech-loading rifled units much more difficult. Limitations on rifles have been implemented for nations that were historically unable to field entire armies with rifles during the 1850s and early-to-mid 1860s, such as the United States, Confederate States, Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Kingdom of Italy, and even the French Empire. Finally, as aforementioned, the prices of weapons now change between each period. This means that compositions that are reliant on rifles are harder to build in the Age of Glory than in the Age of Rifles, even for nations who don’t have limitations on rifles. There are even more changes than what is listed below, but we couldn’t fit every single change to be listed. https://i.imgur.com/09EuV5d.png - Cumbersome to go down in points from -40 —> -25 - Breakable to go down in points from -15 —> -20 - 5 Cohesion to go up by 10 points from 80 —> 90 - 2 Speed cavalry to go down by 10 points from 10 —> 0 - 3 Speed cavalry to go down by 10 points from 30 —> 20 - Infantry Polearms to now be 0 points (Japan only) - Early Era Smoothbore Price to go from 0 to 20 points. - Early Era Rifle Price to go from 30 to 50 points - Early Era Breech-Loader Price to go from 40 to 60 points - Early Era Rifled Breech-Loader Price to go from 100 to 120 points - Early Era Muzzle-Loaded Carbines Price to go from 20 points to 30 points - Early Era Breech-Loaded Carbines Price to go from 60 points to 80 points - French M1842T Rifle to go from no limit to a 6 limit in the Early Period. - French M1867 Tabatiere rifle to go from no limit to 6 limit in the Late Period - Prussian Potsdam M1839 to go from no limit to 6 Limit in the early period - Russian Krest’yane to receive shock - Russian Grenadiers to receive shock - Russian Grenadiers to lose melee drill - Russian Guard Grenadiers to receive melee drill - Russian Grenadier Guards to be given Berdan M1868 as default weapon in the late period. - Russian Smoothbores to be available in the late period. - Russian rifles to be limited to 4 in the early period. - Russian Jaegers to be auto-equipped with smoothbores in the early period. - Russian Greeks to be auto-equipped with smoothbores in the early period. - Russian Grenadier Guards to be auto-equipped with rifles in the early period. - Russian Finnish Guards to be given rifle by default in late period. - Russian Jaegers to be given rifle by default in late period. - Russian dragoons to be given M1847 carbine by default instead of M1867 Dragoon Krnka - Russian M1867 Dragoon Krnka carbine to receive 4 Limit. - Ottoman P51 to receive a 4 Limit in the early period. - Ottoman “Rifles” unit to receive a smoothbore by default instead of a rifle in the early period. - Ottoman P51 Enfield to receive a 8 limit in the late period. - Ottoman to receive 6 limit on Snider-Enfields in the late period. - Ottoman rifles to receive rifle by default in the late period. - Ottoman Zouaves to receive rifle by default in the late period. - Ottoman Dragoons to receive a P43 Victoria carbine by default in the late period. - Ottoman M1866 Winchester to receive 2 limit in the late period. - Austrian Landwehr to go from 4 limit to 2 limit - Austrian Honved to go from 4 limit to 2 limit - Italian M1860 Piedmontese rifle to have a 6 limit in the early period. - Italian M1844/67 Breech-loading carbine to receive a 4 limit in the late period. - USA to receive a 6 limit on M1861 Springfield rifle in the early era - USA to receive a 6 limit on M1866 Springfield breech-loaders in the late era - USA to receive a 6 limit on M1852 Sharps Carbines in the early era - CSA to receive a 4 limit on their Springfield M1855 rifle in the early era - CSA Texas brigade to receive smoothbores by default instead of a rifle in the early period. - CSA to receive a 6 limit on Snider-Enfields in the late period - CSA Texas brigade to receive rifles by default instead of breech-loaders in the late period - CSA to receive a 2 limit to Sharps Carbines in the early period - CSA smoothbores to be renamed to “Assorted Smoothbores” - CSA rifles to be renamed to “Assorted Rifles” - Italian early era carbines to be renamed to “Assorted Carbines” Cavalry Update Changes: https://i.imgur.com/4dCOJdN.png - Prussian Dragoons to receive skirmishing - British Light Dragoons to receive efficiency - Russian Dragoons to receive efficiency - Ottoman Dragoons to receive efficiency - Ottoman Bashi Bazouks Cavalry to lose shock - Austrian Dragoons to receive efficiency - Austrian Hussars to lose disorganized - Italian Dragoons to receive efficiency - Italian Dragoons to lose skirmishing - USA Lightning Brigade to lose breakable - USA Lightning Brigade to receive disorganized Artillery Update Changes: https://i.imgur.com/MvQ8s64.png - French Mitrailleuse to receive cumbersome - French 12lb Field Artillery to receive 2 limit - French 4lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - French 22cm Howitzers to receive 2 limit - All French artillery to receive 3 cohesion from 2 cohesion - Prussian 4lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - Prussian 12lb Field Artillery to receive 2 limit - Prussian 12lb Field Artillery to lose cumbersome - Prussian 21cm Krupp Mortar to lose Range Drill trait - All Prussian artillery to receive 3 cohesion from 2 cohesion - British 9lb Field Artillery to receive 2 limit - British 9lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - British 12lb Field Howitzer to receive 2 limit - British 6lb Field Artillery to lose cumbersome - British 9lb Field Artillery to lose cumbersome - British 9lb Horse Artillery to lose cumbersome - British 6lb Field Artillery to receive efficiency - All British artillery to receive 3 cohesion from 2 cohesion - Russian Licornes to receive 3 cohesion - Russian 12lb Field Artillery to receive 2 limit - Russian 6lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - Russian 18lb Licorne to receive 2 limit - Italian Mountain Guns to receive efficiency - Italian 16lb Field Artillery to receive 2 Limit - Italian 8lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 Limit - Italian 12cm Mountain Guns to receive 2 Limit - Italian 15cm Howitzers to Receive 2 limit - Ottoman 11lb Field Artillery to receive 2 limit - Ottoman 4lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - Ottoman 25lb Howitzer to receive 2 limit - Ottoman 8lb Field Artillery to receive 2 limit - All Austrian artillery to receive 3 cohesion from 2 cohesion - Austrian 8lb Field Artillery to receive 2 Limit - Austrian 4lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - Austrian 8lb Field Artillery to lose range drill - Austrian 4lb Field Artillery to receive efficiency - Austrian 8lb Field Artillery to receive efficiency - Austrian 4lb Horse Artillery to receive efficiency - Austrian 4lb Field Artillery to lose cumbersome - Austrian 8lb Field Artillery to lose cumbersome - Austrian 4lb Horse Artillery to lose cumbersome - Union 3-inch Ordnance Rifle to receive 2 limit - Union 12-lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - Union 12lb Mountain Gun to receive 2 limit - Union 12lb Howitzer to receive 2 limit - Union 12lb Napoleon to lose cumbersome - Union 3-Inch Ordnance to lose cumbersome - Union 12-lb Horse Artillery to lose cumbersome - Confederate 12lb Napoleon to lose cumbersome - Confederate 10lb Parrot Rifle to lose cumbersome - Confederate 12-lb Horse Artillery to lose cumbersome - Confederate 10lb Parrot Rifle to receive 2 limit - Confederate 12lb Horse Artillery to receive 2 limit - Confederate 12lb Mountain Gun to receive 2 limit - Confederate 12lb Howitzers to receive 2 limit - Melee drill has been made a hybrid of what it used to be and what it is now. Now, it will reduce damage taken by -1 on charge impact and it will deal +1 damage at the end of every turn. This makes the perk as good as shock, making it more interesting. - Melee Vulnerable units do not receive a charge bonus when charging into another vulnerable unit. - Time of day speeds are all faster, making it more likely for your largest battles to end up taking 2 in-game days to complete. https://i.imgur.com/IJ7ca1i.png Visual: - Post-processing has been re from scratch and now battles look visually different depending on the season you’re playing on. - New photo mode setting has been added for old-timey screenshots. - Cavalry now wear their carbines on their unit card which helps you identify which units are armed with carbines. - New loading screens and quotes added to the game. - We got rid of the old tent in battles and replaced it with a proper war room with a fireplace. - Slight improvements on animations, we will continue improving though. - New highlight system shows were your units were and where they will go during execution phase. - Arrows are now smooth and not pixelated and dotted. - Cards now get bloody and flash red when taking hits, making it far clearer which units are damaged from combat. - Units with only 4hp will no longer have 1 company within stop animating, now all 4 companies (hp) will animate in stabbing/walking etc, whereas previously they would get bugged. - Configuring the AI and adding player slots has been improved. - Scrollbar in the options menu has been re. - UI for campaigns has been re from scratch. - UI for scenario battles has been re from scratch. - When units change formation they now animate. - Arrows now will be removed as each order gets executed so they don’t clutter up the board during the ordering phase. - The order page has been shrunk so it gets in the way of the battle less. - Color picker added to the game. This replaces the current way we would color code players by overlaying blue or orange over their flag. Now, no color is placed over your flag icons in battles, and instead a colored ring now surrounds your flag based on the color you chose in the lobby screen (you can select a color by selecting your profile on the left side of the lobby). - Tutorial map changed to River Path which is more visually appealing. - Depth of field shouldn’t make everything a complete blur, though it will still be quite blurry if zoomed all the way in while using the cinematic mode. This can be disabled in options, or you can pan your camera up to reveal your units clearer. - Pretty clouds added to the campaign mode. - Godshafts added to battles. - New UI scaler in the options. We got complaints from players that the UI above units was too large, so now you can scale it to whatever size is good for you. - Moving into reserve the UI now appears over the flag icons so it’s easier to choose between frontline and reserve. https://i.imgur.com/tA8Utlt.png Campaign Changes: - Austro-Prussian War campaign has been added to the game for free. - Caucasus Campaign has been added to the game for free. - Franco-Prussian War campaign has been made free. - Western Theater campaign has been added to the American Civil War DLC. - Two Japanese campaigns will go live when the DLC launches this week. - Unit XP system with skill tree added, you can now level up your units in campaigns and give them unique perks/abilities to design your own custom units. - Event system debuts with 80+ historical events added, they trigger depending not only on the campaign you’re playing but also the side you’re playing as. - Military doctrine system added to the game, allowing you to pick between Deterrent Warfare, Mobile Warfare, and Attrition Warfare, suiting three distinct playstyles. - Supply is no longer messy and confusing and works on a simple system of "in supply" and "out of supply" depending on how far you are from the nearest cache or HQ. - Prices in campaign have been overhauled, weapons cost more, and units have dynamic prices based on what they cost in custom battles. - Objectives added to campaigns which give you goals to take, and also help the AI better attack/defend tiles. - Players can now upgrade their “objectives” which improves their economy and manpower gain. - Cash/Manpower has been reduced drastically in all campaigns, you must now upgrade your objectives in order to see your economy/manpower improve over time. - War Enthusiasm system re. It now judges your performance in capturing objectives and winning battles and will buff your economy or debuff your economy depending on your enthusiasm. - Major restructuring of corps, removed historically inaccurate units and weapons. You can no longer have 4 divisions within a corps (24 units in one corps), we found that once the player brought in two full corps of 4 divisions, their battle would become too large and unfun to fight as turns would take a very long time. - Reinforcement system overhauled for the campaign, now you can designate reinforcements and see them come in on the 2nd day of campaign combat. Campaigns utilize our new “dynamic” time of day speed which makes the 1st day of combat always faster. Therefore, you can try and stall the first day of combat in order to get your reinforcements in on day 2. - AI behaviors change, they will be a little smarter and dynamic about attacking and defending based on difficulty. For example, in the Civil War Eastern Theater campaign, they will attack through the Peninsula on hard difficulty but not on eays. - Nearly all campaign UI re from scratch. - Barraging forts now subtracts manpower, making long sieges more costly. - If a major battle is fought, crosswords will appear on the map which will keep a record of your most important fights. - Unit limits implemented in campaigns so you can no longer have 100 iron brigades for example. - Merit can be earnt by completing campaigns now! - Every campaign now has a briefing video and voice acting, as well as a victory/defeat video that is unique to all 16 perspectives of every campaign. - Hovering over tiles will display the names of the tiles, so you can identify where all the locations are and where you need to go to fight in historical locations, such as Gettysburg or Manasses. Sound: - Sounds now play when issuing movement orders instead of silence. - When units die they make death sounds. - Each weapon in the game now has its own unique gunshot sound including different types of artillery. - Infantry and cavalry will use drums and bugles when changing formations. Artillery will make sounds too of wheels moving and the artillery being rearranged. - Marching sounds now play on a loop until the unit is moving. - When the AI ends its turn is no longer makes a very loud order sound. - British Men of Harlech track added. - Lots of sounds added to the campaign, new ambient sounds, voice acting, as well as mechanical sounds like repairing or bombarding a wall. - Scenario battles now have voice acting to lead you into each scenario. Content: - The Shogunate and Imperial Court factions have been added to the game as DLC, but we are waiting on Steam to approve our store page. They will be added to the game in the coming days. - Japan added on the main menu world map in anticipation of the Boshin War DLC. - New maps added, bringing the total to over 100. - Altstadt 1v1 - Arupusu 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - Balaclava 1v1 (Remake) - Calatafimi 1v1 - Countryside 1v1 - Domain Fort 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - Frozen Reservoir 1v1 - Hakodate 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - Kirche 1v1 - Lille Brook 1v1 (Remake) - Massif Stronghold 1v1 - Milazzo 1v1 (Remake) - Missionary Ridge 1v1 (Civil War DLC) - Monte Villa 1v1 (Remake) - Mountain Lake 1v1 - Oases 1v1 - Poplar Station 1v1 (Remake, Civil War DLC) - Prima Valley 1v1 - Rice Paddies 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - River Path 1v1 (Remake) - Ryazan Hills 1v1 - Seaside Outpost 1v1 - Shiloh 1v1 (Civil War DLC) - Takeda Streams 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - The Clearing 1v1 - The Forest 1v1 - The Grassland 1v1 - The Monastery 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - The Plantation 1v1 (Civil War DLC) - The Redoubt 1v1 (Civil War DLC) - The Ridgeline Pass 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - The Steppes 1v1 - Tokaido Road 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - Tosa Dockyard 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - Ueno 1v1 (Boshin War DLC) - Valley Encounter 1v1 (Civil War DLC) - Vicksburg 1v1 (Civil War DLC) - Volturno 1v1 - Aizu 2v2 (Boshin War DLC) - Black Sea 2v2 - Chancellorsville 2v2 (Civil War DLC) - Chickamauga 2v2 (Civil War DLC) - Custoza 2v2 - Darial Pass 2v2 - Federal Fort 2v2 - Fredericksburg 2v2 (Civil War DLC) - Homestead 2v2 - Honshu Fortress 2v2 (Boshin War DLC) - Kars 2v2 - Lake Fortress 2v2 - North Fort 2v2 (Remake) - Reka Path 2v2 - Romagna 2v2 - Sakura Grove 2v2 (Boshin War DLC) - Solferino 2v2 - The Alma 2v2 - Toba Fushimi 2v2 (Boshin War DLC) - The scenario system has always felt limited and overlooked. We decided to rebuild the entire scenario system from scratch by including new "linear scenarios" which allow you to fight across multiple battles as part of a larger military operation. For example, there are now three battles as part of the "Expedition of the Thousand" led by Garribaldi. You can start in Calatafimi, but must complete that mission before proceeding to Milazzo followed by The Volturno. There are a total of 27 of these scenario battles. Mechanical Changes & Features: - Artillery has been overhauled. Artillery has always meant to be one of the most important tools on the battlefield, but we noticed many players did not find it to be too useful. Therefore, we have added a new suppression mechanic which allows artillery to pin down enemy cohesion each time that unit is hit by a barrage. Furthermore, we've added new formations, including a "limber" formation which allows you to move your artillery, a "concentrated battery" formation which allows you to receive +1 range to your artillery, and an "open battery" formation which allows you to receive peripheral coverage (with less damage output) like infantry in open order. - AI “expert mode” has been added. We still have plans to continue improving our AI, but we're happy to announce that a new "expert" AI has been added which is used when the player maxes out the difficulty in a scenario, campaign, or custom battle. The expert AI has much better prediction capabilities, as they can now peak at some of your orders, BUT the ai does not cheat in the form of receiving buffs to their damage/health. This mode is recommended for those who have a firm grasp on the game and are looking for an added challenge. - Fast forward button added to singleplayer games which allows you to skip the boring parts of the battle. Let us know if you want this feature added to multiplayer for either players to vote on, or for the host to use. - AI will now designate troops to go and flank your position. We may improve on this in the future though for aggressive AI to send even more troops to be designated “flankers.” - Fire at Will is now disabled after a unit moves. - Units must now be in Attack Column or March column or Limbered formation to utilize bridges. - Dynamic mode is now even faster during the first few turns of the match. Instant mode is now slightly faster. - Road bonus movement is now only applied if a unit starts and ends their movement on a road. - Added a new “dynamic” time-of-day speed setting which makes the first day of combat fast, second day of combat normal, and third day of combat slow. This way, your first day of combat feels more like an opening skirmish. We’re thinking of later adding a reinforcement system so that you could designate some troops as reinforcements who can come in on the second day of combat. - You can now kick people from slots and close them after opening them, including the AI. You should fully be able to configure your room now to the exact amount of players/ai you want, and where you want them in the battle, without needing to recreate a room. - AI will now go on fire-at-will if they have remaining orders. - AI will now retreat from combat if their cohesion and HP is low, but they won’t move at all if they only have 0 cohesion w/1hp left (will die from attrition). - Added a sandbox mode which allows you to increase the max order count, increase the max unit count, increase max funds, etc Bugs: - Reserve regiments are no longer able to fire in reserve. - Players no longer spawn on the same side in quickmatches. - Charging a unit who has previously moved earlier that turn is no longer considered a “clash.” - Units can no longer phase through each other during a clash; if a clash occurs, both units will halt and fight in melee. - Settings are no longer reset when someone joins/leaves a custom room. - Line of Sight improvements with hills/buildings. - Enemy AI unit spawn fixes in custom games. - Melee can no longer go into fire-at-will if they don’t have a carbine. - Regiments can no longer change formation if they’ve been charged before they had a chance to change formation. - Orders no longer stick to your cursor when the player releases the left-click. - If a frontline unit leaves a tile that is being fired on, the fire order will now go through to the unit that was in reserve. - When targeting a unit who jumps into reserve, the fire order will now be reassigned to the frontline of that tile instead of being thrown away. - Timer no longer disappears when you end your turn, so you can see how long your opponent has left to form their orders. - Infinite movement bugs fixed. - AI will now utilize perks properly, and will no longer utilize perks that it doesn’t have (ie: the ai moving twice despite not having efficiency, or the ai not firing twice despite having breech-loaders.) - AI now can move two units at a time instead of needing to move every unit individually. - When units charged a unit who died on impact, the unit would bug out. Now when you charge and kill a unit on impact, your unit is useable again. - Target ground orders fixed for artillery to allow you to fire on fortified positions without the order getting thrown away because an enemy unit wasn’t on the tile. - Arrows no longer stick around even after the orders are finished. - Players can no longer start a custom battle with no units selected. - Dismounted cavalry should now get range resistance. - Bug in which river path was one of the only maps being selected for quickmatch has been fixed. - AI no longer breaks on day 2 of combat. - In-game chat improvements. Edit: -Hotfix, Battles for the campaign.

Fire & Maneuver 1.0 Launch Day Hey everyone, I'm very excited to announce that Fire & Maneuver version 1.0 is finally released. It includes new artillery formations, 50+ new maps, 3 new free campaigns, and 3 new paid campaigns as well as a campaign mode overhaul. Scenario battles have also been overhauled, sound design has been updated, and lots of bugs fixes! We have made a TON of changes in the last 4 months of development, and we're so happy to finally make this update live for you to enjoy. For a FULL list of patch notes you can read our changelog here: Major features and content of Fire & Maneuver 1.0

• Overhauled Campaign Mode: Fire & Maneuver's campaign mode has been completely overhauled. In addition to us adding the Caucasus Campaign (free), Franco-Prussian Campaign (free), Austro-Prussian Campaign (free), Western Theater Campaign (Civil War DLC), we have reworked a lot of the mechanics of campaign mode. For one, supply is no longer messy and confusing and works on a simple system of "in supply" and "out of supply" depending on how far you are from the nearest cache or HQ. Secondly, a unit experience system has been added which allows you to level up your troops and customize them with new perks and abilities. Third, an event system has been created which can be positive or negative and are tied not only to the campaign being played, but the specific side you are playing as. For example, as Britain, you may get an event in the Crimean War about Florence Nightingale! Lastly, we've added a military doctrine system, which offers replayability into your campaigns, by allowing you to focus on either a defensive, offensive, or balanced doctrine. All of these things and more are also available on multiplayer! UI has also been redone entirely from scratch. https://i.imgur.com/D5GGAhr.png
• Artillery Rework: Artillery has always meant to be one of the most important tools on the battlefield, but we noticed many players did not find it to be too useful. Therefore, we have added a new suppression mechanic which allows artillery to pin down enemy cohesion each time that unit is hit by a barrage. Furthermore, we've added new formations, including a "limber" formation which allows you to move your artillery, a "concentrated battery" formation which allows you to receive +1 range to your artillery, and an "open battery" formation which allows you to receive peripheral coverage (with less damage output) like infantry in open order. https://i.imgur.com/HyF1bfi.png
• Graphical Improvements: Fire & Maneuver has never had a focus on its graphics, so we took our time the last few months in order to improve the look over the game and improve some of the animations of units. We also added a fast-forward button which will allow you to skip straight to the action, this is especially useful for any players who wanted to use the "slow" animation speed but couldn't because of how long it took for troops just to get into combat. Now you can fully admire your troops on the march! https://i.imgur.com/ydcAYZX.png
• Expert AI: We still have plans to continue improving our AI, but we're happy to announce that a new "expert" AI has been added which is used when the player maxes out the difficulty in a scenario, campaign, or custom battle. The expert AI has much better prediction capabilities, as they can now peak at some of your orders, BUT the ai does not cheat in the form of receiving buffs to their damage/health. This mode is recommended for those who have a firm grasp on the game and are looking for an added challenge. https://i.imgur.com/cFKjShJ.png
• Over 100 Maps: When we first launched into Early Access, we had around 10 maps in the game. Now there are over 100 hand-crafted maps, made all by The Armchair Historian himself - created with historical accuracy in mind! The full list of new maps will be listed on our full changelog which you can find linked at the top of this page. https://i.imgur.com/qwvaU2R.png
• New Scenario System: The scenario system has always felt limited and overlooked. We decided to rebuild the entire scenario system from scratch by including new "linear scenarios" which allow you to fight across multiple battles as part of a larger military operation. For example, there are now three battles as part of the "Expedition of the Thousand" led by Garribaldi. You can start in Calatafimi, but must complete that mission before proceeding to Milazzo followed by The Volturno. There are a total of 27 of these scenario battles. https://i.imgur.com/biNfL9Y.png

Those are the major points of this update, but there is a LOT more that I haven't discussed, which you can find on our full change log. The team has worked incredibly hard these last few months, and we're so proud of the community that we've built. Expect some hotfixes and patches over the next few days and weeks as we address your reports in our Discord server. We've done extensive testing, but with an update of this size (our largest yet), there are always going to be bugs that we couldn't catch. Our team will be on standby all throughout April to knock out the bugs are quickly and efficiently as possible! Lastly, our new Boshin War expansion, which adds Imperial Japan and the Tokugawa Shogunate, are going to be released tomorrow! Our DLC will no longer be priced at $15, but now at $10 from this point on, making them much more affordable. We've also taken down our Wars of Unification DLC and included it as part of the base game, but for those who purchased that DLC, they will receive every single Prussian and French cosmetic for supporting us by picking that DLC up during Early Access. Thank you again, we're so happy to finally be at the finish line! Griffin Johnsen, Aaron Legault, Sebastian Alvarez, Geo Gianni, Thomas McLaughlin, Boris Ujević

Dear players, We wanted to give you an update on the future of our game. Unfortunately, we were unable to monetize our game using the free-to-play model. In order to successfully monetize a free-to-play title we would need to include ads, lootboxes, excessive DLC, or grinding in order to generate a profit, but this goes against everything we stand for as a studio. After much deliberation, we've decided to transition to a more conventional monetization model. This means that on the day of our full release on April 17, the game will be priced at $15 USD. However, we're happy to announce that ANY user of the game who downloaded Fire & Maneuver before April 17th will keep the game for free. Because we are putting a $15 entry price on the game, we are also planning on reducing all DLC costs for our current DLC and those made going forward. This will also provide us with the opportunity to add more free content if we can rely on paid copies to bring in revenue. Overall, if you are a player of F&M now, this only benefits you, and future F&M players will benefit from free updates and cheaper DLC costs. Because we're moving away from a multiplayer-oriented F2P model, we're also lowering the cost of unlocking nations from 15,000 merits down to 5,000 and including more ways in singleplayer content to earn merits including: - Giving players the ability to earn merits through numerous singleplayer scenario battles - Removing the custom battle limitations to earning merits The second major change being made is the unlisting of the Wars of Unification DLC on release day since it will be included as part of the base game along with the $15 base price. As a thank you to those who supported us during early access, owners of the soon-to-be-retired DLC will receive ALL current Prussian and French cosmetics. Therefore, on launch day, the base game will include four campaigns: The Sevastopol Campaign, The Caucasus Theater, The Franco-Prussian War, and the Austro-Prussian War. Additionally, we'll be adding around 20 unique scenario battles, most of which will be accessible for free, with the exception of the Japanese and Civil War scenarios which will be available for DLC owners. We appreciate your support and hope you can understand our reasoning for making this transition. We hope that you continue to enjoy the game and look forward to bringing you more updates and content in the future. On April 17th, get ready for the biggest update Fire & Maneuver has ever received, available to ALL free owners of the game and all future paid owners.

2 weeks left until launch!

We are thrilled to announce the release of our latest update for the game. This update is jam-packed with exciting new features that we can't wait for you to try out. Similar to last week, all these updates are currently available on the beta and will be coming soon for all players on launch. First, we've added a new campaign called Caucasus, which we hope will provide a new and engaging experience for players. We've also made some new balance changes to ensure that gameplay remains fresh and challenging for our loyal players. https://i.imgur.com/2LMQTZF.png New features in campaign mode include: - Unit XP system: right click your units to upgrade them with unique perks - Objective System: campaigns now all have objectives for you to conquer, and players may upgrade or loot objective tiles. - Overhauled UI: All UI for campaigns has been completely remade from scratch, along with new SFX. - New event system: 83 campaign events have been written and trigger based on the policies you have chosen, the nation you're playing as, and the campaign that you're in. - Doctrine System: In addition to the military and logistics policies, you now have three different types of military doctrines to choose from which will give your army unique buffs and allow for more replayability in each campaign. If you want to try the beta for yourself: In your library, right-click on Fire & Maneuver, select properties, select BETAS, and on the right panel, switch from (None) to (testing- Public testing branch) https://i.imgur.com/FXHjDD7.png https://i.imgur.com/DLhmpID.png We have also included two brand-new maps for players to explore and conquer. We know that many of you have been eager for new content, and we think you'll be thrilled with what we've come up with. Here is a list of all the new maps available in the beta: - The Grassland 1v1 - The Forest 1v1 - Aizu 2v2 - Domain Fort 1v1 - Arupusu 1v1 - Hakodate 1v1 - Honshu Fortress 2v2 - Toba Fushimi 2v2 - Tosa Dockyard 1v1 - Ueno 1v1 - Chancellorsville 2v2 - Chickamauga 2v2 - Fredericksburg 2v2 - The Plantation 1v1 - Poplar Station (Remake) 1v1 - The Redoubt 1v1 - Vicksburg 1v1 We've improved the user interface and added new sound effects to make the game more immersive and enjoyable. The new arrows and layout for the battlefield will enhance your gameplay experience, making it easier to plan your strategies and deploy your units effectively. https://i.imgur.com/8PXm7yF.png Another addition is the new player information screen to our game! With this feature, you can now easily view and keep track of your player stats and progress. Whether you're a new player or a seasoned veteran, this tool will help you understand your strengths and weaknesses, and allow you to focus on improving your gameplay. https://i.imgur.com/RypXUXV.png Remember, the beta is the perfect opportunity to try out the new content and help us make sure everything is polished and ready to go for the official release. So jump in and let us know what you think. Be sure to check out our new "expert AI" which you can play against if you max out the difficulty slider when customizing the AI in custom battle or campaign!

3 weeks left until launch!

We have some exciting updates to share with you. Fire & Maneuver's deepest sale yet, 66% off of all DLC. Get the Civil War for as low as $5. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679290/Fire__Maneuver/ https://i.imgur.com/JcLfpt3.png Second, we launched another update to the beta. All the features listed below will be visible in the beta which you can play right now! If you want to try the beta for yourself: In your library, right click on Fire & Maneuver, select properties, select BETAS, and on the right panel, switch from (None) to (testing- Public testing branch) https://i.imgur.com/FXHjDD7.png https://i.imgur.com/DLhmpID.png We've also added some new maps to the game! Thanks to our amazing community, we were able to collaborate and create some fresh new content for you to enjoy. Here is a list of all the new maps available in the beta: New Maps Added to Beta Include: - 2v2 Alma - 1v1 Mountain Lake - 1v1 Ridgeline Pass - 1v1 Missionary Ridge - 2v2 Lake Fortress - 2v2 Sakura Grove - 1v1 The Monastery - 1v1 Calatafimi https://i.imgur.com/shRt0nl.png Next up, we've extended the world map to include Japan! Get ready to experience the thrill of battle in a brand new location. Imperial Japan and the Tokugawa Shogunate are going to be Fire & Maneuver's next DLC, which we plan on releasing on launch day, April 7th. For now, you can play them completely for free while the beta is active throughout March. In addition, we're excited to announce that Japanese voice lines have been added to the game, making the experience even more immersive. A new unit preview system when you move to a new tile. Improved lighting for trees and new artillery sprites for all nations! https://i.imgur.com/QpxWv4v.png We've also been hard at work fixing bugs and implementing quality of life improvements. Your feedback has been invaluable in helping us fine-tune the game and make it the best it can be. Last but not least, we've added Bloody Cards to the game. This feature not only allows players to prioritize their units based on damage but also adds to the distinct visual experience during battles. https://i.imgur.com/cf5QmHS.png As always, we appreciate all of your support and feedback as we continue to work on the game. We can't wait for you to experience everything we've been working on. Keep in mind, the full release is coming soon, so stay tuned! Remember, the beta is the perfect opportunity to try out the new content and help us make sure everything is polished and ready to go for the official release. So jump in and let us know what you think!

4 weeks left until launch!

The biggest update to our game is currently live if you jump on the beta and we can't wait for you to experience all the new features we've added. There are still more tweaks, bug fixes and more that is currently being worked on but we always appreciate all feedback the community provides. If you want to try the beta for yourself: In your library, right click on Fire & Maneuver, select properties, select BETAS, and on the right panel, switch from (None) to (testing- Public testing branch) Enjoy all the new features that are currently available as listed below! One of the most exciting additions is our new artillery feature. Now, when you rain down attacks from your artillery, your enemies will be "suppressed," stopping them in their tracks and leaving them vulnerable to your next moves. This feature adds a whole new level of strategy to the game and will change the way you approach battles. https://i.imgur.com/9dDfNdW.png Here is a list of all the new maps available in the beta: New Maps Added to Beta Include: - The Clearing 1v1 - Shiloh 1v1 - Oases 1v1 - Lille Brook 1v1 (remake) - Monte Villa 1v1 (remake) - Tokaido Road 1v1 - Rice Paddies 1v1 - Takeda Streams 1v1 - Kirche 1v1 - Countryside 1v1 - Valley Encounter 1v1 - The Steppes 1v1 - Prima River 1v1 - Reka Path 2v2 - Solferino 2v2 - Waterloo 2v2 We've also focused heavily on polishing the game to make sure it's as smooth and enjoyable as possible. We've added new audio effects, balance changes, and Japanese factions that comes with unique units, playstyles, and mechanics. We've worked hard to balance all factions and will see more changes as we move forward to launch. https://i.imgur.com/pWYkGne.png The full balance changes will be out on the official update, and we can't stress enough how excited we are for the launch day on April 7th! It's the biggest update we've ever done, and we've poured our hearts and souls into making it the best it can be. We appreciate all the support we've received from our players so far, and we couldn't have done it without your help. We'll continue to improve the game in every way possible, from information and UI to AI, sound, animation, maps, and even more balance changes in the future. In the meantime, jump on the beta and enjoy the new factions which will be available to purchase with the new campaign and scenarios on release. Get ready to conquer the battlefield in a whole new way!

5 weeks left until launch!

Launch day is almost here and we're putting the finishing touches on everything! We're cleaning up the barrels, dusting off hats, and making sure all of our units are in tip-top shape for your upcoming skirmishes and campaigns. We're so excited to share everything we've been working on with you! We'll be posting updates every step of the way so you can see what's happening behind the scenes. This week, Griffin made three new maps with the help of the community! If you want to get involved in the creation of future maps, be sure to stay tuned on Armchair Interactives youtube channel. We're also excited to announce the completion of the new Boshin factions! We've added Imperial Japan and the Shogunate to the game, and they come with new units that have unique playstyles, weapons, and mechanics. We worked hard to balance all the factions, and we promise there won't be any pay-to-win mechanics. We believe these new factions will add a whole new layer of excitement to the game that we haven't seen before! Plus, we've got new animal avatars too! Check out these cool new animal avatars we've added! https://i.imgur.com/irumvaR.png Shogunate Tiger https://i.imgur.com/UxOjB3Q.png Imperial Crane We've also made lots of other improvements, like adding new artillery units, formations, and massive balance changes. We've even made weapon upgrades a more conscious decision for players. And, to make things even more exciting, we've overhauled the entire user interface for the single player and multiplayer campaigns. https://i.imgur.com/Hxqi5rw.png We've made major A.I. improvements too! Players have been saying things like "they're too smart!" and "the meta has changed!" so we can't wait to see what you think of the new A.I. in the next update! We'll be spending the next week polishing everything up, making audio improvements, balancing the game, fixing bugs, and more. We're always listening to feedback from the community, so please keep giving us your thoughts and ideas. We're so proud of everything we've accomplished, and we can't wait to share it with you all in the upcoming weeks!

Hi everyone, Update 1.4.3 is now live! A new update for the game has been released which includes a number of improvements and bug fixes to enhance the overall gaming experience. The update addresses issues with game loading and performance, as well as implementing hotfixes to address reported bugs. Notable improvements include improved game stability and faster load times, improved AI behavior and new unit additions. Additionally, the update includes changes to the campaign and map system, and improvements to the user interface and lobby experience. We will continue working together with the community to make sure the game continues to improve in every facet with your continued support. AI Improvements: -Added an AI difficulty slider that allows the player to customize the aggression level and difficulty based on a historic commander or a custom preference. -Added an AI customization button which allows the player to change the AIs unit setup. -Fixed AI Breech-loading artillery firing only once -AI can now path find through rough terrain, no longer is frozen when confronted with lots of rough terrain -AI Cavalry are now more aggressive instead of hiding in cover -AI aggression on campaigns has been updated depending if they are defensive or offensive -AI willingness to attack has been modified in the campaign depending on chance of victory -AI can now utilize efficiency, fire-at-will, and breech-loaders. -Fixed how AI in campaign purchases units Gameplay Improvements: -Player no longer loses attack ability when you add a melee attack and cancel it -Fixed hotkey which now enables reserve line to fire -Fixed clashes occurring out of order between players -Fixed cavalry movement exploit which gave players a free charge after switching to line formation -Fixed arrow preview randomly disappearing during a match -Fixed formation bug which allowed the player to use more movement points than possible -Unit can no longer change formation in bogged down tiles -Fixed unit clashes when units are more than 2 tiles away -Updated breakable to occur before cohesion is regained instead of after -Fixed movement point bug when switching from dismounted to mounted and giving a movement point -Fixed cavalry firing range bug which gave players extra range after engaging in melee -Units now appear visually damaged when spawning into campaign battles after being damaged in a previous battle -Fixed field ui breaking after using multi-day battle -Fixed tiles that do not block line of sight -Rifled Breech Loaders to go up by 10 points from 90 —> 100 -Range Drill to go up by 10 points from 40 —> 50 -5 Cohesion to go up by 10 points from 70 —> 80 Connection & Matchmaking Improvements: -Fixed being disconnected from matches -Fixed ability to join custom games after leaving a match -Popup appears if not connected to the internet -Fixed Map name not appearing in quick match -Fixed Objective zones staying captured when a unit leaves the zone -Fixed AI loadout appearing the same as the loadout between custom and quickmatch -Ranked calibration games have been set from 5 to 10 matches -Fixed ranked mode timer freezing at 23 seconds Campaign & Map Improvements: -Units now appear damaged on their unit card based on the amount of health remaining -Fixed time period issue which would change flags and map in main menu after a custom game -Battles are dynamically named based on province name and stay on the map to indicate where battles have occurred -Fixed visual bug of winter peach trees floating in Orchards map -Campaign tiles currently in fog of war are now darkened -Age of rifles default order count is now 16 in custom game -Unable to use railway movement speed unless you have the appropriate railway policy -Advanced settings added for creating a campaign -Loading screens for campaign are now specific to the campaign which was chosen -Fixed campaign map being set to 2v2 based on corp amount -Fixed war enthusiasm tiles not ticking down -When a player is intercepted the player is now able to retreat in the campaign -In the campaign the retreat can only happen once per turn User Interface and Lobby Improvements: -Loading bars have been added to all loading screens -New view added for building an army -Updated start system in the lobby screen for using the bottom button -Weapons now appearing in the information panel during the lobby screen -Updated the default start time of day to afternoon -Fixed French rooster floating in the lobby We will continue our focus for January in bug-fixing. In February will we start working on new content and features again.

Hi everyone, Update 1.4.2 is now live! A minor update has been implemented to address the loading screen issue that has been reported by players in the past week. We will continue to monitor player feedback and make improvements as necessary. We appreciate your patience and support as we work to enhance the overall game performance. General: - Added new Franco-Prussian DLC tracks to FPW Campaign Audio - Fixed ranked mode completely breaking - Scenario battle UI changes Campaign: - Fixed Campaign Cavalry not being able to shoot - Fixed a campaign bug in which corps are completely empty besides new units being recruited - Added a basic Fog of War system to campaigns (will improve in the future) - New loading screens for campaigns that are dynamic based on the nation selected Quality of Life: - Added battle history crosswords UI to tiles, which display when a player fights an important battle with a large amount of units - New weapon description system added when hovering over armory and unit info tab - Image that allows players to start a campaign has been changed to have historical map borders instead of modern - Shop UI improvements - You can now quickly select a nation to play as using the bottom bar when in the nation selection carousel - UI above units no longer breaks when entering a multi-day battle - Players can now select an alternative view for selecting units in lobbies Battles: - Light Cavalry is 20 points cheaper - Heavy Cavalry is 5 points cheaper - Rifled Breech-Loaders costs 10 points more - AI Cavalry is more aggressive (no longer hides in corners) - Melee damage "overflow" calculations fixed, previously when you charge into a tile with two units on it and instantly kill the first unit, the damage would then double onto the reserve unit too. Now, damage will only apply to the reserve unit if there was leftover damage from the charge after killing the frontline - Objectives stay captured after a unit enters the zone and leaves, you no longer need to leave a unit behind to hold a zone. - Cavalry movement exploits fixed - Units now stop and clash when crossing each other's paths instead of phasing through each other - Formation movement exploits fixed, when changing into a new formation you will not receive bonus movement points. Previously, players could go into a march column to move 3 tiles, and then go into attack column (using efficiency) to receive an additional 2 movement points for 5 total - Reserve line fire orders would go through if players used hotkeys, but this has been fixed - Cancelling a charge order will no longer prevent your unit from making any additional attack orders for that turn - Non-breech-loading Artillery was not firing for the AI, but now does We will continue our focus for January in bug-fixing. In February will we start working on new content and features again.

Hi everyone, Update 1.4.1 is now live! We are excited to announce that a new patch for our game has been released, which includes a number of improvements and bug fixes. The update addresses a number of issues with game loading and performance, which should result in faster and smoother gameplay. We have also implemented a series of hotfixes to address any critical bugs or issues that have been reported by players. Some of the most notable improvements include improved game stability, faster load times and optimized performance. General: - Balaclava Scenario added - Wissembourg Scenario added - Many causes for the perpetual loading screen solved, possibly a few more causes may need to be fixed in another patch however Campaign: - Fixed missing weapons in Franco-Prussian War campaign - Fixed player not being able to attack a tile with two corps in campaign - Corps damage fixes in campaign - Campaign loading/saving bug fixes - Campaign turns getting stuck fixes Quality of Life: - Cavalry formation change hotkeys added - Updated Besiegement map preview - Loading screens now show previews of the players loading in - Tooltips Updated for "Cavalry," "Skirmishing," "Formations," "Attrition," "Routing," "March Column," "Cavalry Echelon," "Cavalry Line." Battles: - CSA Mountain gun no longer has cumbersome - USA Mountain gun no longer has cumbersome - Objective mode updated so that you no longer need to keep a unit on an objective to keep it under your control - Cavalry can now change formations during deployment phase - Tile fixes for Hamlet 1v1 map - CSA Mountain gun to get 2 range instead of 3 - Echelon formation is no longer able to fire - 3 speed to go from 50 points to 30 (light cavalry buff) - 2 Speed to go from 15 points to 10 (heavy cavalry buff) - Regular carbines to go from 30 points to 20 points - Breech-loading carbines to go from 70 to 60 points - British Light Dragoons to lose efficiency - Austrian Volunteer Ulans to lose rugged, gain breakable - Cavalleggeri to go from 3 cohesion to 4 - Charge vulnerability to be removed from Cavalry Line formation - Default Unit count to 16 for custom games and quick match and ranked and training - Breakable to cause hp loss when cohesion is anything but full instead of 0 cohesion only - Bavarian Chevauxleger to receive melee drill We want to thank our community for their support and patience while we worked on these improvements. If you encounter any further issues, please don't hesitate to reach out to us so we can address them as soon as possible. Our focus for January is bug-fixing, there will be additional patches in the coming weeks. Only in February will we start working on new content and features again.

Warning: Users are reporting getting stuck on loading screens during battles and especially for campaign mode. We are working on a fix immediately, but our development team is away for the holidays. We will create another post addressing the patch once we've rolled it out in early January. Very sorry for the inconvenience! Hey everyone! This is our 2nd to last major update before we come out of Early Access. We titled it "Ride of the Valkyries" (going with our orchestral naming scheme for updates) because our main focus was improving cavalry-play! We also included Wagner's song in the game as a free track you can listen to during battle. With this update, most of the game's content is in, though we are still looking to increase the map count, and the update after this can be focused mainly on polish and bugfixing. Before we get into the details of this update, I do want to let everyone know that there is a new game-breaking bug that was recently introduced to the game which puts players on a never-ending loading screen when trying to load into certain large multiplayer battles. We are going to get this fixed immediately after Christmas, as soon as the team is back from holiday. Alongside that, campaigns have a few loading screen issues too which we're also going to patch very soon! Cavalry Rework: https://i.imgur.com/rjiK8uD.png Despite this game being set during the Victorian period, when cavalry was far less useful compared to previous centuries, light cavalry has over-performed in F&M. Because of this, we've increased the price of light cavalry in nearly every update and they fell into an awkward spot as an incredibly expensive and versatile unit. Their diagonal movement along with 3 speed allowed them to move into 49 possible tiles each turn which made them almost impossible to predict. F&M has always been about prediction and so light cavalry has been flawed. We've addressed this by removing cavalry's inherent ability to move diagonal, and now they must use formations just as infantry does. This update not only makes light cavalry less of a nuisance to play against, but it makes cavalry more fun and interesting to play with. - Cavalry now gets 4 formations: Line, Echelon, March Column, Dismounted Open Order. Echelon is exclusive to heavy cavalry and allows for diagonal movement. March column also allows for diagonal movement but it is not a combat formation. Line and Dismounted Open Order no longer allow for diagonal movement. Should the cavalry have the "skirmish" ability, it may move diagonal when in Dismounted Open Order. - Line is charge and range vulnerable, meaning if your cavalry is countercharged or shot it will take increased damage. Line, like infantry Attack Column, now provides +1 on charges. Line can not move diagonal. Cavalry may shoot in line, but only one tile ahead of them at 1 base damage. - Echelon is takes no penalties to being charged or shot, it is more durable. It may also move diagonal, increasing its flexibility in maneuver. It may not allow for shooting and it does not receive +1 when charging. It is exclusive to heavy cavalry, allowing heavy cavalry to move at roughly a similar speed to light cavalry in line. - March Column can not shoot/charge and allows for diagonal movement. Speed is set to 3 when on roads. This means that light cavalry does not benefit as much from roads as heavy cavalry does when in column. That said, light cavalry can not use echelon and so march column is their only way to move diagonal at all. - Dismounted open order behaves identically to infantry in open order formation. You may now purchase carbines for your cavalry and dismount them to fight as infantry. Balance: - Skirmishing perk has been overhauled again. It now allows for diagonal movement on infantry who are in open order. Cavalry can also utilize the skirmishing perk if they are dismounted. - Objective mode now goes to 200 tickets instead of 150. - Leveling up is now 60% faster. - There's a 50-50 chance you get objective mode or elimination mode in quick match. - Default point amount for games is 1600 instead of 1200 now. - Rifled breech-loaders are now 80 points instead of 70. - Shock is worth 30 points instead of 25. - Melee drill is worth 20 points instead of 30. - 2 Cohesion units worth 5 points instead of 10. - 4 Cohesion units to be worth 40 instead of 35. - 5 Cohesion units to be worth 70 instead of 60. - 2 Speed units to be worth 15 instead of 25. - 3 Speed units to be worth 50 instead of 80. - French Lancers to go from no limit to 4 limit - French Chasseurs-a-cheval to go from no limit to 2 limit - French Cuirassiers to go from no limit to 4 limit - French Carabiniers to receive efficiency - French Dragoons to receive efficiency - French Grenadiers of the Guard to receive shock (Elan!) - Prussian Uhlans to go from no limit to 2 limit - Prussian Cuirassiers go from no limit to 4 limit - Prussian Saxon Garde-Reiters to receive efficiency instead of melee drill - New unit added (see under content) - British Light Dragoons to go from no limit to 2 - British Lancers to go from no limit to 4 - British Dragoons to receive efficiency - British Light Dragoons to receive efficiency - British Dragoon Guards to receive efficiency - British Footgards to no longer receive shock (doesn't fit defensive playstyle) - British Highlanders brought back down to a 4 limit. - Russian Cossacks to remove skirmishing and receive rugged - Russian Cossacks to go from no limit to 4 limit - Russian Uhlans to go from no limit to 2 limit - Russian Cuirassiers go from no limit to 4 limit - New unit added (see under content) - Ottoman Lancers to go from no limit to 4 limit - Ottoman Cossacks to receive rugged instead of skirmishing - Austrian Hussars to receive melee drill and disorganization - Austrian Ulans to go from no limit to 2 limit - Austrian Dragoons to receive skirmishing - 2 New units added (see under content) - Italian Lancers to go from no limit to 4 Limit - Italian Carabinieri to go from 4 limit to 2 limit - Italian Dragoons to go from no limit to 2 limit - Italian Dragoons to receive skirmishing - New unit added (see under content) - USA Lightning Brigade to receive efficiency - USA Regular Cavalry to be available for all periods and receive skirmishing + range drill. - 2 New units added (see under content) - CSA Regular Cavalry to receive efficiency - CSA Regular Cavalry to be available for all periods and receive efficiency + skirmishing + melee drill. - 2 New units added (see under content) Features: - New ranked mode added with leaderboards, an ELO system, skill-based matchmaking, and a placement system. - Merits can now be purchased in the in-game store if players wish to support the game. Purchasing merits only allows you to spend them on unlocking base-game nations or getting cosmetics. Players are not encouraged to gain merits through any lootboxes/gambling. Merits do not give players advantages when purchased in any way at all. - DLCs are now viewable in the store page. - Players may now customize the difficulty and aggression of the AI they're facing. You can also select the general that you are facing, which will determine its aggression/difficulty. https://i.imgur.com/ASZk1kK.png - General AI improvements, with many more to come in the next January patch. Fixes: - Major fix to 2v2 games that would often freeze and prevent players from submitting their orders. - Can no longer change cavalry into infantry formations by using hotkeys - Order cancelling fixes - Moving a reserve unit into another tile, then cancelling the order no longer places the reserve in the frontline. - If you move cavalry, charge, then cancel your movement order, your cavalry's charge order is no longer valid. - Units visibly floating off the board during deployment phase is fixed. - Charge preview fixes - Cancelling an order back onto a tile that has since been blocked will no longer break the unit's position. - Open order formation facing diagonal now has the correct range. - Hills no longer give +1 range when you're firing on someone at the same elevation as you. - Bogged down units can no longer charge. - Fire-at-will icon was getting stuck when it should've been getting removed and has been fixed. - Cavalry damage calculation fixes. - AI spawning with the wrong weapons fixed. - Armory info button fixed. - Cosmetics moved onto Steam storage so purchasing cosmetics should no longer frequently result in the item being lost. - Fixed a readyup bug not allowing some players to ready up if the host didn't before they joined the lobby. - Infinite shooting bug fixes which had to do with cancelling movement orders. - Charge damage fixes - Units moving past their charging range should finally be fixed. This means that infantry can no longer charge more than 1+ tiles in Line Formation. - Inventory system fixes - Tutorial should no longer be getting stuck if you follow the wrong sequence of what it instructs you to do. - Swapping to other slots in a lobby when there is AI should no longer break the game anymore. - Reserve units can no longer exploit the movement speed of frontline units. - Cover now updates immediately when a hard cover building tile is destroyed. Campaign: - Peninsula & Overland campaigns removed and replaced by a large sandbox campaign of the entire Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, for DLC owners. - Crimean Campaign tiles redone for better AI pathfinding, will make it more challenging. - Franco-Prussian War campaign added to the game for owners of our new "Wars of Unification" DLC (previously called European Empires) - All starting corps for all campaigns redone. Players will spawn with smaller armies that they will need to build up themselves now. - Starter funds/manpower increased so players can custom make their armies. - AI will be able to call in additional reinforcement corps to the map. - Historical battle maps are now tied to certain campaign tiles, allowing you to reenact historical battles. - Every tile has been given a name in every campaign so when you fight it will give a unique name to your battle. Quality of Life: - Flag icons no longer overlap when two units are in melee - Learn tab renamed to "Tutorials." - Units now face inward on a map when being deployed so that they don't deploy backwards. - Players can switch between the "Glory" and "Rifle" periods on the main menu to view the different borders and flags. - Formation button updates based on which unit you have selected in which formation he is in. - Systems now in placed to prevent cheaters. - Ready button moved to the bottom of the screen and animates up once you've purchased at least one unit. - Camera spawn is now dynamic based on the center point of your deployment zones. - Unit cards now turn bloodier when the units are damaged. - Spawn zones have been changed to blue/orange which fits the orange crosswords and the blue shield in the very top left and top right of the battle lobby. This way if a player selects a slot on the side of the orange crosswords, they will spawn in the orange zones. - All maps have been given a top-down view and a scenic view so you can preview maps clearer. - General UI improvements made. Many more to come for our full release. Mechanical Changes: - New target ground orders allow you to fire at positions that you think the enemy will move to. - Two units that charge each other at the exact same time will both do damage to each other instead of prioritizing the host's order to charge first. - Host no longer receives an advantage to how orders are being carried out when two simultaneous orders conflict. - Units with less than 6 max HP can no longer form a square. - Fire at will no longer disables at the end of the turn, it only disables when it's shot by artillery or if the fire-at-will order is triggered by an enemy. Content: https://i.imgur.com/Hyr9dmS.png - New Maps added include: 1. Legault's Crossing 1v1 2. Gravelotte 2v2 3. Sedan 2v2 4. Paris 2v2 5. Mars-La-Tour 2v2 6. Spicheren 1v1 7. Woerth 2v2 8. Fortalice 1v1 9. Lavender Estates 1v1 10. Chernaya River 2v2 11. Malakoff 2v2 12. Great Redan 1v1 13. Inkerman 1v1 14. Balaclava 1v1 15. Mountain Pass 1v1 16. Gettysburg 2v2 17. Badlands 1v1 18. The Wilderness 2v2 19. Malvern Hill 1v1 20. Spotsylvania Court House 2v2 21. Cold Harbor 2v2 22. The Bastion 1v1 23. The Encampment 1v1put 24. The Besiegement 2v2 25. Tuscan Hillside 1v1 26. The Coastline 1v1 27. Koniggratz 2v2 28. Gitschin 1v1 29. Nachod 1v1 30. Hamlet 1v1 - New "Ride of the Valkyries" battle track. - New Christmas themed cosmetics added for every single nation. They are available for a limited time so get them quickly! - New Texas Rangers unit for the CSA - New Mountain Gun unit for the CSA - New Mountain Gun unit for the USA - New Buffalo Soldiers unit for the USA - New Cavalaggeri unit for the Italians - New Honved unit for the Austrians - New Landwehr unit for the Austrians - Removed Volunteer Hussars for the Austrians - New Greek Volunteers unit for the Russians - New Guards Rifles unit for the Prussians Graphics & Optimization: - All trees moved from 2d sprites to 3d meshes which increases performance MASSIVELY. Players should now notice an FPS increase anywhere from 10-30 frames. - Animation improvements have been made, units now move on the board less awkwardly. Another round of improvements will be made in the next update too. - Units in square no longer face the incorrect direction (inward instead of outward) - Dead body fixes, some bodies were in the wrong pose. - Main menu nations now change flags depending on the time period being viewed. - The 2nd tier of elevation (very high hills) have been remodeled and have been implemented in the new maps. - Hills have proper collisions which prevent units from clipping through them. - Italian cosmetics added for the wolf. - Country names now update properly based on the time period selected. - New English & Caucasian building models added for our map editor. - Road decals now conform to the terrain allowing them to go on hills and different heights. - Smoke/fire is now layered properly so that if your unit stands in front of a burning building the fire will layer properly behind your unit sprites. Known Issues: - Players are getting stuck on infinite loading screens, this will be addressed IMMEDIATELY. - Some users are still reporting losing their cosmetics, but we believe the issue should be resolved. Still, proceed with caution. - A few units still have the wrong traits or stats, will be corrected shortly. - Wrong tooltip info for skirmishers. - Missing tooltip info for campaigns. - Missing tooltip info for the new cavalry formations. - Clashes sometimes doing the wrong damage. - Clashes sometimes allowing units to clip through each other without stopping to fight. - Ranked UI issues, not saving wins/losses on leaderboard. (Elo is correct though) - General campaign issues, player's saves not loading. This will be fixed asap. - Order freezing in the middle of matches, we're still investigating why this occurs. Community Event: One other thing I'd like to mention is that we're doing a big Franco-Prussian War event on our Discord server in which players choose a side and are given battles to fight each week in order to help the war effort! We've done one turn so far, the results of which are in the image below. You can join this event for free by joining our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/fireandmaneuver and heading over to the "Campaign Signup" channel. https://i.imgur.com/2DFntzt.jpg You can see three battles have been fought so far as the Germans go on the offensive. The battle of Wissembourg was a crushing victory for the Germans. Saarbrucken was a minor victory for the Germans. And finally, the Germans also attempted a crossing at the river Weissbach which was inconclusive. The french are attempting to hold back the German offensive while they mobilize their forces. Until then, they will be outnumbered! Next Up: Our plans going forward are to first fix any game-breaking issues through early and mid January. Then, we will shift gears to overhaul artillery just as we did cavalry for the remainder of January. Finally, we will then spend all of February just polishing and fixing issues with the game and improving visuals. Development may bleed into March a bit if we feel like there still needs to be more polishing done. Our aim is to come out of EA in Q1 of 2023 and during Q1 to focus solely on improving the core experience by fixing bugs and polishing visuals/sounds/UI etc. The only other major content additions coming during Q1 will be as follows: - A few new smaller campaigns. - Lots of new maps. - Boshin War DLC for the full release. - Scenario mode improvements. That's all for now, thank you for all the support! The team is doing their best to finish Fire & Maneuver as a polished and clean game. Afterwards, we can continue updating F&M all throughout 2023 with additional bugfixes and maybe even new factions too! Thank you, Griffin

Hey everyone! Just wanted to make a quick announcement about the upcoming update and DLC changes. We haven't done a large update in quite some time and this is because we have been busy working on reworking some mechanics and adding lots of new content. The main theme for this update is cavalry and so we are adding in new cavalry formations and changing several traits that cavalry have across all rosters. Additionally, certain rosters (such as the US, CSA, and Italy) will be receiving some new cavalry units. These changes will be free to all players, and the next update will also include free new maps, ranked mode, and a new free campaign. This update has been challenging to balance and so we've taken longer on its implementation. You can expect the release around December 16th! We also are making some changes to our DLC. We will be retiring the "Franco-Prussian War Music Pack" but anyone who owns this DLC will keep it and still be able to listen to its music. The reason we are retiring this pack is because we will be merging it into the otherwise lackluster "European Empires" DLC. After this merge, we will change the name of "European Empires" to "Rise of Empires" and add some new campaigns and maps to this DLC. Anyone who currently owns "European Empires" will receive this free upgrade. Anyone who currently owns "Franco-Prussian War Music Pack" will not receive the upgrade but will retain the music they have. The "Rise of Empires" refreshed DLC will grant players the following content: - 3 French Marching Songs (from fpw music pack dlc) - 3 German Marching Songs (from fpw music pack dlc) - Unlocks all Base Nations (currently in european empires dlc) - 6 New Battle Maps (NEW!) - New Franco-Prussian War Campaign (NEW!) - New Austro-Prussian War Campaign (NEW!) This change will coincide with the new update (Ride of the Valkyries), however our Austro-Prussian War campaign is still a work in progress and will only be added to the Rise of Empires DLC with the full release of the game. Finally, we hinted toward a "Grand Campaign" in our last post but we've decided to suspend this idea indefinitely, as we want the team to be 100% focused on delivering a polished release of the core game. If Fire & Maneuver becomes successful in the future, we can always revisit the idea of a Grand Campaign. The only other DLC we currently have planned is one which will add the Boshin War to F&M. Therefore we plan on releasing our game in February 2023 with the following DLC: - F&M | Expansion: American Civil War - F&M | Content Pack: Rise of Empires - F&M | Expansion: Boshin War That's all for now, I just wanted to keep you guys informed about our future plans! Thanks, Griffin

Hey everyone! Now that the year is coming to a close, I just want to talk a bit about what we have planned for the full release of Fire & Maneuver, which should be around February 2023. tldr: We are adding several new scenarios, new campaigns, a grand campaign system, improving and polishing the battle and campaign systems, adding attack/defense game mode, implementing huge optimization changes, overhauling cavalry, overhauling artillery, adding a ranked mode, improving ui/animations as well as sounds, and increasing our map count to 100! All of this will be done before we declare our game FINISHED. I'll first start off by saying that we are aware of frustrating bugs with the new cosmetic system (namely, outfits being removed even after unlock) as well as the battle and campaign systems. We have two large updates remaining before F&M comes out of Early Access, and bug-fixing will be a major part of each update (especially our final update). Besides that, we're also aware at the lack of content and unpolished content that is in the game. There are only a handful of scenario battles and they aren't very fun. The campaigns aren't very balanced and there is only one free Campaign with the game. There are also just 23 maps in the game, which is practically nothing when the game is trying to represent battles from America to France to Italy to Crimea. The battles are laggy, and cavalry and artillery aren't very fun to use. Oh, and the playerbase is small which only exacerbates the problems with the game's lack of singleplayer content... We have solutions to all of these issues. Scenarios The scenario battles currently featured in Fire & Maneuver include: - Williamsburg (ACW DLC) - Milazzo - Malakoff Scenarios can be a fun way to jump straight into a match on a historic battlefield and that's why we'll be expanding the scenario system. https://i.imgur.com/cJXF6H9.png You can see here that scenarios will now come in sets of three, allowing the player to play series of battles sequentially. The Expedition of the Thousand, Fall of an Empire, and Allied Incursion scenario packs all planned to be free, but the Western & Eastern Theaters, as well as the Blood & Iron and Empire of the Sun packs will be DLC. You may notice that the Blood & Iron pack is under a DLC called "Wars of Unification Pack." We are not actually creating a new DLC for this pack, but rather, adding it to an existing DLC (Franco-Prussian War Music Pack) and renaming that DLC to have more content in it. Currently, we are planning to create only one additional DLC for the launch of F&M which will be centered around the Boshin War in Japan and include two new factions. More information will be available about that early next year... Finally, we included a few one-off scenario battles like Paris, Gettysburg, and Solferino, which we wanted to include as single scenarios. Campaigns I won't go into too much detail about the F&M Campaigns, you can read about the upcoming changes to campaigns in this post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1679290/view/3405310798875486932?l=english The biggest change we're making is zooming further out geographically, to give players more of an open sandbox to wage a larger military campaign. Something I did not mention in my last post about campaigns is that we have been working on a GRAND CAMPAIGN MODE that spans Europe and Northern Africa. You can see the early sketch for how we plan on dividing provinces here: https://i.imgur.com/ZZvtEka.jpg Players will be able to assume control of all countries displayed on that map, including minor nations. We have enlisted the help of prominent community members in the F&M Discord to help us create over 100 new unit cards for all of these minor nations, and they're doing an excellent job. I am very gracious to have their help, they are "Badbrix," "Mauzer," "Ocean," and "That Belgian Guy." The unit cards were originally created by Nico Vico, an excellent artist- but there's no way he would be able to finish 100 new unit cards in time for our full release! The last thing I'll say is that I do plan on adding some more tutorials about how the campaign works, but considering that we're reworking so much of how the campaigns work, I will be holding off until release day. Battles The next two updates will be centered around first reforming cavalry, and then reforming artillery. Our next update will be titled "The Ride of the Valkyries" and is set to release on December 8th. With it, there will be changes to every nations cavalry rosters, with the skirmishing and efficiency trait applied to many more cavalry units. This is because all cavalry units will receive new formations and so will finally have a use for efficiency. The skirmishing trait is also undergoing another rework which makes it more applicable to more cavalry units. Our goal with this update is to make light and heavy cavalry more distinct, and to make light cavalry, in particular, more predictable. Our artillery update will also add in new formations, but we can't give out too much information on this just yet. We are also considering giving artillery a new "suppression" mechanic which will allow it to pin down enemy's cohesion from afar, making artillery bombardments far more useful. Something I am very excited about are all the new maps coming to F&M. I (Griffin) have personally designed every map and will continue to do so until I reach 100 maps. If you're curious to see which maps I plan on making, you can take a look here. This is just a preview here https://i.imgur.com/0Bi0576.png Maps in red I plan on remastering. Maps in green are already in the game. Maps in purple are finished but aren't in the game just yet. Maps in light grey I am in the middle of working on and will be in the next update. Maps in dark grey (Boshin War) are maps that I can't work on yet until we've finished all of the environmental assets. You may notice at the bottom of the image above that the Total Map Count has been brought up to 41 from the current 23 maps in game. My goal is to reach 50 total maps (more than doubling the map count) for our next update. And in the update after that, to hit 100. It goes without saying that a lot of polish needs to be done on UI, sounds, and animations. We will be dedicating time to this in January or February, but will not be making many polishing improvements until the game is solid and all major bugs have been addressed. Modes Recently we just rolled out capture zones in Quick Match and we will be extending this mode to Ranked. Ranked mode is going to roll out either in the next update or the update after, and will come with a leaderboard! In addition to that, we are adding a new Attack & Defense game mode to custom battles, which should be a lot of fun to play on in the historical battlefields (like Gettysburg). This can be used alongside our multi-day battle system, so players could theoretically fight a 3-day long attack & defense Gettysburg battle. There are some other quality of life features coming to battles that improve on the UI, but we'll speak more about them in the changelog for the next update. We are hoping to eventually make the Attack & Defense game mode the default for Campaign battles so that if an enemy army attacks your fort, you are actually dynamically defending the area. Bugs & Optimization There isn't too much to say about this besides that we are very aware of the bugs in F&M and are working very very hard to fix them. You will need to be patient however, as the bulk of the polishing and bugfixing will come with our final update early next year. That said, we are working on making sure any gamebreaking bugs are eradicated for the upcoming update. In the month of October, our small development team completed 79 new tasks (including features/bugs/polish, etc). In November, we've completed 153 (so far). We are working incredibly hard, around the clock, to polish Fire & Maneuver and release it as a fun and polished experience. We very much appreciate all of your support, and the recent positive reviews acknowledging the improvements we've made are very encouraging. As far as optimization goes, it's always been our goal to get F&M to run on as many computers as possible. We would like to eventually get F&M on Mac & Linux, but there are no promises yet. As far as FPS drops go, we have implemented a new change to how our foliage sprites (tree/bushes) are rendered, and on our development build this has resulted in an FPS increase of anywhere between 10 and 30 frames. This should be a massive boost in performance for anyone playing on maps full of forests! Past that, we are looking into improving the way the unit sprites are rendered, but that will prove to be a harder challenge. AI AI is going to see some large changes, but mostly in the final F&M update. We are working now to allow players to finally change the difficulty of the AI, as well as edit its aggression levels. This will allow you to fine-tune the AI you're playing against to recreate historical scenarios in custom battles. It will also add variety in campaign battles, with different AI armies having different levels of aggression in battles. This will most likely be rolled out in our final update, but we'll see! Playerbase The player-base has been pretty low recently, but this hasn't discouraged us at all. All of the marketing money for F&M has yet to be spent and is going to be heavily pushed for our FULL RELEASE, when the game is finished, the way we intended for it to be played. To celebrate our Full Release, I will be regularly streaming F&M on my channel (The Armchair Historian) and setting up streams with other gaming youtubers. In addition to this, we'll begin regularly hosting tournaments and events again in our Discord: https://discord.gg/fireandmaneuver. Right now, I'd rather put 100% of our time into finishing the game instead of dividing it amongst hosting events and tournaments as well as development. We are currently all working full-time on F&M, the same amount of hours (if not more) as we did during the actual development. This is all for now, I hope it's been informative! Griffin

Hi everyone, Update 1.3.3 is now live! This month continues to be focused on fixing bugs for your online matches. There are many new fixes along with one new map called Hill Towns, a Crimean rural landscape with many small hills. As the team marches towards the end of this month, you can definitely expect more quality of life features and fixes while we continue to polish Fire & Maneuver. General: -Depth of Field intensity has been lowered. -"Hill Towns" map has been added to the game. -Grasslands map has been renamed to Lille Brook. Campaign: -Fixed corps bug which crashed the game when destroyed. -Fixed players getting stuck on the loading screen as they entered battles in the campaign. Quality of Life: -Fixed players being able to move to any slot which would crash the game. -Interactive tutorial now launches with the game for the first time player. -Interactive tutorials issue fixed when the player issues a command in the wrong order of the tutorial. Battles: -Fixed players not be able to play with A.I. when another player joins the lobby. -Fixed objective zones not syncing across the network during an online match. -Fixed preventing units that are bogged to be able to charge. -Fixed cavalry charge not doing any damage to enemy units. -Fixed units facing direction when they spawn into a map. -Fixed units not standing over mountaintops. -Fixed the back units in reserve with a cancelled order moving to the frontline. -Fixed units in open order not being able to shoot when set to a diagonal rotation. -Fixed units in square formation facing the wrong way. -Units now able to swap between formations when in the same tile as another unit. -Units now able to change direction when in the same tile as another unit. -Gatling Gun and Mitrailleuse price has been increased by 40 points. UI: -Fixed animals of nations appearing large in the lobby screen. -Fixed the text that says “Update JSON” when players unlock a new faction. -Fixed the end turn hotkey not updating the envelope UI. -The Kills-to-win setting is now locked when set to objective mode. -Formation button updates when you select a unit. -Country names now update based on the correct time period. -Fire-At-Will icon is now being removed properly when a turn is completed.

Hi everyone, Update 1.3.2 is now live! We are continuing to do hot fixes and adjustments as we prepare for update 1.4, which will be our next big update scheduled for the end of the month. For now, we have this smaller update which fixed a lot of bugs taking place during battles. We have also updated the rotation of the cosmetics, updated older maps, as well as some visual issues. General - Depth of Field intensity has been lowered. - Training Feature has been reenabled and fixed from previous iterations. - Grassland Arena map has been remastered. - Hickory Hill map has been remastered. AI - 2v2 with 3 AI no longer getting stuck at loading screen. Battles - Depth of Field is no longer automatically enabled when starting a battle. - Default Game Mode has been changed to objectives. - Objective tickets is updated to 200 instead of 150. - Disabled the ability to change artillery/cavalry formations. - Units with less than 6 starting HP are no longer able to form square. This makes smaller units with the skirmishing perk more reliant on their ranged resistance from fire and more vulnerable to charges. - AI no longer spawns with melee weapons. - AI now has weapon limits. - Fixed AI starting with the incorrect weapons. - Fixed being able to select units with the field UI. - Fixed cavalry teleportation bug - Fixed free movement bug when cancelling an order in which your own units occupy the tile you were previously in. Campaign - Fixed cancelling and purchasing units bug. UI - Fixed the visuals in the lobby panel - Fixed After-action report no longer displaying the opponent from the previous game. - Fixed Field UI overlapping with the forest. - Armory info button is now working. - Beta warning window added when playing on Beta. - Bear pants have been redrawn in the cosmetics page. - Italy faction added in the cosmetics window. - Options V-sync and anti aliasing has been fixed in the options menu.

Hi everyone, Cosmetics are now live in 1.3.1 update! Using your merits earned in battle, you may now look through the shop and cycle through the current available options. These skins will be in a constant rotation between updates as we continue to allow every player to pick their favorite skin. There have also been a few balance changes with the Ottomans receiving the breakable trait as well as the skirmish perk changing in value. Aside from balance, we have gone through a majority of your comments and concerns regarding bugs and have focused most of our time on removing the bugs listed in the log below. As promised we have also added two new maps. Wissembourg and Bull Run (only available for the Civil War DLC). We are working hard on bringing you a variety of maps that offer unique playstyles so you can expect more to come. Content -Cosmetics now available -New map: Wissembourg, a historical 1v1 map on a French town on the river Lauter. -New map: Bull Run, a (Civil War DLC) historical 1v1 map based on the first major battle of the American Civil War. Quality of Life: -AI no longer shows a negative amount of casualties when the player surrenders. -Auto resolve pre calculation accounts for difficulty. -Reduced recruitment time in the campaign from eight to six. -Updated implementation of hotkeys. -Added a warning box "Are you sure? You still have unused orders" popup for if a player ends their turn without using up all their orders." -Updated the cancel button on cosmetics. -Hidden the arrows on the learn tab. -Added buttons for players to zoom in/out of the map. -Overwhelm Data is now being used for wounded modifications. -Optimized building objects. -Quickmatch and unranked used symmetrical or tournament maps, while ranked uses symmetrical and tournament. -Set map trees to use large sorting order. -All sprites to use the same layering order. -Quickmatch now uses 12 orders in late, 8 orders in early. -Updated HQ spelling mistake in campaign. -Medium option now available in the options quality menu. Battles -Attack column does +1 damage on charges. -Units can no longer infinitely melee pursuits as long as adjacent. -Damage applied evenly between reserve units. -Fixed clashing system to halt units who clash (units no longer continue running through each other when they clash). -“Breakable” has been given to Ottoman Lancers, Dragoons, Cuirassiers. As well as all Ottoman artillery. -Changed Ottoman Mounted Rifles to receive Disorganized instead of Breakable. • 4 Cohesion to be worth 40 instead of 35. • 5 Cohesion to be worth 70 instead of 65. -Hills automatically block LOS for units lower than them, so you can't shoot through them. -Dynamic Zone count is now based on map size. -Crimean War campaign overhauled. Completely new starting locations and starting forces. -Difficulty slider will now affect the game massively. -Unit’s fire orders no longer go through when blocked by line of sight. -If frontline dies immediately, your second fire order is no longer thrown out. -Skirmishing removes flanking damage when shot. -Right clicking on an empty tile in range of a unit will no longer flash. -Tile no longer flickering when hovering over UI. -Order canceling no longer cancels all orders from that unit. -Unit with efficiency is set to the correct formation when order is canceled. -Dragging order list no longer resets or shows pop out page. -Changed cinematic mode controls to control+c. -Canceling an order no longer reverts the unit in the wrong direction. -Adding an AI and faction changing no longer crashes the game. -Added new hill models in river path. -AI artillery can no longer fire from reserve after moving. -Maps have roads replaced with the new decal road system. -Able to modify the correct AI composition. -AI check added to ensure units dying properly (especially when it charges while being shot and killed simultaneous) -Skirmish Perk now set to 20 instead of 25. Fixes: -River path now has collision on hills -Fixed crash when winning a custom battle, going to the main menu, and playing any scenario. -Out Of Sync Retreating Post Battle. -Fixed auto resolve in campaign causing an overflow. -Fixed losing units when winning a battle in the campaign. -AI now orders new corps from their army screen. -Unit count settings. -Damage desyncs in which the client sees something dead but the host sees it alive or vice versa. -Fixed tutorial bug crashing the game when firing before the task. -Fixed machine guns being able to move and go on fire at will. -Fixed reserve/frontline being able to swap in deployment phase. -Units no longer face diagonal when in melee pursuit. -Unit’s fire orders no longer go through when die during the turn. -Cavalry & Artillery can no longer access Formations when using hotkeys. -Reinforcement Corps in the Campaign are now being assigned correct weapons. -Fight button now works against AI in the campaign. -Fatal error when loading in campaign battle. -When you drag new division icon with a unit being moved now creates a new division. UI -Italian bottom cosmetic skins updated. -Replace campaign background images. -Merit count has been added to the shop. -Fix the Animal Stand Rooster/Turkey. -Sound effects added to After Action Report -Sounds effects added to the shop menu. -Option buttons can now be clicked on in battles. -Post-Processing update based on three features. -Unit info tab working on the nation's tab so players can read about the units in a nation's roster before they purchase them. -Customize enemy forces button is disabled when leaving a lobby. -Empty slot in the nations loadout has been updated to reflect the animal itself instead of an empty box. -Fixed unit info tab showing units from different nations. -Renamed animation speed settings to “Slow,” “Normal,” “Instant.” -Cosmetics now appear after being recently bought. -Post-Processing is now being refreshed when turning off features. -Ready up now clears itself after exiting and rejoining the room. -New tooltips for hard cover/soft cover/attrition/bogged Down/speed boost. Known Issues: -If you fire into a melee, you only damage the enemy. -Open order diagonal is not working as intended. -FAW icon not being cleared after the turn ends. -Invisible units fighting in melee. -Units not appearing visually damaged when spawning into campaign. -Ready system in the lobby. -Free movement with units based on their order. -Lag issues while firing. -Reserve unit movements points not reduced to the same as the front line during movement. Next Up: As we progress through the development, we are always achieving new ways to optimize Fire & Maneuver. There were many optimized systems added such as the new quality settings but our continued goal is to find effective ways to make the game playable on many devices. As always, we will continue listening to all the feedback from the steam, youtube, discord and online community to improve your experience.

Hi everyone! We are about to drop a large patch at the end of this week which is going to include a lot of bug fixes, a new form of progression, and some updates to the Crimean War campaign. And now I'd to take some time to discuss what our plans our for F&M's campaign mode and the lessons we've learned since we released into Early Access in July. The current campaigns included in F&M are the Crimean War Campaign, the Peninsula Campaign in the American Civil War Expansion, as well as the Overland Campaign which is also part of the American Civil War Expansion. In my opinions, all three of these campaigns have a rather poor design, and bugs as well as a lack of tutorials have hampered any kind of fun that can be had on those campaigns. So, we are taking a new approach. Before the end of the year, we plan on deleting the Peninsula Campaign and Overland Campaign. We then plan on adding a large "Eastern Theater" Civil War campaign as well as a "Western Theater" Civil War campaign, which will both be playable on multiplayer. We will keep the Crimean Campaign but it is being reworked and will function as more of a short introductory campaign. Our new goal when approaching the design for F&M's campaigns is to make them more of a sandbox in large recognizable locations. The current campaigns provide players with many large cumbersome armies and little opportunity to customize and build your own forces that match your particular play style. We want to start the player with less, but more funds/manpower so they can customize their forces from scratch. Furthermore, we are deleting the two Civil War campaigns because the area they focus on is too small, and we'd rather have larger open-ended campaigns for players to take in their own direction. Below you can see a size comparison of the Peninsula Campaign (in the red box) overlaid within its actual location on our giant new Eastern Theater campaign map. https://i.imgur.com/lUHpn5a.jpg This is will be a free update for all owners of the American Civil War Expansion. We also soon plan on adding large sandbox style campaigns for the Franco-Prussian War as well as the Austro-Prussian War for owners of the "European Empires" Pack. Finally, all free-to-play users will get a sandbox campaign expansion for the Crimean War: the Caucasus Front, fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. Here is a preview of the Caucasus Campaign relative to the Crimean War campaign (which has been downsized in the top right corner) https://i.imgur.com/0ETJmq4.jpg To reiterate, the Caucasus Campaign and Crimean Peninsula Campaign will both be free-to-play for all users. The Eastern and Western Theater Campaigns will be free updates for owners of the American Civil War Expansion. And, the Franco-Prussian War and Austro-Prussian War Campaigns will be free updates for owners of the European Empires Pack. In addition to more open-ended sandbox campaign experiences, we will continue polishing the campaign system to be more stable and engaging. Once we start rolling out these larger campaigns, we are going to also release a tutorial series to go along with them. That's it for now, I just wanted to share something we're working on! Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions! Griff

To celebrate our latest and biggest patch "The Battle", a sale will begin today, October 3rd, and will last for just one week ending on October 10th. All of our DLC is on sale including: Prussian and French Music pack will be 66% off ($3 $1 USD) Comes with Yorkscher Marsch, Koniggratzer Marsch, Duppeler Schanzen Marsch, Vouz n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine, Le Boudin, and Marche Lorraine. Steam Link American Civil War will be 35% off ($15 $9.75 USD) Comes with new maps, 2 new campaigns, 2 new factions, 8 civil war marching songs Steam Link **European Empires Starter Pack will be 35% off ($15 $9.75 USD) Comes with all base game factions. This will save you merits that you would have spent on factions so you can spend those merits on buying cosmetics that will be released early this week! Steam Link You can get all the DLC for $20.50 $14.35 Or purchasing the "F&M Standard Edition Bundle" which is also currently on sale includes ALL DLC and is currently priced at $14.35 This sale will last from Oct 3rd to Oct 10th. If you also missed the info on our latest patch, check out last blog post going over all the details for "The Battle"

Hi everyone! It's been a while since our last update and I'm really excited to share all these new features and fixes with you! The cosmetic system is on the way and will most likely be arriving on Monday or Tuesday, so consider that part of this update. We will not add microtransactions as a form to purchase these cosmetics for another few weeks, but even when we do, all cosmetics will be earnable with Merits without needing to spend any money at all. Since so much focus has been placed on stabilizing the F&M battle system in this update, we have thematically called version 1.3 "The Battle." We've been naming updates after famous 19th century orchestral pieces and so this one is named after Tchaikovsky's piece in Act I of the Nutcracker. There have been some major mechanical and balance changes which should make defensive strategies less overpowered and that make melee a more viable strategy again. Read about these changes specifically under the "Quality of Life & Mechanical Changes" section. We wanted to add more maps in this update but we spent all of our time making bugfixes and balance changes. Next update, you can expect to see some new maps! 😊 Note, we plan on doing a big sale for all of our DLCs on Monday! Balance: - Units with the breakable trait no longer die when their path is blocked. They also don't automatically fall back a tile when their cohesion is 0. Instead, they take 1 point of HP damage for every turn they have 0 cohesion. This makes them far more viable. - Charge vulnerability has been changed to +1 instead of +2, making melees less extreme. - Range vulnerability has been changed backed to +1 instead of +2, making march columns, attack columns, squares, and cavalry more resistant. - Melee drill now deals one damage at the end of each turn in melee instead of reducing charge impact damage by one. - Melee drill cost penalty is now 30 points instead of 20. - Units with 4 HP are now 10 points cheaper. - Italian Grenadiers now have the rugged trait. - Italian Militia now have the rugged trait. - Italian Bersaglieri now have efficiency instead of rugged. - Max unit count in games changed to 24. - Confederate Stonewall brigade now has melee drill. - Bavarian Line Infantry is limited to 6 for the Prussians instead of 4. - Horse Artillery now costs an additional 20 points for all countries. - Breakable trait now reduces a unit's price by 15 points instead of 20. - Removed maps Monte Villa, as it was unpopular. - Removed map "Heights" as it was unstable. - Removed map "La Moncelle" as it was poorly designed. - Auto resolving now considers the weapons you have equipped. Fixes: - Fire at will is now removed when a unit changes into marching column (a non-combat formation) - Leaving a melee or entering a reserve no longer causes a rubberbanding effect where the unit snaps back to his original position and then corrects itself onto the new tile. - Attrition now applies to units who have 0 cohesion and move even when they aren't bordering an enemy unit. - The client's turn timer now is fully in-sync with the host. - Issues with vulnerabilities have been fixed, no longer will you charge into an open order formation and take full frontal damage. - Units with the cumbersome trait can no longer utilize fire-at-will when they move. - Visual issue where sprites would face backwards after winning a melee has been fixed. - If your army goes into a campaign battle and takes losses, the game will no longer count those casualties against you in every subsequent battle. Previously, your losses would compound and the casualty reports would include any losses you took in previous battles which would continuously stack casualties. - Cinematic mode has been improved and no longer can glitch your unit's UI. - Reserve units should no longer be able to have their fire orders go through. - Units shouldn't change direction when charging now. - Fixed an AI glitch where if an AI had an order to charge you, you wouldn't be able to shoot it. - AI would sometimes detach itself from tiles and break which is now fixed. - Broken buildings would not update with the correct broken/scratched model. - Percentage kills at the top of the screen has been fixed and now displays properly. - Players are no longer loaded into a scenario battle instead of the tutorial. - The ordering system has been improved, you will no longer have orders that float off your page and execute incorrectly, or orders that linger from previous turns. - This entire time the German DLC music has been unplugged and instead been playing French marching music. So now, if you own the Franco-Prussian War DLC Music pack, you can finally hear all the famous German marching songs! - Some fixed have been made to cancelling orders, which often results in the wrong positioning for the units who were reverted. - Fixed crashing that would result from range calculations on hills breaking the game. - Austrian Dragoons would spawn in with breech-loaders instead of their sabers, which has been fixed. - You can now quit the tutorial at any time. - Fixed tutorial bugs that would freeze the game. - Cavalry & Artillery can no longer change formation. - Formations would sometimes appear as greyed out completely requiring you to unselect your unit and reselect him several times to fix. - Fixed artillery being able to launch charges. - Fixes for players getting stuck on the loading screen into custom battles and quickmatches. - Supply map mode fixes in campaign. - Fixes for save game files in the campaign mode. - Fixed the AI from repeatedly attacking the same area over and over in a loop in the campaign. - Quickmatch stability fixes. Melee Rework: - Melees no longer change direction when additional units join a melee fight, instead they just fall back into reserve which makes melees more stable. - Lots of melee-related bugs have been fixed, including game-breaking ones. - Players can no longer order retreats THROUGH an enemy unit, now you must retreat backward out of melees. - Units with fire orders can no longer use those fire orders if they are engaged in a melee. Same with fire-at-will. - Order preview fixes when it comes to charging (previously showed the wrong angle a unit would be charged in the ordering phase). - When the defender of a melee charges in an extra unit he won't charge himself anymore, that damage will go to the enemy. - The new simultaneous turn changes (read more under Quality of Life) now results in a new mechanic called "Clashes" happening when two units accidentally move to the same tile at the same time. Both units will take frontal charge damage. Quality of Life & Mechanical Changes: - The game is now FULLY simultaneous. This means the host will no longer receive an advantage when two units are given fire or charge orders at the same time. Previously, two units told to charge each other at the same time would result in only the host's order going through. Furthermore, if two units were told to occupy a tile at the same time, the host would always get their first, but now both units will enter the tile in an accidental melee brawl. - Enemy units can no longer block your fire orders by moving an untargeted unit in front of your men. If an enemy is blocking your target, the fire order will still go through but it will apply to the new enemy unit that is in range. - Fire-at-will has been redone. Instead of being able to leave fire-at-will on for as many turns as you want and getting as many hits with it as is possible, it now expires at the end of every turn. This means you can no longer rely on setting your army on fire-at-will and not engaging the enemy actively. Fire-at-will can also now be broken by artillery barrages. - An error sound and popup now appears when you run out of orders for the turn. - Formation button should update to whatever formation your unit is currently in. - Prices now calculate properly when buying AND trading weapons in the armory system. - All terrain bonuses and penalties now update in real time instead of receiving a bonus at the end of the turn. This means the moment you occupy cover, you will receive the protection. - Player names are now displayed in the lobby. - Health bars over buildings now always display even when they're occupied. - Multi-page order system has been made into one long order which you scroll through. It makes it clearer to navigate when you have a lot of orders. This also opens up the opportunity for us to make order counts limitless instead of having 16 at a cap (since that's all that 2 pages could hold). - A new after action report has been added which tells you about your battle! - You can now edit the AI's composition for their army! - The AI has seen massive overall improvements. - A notice will appear when you've played the maximum battles that you're allowed to against AI to gain merits for the day. - Tapping right click on an enemy unit counts as a fire order, holding right click counts as a charge order. - Right clicking units always reveals their range. - Shift + left clicking a unit marks them. - Shift + right clicking a unit opens their info tab. - NEW controls menu added so you can rebind all controls in battles. - The new tooltip system has been expanded into the custom battle lobby. - AI now recovers more wounded men after battles on harder difficulties. - New formation hotkeys, change formations easily by using 1,2,3,4,5. Content: - New multiplayer campaign system added. WARNING: I do not recommend playing it right now as some game-breaking bugs were discovered which don't let players progress past their second battle. We are going to patch this out immediately and get multiplayer campaigns working again very soon. - New multi-day battle system has been added which allows you to adjust the starting time of day, amount of days that can be fought across, and the speed of the day/night cycle. Players will now need to redeploy their forces for the next days of battle, with an animation to go along with each evening. - New "Getting Started" video tutorial added. - New "Choosing your Nation" video tutorial added. - New "Formations Overview" video tutorial added. - New "Utilizing Terrain" video tutorial added. - New "Intro to Combat" video tutorial added. - A tab for Steam guides has been added in the "learn" tab. - New song "Blue Danube" by Johann Straus II added as a generic battle track. - New song "The Battle" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky added as a generic battle track. - New historical map "Saarbrucken" added which is also in the Quickmatch pool. https://i.imgur.com/YCCe76y.jpg Graphics & Optimization: - The bloom effect no longer effects roads, so they no longer glow. - Turning off post-processing settings no longer makes the game oversaturated, it's now perfectly viable to play without post-processing and you could gain an extra 10 fps. - The game has seen a massive optimization update with some players reporting they've gained anywhere from 10-20 fps. We are still working on improving larges-scale battles though which still result in a lot of lag. One option we're considering is reducing the sprite count in 2v2s. - Animal nation flags as well as the flag UI in-game now shows the correct flag depending on the time period you're playing in. No more German Empire flag shown in scenarios taking place in the 1850s or early 1860s. https://i.imgur.com/WseGip6.png The following flags were affected (listed in the early period --> late period) Prussia --> North German Confederation Austria --> Austria-Hungary USA --> USA (more stars) CSA --> CSA (new design) Russia --> Russia (new design) - A new minimap UI has been added in-game with a day tracker. - UI at the top of the screen has been improved. - UI has been redone in battle to appear clearer and players can move their cameras closer to units to see the UI up close. Resolution of all trait icons have been reuploaded in HD. - Melee-only trait now appears as an icon under sabres in the armory. - Unit card fixes, some were holding the wrong model rifle. - Fire-at-will has a special activation and deactivation animation. - Credits added to the main menu. - New Civil War loading screen added. - The main menu map has been completely redesigned. Known Issues: - Units can charge an enemy that more tiles away than that unit has movement points. - Units can bypass bogged down tiles through exploits using efficiency. - Fire-at-wills can sometimes cause lagspikes. - Multiplayer campaign system not stable. - Units are spawning with the wrong weapons in the campaign system. - If you play a battle, and then try loading into a scenario, your game will freeze. - Attack column still isn't doing +1 on charges. - When melee drill is in the reserve it's not doing +1 at the end of each turn in melee. - Units with a lot of movement speed that move through each other's path now clash but then immediately walk through each other. - Fire-at-will icon sometimes lingers on the screen even after deactivation. - Sometimes the client and host see units with differing HP's when they fight in melee. - Crimean Campaign is missing flags (will fix asap) - There are some menu issues when you back out of certain menus repeatedly. Next Up: In addition to addressing bugs and the "Known Issues" list, our next focus will be adding a ranked mode and quickly getting cosmetics working. Next, we want to allow cavalry to dismount and change formations. After that, we will be making massive changes to the animations of units and the sound effects in-game which haven't received much work at all. We also want to add more maps and overhaul the scenario system. Lastly, we will be giving away a free campaign for the Caucasus in the Crimean War and we will be redoing the two Civil War campaigns to be more zoomed out areas, which will be free for all Civil War DLC owners. We also want to flesh out the Union and Confederate rosters with more units being added to those nations, as well as one new unit coming to the Italian faction. We also want to give players the ability to target specific tiles.

Hey everyone! I'm excited to bring you our second major update for Fire & Maneuver. We've made some substantial changes that impact melee mechanics, fire-at-will, the tutorial/tooltip system, and several other aspects as well. We mentioned a few weeks ago adding in the new cosmetic system and progression for the animal avatars, but instead of introducing in-game monetization we wanted to focus on fixing bugs and stabilizing the game first. Finally, instead of calling our updates titles like "General Improvements" we're going to name each update after a famous 19th century orchestral piece and in some extra music each month to go along with it; update 1.2 is titled "Blue Danube" because many of the changes we made incidentally affect the Austrian faction. We plan on releasing one more update toward the end of this month which will hopefully add in cosmetics and fix more bugs. Balance - Cavalry prices increased by 25 points. - The Cumbersome trait now decreases a unit's price by 40 points instead of 10. We wanted to make field artillery more viable, especially light artillery. - 3 range units are 45 points cheaper. - 4 range units are 25 points cheaper. - 5 range units are 5 points cheaper. - The "range vulnerable" debuff which is applies to all cavalry and the infantry march column formation now gives a +2 penalty instead of a +1 penalty when being shot. Attack columns are now also range vulnerable. This means playstyles that rely on rushing are going to be harder to pull off. - Units on hills can now fire over obstacles making non-indirect fire units more useful. - Dismantling supply caches in the campaign now gives 33% of your cash back. - Units with the "breakable" trait will no longer be able to receive orders until they can regain cohesion. This state of continuously retreating and not being able to be ordered is called a "rout." - You can now hurt units in hard cover if you shoot at their flanks or use the "range drill" perk. Otherwise, you will need to blow up their cover with artillery before moving in. - Square formation can no longer receive flanking penalties, this has been something the community has been asking for for a while. - Artillery's "charge" button has been disabled. CSA - Sharps Rifle has been removed from the "early era" for the Confederate faction. USA - Zouaves from 0 to 6 limit Italy - Added Fusil M1866 rifle with a 2 limit - Bersaglieri from 0 to 4 limit - Carabinieri from 0 to 4 limit Ottomans - Added Fusil M1866 rifle with a 2 limit - Egyptian Line Infantry from 0 to 6 limit - Zouaves from 0 to 4 limit Russia - Added Berdan M1868 rifle with a 2 limit Britain - Added Martini Henry rifle with a 2 limit - Highlanders from 4 to 6 limit - Dragoon Guards from 0 to 4 Limit Prussia - 2 limit on the Werder rifle - Bavarians from 0 to 6 limit France - Zouaves from 0 to 6 limit - Voltigeurs from 0 to 2 limit Austria - Austrian Line Infantry to lose "melee drill." We felt like last update we overcorrected the Austrian melee-focused playstyle. We kept the Hoch & Deutsch as a strong melee unit, but made the regular infantry more vanilla. We wanted the difference between Hungarian & German infantry to be more distinct. - Saxon from 4 to 6 limit - Bavarians from 0 to 6 limit - Grenzers from 0 to 6 limit - Austrian Kaiser Jaegers get range drill instead of efficiency. Because the Hoch & Deutsch are now a melee-focused unit, the Austrians did not have any range options. Fixes Fire at Will This mechanic has been completely overhauled. It has a new visual display over units and will fire reliably at enemies crossing its path. - Fire at will will no longer be able to trigger when a unit is engaged in melee. - If an artillery unit with the cumbersome trait moves then its "fire at will" stance will not be able to activate that turn. - Units in march column (who can't shoot) can no longer use fire at will. Melee - If a third unit joins a melee, that unit will no longer alter the direction of the melee; instead, it'll fall into the reserve line of its ally. - Charging into a melee will no longer damage friendly units. - Withdrawing from a melee is more reliable, you can now withdraw diagonally if you were charged at an angle and the bug where units could only retreat forward through an enemy instead of backward has also been fixed. - Withdrawing from a melee and cancelling the order no longer flips the units who were in melee. - Ordering a charge and cancelling the charge order no longer breaks the orientation of the unit who was going to charge. - Infinite melee-pursuits are fixed. If a unit tries to charge and an enemy withdraws out of the charging unit's range, the charge won't go through. For example, light cavalry can no longer charge across 4 tiles (past its total movement cap) to complete a charge. - Units can no longer bypass the bogged down terrain by moving into a forest and then charging through it. - Units who have orders to charge will no longer go through with that order if they get charged first during the turn. - Units with the "breakable" trait will now retreat from melees when their cohesion hits 0. Miscellaneous - Damage desyncs have been fixed. In some games two players would see different amounts of damage on the same unit. - Attrition was not applying to units who didn't border an enemy unit, this has been fixed. Now, as long as you have 0 cohesion and move you will always take attrition (unless you have the skirmishing trait). - Added some stability to 2v2s, players who experienced freezes should have smoother games. Let us know if you detect any further issues. - Playing a battle and then jumping into the tutorial would previously get stuck on the loading screen which has been fixed. - When a unit with the "breakable" trait routed it would cause the game to lag, which has been fixed. - A bug where players would select an "age of rifles" breech-loader, then go into an "age of glory" lobby and then left click to drop it in has been fixed. - Infinite loading screen in campaigns is fixed. - In campaign units with 0 strength will no longer be able to enter battles. - In 2v2s sometimes your orders from previous turns would show up on your order page and couldn't be gotten rid of. I believe we fixed this, but if we didn't let us know. - Arrows on the game board no longer linger from previous turns, they are cleared consistently at the end of every turn. - Players are no longer able to charge their teamates in 2v2s. - When players leave lobbies their names will now get cleared instead of lingering. - The Hard & Soft Cover system has been remade and is far more robust. Shooting/charging into cover now deals the correct amount of damage. - The locks over countries were backwards and natitutons would appear as locked while they were unlocked, this is fixed. - The little orange/blue pips on a unit card now clear when a unit is dead. - Bugs relating to equipping cavalry carbines are now fixed. - 2v2 maps no longer show up under the 1v1 section, but they are still playable in a 1v1. - Changing resolution would revert when hitting apply, this has been fixed. - Turning off shadows on graphics option now works. - Depth of field now works. - Crimean War campaign gave the wrong popup. - Bug relating to occupying enemy HQs in the campaign fixed. - Corps splitting exploit fixed, now creating now corps cost money and you lose movement points. - Bug where players who played quick matches can't play custom matches until they restart their game fixed. - Empty "zombie regiments" in the campaign are now disbanded. - In quick match some players got the "early era" and some got "late era" in the same lobby, this has been fixed. - Math corrected for high influence modifier in the campaign. High influence now grants 1,250 manpower per turn instead of 250. - Training match now chooses between several maps instead of always playing on the same one. - Players who do not own the Franco-Prussian War music DLC will not be able to hear the bonus music. - Training matches now choose between early and late instead of the "All" era. - The quick match lobby timer ticks instead of being frozen. - Level display in lobbies is fixed. - Late period CSA cavalry now have the correct default weapons. - Cover has been added to the frontier map's forests and villages. Quality of Life - Changing formation will now give you a preview just like moving to a new tile does during the ordering phase. We plan on making the preview system better when in the ordering phase so that players can see a "ghost unit" of where their unit was and where they intend on moving to, that'll be for a future update. - An info panel has been added to the armory if players are confused on how to equip weapons. - A brand new interactive tutorial system has been added to the game. Players are no longer forced to play through it, but may revisit it under the "learn" tab. - A brand new set of over 65 nested tooltips have been added to battles. Every mechanic of battles are explained through the nested tooltips. - New 1v1 map "Monte Villa" - New 1v1 map "Twin Creeks" - New 2v2 map "Alpine Foothills" - New 2v2 map "Magenta" https://i.imgur.com/liFTmMX.png - New scenario system. This sytem still needs a lot of work, but you can now jump into historical scenarios on the world map, they include: - Malakoff, Crimea - Milazzo, Sicily - La Moncelle, France - Williamsburg, Virginia (DLC-required) https://i.imgur.com/0sKoeKp.png - Players can now right click on a unit's UI to assign it a number. This is good if you want to keep track of certain friendly or enemy units. - Arrow movement preview is turned off when the mouse hovers over UI. - Envelope in the bottom right now tells you how many other players ended their turns, especially useful in 2v2s. Content - A new objective-based game mode has been added for custom matches. If you guys like it, we can make it the standard way to play quick-matches. We buffed artillery a lot in this update, but we also don't want to see people sitting in corners with their artillery. An objective-based game mode in quick matches could help remedy corner camping. Let us know! - Added an "All time periods" custom match option. - Dynamic time of day has been added! - Multi-day battle system has been added. If you play long enough it will become night time and you will need to redeploy your men for the next morning of battle! In the next update we will add some UI to make this feature clearer, and we will add a game option to turn this off if you don't like it. - In the Campaign the AI is smarter and can now buy its own troops to rebuild armies! - Several new maps added to the quick match pool so you aren't playing on "River Path" all the time... Graphics & Optimization - Playing with post-processing turned off no longer looks super oversaturated. - Graphics menu UI updated. - Players can now customize the music they want to hear under the audio tab. - Animals/flags on the "Nations" tab are much higher resolution. - Every nation now has a unique background in the "nations" tab. - The game border is now lifted up slightly so that farmland that extended off the map is covered up. - Brand new tooltip graphics (read more under quality of life) - Brand new battle UI, a new chat system, and kills-to-win bars. A mini-map will be added soon. https://i.imgur.com/fHAmLUa.png - More sound effects/polish on buttons that previously felt dull. - Buying weapons/troops under the army builder is more intuitive, buttons are clearer. - The unit info tab has been moved to the top left of the screen. - When you unlock a faction, the nation's victory theme will play. - Selecting a unit now has a unique voice line associated with it. We will continue adding in more voice lines each update! - Buildings weren't generating fire/smoke when destroyed, this has been readded. - New loading screens have been added to startup and when going into battles/campaigns. - New quotes have been added for loading screens. - The "Delta" map had floating trees and a missing hill mesh fixed. - Units hold their rifles better in the campaign unit cards. - The text "Attack" has been changed to "Fight" when an enemy attacked you in campaign. - The flags the animals held in 2v2s no longer layer improperly. - Bloom reduced on the main menu map. - Icons for the French carbines, Russian M1856 Rifle, Ottoman Enfield rifle, and the Italian weapons in the armory have had their icons corrected. - Did a little work to optimization but not much this update. Next update we are updating our project and cleaning up files, and optimizing how sprites are loaded. Known Issues - Spawning on Antietam puts your camera at the wrong area and spawns troops backwards. Will fix asap. - New tooltips can be a bit buggy and not very smooth when appearing on screen. - Hotkeys still need to be fixed. - Players can't add more than 1 AI in a match. - Ready button UI needs to be changed. - Units crossing bridges look ugly when not in column as they spill into the water, will fix. - Players aren't able to put cosmetics on their animal avatars. - Sprites sometimes face the wrong direction after finishing a melee - Animations suck and need to be worked on for sprites. - Players have a lot of merits but nothing to spend them on, especially players who spent $18 on the "European Empires" pack. They will soon be able to spend these merits on cosmetics and more things in the future...

Hi again, This is the first update for Fire & Maneuver since launch, "General Improvements." A rather dry name, but there have been adjustments to every single part of the game, we didn't gear this update toward one specific thing. We are going to try to do weekly updates for you guys and communicate with you every step of the way leading up to full release. Next week we hope to add in the animal cosmetic system, work on the buggy melee system, add in historical scenario battles, and importantly, add in an interactive tutorial along with an advanced nested tooltip system. A lot to look forward to! Update 1.1 has been released this week alongside Patch 1.0.4 which you can read about here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1679290?emclan=103582791470379479&emgid=5154949827504636802 Balance Changes - Units with 3 cohesion are 5 points cheaper, this means that militia and the Union/Confederate volunteers are slightly more affordable. - Efficiency now increases a unit's price by 5 additional points, making Prussian and Confederate infantry slightly more expensive. - All modern artillery (Prussian Krupps, British Armstrongs, Russian M1867s) now have a 2 limit, we are not happy with players taking an army of artillery and putting themselves into the corner of a map so this is a band-aid solution to this problem. In the future we will be adding an objective-based game mode which should prevent people from camping in the corner. Until then, we kindly ask our players to play fairly and properly engage your opponent without employing tactics that make the game unfun. - US/CSA cavalry now have carbines as their default weapon in both the early period and late period, which is more historically accurate. - Austrian Line Infantry now all come with the "Melee-drill" perk. We felt like Austria felt too vanilla and similar to France. The melee-drill for all Austrian line infantry helps reflects the Austrian "Stoß Taktik" or "Push Tactic" of the time. - Austrian Hoch & Deutsch unit given "Melee-drill" instead of "Range-drill." This means Austria has no units with "range-drill" and therefore can't rely as much on mass-equipping the superior breech-loaders to pick off enemies. - 3 Speed units are now cost 10 additional points. We've found light cavalry has been too dominant in the Quick Match "meta." - 2 Speed cavalry is now 15 points cheaper. We've found that players often times completely ignore heavy cavalry in favor for light cavalry which is much harder to predict. In this game, prediction is one of the most important skills and heavier cavalry are much easier to predict than light cavalry, so we believe the price cut should make them a more attractive option. Fixes - On the lobby list every match displayed it's map as "map" and not the actual name. - Movement lines/arrows weren't appearing on hills and cliffs making it difficult to properly maneuver. - Swapping reserves was completely broken and would also flip your unit backwards. - The advanced options menu was not available in battles, only on main menu. Now you can properly adjust your graphics even when in a fight. - A bug which gave units bonus movement speed when orders were cancelled has been fixed. - Changing formation and then cancelling the formation change will revert your movement speed to the correct amount instead of setting it to the incorrect amount. - Players sometimes experienced a bug in which cancelling orders simply broke on the order card, and we believe this has been resolved. - On occasion the client's (non-host) orders would get thrown out without reason and we believe we've fixed this issue. - If you alt-tabbed out of your game while selecting a nation your mouse would duplicate thousands of times and we believe we have fixed this issue. If players find that you can still break the mouse, we'll get it patched first thing next week. - The formation button should now automatically update to the unit you have selected. - You can no longer put cavalry/artillery in a formation by selecting your infantry first and opening the formations tab. - The chat in lobbies is now working. - Some settings were being reset upon confirming on the options menu, which is no longer the case. - The camera spawns for the Overland campaign are now correct. - The corps text headers for the Overland and Peninsula campaigns are now correct. - Some spell-checking has been done in the campaign mode. - Some troops were spawning in with sabres-only in the campaign mode when they were given rifles, this is now fixed. - Some troops on the unit cards weren't properly holding their weapons when assigned a new one, this is now fixed. - Quick match can't be selected more than once, this was previously queueing people into multiple quick-match sessions. - Players should no longer be joining empty lobbies in quick match. - The load button on campaigns was displaying the wrong saves. - Players can only equip the sharps-rifle to sharpshooters in the campaign. - Regiments with 0 men left should now properly dissolve. - The campaign casualty system has been overhauled and now yields more realistic and consistent results. Auto resolve still needs some work though... - Administration policies in the campaign would randomly reset. - Some players weren't experiencing the victory screen on the tutorial scenario, which is now fixed. - The campaign portraits showed the wrong generals for Overland. - Commas are now correctly displaying to merit amounts. - Players can now replay the tutorial battle from the main menu under "learn tab." - Fire-at-will mode should be more consistently firing but work still needs to be done on this firing mode. - Leaving/rejoining lobbies has been stress-tested and improved. Previously there were issues with players leaving, coming back, switching slots in a room, and doing so repeatedly. Quality of Life - Unit cards now have blue and orange pips above their health/cohesion bars. The blue pips symbolize how many maneuver orders that unit has remaining, and the orange pip represents how many fire orders that unit has remaining. When all orders are spent, the card will darken. This makes it much easier to tell at a glance which units have yet to receive orders. https://i.imgur.com/487L5IC.png - Percentage to win numbers are now: 60%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%. Previously there was an option for 25% kills to win which confused players who thought that they'd win once the enemy had 25% forces left, when in reality it meant the game would end once someone lost only 1/4 of their men. - Some hotkeys added. R,F,C now quick select the options for fire at will, firing, and charging. T,G,V now quick select the options for swapping reserve, moving, and changing formation. We will be improving hotkeys and making them rebindable in a later update. - If the player doesn't have any factions unlocked they can no longer access quick match/custom match menus and will instead be repeatedly prompted to select their 3 free factions. - When selecting a unit in reserve it will darken the firing buttons making it clearer to players that reserves can't shoot. - UI now completely darkens when no unit is selected. - An info panel has been added to the armory which informs you how to use it. - While in a melee players can no longer select firing buttons and formation buttons. - There is now a filter for password protected games on the lobby list. - There is now a filter for Steam friends on the lobby list. - A timer now appears on Quick Match letting you know how much time you have before the match launches. - When a weapon is equipped it now plays a sound to confirm you've equipped a new piece. - All UI now darkens during execution phase making it easier to tell the difference between the two phases. - Server region added for Asia. Content - New Dynamic Game speed option which is now the default way to play. Dynamic game speed makes the first few turns have instant-animations and then slows down the action when the two forces engage. This way setting up troops for the first few turns is much quicker. The dynamic game speed will be improved with time and become smarter so that it can speed up turns toward the end of a match when few units are remaining as well. - Quick Match now has random map selection which adds more variety. Seasons are also randomized. - Quick Match time period is randomized, some matches are early exclusive and late exclusive. - New historical 2v2 map "Antietam" for owners of the American Civil War DLC. - New fictional 2v2 map "Delta." - New fictional 1v1 map "Frontier." https://i.imgur.com/PoC73s3.png Graphics & Optimization - Players now have the options to turn off shadows. - As previously stated, the advanced options menu can now be accessed while in battle. - Unusual lag on the lobby & faction selection screen is gone. - Players can turn off "advanced sprite layering" which reduces GPU usage. - UI elements are batched when going into the battle which helps everyone's FPS. - Added a Confederate Snake animation. - Added a Union Eagle animation. - Tabletop texture remade, now it's not blurry. - New lighting update which makes foliage match their environment better and improves lighting across the map as a whole. This will continue to be improved, in some cases the foliage can be far too bright still. - The time of day was set to very early morning it hard to see on maps, we've fixed this and set it to a later time in the day. Dynamic time-of-day has been temporarily removed so we can work on it more. Known Issues - Spawning on Antietam puts your camera at the wrong area and spawns troops backwards. Will fix asap. - After playing on quick-match some players will experience trouble hosting a lobby, this will be fixed asap. For now, the player must restart their game. - Charging is buggy when it includes more than 2 units on a tile, we will be setting aside an upcoming week to overhaul this system. - Tooltips are still unhelpful, the nested tooltip system will be added very soon. - Hard cover damage is inconsistent. - Players can't add more than 1 AI in a match. - Hotkeys need improvements and rebinding. We will allow players to remove the WASD camera controls. - Ready button UI needs to be moved somewhere more obvious. - Some invisible unit issues after melees. - Units crossing bridges look ugly when not in column as they spill into the water, will fix. - The scenario battles we tried to add in in this update are not displaying on the map and the locks are still displaying on the map even if the player has the country unlocked. These issues will be fixed soon. - The tutorial needs to be made interactive, we hear you! - Players aren't able to put cosmetics on their animal avatars. This has been disabled since launch and we decided to hold off on finishing it until the game was more stable. Hopefully next week we can get that feature in along with another round of bugfixing and polishing! - Delta map has some visual bugs that'll be fixed shortly. + General bugfixes, UI, polishing tasks...