Greetings folks,

Before we reach the weekend, we wanted to get a single line hotfix out to address a critical issue that we spotted earlier in the week for new players that are making their way through the Prologue. Hotfix 5.0.1 is now live for all users here on Steam, with other platforms following as soon as we’re able too.
For posterity, here’s the single fix that we’re addressing in this update:

• Fixed a soft-lock occurring in the prologue after Turn 5 when the tutorial was enabled

Note: Soft-locks are when the game continues to run, but you find yourself unable to continue your turn for unexpected reasons.

Whilst we’re here, we wanted to let you know that we are also aware of some further instability issues that have popped up since Update 5.0 dropped this week, to let you know that we’re working on these issues as priority, and that we hope to have an update on some further fixes for you next week.

One key crash that we’re currently aware of which has a loose workaround for it:

• A crash can occur when Vampires take a settlement with a Garden of Morr in it – If you currently experience this issue in your campaign, and don’t want to wait for our next Hotfix, we have found that you can temporarily work around the problem by razing your own Settlement before any Vampires arrive. We’ll be looking to address the issue next week so that you don’t have to do that!

We are otherwise aware of random occurrences of Malakai’s campaign becoming soft-locked at infrequent intervals, and understand that reloading to a prior turn and progressing as normal is sometimes successful bypassing that softlock. We’re again looking to address this issue, as well as any other key instability issues as soon as we can next week.

If you encounter any new issues with the game since Update 5.0, or want to stay up to date with the very latest information, do join us over on the official forums[community.creative-assembly.com], where new issues are being tracked in our dedicated bugs sub-forum[community.totalwar.com].



Thanks for all of your feedback surrounding the Age of Reckoning system since Update 5.0 and the launch of Thrones of Decay. This has been really helpful to all of us across the teams this week as we’ve looked at some possible adjustments that we’d like to bring into the game as soon as we’re able.

Some of these fixes have already been lined up for a future update, and whilst we’re working away on them, here's a sneak peek at what we have in mind:

• Grudge Targets scaling out of control as the player meets new factions (specifically as the player meets new factions across the world via things like quest battles and alliances.)
  
• Players feeling too rushed by the 10 turn cycle
  
• Players struggling to get out of the lower tier brackets where they would receive debuffs rather than bonuses.
  
• Some Dwarf factions have easier starts than others when it comes to hitting Grudge Targets.
  
• The influx of free units and the summoned grudge settler army has a disproportionately massive effect on the early game.
  
• In the late game, massive stockpiles of grudge settler units build up in the pools of participating factions, causing constant instant and free replenishment for losses.

• We are looking to change how we calculate your met factions when determining Grudge Targets to instead look at factions you share a land border with rather than just any met faction.
  
  • This change will still allow Grudge Targets to scale up/down depending on your local situation, but it won't get out of control after simply meeting new factions across the map.
• We will be removing the control/growth penalties from the 2nd Age of Reckoning bracket (Skruff) and slightly lowering the debuffs from the 1st (Elgi).
  
  • While we don't want players to always hit the higher rewards each cycle, we also don't want them to struggle to get out of the negative brackets. By making the 2nd stage (Skruff) act more like a neutral stage rather than a second negative one, it will hopefully alleviate the pressure of needing to clear at least 50% each cycle to simply get out of the red.
• We are looking to increase the Age of Reckoning durations to 15 turns from 10
  
  • By giving players a longer duration we hope it gives them a bit more freedom to take that 2-3 turn movement to a new target that might have more grudges rather than feeling like you always need to rush to the next closest enemy because you don't have enough time.
• We will be adding a few more starting grudges to the world where appropriate
  
• We will be reducing the size of the spawned grudge settler army, but allowing you to increase it more via techs.
  
• Grudge settler units will no longer be free to recruit, but adding some recruitment cost reduction in midgame techs.
  
• We're reducing the maximum grudge settlers reserved in the pool, and reducing the cap of grudge settler units that can be in each army at the start of the game, but adding more capacity to the tech tree.

The overall goal is that players shouldn't hit the maximum reward every time, but we don't want that to become a stressful experience for players who just don't want to receive debuffs, so we'll continue to test and monitor the changes over the following patches to ensure we hit that sweet spot.


Our top priority has and always will be to resolve any instability issues that we’re made aware, like those mentioned at the top of this post. Once fixes for these have been rolled out, our next goal will be focused around bringing further updates and improvements, including the Age of Reckoning tweaks detailed above out to you in a future update as soon as we’re able.

We won’t rush this out as we want to make sure we get them right and everything is working as it should, so we can’t give a specific timeframe on this, but we’ll likely return to you next week with more information on upcoming updates.

Thanks for checking in with us otherwise, enjoy the weekend! It’s a public holiday here in the UK on Monday, so we’ll look to check in with any new information on Tuesday.

—The Total War Team

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If you experience any issues after downloading the update, please take a moment to Verify the integrity of the game files first to ensure there were no issues when downloading. A step-by-step guide can be found in this article.

If the issues persist, please visit our support site[support.sega.com] for additional troubleshooting steps and assistance.

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Please note that user-generated mods may have compatibility issues with new game updates. If you are encountering performance or stability issues following a release, is recommended that you disable any mods you're running. If you continue to experience issues, please visit our support site[support.sega.com] for additional troubleshooting steps and assistance.