This has been a long wait for the last update to the demo before the full release of the game. We never really found a good place to release it before now, as more and more things were fixed and improved… it was the development equivalent of "just one more turn!"

About one week before release we're in a spot where we're quite happy with how it plays, even though there still is a big list of things we'd like to improve or add to the game. There will be plenty of that coming to the game after its first release, as we will continue to support the game!

https://youtu.be/bP8p_sGTq0I
The main theme of this update is the big AI improvements we've made. The AI now has quite a few more tools to analyze what is going on in a race and how it can react to that.

Of course there are plenty of other good changes to game mechanics, UI, and the visuals, too. From the change log posted below you can see this is more like 3 updates in 1, and definitely worth checking out!

Demo Update 10 Changelog

Game Mechanics

• Removed slipstream bonus for front P0 rider moving to the peloton's chosen target node
• P1, P2, and P3 riders now take an additional -1 trait penalty across tech or cobble sections
• Made the peloton only able to follow energy-only moves made by P1 whenever no P0 exists
• Implemented country- and race-specific modification of spawning technical sections

AI Improvements

• Team leaders will now reposition themselves to get onto good wheels for attacks and sprints
• Team leaders better position themselves in the peloton (P1 to P3)
• Improved when team leader attack timing. No longer happens from too far out and on bad terrain.
• Much improved chasedown of escapees by the peloton in the last ~200 nodes. This change makes attacks from about 100 nodes away much less powerful and also addresses the team attack exploit to a large extent.
• Fixed the peloton breaking apart too easily, leaving leaders behind unnecessarily
• P0 riders now calculate required effort to both chase escapees and to make attacks impractical
• Much improved peloton control over shorter stages
• Added an all-out, full-throttle mode for helpers where they don't care about resource expenditure
• Implemented new stage analysis, making rider strength calcs and AI team roles more accurate
• Improved escapees to go hard towards the end of a stage when they are still ahead of the bunch
• The AI now to some extent tries to avoid moves that give maximum recovery
• Added noise to the AI movement decision heatmap calcs depending on the difficulty setting
• Implemented AI look-ahead distance to depend on difficulty setting. On Easy normal riders look ahead 2 turns while team leaders look ahead 3 turns. On Medium it is 3 and 3, while on Hard it is 3 and 4 turns, respectively.
• Tweaked how much escapees are allowed to get away by overall stage length
• Allowed breakaway groups to be a bit larger for longer stages
• Fixed an issue with team role assignments, sometimes favorites would relay in P0

UI Features & Improvements

• Implemented an autosave feature to have a backup for when a game should crash while saving
• Implemented stage profile scaling to better represent the true scale of the stages
• Made a click on the minimap move the camera to the new location instantly
• Implemented a more appealing backing plate for tutorial notes / markers
• Implemented switch (SPACE) to see auto-generated rider names instead of real names in race
• Load Game screen now correctly shows team jersey information
• Moved the in-race score panels to be on the left side of the screen to not get in the way as much
• Updated translations

UI Fixes

• Fixed tooltips not getting shifted to the left when they would go off-screen to the right
• Fixed sprint UI issue where it would awkwardly ping pong between rider positions
• Fixed the terrain archetype not updating in custom race setup panel selecting single race classics
• Fixed the peloton ghost marker showing without hover-over when a P0 rider was offered a catch-up
• Fixed that the camera field of view on the minimap doesn't correspond to what's on screen
• Fixed switching between celebration screen podium and standings to freak out the UI
• Fixed issue with move distance range when pulling the peloton at high speed
• Added translation for base terrain section names: "Flat", "Mountain", and "Downhill"

Graphics Fixes & Improvements

• All revamped team jerseys with better color representation and new options to pick from
• A new work-in-progress prop placement check. Not quite right yet (as you'll see).
• Implemented a new the loading screen layout, getting rid of our placeholder design
• Fixed main menu logo particle animation not scaling with resolution settings

With release getting close, we're going to focus mostly on some general polishing of what is there already, instead of making big terrifying last-minute changes.

Please let us know how it plays with the beefed-up AI, and don't forget to join our discord server if that is something you'd be keen to do: https://discord.gg/DHCd8UZk5B

Sharing your experience there would be much appreciated. :)
Cheers!