Greetings Lords and Ladies,
The time has finally come, all the patches, updates. fixes and improvements that you've been testing in the Public Beta during the weeks are finally entering the main build of Lords and Villeins. A lot of things have been changed / added, so we recommend going through the Change Log below, especially if you were not a part of the Public Beta testing.
For a short summary, we have redesigned nobility and royal taxation, extensively improved UI, put additional work into performance and added new ways for you to control the economy. As this patch is making significant updates to the internal data structures, you will not be able to continue playing your save files from the previous version, so if you are not ready to switch yet, we will keep the older version available in the "oldversion" branch for some time.
We are incredibly thankful for your help with the testing and for the overall support, we would not be able to get this far without you! And that's not all, more awesome things are on the way! For now, enjoy the current update and let us know what you think about it on our Discord server, here on Steam forum or feel free to write a review of the game.
Next on our roadmap is the promised Campaign update, so stay tuned for more info soon!
Change Log:
Performance Optimization
- Path computed in one direction is now used in reverse order for opposite direction.
- Pathfinding is now distributed over multiple frames and threads using a BurstCompile job system.
- All visitors now share a common pathfinding map instead of each family calculating their own.
- Prioritization of path search for NPC over animals and further limiting animals use of pathfinding in a single frame.
- New option in the settings to serialize pathfinding data. It will increase save and load time, but prevents spike on reload.
Replaced Nobles with Artisans
- Chapel is no longer used by artisans. They share the church with everybody else.
- The Tavern was removed. Artisans arrive through the Inn.
- Inn now also serves mead and wine.
- Donations to clergy no longer reflect noble families. The clergy simply expects the player to donate a calculated amount of valuables over some time.
- Theatre is now visited by everyone, including peasants.
Added a new class of Noble Houses
- Noble houses are generated automatically at the start of the game.
- Their growth is stimulated automatically outside of the map.
- Noble houses can be viewed in the population book in a new Nobles tab.
- Noble houses now accept ruling family marriage proposals instead of the previous artisan families.
New Quests and Deliveries
- Noble houses and royalty offer optional delviery quests for extra rewards.
- New Loading Site structure added that is used by villagers to prepare deliveries.
- Players can also grant resources to noble houses or a royal family which is sent away through the delivery system.
Hosting at Villa
- Players can now invite a noble house to be hosted at their villa.
- The noble house will spend a certain amount of days and consume the meals of the player.
- After they leave, the relationship with the player will change based on how satisfied they are with the quality.
Combat Power
- Villagers in the military regiments now display their combat power.
- Combat power is a function of their equipment, age, health, training, skills, blessings, and other buffs and bonuses.
- Total combat power of a regiment is used when delivering military as a royal tax.
- Combat power is now displayed in the population book.
Royal Taxes Updated
- Royalty now only expresses their demand in terms of the gold value of delivered resources and the total combat power of delivered soldiers.
- Players can complete the taxes through deliveries or sending regiments to war at any time during the year.
- The Tax Evasion mechanic was removed. Instead, having a Master of Coin appointed will boost the rewards and contributions made through deliveries.
- Royalty also offers optional quests that provide extra money and favor points.
- Royalty also offers a list of bonus equipment, which boosts the combat power a certain regiment contributes with.
Changes to professions
- Ropemakers can now utilize Loom to create a new Carpet resource. This resource can be used to build new floor-type carpets. Five different carpet patterns are added.
- Alchemists no longer make health, magic or stamina potions. Instead, they make love potions that peasants consume to boost their pregnancy chance, exotic mixtures which can be used as a cooking ingredient or transmuted gold, which can be minted into gold coins or granted to nobles as a valuable gift.
- Glassmakers nwo also produce glass bottles, which are required to make potions.
New options to manage priorities
- Priority screen is updated and shows more detailed information.
- Player can update how much material a family is stocking for production.
- Player can also limit production if a family has stock over a certain amount.
- Player can also restrict tax-deductible options, to prevent villagers from consuming taxed resources to produce other taxed resources.
New cooking management options
- The accounting management screen has a new cooking tab.
- Players can set custom targets for cooking meals and toggle if families are allowed to supplement high-quality targets with a lower quality meals.
- Logic for cooking was also updated so that families will continue cooking higher quality meals even if they have plenty of lower quality meals.
- Logic for cooking was also updated so that families will continue cooking higher quality meals evn if they have plenty of lower quality meals, to meet their targets.
- It is possible that families go over their target if multiple people start cooking at the same time.
Other Changes
- Rework the internal system for generating new families.
- The notification system was reworked to allow more flexible data transition. As a result, several notifications were updated to provide more information about their context.
- Storage management screen now has copy/paste option.
- CTRL+Select when clicking on a buildable object will now select that object from the build menu.
- A number of UI screens was improved for performance.
- Multiple churches are now possible. Secondary churches hold Sunday massby villagers assigned to the monk order.
- Inns can now be toggled in the context menu to prevent selling beds and meals to locals.
Small UI changes
- Notifications now distinguish between source and target. Players can click separate buttons to move the camera to them.
- Zone context menu was reworked to separate the quick-build menu into structures, furniture and storage. Buttons to switch between tiered collections were added to quickly access different quality furniture and storage.
- New option in the settings to display a contrasted version of the HUD.