Hello everyone,

Your feedback has reached me loud and clear. The majority of players want a more realistic experience, so I have started building towards that. First up is the game speed: I lowered the entire game speed by 7.5 percent by default for a heavier feel in everything you do. On top of this, I added and tweaked melee animations to provide a more grounded experience. Player cavalry movement has also been improved to feel less arcade and much heavier. It will take a little while to get used to, but it is better than the instant turning you could do on a horse.

This update also adds realistic fire arrow smoke. Based on a video by Tod's Workshop, the smoke from fire arrows now actually resembles the nasty chemical burn seen in real life. This setting needs to be enabled in the performance section of the option menu.

Finally, I added fear reactions to units in certain situations. Units can flinch or freeze depending on context, for example large projectile impacts nearby, getting pummeled by fire arrows, or even getting hit by a heavily armored knight.

If you experience any issues or bugs, you can report them using the ingame feedback form, here on Steam, or on the official Discord server.

Join the Discord here:
https://discord.com/invite/cTgXXfTmhc

Thank you for all the support!

Full Changelog

• Added basic officer AI to make formations more self-preserving.
• Added commander aura mechanic: If player is near, prevent formation from wavering and provide small boost to units.
• Added subtle glow to formation cards in commander range.
• Added option for realistic fire arrow smoke.
• Added fear / cower reactions to certain situations.
• Added fear reactions to fire arrow impacts.
• Various optimizations.
• Made officers even less likely to fall on the battlefield.
• Swapped two and one handed animations for more realistic ones.
• Renamed cinematic mode to arcade mode.
• Set default game speed at 92.5%.
• Rebalanced realism mode settings.
• Various realism mode fixes.
• Tweaked kick animation and sweep distance.
• Improved and polished melee animations.
• Smoothed player cavalry movement.
• Fixed longsword stance clipping issue.
• Fixed tournament animation issue.
• Fixed issue with on-screen controls.
• Fixed tournament "no castle" selection.
• Fixed ranged mode distance check on siege defense.
• Fixed possible crash related to water.