Domestic animals in Ruin or Victory are directly controlled by the player and provide various economic or military advantages based upon their type. Horses, oxen, and various farm animals will be available at release. Horses and cavalry will be the subject of a future dev blog.
Domestic animals are obtained either by capturing them from the enemy, or luring a wild animal into a pasture and taming it. Once tamed, animals can be trained to increase their usefulness and bred to multiply their numbers.
Oxen can help peasants planting crops at a farm, increasing the speed that plants grow. They can transport resources and items in much greater amounts than a human, as well as pull carts carrying even more. They are slow but steady laborers who take the burden off your peasants.
Farm animals, including reindeer, cows, and pigs, can be kept and bred at a farm instead of crops to produce food. They offer several key strategic differences from planting: they are a steady source of food; their population grows more rapidly as the food ration increases; they can be moved to a new location easily.
There are several types of farm crops that offer different grow speeds and harvest sizes. You will have to weigh the advantages of planting a faster growing crop, or waiting for a larger harvest.
Training and breeding animals as well as planting and harvesting crops now makes your peasants more skilled in the difficult life of medieval agriculture. A skilled peasant gains bonuses to all aspects of domestic animals and gathering resources.
Although a small hand cart can be of great use to your peasants, taming animals and creating a large cart pulled by horses or oxen will allow you to transport the largest quantity of resources and items possible. These mobile stockpiles can quickly move to new natural resources or flee from the enemy.
Domestic animals and the new crops will not be available in the demo, but demo update 0.920 will include several new features. Carts can be ordered to work at a stockpile or armory, automatically carrying out move orders at these buildings without the need for micromanagement. New auto move orders will continue to move an unlimited quantity of resources or items, creating an automatic supply chain. The UI’s display of equipment set readiness and assignment as well as population is improved.
The release date has been set at May 27 to provide sufficient time to deliver all intended release features with a minimum of bugs and issues. The demo will continue to be updated with fixes and minor features before and after release.