Oy rulers,
The beginning of the year was marked by many rounds of polishing and balancing, especially with some tweaks to the Bandits features, but let’s not forget about the addition of the Siege mechanics! We’ll dig deeper into this new content later in this Development Update. Thank you for your detailed feedback about the Bandits. With the information you shared, we have been able to make some adjustments to it. A lot of constructive input and e are also reviewing and discussing suggestions that you shared in the Steam discussions and reviews. As always, we deeply appreciate your involvement, and this is what fuels our creativity and minds to make the game even better, thanks to you!
Design & Balancing
Bandits and safety: As mentioned above, thanks to your input, we have been able to balance the bandits' attacks on the map, especially in the early phase of your fiefdom. This led to tweaks in many areas of this feature: bandits delegations now have more dynamic costs, more choices to make, and more varying outcomes, bandits can no longer siege players repeatedly, and the fiefdom starting safety is set to 2 instead of reverting to 0. In terms of UI, we have improved the safety tooltip and how it shows the thresholds for the next level, as well as the safety icon, which now shows its progression. Lastly, the AI bandit movement has been upgraded.
Siege: The Siege feature is progressively implemented. This month, the feature is now playable with the elements we added: timers, information on the map, health loss for defenders over time, siege and garrison UI and UX. Buildings can impact siege duration and speed.
How does it work? A Siege starts when an army attacks an enemy city. When sieged, the defender must raise a garrison. This is without the cost of raising an army for some of the units (although upkeep still must be paid). The attacking army starts building siege equipment, and when ready, it can attempt to assault the fiefdom. The progress of the siege equipment is shown on the siege tower icon. The defending army loses health while under siege, and all resources from production locations and trade stop for the time being. The defender may try to lift the siege at any time. We've also updated how the armies work. When the army is raised, it does not automatically leave the city but is instead stationed in a garrison within the city.
AI: Following the balance of the Bandits feature, the AI now manages its safety production better to be less likely to be attacked and overwhelmed by bandits. It also fights bandits back to protect its land. The way AI handles its production and storage has been improved as well.
War and alliances: Regarding allies, we have applied a few changes. It is now not possible to declare war against an ally. On the other hand, you will break an alliance by refusing to assist an ally at war if they ask for your support. In terms of UI, War and Alliance states are shown on the family crest. As for the war, army movement has improved. You have reported that army resources were not returned when an army was disbanded. It is now effective, and disbanding an army partially returns the resources spent to raise it.
Visuals & Interface
User Interface scaling: We are still experimenting with wide-screen resolutions. UI scaling is still a long, ongoing process, and we welcome feedback to help us optimize it during the whole Early Access phase. We have added a master control to change all scalability settings at once in the Settings menu.
Visuals alignment: We continued working on the text, button, and icon alignments to improve and harmonize the overall UI and interface menus.
Visual FX and clarity: We have been working on adding a fair share of audiovisual feedback lately, like sound effects when declaring a war (on top of the change applied to the crest during a war), visual effects after a battle on the map, a bird particle system, showing ranks timeline progress, and growth indicator colors depending on the overall happiness level. You can change the visual effects quality in the Settings.
Technical fixes & optimization
Optimization: We have been focusing on optimizing the game in general, but only particularly on the world map, as it is the main screen. The overall performance of the game has improved thanks to your input. We also focused on particle, day-cycle, and scalability settings optimization. This is still an ongoing process to improve the game on all kinds of setups and monitors. Please let us know if you encounter issues regarding the User Interface, the stability of the game, or other similar issues.
For more information, read the full aggregated patch notes below:
Added
- Audiovisual effects when declaring a war
- After battle map FX
- New bird particle system
- Visual effects quality selection in the Settings Menu
- Master control to change all scalability settings at once in Settings
- World map optimization
- Performance tweaks
- River location event
- Alliance ends if you do not come to ally’s help when asked
- Alliance end texts shown at relevant events
- New achievement: win a game
- Buildings can impact siege duration/speed impacts
- Show ranks timeline progress
- Raise army resources are partially returned when the army is disbanded
- AI behavior can also follow pure storage amounts
- Siege
- Timers
- Information on the map
- Health loss for defenders over time
- Siege and Garrison UI and UX
Updated
- Units don’t get a health boost when wiping out enemies in conflicts
- Bandit stopping delegations now have more dynamic costs, more choices to make, and more varying outcomes
- AI manages safety production better
- AI handling bandits
- Safety tooltip improved and now shows thresholds for the next level
- War and Alliance state towards player shown on family crest
- Chronicle text indentation
- Currently selected tradition now shows also color in tradition button
- Safety icon shows progression
- Army movement UX improvements
Fixed
- Fiefdom starting Safety Level reverts to 0
- A few events that were supposed to have the choice of saying "OK" were saying something else
- General Spy Investigation now provides penalties properly
- Bandits sieging player
- Can declare war against an ally
- Commander leaves caravan when arriving home
- Stuck in the Comital Ranks of Calderia
- Bide your time skill in social conflict takes too long to happen
- Own a family member as a court member at home
- Trait tooltips missing duration time unit
- Visual bug where archers appeared to be strong against almost every unit in the game
- When pressing Esc during AI rank selection, it caused a bug where the UI would zoom out endlessly
- You can move on the map in character state, edit character state, and skip tutorial state
- Tradition screen zoom is not functioning correctly
- Army movement not showing path when targeting cities
- Travel icon style changes when a courtship is rejected
- Broken roads
- Clothing randomisation incompatible with overweight bodies
- Point Of Interest FX is not working when viewed up close
- Pressing ESC in Ranks of Calderia Result doesn’t remove background
- Problems with delegations AI
- Known Issues
- UI scaling might cause some buttons to go outside the screen on some resolutions. To fix this, adjust the UI scaling percentage in Video Settings.
- Character customization images might fail to load occasionally. The UI still works, and reopening the menu sometimes fixes the issue.
This new year starts on the right track, and we intend to keep at it! Stay tuned for more news on the game's development and content!
- Great Houses of Calderia Team -