Hello everyone,
Dmitry here.
First, thank you for your patient waiting.
Second, we’re starting to roll out to the beta branch everything we’ve worked on over the past weeks (and what we promised in our roadmap. For once, we’re actually on schedule).
By the way, if you haven’t left a review on our Steam page yet, now’s the perfect time!
Today, we’re releasing a beta version of politics and the new economy. Next week, we’ll add more political and economic mechanics, new residential architecture, a new city-building grid, building influence, and a new army menu (you’ll be able to customize warriors).
Here’s a presentation of the art style from our artists, in case you haven’t seen it yet:
While adding new mechanics, we’ll also tone down or even remove some old ones (for example, I think loyalty might get the axe) to avoid overloading the game.
Additionally, in the near future, we’ll improve many things based on your feedback from the forum and our Discord—like adding a librarian and auto-learning for knowledge, among others.
All these changes will accumulate in the beta branch until July 11, after which we’ll roll them out to the main branch.
Starting in July, we’ll also begin working on the promised roadmap features: map generation, economy expansion, knowledge mechanics expansion, and deeper character personalities (the latter had to wait until the politics mechanics took shape).
Now, let’s dive into the details of the new features. As usual, old saves are compatible.
New Economy
Lords’ Gold
Some of our features looked odd for a reason—they were placeholders for better times. That time has come.
Now, lords have gold, which ties them to the main economy. All tasks and rewards are now valued in gold.
Lords independently buy rings, which they use for gifts, while politicians spend gold to increase their influence (more on that below). Soon, we’ll add other luxury items besides rings.
We’ve reworked thoughts and desires related to rings and removed some (like ring desires).
When loading saves, lords’ rings will be converted to gold.
New Resource Allocation Menu
We’ve combined the production and finance menus into one, task-based interface. Now, you can directly distribute resources like food and alcohol to your subjects without needing to sell them. However, selling is still an option, as is paying wages the old way—though now it requires research.
Characters will buy food and alcohol from caravans if they run short (migrants and warriors still bring gold, so if you don’t want it flowing to caravaneers, you can start internal trade).
City Mechanics
We still need to finish drawing some residential buildings, but for now, we’re rolling out the first batch of city-building mechanics to let you focus more on city design.
Storage
Warehouses now have fixed capacity by resource category (categories include food, crops, weapons, resources, liquids). Overfilled resources will spoil. Food always spoils, and there’s a separate granary for it with reduced spoilage. Weapons are now stored in a secure armory (its sturdy doors will hinder rebellious peasants).
This allows us to display resources in warehouses, with quantities updating as they fill (although you will see this in the next update, the system currently requires optimization).
Don’t worry—the cloud structure remains (resources are automatically distributed across warehouses), so no extra micromanagement is added.
Builders are now hired in a separate new building, by the way.
Distance and Linked Buildings Display
When selecting a production building, you’ll now see where its workers live and the nearest warehouse they access for resources. This helps optimize building placement. By the way, peasants and prisoners now settle more accurately near their workplaces.
Politics
This long-awaited mechanic wraps up our vision for the local map. It’s still in progress and will improve significantly over the next couple of weeks, but you can already try it out.
Now, one or two lords on your local map may become politicians if their loyalty drops. They spend their money to gain influence among other lords, warriors, the bishop, and neighboring kings. If they clash with the king, they’ll demand the crown, threatening a rebellion with their allies.
Hostile lords no longer bribe every lord indiscriminately but target politicians specifically. If politicians rebel, hostile lords will send armies to aid them (by the way, we’ve reworked the bribery algorithm—it now happens in response to your aggressive actions, not constantly).
On the plus side, politicians’ ambitions give them a 30% bonus to experience gain, so they can be very useful as long as relations are good.
This is a large and complex feature, and it’s quite rough around the edges, so we’re particularly interested in your feedback on it first and foremost. Thank you!
Army Loyalty
Who will warriors support during a rebellion? Fanatics back the bishop (and whoever the bishop supports), loyalists back the king. Others may support a politician who proved their valor in battle or bribed them through special sermon-speeches. The mechanic is still in progress (currently, support is a total percentage, but soon it’ll be individualized per warrior).
Overall, politicians bring tactical planning to the local map—it now matters who is friends with whom, which warriors back whom, and who supports whom.
Experience Improvements
Since politicians add complexity, we’ve eased some punishing mechanics for balance.
Among others:
Heirs won’t start rebellions—only politicians will.
Buildings no longer burn to the ground and can always be restored.
Field costs in the tech tree are reduced,
The matriarch is happier with fanatics in your kingdom (Except, as usual, for the hardcore level. Here, we’re thinking about how to make your life tougher in the late game!),
Family relations have a bigger bonus.
We have also added a stronger reconciliation option on the global map, which will allow alliances to develop more quickly.
Ceremonies and sermons in temples now, as in the old days, take place in the morning (so as not to distract characters from their evening activities).
No more than 3 vagabonds can now appear per day. This will prevent the situation in the late game where the number of criminals could start growing at a very high rate. (And yes, we know the current population limit feels artificial. We’ll fix it properly and elegantly later—for this, we need to refine trade and the economy so that it’s more beneficial to grow cities through professional specialization rather than population size.)
And we now also display all your created units at the bottom for easier access.
Once again, we’re very interested in your feedback on these changes, so leave a review on our Steam page and join us in Discord!
Full Changelog:
New
- New mechanic — warehouse capacity and resource spoilage.
- New buildings added: "Builders' Camp", "Granary", "Armory".
- A technology has been added for constructing the Granary and Armory.
- Starting resources have been adjusted when launching a new game or tutorial.
- A new advice message warns that resources ripening in the fields might not fit in the warehouses after harvest.
- New mechanic — resource distribution.
- The production and finance menus have been merged into the new Economy menu.
- A technology "Salaries" has been added, allowing gold salaries to be paid to town residents. Requires 30 residents.
- A technology has been added for constructing the Market, Tavern, and Den. Requires knowledge level 9 and a population of 30.
- If a player had a Market, Tavern, or Den in their save from a previous game version, they will automatically receive the "Internal Trade" and "Salaries" books after loading. The player's king will also receive the same knowledge.
- The Market has been removed from the prebuilt structures at the start of a new game.
- A positive thought "Visited a public place" has been added for residents who have been to the Market, Tavern, or Den.
- Characters who have received food through resource distribution will no longer buy it on the Market.
- New mechanic — Politicians.
Other changes:
- AI will attempt to resettle an abandoned town only after 4 days following its destruction.
- After a faction has been forced into neutrality, it will not create or join alliances for 2 days.
- The placement location for the turnip field in the tutorial is now more noticeable.
- Even if some migrants don’t reach the hall by 8:00, players will not receive a notification about them leaving due to closed gates, provided migration is allowed.
- Heirs and low-loyalty lords will no longer start rebellions unless they are Politicians.
- The building repair system has been reworked: previously, buildings were considered repaired at the start of repair; now they will remain broken until the repair is completed.
- A new thought "Wealth" has been added. It appears when a resident has 31 or more coins.
- The "Temple" technology now requires knowledge level 9 instead of 3.
- The "Mine" technology now requires 20 residents to unlock.
- The "Prisoner Maintenance" technology has been removed — the Prisoner Barracks can now be built from the start of the game.
- Players will no longer receive a free book on temple construction when a bishop arrives.
- Repairing burned buildings now costs wood instead of tools, and the amount is no longer dependent on the building’s level.
- The "Burned completely" status has been removed — buildings can now be repaired even if fully burned.
- Knights will now have the title Sir or Dame in their names.
- The conditions for triggering a Wise Conversation during lord interactions have been adjusted.
- If an order is placed to produce a very large quantity of resources, workers will consider their theoretical productivity and not take excess raw materials.
- Fixed a bug where the absence of a bishop at the start of a religious rebellion caused all lords to join the rebels.
- Fixed a bug where manual combat on the world map with no standing enemies made the battle unstartable.
- Fixed a bug where a guest duelist provoking the player's lords into a duel triggered the matriarch’s anger toward the player.
- Fixed a bug where any alcohol consumed by residents was incorrectly considered Moonshine.
- Fixed a bug where the tooltip about a vassal being exempt from taxes due to troop use was incorrectly shown for the player’s ally instead of the vassal.