Hello everyone,
Dmitry here.
Here is another patch for the Beta branch. This one is not particularly large.
For a while, updates will become less frequent, roughly once a month, because most of the studio is currently working on the fundamental rework of the game's mechanics, which I talk about separately here:
So for now, only part of the team is working on standalone mechanics that can be released regularly. More precisely, that part of the team is called Ivan, and today's update is about 80% his work.
Let's see what Ivan has prepared for us today!
Counter-Intrigues
Right now, when a lord is preparing an intrigue, for example seducing one of your lords to turn them into a puppet, it is not always clear what you can do about it. Now every intrigue has a way to counter it.
We have added a number of improvements to give you ways to fight back.
Sabotage Weapon
By sneaking into a lord's house at night, you can sabotage their weapon so that, for example, the next time they go hunting or fight a duel, they might find themselves in an unpleasant situation.
Prepare Nectar
A character can prepare Nectar to drink before their next fight, such as a fistfight, to improve their chances.
Nectar also works as an antidote, reducing the chance of being poisoned.
Chance-Based Actions
We have lowered the relations thresholds required for actions such as turning someone into a puppet, seduction, and making an ally. At the same time, we raised the upper threshold and made the success of these actions chance-based.
This means you can now take the risk and try them earlier.
Counters
Every intrigue now has something that can be used against it. You can counter a fistfight duelist by preparing Nectar, a seducer with a fistfight or Madness Potion, a Wolf Hammer wielder with a sabotaged weapon, and so on.
Inviting Neighboring Lords
Manipulators now bring gold as a gift, so successfully defending yourself against them can actually leave you better off.
However, if you have good relations with your neighbors, you can spend that money to invite a lord from a neighboring province to participate in an intrigue with a single click.
Dissuade Action
Once you gain influence over a character, you can attempt to dissuade them from carrying out their intrigue.
Interface
Detailed tooltips, hints, and breadcrumbs now explain more clearly who is planning to do what, and what you can do about it.
Tree Highlighting
As requested by the community, when placing a building, trees and bushes that will be destroyed by construction are now highlighted in red.
Map Generation Improvements
Map generation is now significantly faster.
We have also added the ability to save and paste map seeds. Just remember the rest of your settings. As in other games, a map seed only produces the same result when used with the same overall generation settings.
Full Changelog
Worldviews
All lords will receive a worldview when created. For regular lords, it will become active after they are appointed as a king or politician.
In the Family Editor, a worldview can be selected for any lord. The selected worldview is guaranteed to be assigned when the character becomes a ruler or politician.
The ruler or politician hint in the city menu will display their worldview, with its corresponding color and a separate tooltip.
The notification about a new politician will show their worldview and allow you to open their hint.
UI & QoL
Hints for residents, soldiers, slaves, and bandits will show their most common negative and positive thoughts.
Strength and weakness hints will be displayed in a compact framed row. Temporarily inactive weaknesses will show an icon and recovery time.
A character's strength and weakness will be displayed as separate entries in the "Conditions" section, with icons and detailed hints.
In strength and weakness hints, lists of vulnerable lords and lords with an advantage will also display the name of the corresponding opposite trait.
When selecting a performer for an action with a suitable "target weakness - performer strength" combination, up to three suitable lords from neighboring domains will be shown. They can be assigned after being invited to the city.
Weakness hints will show suitable invited guests and up to three available foreign lords with the corresponding opposite strength.
Fistfight Duel, Madness Poisoning, Weapon Sabotage, and Prepare Nectar will be placed in the "Countermeasures" subsection of the Intrigues section.
In the local map action menu, for lords who pose a threat, categories containing suitable counter-intrigues will be marked with a warning icon, while individual actions will display icons for the required strengths or weaknesses.
Hints for "Fistfight Duel," "Madness Poisoning," and "Weapon Sabotage" will warn you if the action would weaken the strength of a lord who poses a threat to the player.
A new advice notification will warn about a conspiracy, dark deed, politician action, or a revealed scheming guest, and will show the initiator's strength and weakness as well as their target's weakness.
The "Risk of Rutabaga Typhus" advice will appear if at least three susceptible residents of Nevorunian culture have recently eaten Rutabaga, and will disappear once infected residents actually appear.
Hints for kidnapping, robbery, poisoning, deadly duels, and conspiracies will warn that the performer will be blinded on failure instead of showing the outdated consequences involving fear and loss of support.
The "High Opinion of the King" reason hint for the "Sermon of Hope" will show the required relations threshold of 25.
The pillaging threat hint will show that the ruler will respond in 1 day.
For reactions to actions on the World Map, the king's reaction is now displayed as the faction's reaction, while politicians' reactions are no longer shown.
Army information will include a section showing the total amount of weapons, armor, shields, and other equipment currently issued to soldiers.
The expanded or collapsed state of categories in the "Daily Economy" menu will persist between openings of the menu and after saving/loading the game.
Hints for items in the "Problems" menu will open to the right of the entire menu and will no longer cover the lord panel.
The screen event showing the results of Seduction will now appear after sex ends, and its hint will contain detailed information about the outcome.
Intrigues, Strengths and Weaknesses
Added the "Dissuade" action. If a threatening lord has relations of at least 0 with the performer, you can attempt to cancel their conspiracy, dark deed, rebellion, guest intrigue, or political strategy.
Added an action to sabotage a sleeping character's weapon. The performer will sneak into their house and prepare the weapon to break. It will then be destroyed the next time it strikes during an armed fight.
A character can now prepare Nectar from storage in advance. One unit will automatically be consumed the next time they enter combat.
A foreign lord can be invited from a friendly neighboring city to participate in local intrigues. The payment will be split between the lord and their ruler, while the player's puppet will come for free.
For World Map actions performed by a character from another city, the assignment will first be delivered by a messenger. While waiting, a Paper icon will appear on the action card.
When selecting a performer for a local action, a suitable lord from the World Map can be invited directly to the city. The hint will show the cost, and once the lord arrives, they will become available for assignment.
Fistfight Duel and Madness Poisoning can now target regular guests, while regular poison can be used against the player's own lords. Kidnapping guests has been moved from "Intrigues" to the general action list.
After being greeted by the king, guests with the "Schemer" and "Manipulator" roles will reveal their intentions and give the player 300 gold.
Prepared Nectar will be consumed when a regular poisoning attempt occurs and will reduce its success chance by 50%. A separate notification will appear when poison is neutralized. Nectar preparation will automatically be cleared if the character runs out of Nectar or their inventory is emptied.
"Seduction," "Make an Ally," and "Make a Puppet" now have a chance of success. Their activation thresholds have been lowered.
The "Chickenhearted" weakness will increase all received fear thoughts by 50%, while the "Brute" strength will increase fear caused by nighttime intimidation by 50%. Successful intimidation will also cancel the target's desire and political strategy.
The "Deep Sleeper" trait will become "Absent-Minded." Such a character has a 75% chance to leave their door unlocked, allowing someone to enter their house without breaking in or waking its residents. Its previous World Map effect will remain.
The automatic attempt to turn the target into a puppet has been removed from the Seduction action task.
Miscellaneous
After every regular sermon, the next eligible sermon by a politician or bishop with relations of at least 25 with the king will be a "Sermon of Hope."
Once every 12 hours, a bishop can comfort a friendly adult lord who is grieving the death of a loved one or a miscarriage, free of charge.
Hops have been added to the list of resources that can be ordered from a trader. The city will sell them in batches of 30 units.
When placing a building, trees, bushes, and berry bushes that will be removed by construction will be highlighted in red.
Four new options have been added to the set of faction banner symbols.
A local map generation settings menu has been added to the new game setup.
A text box for setting the map seed has been added to the local map generation menu.
Ctrl+V is now supported in the game's text boxes. Pasted text will replace the current text in the text box.
Balance
Puppets will choose dark deeds before receiving their evening investment and will no longer be able to immediately spend newly received money on a crime.
Followers of the king who are not puppets can no longer perform duels, slander, seduction, murder, or poisoning. These intrigues will require either the king or a puppet.
A blinded AI lord will cease to be a politician and will no longer be able to perform World Map actions. Failing a dark deed now blinds the performer instead of reducing support and causing fear, while a successful dark deed will no longer send the performer to the player.
Murder can no longer target a guest on the local map.
Local map kidnapping hints will show the ransom, fear, relations change, chance of waking up, and relevant strengths and weaknesses. Rulers can no longer be kidnapped.
The "Hot-Tempered" and "Blinder" strength/weakness pair has been removed from the game. The hidden "Duelist" trait will no longer be automatically assigned to lords.
For a Fistfight Duel, both the target and performer must have a Combat skill of at least 4. The previous requirement based on the difference between their skills has been removed.
Seduction, nighttime intimidation, Madness Poisoning, and Fistfight Duels on the World Map will each cost the player 200 gold. The cost will be refunded if the action is canceled.
After a Fistfight Duel, interest in the winner and loser will change only among lords of the opposite sex who are currently in the same province.
A peace offer will automatically be canceled if the player performs an aggressive action against the faction that made the offer.
Guests will arrive with a random number of bodyguards from 1 to 3 instead of 2 to 3.
The "Light Armor" book will become a green, medium-difficulty book. On Peaceful and Normal difficulty, books will cost half as much, while an Ambitious AI's army will be limited to 160% of the player's army strength instead of 200%.
The thought from winning or losing a fistfight has been reduced from 20 to 10.
The "Holding a Hostage" thought has been removed when a lord is kidnapped.
Fixes
Fixed a bug where ceremonies could break after loading if the temple associated with them failed to load.
Fixed a crash when starting the tutorial caused by the new generation settings menu.
Optimized the local map generation process.
The squad creation tutorial will no longer access step data before that step begins, preventing a crash.
Fixed an error during break-ins that could occur if the reaction to the crime started a fight and destroyed the active break-in activity.
For sex, a suitable available house belonging to either participant will now be selected, rather than only a house belonging to the initiator.
A political threat will now be restored after the politician or the target of their strategy returns to the map.
Fixed a bug where the actual chance of winning at dice was lower than the chance shown in the action hint. On the local map, the initiator's actual chance of winning at dice was half the displayed value.
Fixed the position of icons above the hall storage.
Character descriptions will now be correctly inserted into hints together with their own context.
The inquisitor hint will now correctly display the group size.
Fixed a bug where moving the cursor from one strength/weakness badge to another on the appoint button could cause the appoint button's own hint to appear.
Nested hints inside custom hints, such as lord hints, can once again be hovered over.