Hello and welcome to the new year!
This version's a big one - lots of balance and play-path tweaks, new scripting for player starts and AI-unit behavior (especially refugees), and new dynamics for picking your late-game faction leaders. We're closing in on what we envision as the final look and feel of the game - and we're really excited to hear what you think! Let us know in the discord or the bug submission portal.
(If you're not an alpha tester - do not despair! We're hoping two or three more versions will get us to a public version. Stay tuned, and wishlist us to hear when the next version drops!)
New to this version...
New Logic:
- Implemented new refugee scripts. Refugees will now "flee" for 3 turns, then settle in the nearest plains or steppe tile. Resettling a refugees unit on a pillaged tile will replant a hamlet and add this tile to the player's kingdom.
- "Heritage" starts: All players will start with knowing a how to farm a random crop or ranch a random animal, based on the player's starting terrain. (e.g. If a player starts on a snowy steppe, the starting crop/animal will work on snowy steppe). Stacks with faction leaders whose bonus is knowing a starting crop/animal.
Balance/Play:
- All buildings are now built by laborers (and only laborers can build buildings)
- Laborers are now available at level 0 ("Subsistence"). Warbands are now available at level 1 ("Surplus")
- Choose councilors: When the "new faction" dialogue pops up, players can now choose to promote a different leader to their council (rather than being forced to take the nominated leader). The chosen leader must still be aligned with the same faction. Leader options are pulled from the list of unlocked leaders; unlock more leaders by completing games!
- Hid resource/yield effects from events when they first pop up. Make your choice based on faction leader opinions and your own intuition!
- Expanding a settlement (hamlet->crossroads, crossroads->village, etc.) produces a 1-time reduction in time to the next unit. Otherwise, villages & towns produce units faster based on the number of surrounding tiles 'feeding' them.
GUI Fixes:
- fixed game-over and game-won images overlapping their borders
- fixed "lonely mountain" and "snowy steppe" tiles not shadowing correctly
- fixed unit-training window cropping in some situations
- redesigned councilor cards for tighter/more immersive display
- fixed control settings buttons cropping in some cases
- removed "font size" option from control settings (not fully implemented, removing to avoid confusion)
Bug Fixes:
- fixed hamlets appearing whenever a unit moved over water
- fixed a bug where closing the control settings window automatically changed the font size to large
- fixed warband promotion - warbands can only be upgraded to archers (or other units) when your kingdom is at a "surplus" level or higher
- fixed occasional crashing from the map-generator script failing to place all kingdoms