"This week we are going to step back a little and take a closer look at our vision of how we see players using Warbands."

"The ever shifting terrain and the verticality provide by the many land layers makes Godus a unique landscape for battle. We really want to play on these features to provide an experience that is very different from what players might expect from a RTS title."

"Directing troops and exploiting the landscape (and even altering on the fly) in any meaningful way proved to be a very challenging feat of multi-tasking once more than half a dozen units were on the field. The decision of using Warbands grew out the desire to retain a sense of scale to conflicts without forcing the player to manually control large numbers of individual soldiers."

"We really want to encourage smart and tactical gameplay, where players are rewarded for paying careful attention to the actions of individual Warbands.To this end we have reinforced the effects of the landscape on the performance of the soldiers. Height advantage and tree cover for example have a powerful effect on the outcome of battle. Players able to exploit the landscape with clever positioning of their Warbands will have the upper hand even over far superior numbers."

"Players will also notice that veteran Warbands will become stronger (potentially a LOT stronger). The goal is to encourage and reward players to use and preserve their soldiers carefully rather than seeing them as completely disposable. We are currently experimenting with how to make these veterans visually distinct on the battlefield to reinforce their status as elite units."

Here's a a couple of new screenshots of a recent Combat build showing off some of the new military props around Settlements.