Hey everyone, Steve here from Flying General Games, the (mostly) solo dev working on Notoris 2: Warlords. Here's what I've been up to the past two months. Heads up, this is kind of a long one..
Skill Trees
If you've spent time in the Total War: Three Kingdoms modding community, you might have come across my "Havie-Improved Skill Trees" mod. Building that mod was honestly where something big first clicked for me about game design. Reworking their skill tree system and watching how different node layouts shaped playstyle choices and made officers feel way more unique was so rewarding. That experience is a big part of what pushed me from modder to wanting to make my own game. So when it came time to design skill trees for Notoris 2, it felt like coming home.
The catch is that NOTR2 doesn't yet have the same number of modifiers, stats, and scopes that TW:3K does. So instead of designing around what already existed, I flipped the approach: design the nodes first based on what would be fun, then figure out what I could actually implement. New logic got added where I could, and anything needing more foundational work got backlogged.
That design-first process led to a JSON situation. I moved the underlying data from Unity Scriptable Objects to JSON, which meant rewriting a fair amount of the data management layer. Pure JSON turned out to be a worse workflow for me, so I landed on an awkward but functional middle ground: defining structure in the Unity editor but pointing it at JSON effect data. My plan is to write an exporter later that converts Scriptable Objects to JSON for final builds, making JSON the main source of truth the game runs on.
Progress through the two months:
One skill tree set up for each of the five attribute class types
Added dynamic multi-coloring on nodes that span multiple attributes, so the tree reads visually instead of being a wall of identical icons
AI officers now spend their skill points
Self-buff tactics were pulled out of the skill tree entirely. They weren't exciting as learnable nodes. Each class template now gets its own default self-buff, keeping the skill tree focused on modifiers that actually change how you play
Tactics
A bunch of new tactics were added and the whole system got more mature. Wyatt from NOTR1 is back part-time and added support for new AOE shapes, enabling tactics to target different areas near the user. I also added cooldowns, then built several INT tactics around manipulating cooldowns for both enemies and allies.
New tactics added:
Sweep (FORT)
Obliterate (STR)
Arcane Surge (INT self-buff)
Smothering Tide (INT)
Suppress (INT)
Favorable Winds (INT)
Fortify (FORT self-buff)
Revive (AUTH self-buff)
Commanding Strike (AUTH)
Iron Bulwark (AUTH)
Also, each troop class now gets one default tactic -- so no officer starts completely empty handed. At bare minimum every army unit has 1 self-buff and 1 usable tactic by default. The overall tactic count is still a little thin, but that'll be addressed when Items get added.
AI Improvements
The faction military AI got a major overhaul in the second half of May. The old system was fairly basic about army allocation and strategy. After a full rewrite, the AI can now:
Generate multiple deployment orders per town on new months (previously capped at one)
Generate defensive deployment orders each turn, so AI officers can sporadically deploy to protect towns without waiting for a monthly reset
Use a third strategy type to intercept incoming enemy armies, rather than just attacking or defending
Connect QuickDeploy defensive orders to individual officers, so they can actually see and act on them
Other improvements:
Reimplemented TacticInfluencers from NOTR1, the system that evaluates which valid tactic is the best choice in a given combat situation
AI pathing now correctly applies AP movement costs when an officer moves without an action
Adjusted formulas for perceived target value, troop deployment priorities, and damage against towns and armies
Not the final perfect AI, but noticeably more competent and less prone to doing nothing or oscillating between turns.
New Stats
Three new stats were added to the damage system:
BOW_DEF
SIEGE_ATK, tied to INT attribute tiers (future-proofing for siege engines/tactics from INT officers)
SIEGE_RESILIENCE, tied to FORT attribute tiers
These open up more meaningful differentiation between troop types and give the skill tree and officer attributes more to interact with.
Characters and World Content
Around 16 new character portraits added over the two months
16 new officer data files added (3 in late April, 13 in late May, the most ever done in a single sprint!)
Finished iterating on mountain asset variants for different biomes
Added a third town layout variant
Buildings can now display different art variants depending on which town layout they're in
More placement data for mountain ranges
Rebalanced starting town resources in the northern region of the map
UI and Quality of Life
Territory UI now shows selected army details: base stats, HP, resources, AP, troop type, rank, and available tactics
Entity buffs/debuffs now display visually in the territory entity UI
Injuries from duels/defeats are also shown there now, along with troop type and race
Hold spacebar during tactics and entity movement to speed up animations (ported from NOTR1, needs some tweaking for full AI turn coverage)
Camera movement is now allowed during AI end turn steps as long as no tactic is actively playing. Previously the camera locked for the entire AI phase
Radial wheel and entity menu got UX improvements around right-click to go back, consistent with the rest of the input conventions. The Info option now correctly opens the Officer Details Panel
Armies can now use a Rest action on the territory map to recover AP, and the AI uses it appropriately
Main menu language dropdown added. Localization system refactored with language files now split per language and loading more dynamically
Continue button added to the main menu for autosaves
Bug Fixes Worth Mentioning
Officers could unlock wrong or duplicate tactics after a save/reload due to class template data being applied twice
Skill tree points could go negative when loading a save
Armies sometimes got stuck trying to retreat to a town outside their movement range
Starting armies were auto-retreating on turn 0 due to how the new faction military AI evaluated threat levels
Town damage number popups were showing double the actual gate HP change
Entities dying to town arrows weren't always cleaning up their state properly
Players would double-spend will on tactics
Clicking through the player character portrait would open and immediately close the character details panel
That covers most of the significant stuff. Still a lot more to do before I'd call this game ready, but with these combat changes I'm really starting to see things come together. Might do a separate post on that soon.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions about the design decisions or any of the systems, drop them in the comments.