Behind the Sword Leaves Early Access
After a long time in development, Behind the Sword is officially leaving Early Access.
This is the biggest and most important update the game has received. A large part of the game has been revisited, many long-standing problems have been fixed, performance has been improved, and the AI has received a major redesign.
With this update, I consider Behind the Sword to have reached the state I wanted it to reach as a complete game.
A Major Update
A significant amount of work went into reviewing and improving systems that had been part of the game for years.
Many bugs have been fixed, including some rare but serious problems that could cause matches to freeze, crash, behave incorrectly, or break after playing for a long time.
World generation, kingdoms, provinces, combat, scoring, music, controls, localization, tooltips and many other parts of the game have received fixes and improvements.
Performance has also been improved, particularly in large matches with many kingdoms.
Much Smarter AI
The AI has received one of the largest changes in this update.
The previous AI was based on an older prototype system and relied heavily on simple or random decisions. It has now been redesigned to make much more deliberate decisions while still following the same rules as the player.
AI kingdoms now make better decisions about expanding, managing their economy, purchasing and positioning units, building farms, defending important territory, controlling trees, reinforcing armies and choosing which enemies and territories are worth attacking.
The different difficulty levels are also much more meaningful now.
Novice opponents remain easier and make less efficient decisions, while Expert and Master opponents are increasingly better at planning their economy, protecting valuable territory, preparing attacks and reacting to dangerous enemies.
Higher difficulties do not receive hidden money, stronger units or other artificial advantages. They simply make better decisions.
Better Controls and Quality of Life
Selecting land is now more responsive.
Small natural mouse movements while clicking no longer prevent a tile from being selected, while dragging the planet still works normally without causing accidental clicks.
Several other smaller usability problems have also been corrected throughout the game.
Leaving Early Access
Most importantly, this update marks the end of Behind the Sword's Early Access period.
Behind the Sword has changed considerably since its original release, and reaching this point involved revisiting many systems that were created years ago and bringing the game to the state I wanted for its full release.
I don't currently have another major expansion or large update planned after this one. That doesn't necessarily mean the game will never receive another update, I may still release fixes, compatibility updates or other changes when necessary, but this release represents the completion of the main development of Behind the Sword.
Thank you to everyone who played the game during Early Access, reported problems, shared feedback, or simply gave Behind the Sword a chance.
I hope you enjoy the completed version of Behind the Sword.
Version 1.0.0
[AI Overhaul]
Completely redesigned the AI for Novice, Expert and Master difficulties.
AI kingdoms now make much smarter decisions about expansion, combat, economy and defense.
AI now makes better use of the units it already owns before purchasing additional units.
AI now chooses attack targets based on their value, defenses and strategic importance instead of relying heavily on random choices.
AI now makes better decisions about when and where to move units.
AI can reposition units toward more useful fronts instead of leaving them idle.
AI is better at reinforcing units when stronger forces are needed.
AI is less likely to waste units by combining them without a useful reason.
AI now considers whether moving a unit would leave important territory exposed.
AI can recognize important enemy farms, villages, castles and vulnerable territories.
Master AI is better at identifying kingdoms that are becoming dangerously powerful and putting pressure on them.
Improved AI behavior when territories or provinces become connected during its turn.
AI difficulties now differ much more clearly in how well they make decisions.
AI difficulty is based on intelligence and decision-making rather than hidden bonuses or cheats.
[AI Economy]
AI now plans its spending more carefully.
AI considers future income and army costs before making expensive purchases.
AI is much less likely to accidentally bankrupt itself by purchasing too many units.
AI now actively builds farms to improve its economy.
Improved farm placement so stronger AI difficulties prefer safer locations.
AI now keeps more money available when it expects to need units or defenses.
Expert and Master AI make increasingly better long-term economic decisions.
[AI Defenses]
AI now actively builds towers and castles.
Towers are placed where they can protect threatened or valuable territory instead of being placed mostly at random.
AI considers nearby enemies before deciding where defenses are needed.
AI gives extra importance to protecting farms and villages.
AI avoids unnecessarily placing multiple defenses in the same location.
Expert and Master AI can create stronger defensive positions along contested borders.
Master AI is more willing to build castles when an important area is under heavy pressure.
[AI Tree Management]
AI now actively controls trees growing inside its territory.
AI recognizes that uncontrolled trees can damage its economy over time.
Tree cleanup now depends on how many trees exist compared with the size of the kingdom.
Expert and Master AI dedicate more units to tree removal when forests begin spreading too much.
AI prefers using existing units for tree removal instead of unnecessarily purchasing new units.
AI prioritizes dangerous trees that are likely to continue spreading.
AI can purchase additional villagers for cleanup if tree growth becomes severe.
Tree management is balanced against expansion, defense and warfare so AI kingdoms do not ignore enemies just to remove trees.
[Combat & Units]
Fixed attacking a weaker enemy unit sometimes incorrectly upgrading the attacking unit.
Defeating an enemy unit no longer counts as combining two friendly units.
Units are now upgraded through merging only when moving onto compatible friendly units.
Fixed several unusual unit combinations that could result in incorrect unit behavior.
Fixed some situations where AI units could attack defenses using rules different from the player.
Player and AI attacks now consistently follow the same combat rules.
Improved handling of unit movement and territory ownership after capturing land.
[Kingdoms & Provinces]
Fixed defeated kingdoms sometimes remaining active after they had been eliminated.
Fixed eliminated kingdoms potentially continuing to take AI turns.
Fixed several problems that could occur when provinces joined together.
Fixed rare cases where provinces could continue referring to kingdoms that no longer existed.
Fixed territory ownership sometimes becoming incorrect after captures.
Fixed some situations where player-owned land could remain incorrectly marked after an enemy captured it.
Improved handling of kingdoms whose territory changes significantly during a turn.
Fixed several long-match issues involving kingdom and province state.
[World Generation]
Fixed rare world generation situations that could cause the game to become stuck indefinitely.
Fixed large oceans, lakes or landmasses potentially causing a crash during world generation.
Improved stability when generating unusual planets.
Added better handling for invalid or incomplete planet settings.
Improved several parts of biome and terrain generation.
Improved performance during world generation.
[Performance]
Improved performance during matches with many kingdoms.
Reduced the amount of unnecessary kingdom-wide checking performed after AI actions.
Territory changes now update only the kingdoms that actually need to be updated in many situations.
Improved several AI searches and decisions to reduce unnecessary work.
Improved performance when checking large groups of connected territories.
Reduced unnecessary work when updating graphics and territory states.
Improved performance of several world-generation systems.
Large AI-only matches should run more efficiently, especially with high kingdom counts.
[Controls]
Improved land selection responsiveness.
Small mouse movements while clicking no longer prevent a land tile from being selected.
Added a small movement tolerance before the game considers the mouse to be dragging.
Planet movement now begins only after the mouse has actually moved far enough to count as a drag.
Fixed dragging the planet sometimes also selecting a land tile.
Fixed releasing the mouse after a drag sometimes causing an unwanted click.
[Music & Audio]
Fixed Alt+Tabbing or temporarily leaving the game causing the current song to change.
Music now pauses when the game loses focus and continues the same song when returning.
The current song now resumes from the same position instead of starting another track.
Fixed some sound effects playing at an incorrect volume.
Improved handling of situations where no music tracks are available.
[Localization & Tooltips]
Fixed a crash that could occur when displaying certain tooltips.
Improved tooltip stability when they appear for the first time.
Fixed dynamic tooltips sometimes displaying the wrong text after changing language.
Improved handling of translated text containing commas and quotation marks.
Improved fallback behavior when a selected language is unavailable.
Improved handling of missing or invalid localization data.
[Scoring]
Fixed some province scores being calculated using the wrong territory.
Fixed kingdom changes sometimes affecting unrelated entries on the scoreboard.
Improved score handling after kingdoms and provinces change ownership.
[Game Setup]
Fixed some New Game settings being unintentionally changed when opening the menu.
Fixed some invalid game mode settings being handled incorrectly.
Fixed player colors sometimes being handled incorrectly in matches with large numbers of kingdoms.
Fixed AI-only games unnecessarily reserving the player's kingdom color.
Improved starting kingdom placement in unusual game configurations.
[Economy]
Fixed a rare farm-counting problem that could cause farm prices to become extremely high.
Improved farm ownership tracking after territory changes.
Improved handling of income after kingdoms gain or lose territory.
[Steam]
Improved Steam player name initialization.
Improved behavior when Steam services are unavailable or still initializing.
[Interface & General Fixes]
Fixed the FPS counter displaying inaccurate values.
Fixed several rare graphical variation errors that could occur when certain art lists contained fewer entries than expected.
Improved handling of missing or incomplete game data.
Improved stability when returning to menus or starting new matches.
Added additional protections against rare invalid game states.
Fixed various smaller bugs and inconsistencies throughout the game.
[Full Release]
Behind the Sword has officially left Early Access.