Hey Everyone,
Thanks again for your continued support and invaluable feedback on Knights of the Crusades! We’re thrilled with the engagement since our Early Access launch and excited to present the second update.
To start things off—you’ll notice smoother gameplay across all systems, particularly on AMD graphics cards. We've also expanded our support for ultra-wide monitors.
On the world map, we've streamlined building management, enhanced the clarity of city and population displays, and improved unit recruitment interfaces. There are numerous improvements in RTS mode as well—like displaying building levels and various other UI enhancements.
We've also begun balancing the game, starting with the introduction of a new Difficulty menu allowing you to adjust the campaign and battle difficulty at any point.
We recommend making sure you're playing on Medium difficulty (Easy difficulty was only intended for players very new to grand strategy and RTS games).
Artistically, we've unified the look of Kings and Lords across each kingdom, creating a consistent yet diverse aesthetic. More art updates will come in the next update.
Finally, we've addressed numerous localization issues across the board.
Thanks again for your continued support—our third update is just a few days away. For full details, see the complete Patch Notes for Update #2 (game version 0.25) below:
Game Engine Updates
- Performance boost across all systems – gaining several FPS
- Attempt to fix major performance issue affecting some AMD video cards
- Various improvements to wide-monitor resolution support
- Added support for resolutions like 2560x1080
World Map Updates
- Reworked UI for managing buildings on world map – for upgrading and demolishing
- Attack window now properly shows the name of cities that player is attacking
- Updated how civilian population is displayed in Recruit window: new icons, centered with Citizen label
- Various updates to Recruit and Transfer units display for citizens and army/town names
- Strength now shown on main army/city window
RTS Updates
- Buildings in RTS mode now show their level
- Fixed various issues with game speed controls in RTS mode
- Fixed clicks not registering on RTS map when near the top UI panel
- Number of improvements to click registration in all RTS situations
- Improved appearance of mouse-over pop-ups
Balancing Changes
- Added new Difficulty menu to the game's options – allowing battle and campaign difficulty to be changed anytime during the campaign
- New players who start the tutorial campaign will automatically play at medium difficulty
- Players who already started the campaign after playing the tutorial are recommended to switch to medium difficulty
- Started reworking mid- and late-game difficulty to be more challenging
Art Updates
- New approach to nations' Kings and Lords: all now wear similar colours representing their Kingdom
- New Lord character art for Kingdom of Leinster
- New Lord character art for Kingdom of Scotland
- New King and 5 new Lord character art pieces for Kingdom of England
- 7 new Lord character art pieces for Kingdom of France
Translation Improvements
- Fixed loading screen tips text running over borders or not showing entirely
- Fixed some text appearing in English on the world map UI
- Many improvements to German translations
- Improvements to Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian translations