Hello everyone! This is Tenkajin IceCream, developer of TOHOTOPIA!
Here is the development update from my partner and me since our last report.
This week, three of the Myouren Empire's Heroes and a batch of new features are complete. The Hakurei Empire's Heroes are still in testing and need a little more adjustment time. This content is expected to join the Beta branch next week and, overall, to reach the stable version before October.
Myouren Empire: First Playable Content Complete
Last week we revealed the designs of Shou Toramaru and Nazrin. In the meantime, the first playable content for the sixth faction, the Myouren Empire, is also complete, including its unique tiles, buildings, units, and three Heroes: Byakuren Hijiri, Nazrin, and Shou Toramaru.
Once it joins the Beta, you will be able to try all of this yourself. Here is a first look at how the faction plays.
Palanquin Ship: A Tile That Carries Your Army
The Myouren Empire's unique Palanquin Ship tile can carry units as it moves. It advances together with your army, and it can even make fleets fly! Deciding which units to load and where to send them will be a new challenge worth exploring.
The Star Lotus Home Port works alongside the Palanquin Ship, letting you build and upgrade it. Another unique tile, the Windsor Royal Dojo, grants units extra Movement Action Points after they attack, making your troops far more flexible.
The new Longbowman unit gains extra range on dojos, mountains, and Palanquin Ships.
On the economy side, the unique Manor building makes even more use of granaries, farms, and rivers, boosting your economy and city development. The rivers we introduced last time will also have new uses in this faction.
Map Editor: Build Your Own Battlefield
The Map Editor is also complete and is expected to join the Beta together with this batch of content. Once it opens, you can enter it from Create → Map Editor, edit and save custom maps, then pick your own creations for a match.
Try a special terrain layout, or design an interesting challenge for yourself. The first release of custom maps supports single-player only.
The more flexible Mod Editor, which supports custom factions, Heroes, units, and buildings, is under development as well.
Training Grounds: Making New Units Easier to Learn
As units, buildings, and Heroes keep growing in number, descriptions alone are sometimes not intuitive enough. That is why we have completed the Training Grounds feature: a small dedicated test environment for each of them, so you can quickly learn, test, and practice how they are used.
Tier List Maker: A New Way to Share Your Impressions
The Tier List Maker tool is also complete. Once it opens, you can rank Heroes by strength, difficulty, or simply how much you like them, and share your list with us.
Your feedback during our faction adjustments has helped us a great deal. We hope this tool will make it easier to compare how different Heroes feel in play. If you also add your reasons for a ranking, it will help us understand your thoughts even better.
Matches and Multiplayer
We will allow hosts to adjust the action order of room members, making multiplayer matches fairer.
Simultaneous actions for teammates in multiplayer matches such as 2v2 are also in development, which should save time in a game.
Hakurei Empire and Other Faction Balance
The Hakurei Empire will gain a guarantee of at least one river at the start; after a Berserker sounds the horn, unpromoted units can be promoted immediately; and Danegeld will also unlock Battlefield Inspiration, letting you actively grant War Loot to units on the battlefield.
Adjustments for the other empires are still in our development queue. To be honest, balance work is a serious challenge for us: it needs careful design and testing, and it takes far more time than we expected. But some Heroes are clearly too weak and some strategies clearly too strong, and they are doing real damage to the current experience. For these more urgent balance problems, we will pull them out and handle them separately first, to ease some of the frustration you have been running into online.
Other Improvements
The map filter will add a road view, making it easy to check roads and connections at a glance.
In addition, the bug fixes on the Beta branch for Natural Wonders, Hero Altars, and City-States will be released together, including city-states failing to return to neutrality after a war, missing notifications after becoming a suzerain, and new units still spawning after a barbarian camp or city-state has been occupied.
Coming to the Beta Branch Next Week
That is everything completed this week that is waiting to be released for testing. We expect to add it to the V0.7.12 Beta next week, and we expect the iteration on the Hakurei Empire, Natural Wonders, the river system, and more to reach the stable version next week as well. Please check the update announcement at that time for the exact release schedule.
Once these updates are live, we welcome you to try the Myouren Empire and the new features yourself, and tell us how they feel in actual play! Thank you for your continued support and patience.