Welcome, lords and ladies of KINGDOMS!
0.592
We're back on track! Todays update will bring us closer to wars - actually we're almost there, only final shapes are left. As you remember Kingdoms is 100% AI designed game - that means when I design game mechanics the main thought is "How it will work for AI first?", the player is only small part of constantly developing open-world and for me, as for designer, is always very important to understand how that or that game mechanic will work for AI. And when developing war-camps, marching and future (but almost ready) settlements attacks I've always kept in head following "All these should work for AI", so I prepared all the code and all the mechanics for that. And the day when AI could use (and manage!) war-camps, gather army there, build things, declare wars and send their armies to enemy gates has finally come! Now AI cant do the same things player can and world around becomes more and more alive. When testing todays update mechanics and seeing armies marching all over the map, war-camps smokes popping there and there and I thought "This is actually cool, thing are finally shaping". If everything goes well, I'll start to add sieges stuff tomorrow (or Tuesday, depends) already. I want and don't want to rush at the same time. It's exiting to finally see all this in action already, but amount of thing to polish is still quite large - using of sieges machines/barricades, animations, background calculations for battles (when player is far away, but battle is happening), walls destructions etc.etc.
Today's changelog is quite large and I would like to point at most important "non-war" additions. First one is archery balance - weapons and arrows damage was changed as well as archers perks additional damage. Now experienced archer with good bow can hunt animals or kill bandits without 100+ arrows shots. But please (please!) don't hunt bears with self-made wooden bow, made literally from the stick! The second one I want to point is UI change. This one is important because it was added thanks to your feedback (Don't be afraid to share it in game Community!). Central pop-up text was moved to right-bottom corner of the screen and font size was reduced a bit - looks much better now. Full changelog follows:
CHANGELOG & BUGFIXING
- Fixed issue when settlements weren't discovered from start in populated world when player picked "Pilgrim" perk;
- Amount of items bought from the shops was decreased a bit in order to balance mirco economy and not to let shops become empty at some point;
- Positions of central UI notifications (static ones) were changed a bit;
- Central notifications messages were moved to right-bottom corner of the screen, font size was reduced a bit;
- Fixed issue when Kingdoms could belong to wrong kingdom after loading the save (new game needed);
- Now all war notifications are more precise in meaning of naming settlements and kingdoms they belong;
- War declaration mechanics for AI were completely rewritten in order to make every war declaration logical and understandable in meaning of AI goals;
- AI now can choose a place for war-camp and set it there as well as player can;
- Archery balance: bows damage was balanced a bit;
- Archery balance: arrow damage was fixed;
- Archery balance: shot damage now depends on archery skill (+50%, +100%, +250%, +500%, +1000%);
- Wolves running speed was decreased a bit;
- AI army size depends on leader commanding skills (10%, 20%, 50%, 80% of total settlers);
- AI will declare war when having at least 10 soldiers in army;
- AI now can set soldiers to build structures at war-camp;
- AI now can send army march to hostile settlement when all structures in war-camp are ready;
- Fixed issue when sometimes house parameters in settlement could be saved incorrect when this house was previously empty;
- Quest "Bring raw bears meat to general" was added;
- Quest "Bring iron axe to farmer" was added;
- "EXP" was replaced with "LP" in all places where needed - UI, dialogs, character creation etc.
- After Level up player can see how much learning points are left;
- Snow amount on terrain for cold months was changed;
- AI pathfinding parameters were changed a bit in order to increase performance;
- Animals pathfinding parameters were changed a bit in order to increase performance;
IMPORTANT
1) Please, feel free to use built-in bug reporter (F11) - it will help development a lot.
2) If something is broken make sure you have verified game files and started new world, remember -KINGDOMS is still EA, i try to make saves compatibility for every new version of the game, but can't guarantee it all the time.
3) The game is still in development, it's NOT finished product, updates are coming 3-4 times a week and that will inevitably cause various issues. Updates for game in development and for finished game - are two absolutely different things, remember that. Game mechanics come and gone, bugs are being fixed and new ones appear all the time. Its a normal thing for development process. If you want to experience KINGDOMS as it was initially designed - smooth, without bugs and full of working mechanics - please, wait till final version will be out.
Thanks for your support, see you very soon!
Cyfieithydd