Hey Everyone,
Thank You for supporting our early access production and giving Medieval Kingdom Wars a chance. We have a long journey ahead of us - and as of now, the game is in early pre-alpha state with many months (if not a year) away from completion.
With that said - even now MKW has quite a lot to offer, and we are committed to releasing big weekly updates. With over 30 updates since the EA launch this summer, we are just gaining the momentum.
Now lets look into production plans for the rest of the Fall.
OCTOBER & NOVEMBER DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP
Upkeep Cost - this seemingly minor feature will have a huge impact on the world map gameplay. As units and some buildings will drain your silver resources in a monthly upkeep cost. This will force players to better balance out their towns and garrisons, as well as spread our the unit producing buildings
ETA: Middle October
World Map Economy - next up, we are adding new ways to earn Silver and research tree Trade Goods on the world map. Constructing certain building will improve tax rate, and certain settlements will produce certain Trade Goods.
ETA: Middle October
Tech Tree Updates - tech tree will get greatly improved interface, with techs showing icons and details of exactly what units, buildings or sub-techs they unlocked. In addition a lot of techs will get moved around and their prices improved. Finally we have to complete around 40 of the techs that effect the world map gameplay.
ETA: Middle October
Core Resources Persistence - it`s about time to connect the RTS view and world map resources together. Now all the resources, including army resources will be persistent, they will continue to slowly gather while player is on the world map, and player could also exchange silver to purchase RTS resources for a particular town or army. In addition we will add a Silver Mine that will slowly produce silver while in RTS view.
ETA: Late October
Updates to Silver Drain - silver drain is about to become a much bigger factor. While having very little effect in early game with small settlements and armies, it`ll play a much bigger role in later game - as larger armies and towns will have a much higher silver drain
ETA: Late October
Bug Fixes and Improvements - there are over 36 other smaller bug fixes and improvements planned - too many to get into, but yeah - something like 21 of these are Your suggestions and bug reports, so once again - Thank You!
ETA: Late October
New Town Levels - we plan to add three new large towns to the game - Caen in large October, and Dublin and Munich in November.
ETA: Late October to Late November.
AI Armies Behavior - AI armies will get a lot more intelligent and start playing by the same rules as the payer. For example they will not disappear after capturing a town, but will continue their conquest. Also they`ll look for targets that they can reasonably hope to defeat, instead of occasional suicide attacks.
ETA: Early November
AI Town Behavior - AI will start building up their towns with buildings and walls as campaign progresses, as well as upgrading the settlement levels. Garrisons will also improve so in the mid to late game there will be no walk-overs.
ETA: Early November
World Map collision and Choke Points - World Map is getting collision and choke points, where armies would not be able to scale mountains, or cross river unless there`s a bridge or a major ford.
Kingdom Diplomacy
This is the biggest change this Fall. It`s not just about the new Chancellor Menu, but so much more. Diplomacy system in MKW is complex and a mini game in itself. And while we`ll only see basic diplomatic features added at first, it`ll be a huge step forward.
ETA: Early November
Local Lords Diplomacy
As part of taking things to the new level in grand strategy - diplomacy is designed to account not just for the 14 current nations, but for each and every of over 60 minor lords and nobles (to be expanded in the future).
ETA: Early November
More Hamlet Designers - same time we are working on more hamlets designs - including fishing villages, small harbors, mountain villages e.t.c
ETA: Mid November
Expanding the Random Map - right now most levels for Army vs Army or Hamlet attack look the same - just some Oaks, maybe a lake and a river there. in July we are greatly updating this system to include a lot of new terrain - from dense forests, to swamps.
ETA: Mid November
Feudal Kingdom Hierarchy
And last by not least we hope to start including the very basics of the Feudal Kingdom Hierarchy - players and other minor lord standing without the kingdom, their relations with the king and each other and so much more. Again - we`ll only the very basics of this system in for now, but it will dramatically effect the gameplay already.
ETA: Late November
Reworked Tutorial Campaign - This is a BIG one. We are completely redesigning and greatly expanding our prologue learning tutorial campaign. It will become a lot more entertaining and cinematic, and cover 8 scenarios instead of 3. New tutorial will cover majority of the world map features as well as plenty of combat features.
ETA: Late November