Hello there.
Development has been made on the merchant system, where players can buy weapons, supplies and general items to aid them in combat, and sell their hard-earned loot. This is all adaptations to our current system which was devised to showcase our game, as we move closer to the final World Campaign mode.
When finished, in your Warband scene, you will be able to choose between travelling to a Wandering Merchant, Blacksmith or to the nearby Marketplace. Each merchant sells and buys specific items.
Marketplace: Here you buy supplies such as food, alcohol, tools and medical items.
Wandering Merchant: This rootless, travelling merchant will buy off your loot and also sell items with a high mark-up, but sometimes he may have weapons, armor or something which you won't be able to find elsewhere.
Blacksmith: The local blacksmith will buy off from you armor, weapons, hides and scrap metal from you. Obviously, he also sells ammunition, armor, shields, helmets, weapons and everything needed to keep your warband well-supplied.
We will have more merchants in the future, such as a Horse Breeder, for example. These are just the first three to get our trading system going. There will be some livelihood to the trading scene, as villagers and their children roam around the roads to simulate the populace of the town you're trading in, and this will later come in handy for us to populate the villages, so its not just a personal touch.
Second, we are re-evaluating our current currency system to involve more physical currencies. Currently, currency is almost like different "credits", which you do not spend yet, but when looting cabins and houses, you automatically add it to your total. We're changing it so each coin has weight, stack and occupies a place in a unit's inventory. This will be later used for looting the enemy's defeated units and controlling the personal wealth of the units you command.
Third, unit looting. There is a very high demand to enable players to loot the units they defeat, and we are figuring out where to go with this mechanic. On one hand, punishing a losing player will be required, as losing a precious weapon or piece of armor can hurt your units. On another, we also want to make ransom mechanics so players who lose their units will eventually get their equipment and units back, if they do not outright die from the results of their battle. It is tough to find the correct approach to this, and we're evaluating the best route.
Fourth: there's a nifty gemstone system being developed where you find gems of different sizes and cuts. Depending on the type of gem you find, there's a huge chance you can get pretty rich, but you'll need someone that can identify the gem for you. This is still under development, so stay tuned for more details.
Finally, our pixel artist is focused on also remaking the units of the Visigoths, as previously made with the Aihwudrauhts. The next unit being redone is the Hundafaths, and more will follow. If you like his work, feel free to reach out to him: [email protected]
We have not forgotten our commitment to the Timeline; we promised ranked play with territory conquest in June, new units for each tribe in August and minigames in July. Our timeline is being shifted as mechanics we did not promise and/or were promised at a later date (such as the Suebians being released much earlier) are being released earlier than expected.
- Territory Conquest: This is a very important mechanic for us because it will later on be used for the World Campaign game mode. Currently, players are limited to only skirmishes vs the AI or against other players. There will be new game modes planned to support this function, but we ask a little bit more patience, since the maps are still being done and the coding for previous functions to make this more complete is still being dealt with. We plan to make the province of Tarraconensis the battlegrounds for our new tournament system, explained below:
- Tournaments: We do not like the current tribe picking system. Later down this month, we will revisit this to make the first choice of the player's tribe to be more forgiving, so players can get a handle of it. After this first pick, you can choose a more certain tribe with a more structured warband and play in a tournament of sorts. You will fight other players who already picked their tribe for this, and fight it out to conquer the municipalities. The tribe who gets the most points (decided by battles won, units defeated, and so forth) conquers the municipality; at the end of the tournament, the tribe with the most conquerings will retain control of Tarraconensis.
- Minigames: Our first minigames are already made, but we want to make a few more to introduce them all at the same time. Plus, we do not have territory conquest yet, which is a pre-requisite. Players will be able to engage in hunting, horse racing and competition shooting/throwing bets, as well as traditional games of the time, such as Tali (knucklebones) or Latrunculi ("game of brigands"). These will be incorporated to the game as we develop.
- New Units: We have currently one leader unit and five ordinary units per tribe, and wish to expand this to seven ordinary units per tribe and one leader unit by the end of December. Certain tribes will get their units first to better compliment their arsenal and/or identity, but eventually all tribes will be with their new number until we move for a new round of new units added (which will include a new type of leader).
- October milestone - New Tribe chosen from a list: Next month, a poll in our Steam forums will decide which tribe you want to see next in our game. Our objective is to either make it so we get a good number of provinces with tribes complete in our world map, but a few oddballs can make our game more interesting by offering new gamestyles, so these will definately be there. The list still being made, in advance the plan here is to not include the Vandals, eastern Europe tribes and those near the Eastern Roman Empire.
As always, thank you guys for supporting our game.