Happy New Year, and we hope you had a fantastic holiday! We’re back at the office, and it’s time to do a recap of what we did in December!
As you may have noticed, we are still reworking the UI and AI on top of the additional features coming progressively. Bandits are now here to disrupt your fiefdom and your rule! You can also win the game by choosing a more diplomatic path, thanks to the Scholars and Schemers traditions.
Your contribution and extensive comments after the addition of the Bandits feature in December are greatly appreciated! This is exactly why we chose Early Access—to be able to experiment and improve the game features with your help! As always, thank you for your support and your commitment, this is invaluable and crucial to the game process.
Design & Balancing
Bandits: A major update has been made to the world map with the appearance of bandits on the roads. No path is as safe as it used to be for merchants and soldiers. This feature comes with a series of brand new and unique events you’ll have to deal with when they appear. While the feature is new to the game, several iterations are required in the coming months to balance it properly, especially at the beginning of a new game. Thanks to all of you who have already spotted some issues with it and have suggested a few ideas to improve it.
Traditions: New traditions have been implemented and tested, including the « Dozen Peers » of the Idealist path (which unlocks the Noble Advisor companions and units) and the « Holy Knowledge » of the Scholar path (which increases Scholar professions happiness from wages by +1 but doubles wage consumption).
AI: With the new Bandits feature, the AI is now considering these attacks and unexpected Bandits events in its plan. Its overall plans have been tweaked and improved as well.
New winning condition: A more diplomatic way of winning the game has been added thanks to the addition of the Scholars and Schemers tradition perks.
Resources, costs, and buildings: Production consumption has been globally revisited. The Cooperage building now has its own category in the Fiefdom building menu, and bonus & penalty words for the refinement costs are now visible.
Safety production: In connection with the Bandits feature, the safety of fiefdom production is now more important than ever.
Visuals & Interface
User Interface scaling: We are still experimenting with wide-screen resolutions. UI scaling is still a long, ongoing process and we welcome feedback to help us optimize it during the whole Early Access phase.
Visuals alignment: Text, button and icon alignments have been reworked in some of the interface menus as well as in the event description to look better.
Technical fixes & optimization
Crash fixes: Loading a save file from an older version doesn’t cause the game to crash anymore. We also fixed a crash linked to a new tradition perk: « Holy Knowledge » when dragging workers into the scholar professions.
For more information, read the full aggregated patch notes below:
Added
- Right mouse button to close the Ranks of Calderia screen
- Tradition - Dozen Peers
- Tradition - Holy Knowledge
- Tradition tree connection to Light Mathemagic and Law Unites Us All
- Spy investigation events now have costs associated with them
- Safety increase winning effects in Conflicts
- Bandit spawn UI
- Bandit appearance speeds
- Bandit ‘army’ consistencies
- 7 Bandits-related events
- Bandits movement AI
- Bandits conflict resolutions
- Scholar Winning Condition Path
- Scholar Winning Conditions steps
- Scholar Winning Conditions events
- Conquered and Truce icons on the world map: Fiefdom Banners
- Diplomatic delegation cooldown counter
- Highlight the character icon when hovering over notifications
- Caravan capacity and trip counter visualizer for Trade View
- Three new courtship events
Updated
- Siege Defender gets more and better units from garrison
- Tweaks to AI plans
- AI won’t cause social conflict in Lesson in Negotiations event
- New Event illustrations
- Conflict planning layout
- Improved Tutorial window positioning with UI scaling
- Tradition view
- Safety Level shown also for the player’s fiefdom in World Map
- New graphics for the Winning Condition view
- World map border and road changes
- Character customization reverting selects original objects
- Show negative Safety production correctly in Fiefdom upgrade info
- Safety production changes: Bourg 2->4, Fort, Fortress and Citadel bring ->1, Stone Walls 0->1
- All military units are cheaper to recruit and upkeep
- All starting Safety Levels in Fiefdoms 0 -> 2
- Increased the probability of weather effects
- Changed Cooperage building to be left most building in its own category
- Changed production consumption to refinement cost
- Added Bonus and Penalty words to Refinement Cost in Building View
- Winning Progression steps VIa and VIb combined into one
- Improve drag and drop in delegation
Fixed
- Game crash when dragging workers into scholar professions with Holy Knowledge tradition
- Game crash when loading a save from the previous version
- Recruit spies cannot be done when relations are bad
- Impossible to pillage buildings with an army
- Units do back-and-forth movement instead of capturing a spot in conflict resolution
- Rank delegation stuck on own fiefdom
- Relation to count objective not counted after becoming the count
- Participants stuck in rank selection state indefinitely
- Courtship delegation for house members of the same rank indicates a superior rank
- Fortress notification in Chronicle
- Stuck in a military conflict with no board
- Events that provide a low amount of tradition points now provide a low amount
- Intrigue tutorial closes the menu
- Problem with trade duration if player places too many resources in the balance
- Traits are not counted towards character skill value checks in events
- Voice of Calderia not counted in Winning Conditions
- Trade gold amount overlaps caravan information with four or more resources
- Conflict end screen text overflows victory screen
- Marriage notification view issues
- Fundamentals of Feudalism event wording
- Poleaxer military unit noted as tier 3 in Military Conflict
- Counselor has the wrong icon in Social Conflict
- Courted character message never disappears if a courted person dies
- Scholar Winning condition texts back
- Courted character message never disappears after a courted person is dead
- You can move on the map with the war window open
- You can move on the map with an event open
- Tradition progress bar shows correct progression when finished
- No house member on the screen to send peace delegation
- New Tradition button texts not inside buttons
- Variable name in brackets instead of House name in Spy Accusation Event
- ‘Appeal to mutual benefit’ text on Army has arrived event
- In Trade View, the resource valuation information shown in different places doesn't match
- Event outcome text padding
- Misaligned male head icon in customization view
- Diplomacy Window transparency issue with opposing Family Character
Once again, happy New Year to everyone and thank you for all of your suggestions and feedback. Stay tuned for more news on the game's development and content!
- Great Houses of Calderia Team -
