This month has been characterized by extensive behind-the-scenes efforts. Primarily, our focus has been on advancing the Civil War feature. We'll expand more on it in this post, and even more so in a dedicated devblog later this month. This feature holds significant importance for the late game.
In addition to the Civil War, we've been considering and implementing features based on your feedback. Furthermore, we've been improving existing features, UI, fixing bugs and issues. Your insights are greatly appreciated, and we encourage you to keep sharing them to help us improve the game! And now, let's move on to exploring the changes that have been made this month!
Design & Balancing
Civil War: As mentioned above, we are still working hard on the Civil War. That late part of the game will be completed and should be fully playable around the end of April. Progress this month includes additional interfaces and screens to depict the rise of this dramatic timeline, in addition to a series of unique events and new battlefields triggered during the civil war up to the end of the game. We are currently implementing, testing, and polishing this feature, so stay tuned!
AI: A lot of work has been done on the AI behavior, especially for early game, where it will be better at setting up and developing its fiefdom. We’ve been focusing on this aspect a lot lately, and we’d love to have your feedback (and save files) on Steam, or Discord to keep on improving AI!
Military overhaul: Early March, we implemented the military overhaul. You can read more about how it changed the way military conflicts work in this devblog.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1812910/view/7356139324008352973
Delegations: We’ve been fixing a few issues regarding delegation conditions, some were too strict, making them rare. A set of new delegations has been added related to Traditions in the latest update in March. Also, in some cases, the character you decided to court was on a trade delegation, which led to a lot of waiting until the first date happened because of the trade. Since trading is the only continuous delegation in the game, we made it impossible to court someone who's handling a trade to avoid that issue. Regarding trade, an important fix was made thanks to you. Trade delegations are now canceled if one of the Houses does not have enough resources for one trip.
Character training skills: This was a suggestion from you, the community! You can now assign a task to your characters to improve their skills (one level and one type at a time, i.e.: Diplomacy, Economy, Intrigue, and Military). The higher the skill level, the longer it takes to increase it. This training improves the skills at a slightly faster rate than other actions. It is considered a task, and your characters won't be able to do another while they are training. This means that it also cancels your character's current assigned task. Whenever the skill level increases, the task is automatically finished.
To do so, head over to your own Fiefdom's Diplomacy menu to start the training in Diplomacy, Intrigue, Military, and Economy. We also added a Character skill preview accessible by pressing the Left ALT button (Settings > Input Settings).
Traditions: A set of new traditions have been implemented:
- « Strongest Among Giants » of the Warrior path (which prevents your military units from panicking and improves their survivability)
- « Whose Land, Their Rules » of the Isolationist path (which forces passing caravans to give you 5% of their content)
- « King of Hearts » of the Peacemaker path (which unlocks 2 unique delegations)
- « Always Pay Back Debt » of the Idealist path (which unlocks a unique delegation and gives the ability to make a House be in debt to you).
Siege: New iterations were led this month on this feature, along with UI improvements. We’ve added a set of new buttons: Assault and Sally Out (in Garrison view, to attack out of a sieged castle). The Siege slowdown changed to wall upgrades from castle upgrades, and its duration text is visible in the Production View.
Visuals & Interface
World map: Map clarity and mode improvements that work as filters, including clearer army icons to identify allies and enemies better. In “Resource” mode, you can now select multiple resources from a window that opens above the map mode toggle.
UI: The windowed interface now has fade in-out effect. Various fixes were made to the interface, from tooltips, to information clarity, missing icons and text wrapping. New notifications and tooltips have been added.
Technical fixes & optimization
Crash: If you experience a crash, please send the crash report via the Unreal Engine Crash Report window, and let us know on Discord or in the Steam forums.
For more information, read the full aggregated patch notes below:
Added
- Tradition - Strongest Among Giants
- Tradition - Whose Lands His Rules
- Tradition - King of Hearts
- Tradition - Always Pay Back Debt
- AI is now able to check resource status in its plan as a condition for action
- 10+ new events, mostly relating to Traditions
- 10 new playgrounds
- 5 new winning conditions to playgrounds
- 6 new delegations
- UI fade animations
- Siege - Assault button
- Siege - Sally Out button to Garrison view - can attack out of sieged castle
- Clicking on the Resource bar buttons should take you to the corresponding profession
- Characters can train skills at home via the Diplomacy menu
- Character skill preview by pressing Left ALT button (Settings > Input Settings)
- Army movement preview when creating new path
- Tax increase via negotiations now have meaningful other things to negotiate
- Profession Upgrade Built notification
Updated
- Allies no longer automatically accept “Demand War Support”
- Tradition view improved readability
- Tradition-related Delegation buttons hidden until the tradition is unlocked
- AI plan ‘Fix Shrinking Population’ checks in a better way the status of high-end buildings and professions
- Tradition Will of the Region has improved texts
- AI will sue for peace more eagerly if the war drags on
- Conflict resolution Military Unit counter matches new unit types
- Trade Caravan list logic
- Archer attack FX has fewer arrows
- Clarify army icons on map to show allies and enemies better
- Tax increase, delegation, & events improved
- Allies no longer automatically accept “Demand War Support”
- Tradition view improved readability
- Tradition-related Delegation buttons hidden until the tradition is unlocked
- AI plan ‘Fix Shrinking Population’ checks in a better way the status of high-end buildings and professions
- Tradition Will of the Region has improved texts
- AI will sue for peace more eagerly if the war drags on
- AI Improvements to profession upgrade plans and competing for a rank
- Production info button is now visible even if there is no production
- Safety Production and Safety Consumption values
- Overseer effect “safety” changed to “security”
- Clicking the army icon at the bottom opens army movement mode.
- Resource map mode update, you can now select multiple resources from a dialogue that opens above the map mode toggle.
- Resource and production breakdown tooltips
- Army movement UI improvements
- Military Unit overhaul—armor, weapons, and different ranges added.
- Universal special rule based on “Bonus against” system
- Unit descriptions and lore added to the book icon
- Rally Troops ability removed from all units, now only available as Nerves of Steel ability for characters with Champion reputation trait
- Old Rally Troops Powerful is now named Rally Troops and acts as an area of effect Morale boost, available for Ordo Fortis, Palatines, and Characters with Military 13 or higher
- Armigeri unit now unlocks from Smiths Tier IV upgrade: Paddle Wheel Cooling
- Swordsmen unit now unlocks from Fortress (Tier III)
- Crossbowmen unit now unlocks from the Herdsmen Tier II upgrade: Hunting Grounds
- Le Balestre Veloce unit now unlocks from Herdsmen Tier III upgrade: Gyrfalcon Mews
- La Balestra Precisa upgrade, renamed Precision Optics Workshop, now unlocks at Citadel Tier and is a Tier IV unit
- Ordo Vita upgrade, renamed Temple of Vitality, now unlocks at the Fortress Tier and is a Tier III unit
- Ordo Vita can heal in combat
- Siege slowdown changed to wall upgrades from castle upgrades
Fixed
- AI Bandit and army stuck and AI won’t do anything else
- “Who is who” objective not registering
- Can marry notification has constantly “Not available” status
- Player had “Merge armies” notification even when it’s not possible
- Broken roads west of Acissetta
- Broken road in Galdas
- Some other broken roads
- Too many decimals in Safety Production tooltip
- Typos in delegation and military actions
- Delegations’ requirement of “at war with” did not work
- AI plan ‘Fix Shrinking Population’ can no longer get stuck in case Fiefdom doesn’t have workers in Farms
- AI plan ‘Improve Rank’ is no longer possible to happen to Dukes, causing them to have only one primary slot to plan. They cannot do Appeal Delegation actions, which were the main action in the plan.
- AI now knows how to properly check the required resources to upgrade a building and plan actions accordingly
- Family Member Can Marry had a constant “Not Available Status” even when they were available
- Resource mapmode tooltip is incorrect
- Player can raise armies even when Fiefdom has been conquered
- Some Official Visit events requirements were too strict, making them very rare
- War score requirements for suing peace are now calculated from all participants instead of just primary participants, fixing the issue where the ally does all the work and war can’t end
- Bandit army commander is wounded when army appears
- In rare cases, one could send a Courtship delegation to a character who was in Trade delegation
- Potential crash fix
- Foreign Fiefdom did not show tax increase correctly
- Trade fixes [list]
- Trade delegation is canceled if there are not enough resources for one trip, previously, only 0 resources were canceled trade
- Chronicle now shows correct amount of resources traded
- When canceling trade, event now shows correct trade resources
Known Issues
- Some siege events may incorrectly refer to ‘bandits’ in their text
- Left ALT skill preview UI flickers
- Ranged units show ranged animations while in melee
- UI scaling might cause some buttons to go outside the screen on some resolutions. To fix this, adjust the UI scaling percentage in Video Settings.
- Character customization images might fail to load occasionally. The UI still works, and reopening the menu sometimes fixes the issue.
As you've seen, we've been keeping ourselves busy, and there's still much work to be done. We can't wait to hear your feedback on the Civil War! Keep watch for more updates on the development of Great Houses of Calderia and upcoming content!
- Great Houses of Calderia Team -
