We’ve got another free update for you called War & Diplomacy! It expands upon the AI Kingdoms update a bit with your feedback and comments. New conversations, new diplomatic options, and more. Here’s the notes:
Conversation Expansion
New Conversation - Birthday - the AI will talk to you about their birthday, and you have the option or not to give a gift.
New Conversation - Theater Event - the AI has written a play and would love it if you’d show it in your theater. Let’s hope their work pleases the peasants!
New Conversation - Origins of Power - The AIs discuss how they came to power, different for each personality type. Some of these conversations can take a dramatic turn!
New Conversation - Broker Peace - If you are war long enough either your ally or a neutral AI may try to broker peace between you and your enemy. You can agree and end the war or disagree and see what might happen.
Ignore Response
The AIs will respond if you ignore or dismiss their diplomats. Depending on personality, how they feel about you, and how much you’re ignoring them they may decide to go to war against you.
Tribute
Player Tribute
When your diplomats visit an AI Kingdom you can now demand tribute from them if you’d like. The results of this demand will depend on their personality, relative military strength, mood, and if they can afford it.
Resolution for AI Demanding Tribute
If you refuse to pay tribute, go to war, then win and let AI stay in power they now show some deferrence to your grace. After being defeated in a war they acknowledge their defeat and will no longer demand tribute.
Warfare
We’ve made a few changes to improve the combat:
- Archers now fire from ships
- When stopped, catapults auto-attack military buildings if in range
- Increased catapult damage to non-stone buildings
- Increased catapult range by 1 tile
Viking Catapults
Vikings can now deploy catapults against you! Generally they appear later in the game. In harder difficulty modes more viking catapults will appear sooner.
Greek Fire Tower
We’ve added a new tower type that shoots out a blast of greek fire! It is extremely effective against ground units and ships - a fully skilled Greek Fire Tower can completely sink a ship with a single blast. However, it has some drawbacks. It requires 8 people to operate it, it has a very short range and can’t attack dragons. It also consumes charcoal when fired and takes a while to reload. If it catches on fire it has a chance to explode and start fires around it. Give it a try and be careful!
New Dragon Type
There’s a new dragon in town! This one flies more slowly than the others but specifically targets your military infrastructure (archer and ballista towers, blacksmiths, archer schools, etc). It appears a little later than the others, depending on difficulty mode.
Improvements and Fixes
- Added option to permanently decline an AI trying to abdicate
- Peasants now become unhappy if you betray an ally or treacherously surprise attack someone.
- Increased happiness radius of all 1x1 and 2x1 statues
- Fixed issue where sea gate pathing cost was wrong for vikings
- Fixed issue where you could build a happiness building and then close it but still get credit for happiness debuffs.
- Fixed issue where AI would immediately demand troop removal after you had defeated them in a war and spared them.
- Fixed bug where AI would demand payment to end a war after the war had already ended
- Fixed bug which caused archers to sort of ‘dance around’ when using auto targeting behavior
- Fixed case where AI would have trouble balancing tax rate vs happiness
- Fixed bug where AI would not build a theater
- Fixed bug where AI would build too many masons
What's next?
It's finally time, we've got VR coming up next! This is a free update, totally optional, and won't impact you at all if you don't want to play in VR. We're supporting the VIVE, Index, and Occulus Rift. Expect VR to hit the beta branch in the next week or so! And after VR we've more pure gameplay content updates planned as well.
Also, don't forget, we've got a Parks & Statues DLC available if you want to decorate your kingdom!
Until next time!
-Pete & Michael
