Today, we’re rolling out an update focused primarily on balance improvements, quality-of-life changes, and numerous fixes. Notably, we’ve made hunting more engaging, reworked the system for recruiting warriors in the late game (cities will now hire crossbowmen, making them better defended against your armored troops), and adjusted the combat skill progression — warriors will now gain significantly more experience from real battles compared to training. We’ve also made the seduction action on the global map more effective and accessible.
The studio is heading into a winter break and will slow down the pace of updates. We need some rest to return stronger in the new year and continue bringing you even faster game development.
Thank you for staying with us. There’s a lot of exciting stuff ahead!
Features
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- AI Army Limits: On easy difficulty, AI cities will limit the growth of their armies to 40-50 soldiers (applies only when starting a new game).
- Hunting Consequences: If a hunt fails for one of the lords (e.g., the lord is unconscious, unable to move, or has broken morale at the end of the hunt), the hunt is considered unsuccessful for both lords. They both receive negative thoughts and social opinions about their partner.
- Tier 3 Crossbowmen: Added a Tier 3 equipment level in AI cities with crossbowmen, unlocked after reaching 60 population on medium and hardcore difficulty.
- AI Rearmament Rate: AI cities now rearm their troops to the current tier (depending on population: 0-40-60+ population) at a rate of 4 soldiers per day.
Improvements
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- Bandit Camp Notification: If a prisoner dies in a bandit camp, a special notification will appear instead of “died during travel.”
- Bard Pathing: When a bard arrives in a province, they go directly to the performance location instead of waiting in the hall for orders.
- Battle Notification Removal: Removed the notification on the right about a new battle on the global map.
- Family Protection Timing: The message about protecting the Loving Family will now appear after the second opening of the global map.
- Problems Menu Prompt: A notification was added, prompting the player to check the Problems menu. It appears only once per game at 11:00 if at least one problem exists.
- Dialogue Bubble Positioning: The dialogue bubble for lords, even off-screen, will now appear closer to the center of the screen.
- Inspector Highlighting: Building inspection buttons will be highlighted if no inspector is assigned.
- Ransom Action Level: The action to ransom a prisoner from a bandit camp will now be available at the first action level.
- Hunting Hints: The hunting task now has separate local and global map hints. During hunting on the global map, an outcome can be unsuccessful.
Balance
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- Interest Bonus Adjustment: Adjusted the interest bonus value from age and modified the calculation formula for the interest bonus from the Manners skill level.
- Flirting Technology Bonus: The “Art of Flirting” technology has a lower level but increased its bonus from 20 to 25.
- Knowledge Trader Frequency: Every fourth unique guest is now a knowledge trader. The knowledge trader will bring fewer books.
- First Ambition Timing: The first ambition will now appear on the 3rd day of the game.
- Combat Experience Adjustment: Adjusted the formula for calculating experience from battles on the training ground — real combat is now more effective than training. The effectiveness of the “Effective Training” and “Kaiden Training” books has been updated.
Fixes
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- Enemy Squad Crash: Fixed a crash when leaving the local map of an enemy squad if the player had not yet completed the tutorial on attacking the enemy (arrow pointing to the enemy squad banner). To test, delete the help_buttons_status.json file. (load save file and pass some hours to see a crash)
- Screen Resolution Crash: Fixed a crash if the screen settings file contained resolution values that did not match the screen size or any of the preset resolution options.
- AI Army Duplication: Fixed a bug where sending an AI army with more than one squad to assist caused the army to duplicate.
- Task Cancellation Bug: Fixed a bug where a lord would cancel their task in an AI city if 11:00 occurred during its execution.
- AI Lord Monogamy Issue: Fixed an issue to prevent too many AI lords from being monogamous at the start of a new game.
- Province Selection Bug: Fixed a bug where, upon opening the province selection menu for a new game, the camera would show a locked area instead of the recommended province for the new game.
- Appoint Menu Scaling: Fixed the contextual appoint menu scaling issue when using scales other than 100%.
- Stealing Books Cost: Fixed the displayed cost of stealing books.
- Trader Marker Timing: The knowledge tab marker for traders will now work only on the first opening of trade per trader visit.
- Date Scheduling Condition: If a lord has no home, a date will not be scheduled.
