Lords and Villeins News

We greet you, Lords and Ladies,

As you may have noticed, we released a content update for Lords & Villeins recently. Thanks to your ongoing support and your feedback, we were able to identify lot number of issues and balancing problems, which we fixed immediately and are sending the hotfix to you right now!

If you manage to find anything else that should get our attention, please share your feedback with us either on our Discord server or start a discussion here on Steam! Thank you very much for keeping your eyes open and communicating with us what should be improved! We hope you enjoy this update!

Note: saves that were started in the previous version (0.17.16) are compatible with this patch and you don't have to start a new game!

[h2]Full Changelog:[/h2]

[h3]Functional Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Missing notification about a domesticated animal dying
  
• Added fix that prevents servants to wear jewelry
  
• Added missing ability of caravans to purchase animals from the player
  
• Crash sometimes caused when an arrow was shot
  
• Crash related to storing ground resources after a save was loaded once
  
• Bug preventing bakers to make pies
  
• Bug with wild animals not being generated in correct amounts throughout time
  
• Bug preventing service fees to be paid and subsequently blocking other purchases
  
• Villager getting stuck when charging at an enemy
  
• Crash related to an inventory capacity being violated
  
• Bugs related to relocating and feeding fainted villagers
  
• Bug causing villagers to teleport when running away from crime
  
• Bug causing all animals of certain herd to leave the map after a save file was loaded
  
• Bug with fighting state machine that could cause vandalism to be stuck in a loop after a save file was loaded
  
• Crash related to removing prisoner from jail, possibly preventing them to be freed properly
  
• Reputation gains and losses by imprisoning and releasing were inverted
  
• Crash related to a villager planning to go on a date with a villager that experienced death during this time
  
• Bug causing villagers to be stuck in a loop of dropping repair kits
  
• Bug incorrectly tracking church zones when they are removed
  
• Bug causing villagers to collect fertilized eggs and preventing chicken to reproduce
  
• Bug causing same-sex couples rolling for adoption chance twice, effectively doubling adoption probability over the intended value
  
• Crash that could randomly occur during fighting
  
• Bug preventing regiments to leave after they have been sent to war
  
• Bug preventing construction on certain clay area as a result of faulty map generator
  
• Visual bug of the execution display when rotated forward while executing teenagers
  
• Missing inventory type allocation for pies
  
• Several crashes related to loading a save file
  
• Crash related to expelling a family
  
• Bug causing animals to get stuck when left on a door tile
  
• Bug causing any type of bench being considered as jail bench if placed inside of the jail
  
• Bug causing clergy not purchasing what they need
  
• Bug causing foragers to harvest trees before they are fully grown
  
• Bug causing some items to load invisible
  
• Bug causing ruling family to not study reading and writing
  

[h3]UI Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Create New button persisting through other pages of the population book
  
• UI crash caused by an attempt to remove an animal from market listing
  
• UI crash caused by a person dying when clergy tab was selected in the warehouse book
  
• Incorrect amounts of consumed resources accumulated in the accounting reports
  
• Bug with scrolling the family tree in the population book
  
• Bug caused in tenure selection when a family of already existing last name was generated (we will be expanding the name list in future versions to avoid duplicates further).
  
• Bug of randomly disappearing portraits in the population book
  
• Bug incorrectly displaying cooking ingredient demand in the warehouse book
  
• Bug causing requested soldiers to not be shown in the king report screen when it is first generated
  
• Beehive displaying honey instead of honey comb
  
• Floors were not displaying deterioration status in their tooltip
  
• Fixed visuals of the variations for the good bed and good double bed assets
  
• Overflowing UI element of the structure tooltip in the zone quick build context menu
  
• Updated the king speech bubble text scaling to prevent text cutoffs in certain chapters
  
• Misplaced yellow button highlight during tutorial in the build menu
  

[h3]Optimizations[/h3]

• Improved texture management and disposal to significantly reduce memory usage.
  
• AI now has capacity to better organize among the family members by dynamically assigning roles. First role implemented was the purchaser who will collect all of the money the family owns and will heavily prioritize purchasing until it is no longer possible to buy things or all things have been bought. This should significantly reduce inefficiencies of the market where families would repeatedly go home to drop money and collect more money again because their plans had to change, or swap with another family member who ended up prioritizing it instead of them.
  
  
  
  
  • As a downside it is now more difficult to seize money from families because they are keeping them reserved in their pockets for most of the day and during that time they are not visible in the warehouse book. This will be addressed in future major updates.
    

[h3]Balancing Changes[/h3]

• Reduced chance of pregnancy for most animals and reduced also the frequency of procreation to provide more sustainable growth
  
• Resources taxed by the king are now penalized in prioritization for the purpose of eating and refilling the feeder (they may still be used if there is no better option)
  
• Probability of pregnancy for humans is now reduced only by the amount of living children (previously it would also reduce it by all children, including those already passed away).
  
• Removed limitation for servant laborers to pick fruits only by one person. Regular families remain limited to prevent fruit picking to be too disruptive to their regular duties.
  
• Added cap for thieves to not steal more than 5 gold worth of valuables, prioritizing money when stealing.
  
• Rebalanced happiness and mood to provide smoother experience. Main changes include:
  
  
  • Player Reputation plays less of a significant role in reducing the happiness of people
    
  • Relationship with families also reacts to happiness a lot less aggressively, meaning it is less likely to drop due to people being somewhat unhappy. This also applies to nobles and it should increase the ability to keep them.
    
  • Significantly reduced negative impact on happiness for providing low pay to soldiers and servants (i.e. going lower than the default value).
    
  • Impact of the beauty need has been increased to promote the need for better housing of nobles. However, peasants beauty need is still satisfied relatively easily compared to nobles so this change should not impact peasants.
    
  • Reduced impact of ruler family members not knowing reading or writing
    
  • Increased impact of happiness penalties for nobles when they sleep in a low quality bed or eat normal meal.
    
  • In general, as long as peasants have food, heat, some kind of household with furniture and any kind of bed, their happiness should remain relatively high.
    
• Updated balancing of carpenters and architects:
  
  
  • Time to produce repair kits have been doubled to reduce resource consumption and the resulting financial liquidity imposed on these families.
    
  • Price for a basic repair kit has been increased by about 150% to reflect the slower time to produce them and make them more profitable in general. Advanced repair kits kept their price since they were already expensive enough.
    
• Updated balancing for military requests:
  
  
  • Reduced sizes of regiments requested by about 35%
    
  • The first soldier request will now arrive one year later than it currently did
    
  • Reduced the variance in regiment size requested to be more predictable and sustainable
    
  • Regiment requests will not increase in difficulty unless the player completes a certain minimum percentage equal to the threshold to receive additional favor points from the royals.
    
  • Reduced time for regiments to be away for war before the war outcome resolves to 50 - 70 days (roughly a year from previously 1 to 3 years).
    
• Updated jailors and guards:
  
  
  • Jailors can now feed fainted prisoners so they don't die as a result of hunger.
    
  • Freeing a criminal and bringing them to the execution display can now also be performed by guards
    
  • Jail benches and jail chairs no longer require carpenter to be built
    
• Increased the size of families generated through the favor point system by an additional generation.
  
• Increased probability of mutual interest and requesting marriage after dating to increase the frequency of marriage requests.
  
• Structures that are built or repaired are set to a random HP between 90-100%. This will space out their deterioration and make it easier to be maintained.
  
• Grapes will no longer be requested by the royal tax since they can not be easily obtained from clergy.
  

[h3]Quality of Life Improvements[/h3]

• Added new Wattle Fence Gate asset that does not require carpenters to be built
  
• Added new Brick and Crude Wood floor assets, costing 1 Brick and 1 Wood respectively
  
• Added new storages
  
  
  • Drawer as a smaller version of the Cabinet
    
  • Small Barrel as a smaller version of the Barrel
    
  • Ground Depository as a smaller version of the Ground Storage
    
  • Small Shelves as a smaller version of the Shelves
    
  • Rusty Bookcase as a smaller version of the Bookcase
    
• These storages do not require carpenter and have capacity equal to the existing larger equivalents. The current storages had their capacity and construction cost increased, but they now also require carpenter to be built.
  
• Added storage capacity in KG displayed in the storage tooltip.
  
• Added notification when a monk is initiated. This notification also corresponds with a bishop and minister being assigned as that happens immediately with the first two monks initiated.
  
• Added shortcut button in the storefront context menu, which will open the buy tab with a family operating the storefront selected
  

Since we’ve launched the latest patch, many of you enjoyed the numerous additions and improvements that it brought to the game. From recruiting servants, and hiring builders to training soldiers and capturing criminals, our settlements got all the more lively.

Many of you have been sharing feedback, and reporting problems with the game and we’ve been listening and working hard to fix them. A patch is on the way delivering a large number of bug fixes, balancing updates, and quality of life improvements requested by our community. This patch is currently in closed beta and should be going live soon. Thank you to everyone for reporting problems, sharing your feedback, and remaining patient as we seek to address them!

[h2]Q&A Livestream[/h2]
To address any remaining questions you might have directly and interactively, we will be hosting Q&A livestream! Mark the date in your calendar, post your questions and get ready!

• When: Saturday, July 16th, 8PM CEST / 2PM EDT / 11AM PDT
  
• Where: Twitch
• If you miss the stream, the VOD will be hosted on our Youtube channel

Where to ask questions:

• Live in the chat on Twitch
  
• Using the !question-lav command on our Discord
• In the comment of a thread on Reddit
• In the comments below this article
  

[h2]Addressing Early Access[/h2]
As we’ve been reading the feedback, we’ve noticed few comments that were somewhat critical and expressing disappointment that we are failing to deliver on the premise of Lords and Villeins. We take this criticism seriously and we were thinking what is the best way to address it. While actions speak more than a thousand words and we believe that ultimately to earn solid trust and goodwill with our players, first and foremost we need to deliver good content, these things take time and transparent communication of the development is just as important. So we decided to give you a look behind the curtain. An extra level of detail behind our decisions, what early access means to us and why we chose to make our game this way.

[h3]The Decision to Launch in Early Access[/h3]
It may seem obvious for a city builder genre, but deciding between the launch of the full version and early access was not an easy choice for us! The positives are clear - establishing a tight feedback loop with our community, giving our players a chance to shape the game early on and having a greater impact on what it ends up being while giving us a better insight into who our target audience is, so we can improve our chances to succeed within the limits of our creative vision.

What about some downsides? Building a procedurally generated simulation means that polishing this experience takes a long time. We knew that we will at the very least struggle to make the experience smooth during EA. While some level of roughness is generally accepted during EA, we remained conscious that this is not a free demo - we are charging our customers to access it, and with it comes a certain baseline of expectations and quality, that we will need to maintain throughout the majority of the development. With early access comes a lot of added pressure and extra time on top of an already complex and difficult game. A baseline that as a small team with our first game we may not be able to always meet.

Overall we felt that this is a tradeoff that is going to be a net positive for the game, so we went with it, and we’ve been very happy with our decision ever since the launch. The amount of feedback has been incredibly valuable and the game is simply a lot better for it. It brings the best out of us and makes us work harder and helps us to make a game that we are really proud of. However, the downsides do exist and it is a big challenge for us to manage well. One that we arguably have not always succeeded with and delivered versions of the game more rough than we would like to see.

[h3]Requests and Priorities[/h3]
Another challenge that comes with game development in general, but even more so during early access, is sorting the feedback, evaluating the impact of certain problems, and prioritizing them correctly. We receive many suggestions, feature requests, and feedback about the user experience on daily basis and it is our job to estimate how impactful they can be if they are a good fit for our vision, and what would be the best time to focus on them.

Here are some of the most significant things that we consider with each feedback:

• What are the possible solutions and do they overlap with something we are already planning to do?
  
• What part of our player base is impacted by it and how often do they encounter the problem?
  
• Does the team agree with the perception of the problem?
  
• Does it align with our vision or is this a case of a misplaced expectation?
  
• What is the scope of the intended solution?
  
• When can we implement the solution in a way that does not impact the timeline of delivering new content?
  
• Is it worth delaying the new content if there is no such possibility?
  
• When is it the most effective to act? Is it more efficient to solve the problem now or later?
  
• Will the problem last when we implement some of the features planned in later updates?
  
• Are there any simple and creative solutions that are worth doing in the meantime to reduce the impact of the problem?
  

Answers to these questions are often intuitive, based on feelings or subjective experiences, or driven by the personal motivations of our team. We listen to our players and reflect within the team on what we would like to see achieved with our game as well. While making these decisions, we also make a lot of assumptions about our future, what will happen next and how much of our time will be needed on everything else. All while doing our best to respect our limits, have a healthy working culture without excessive crunch, and take good care of our mental health.

We don’t always make the right call. Sometimes we hyper-focus on minor things, and we run out of time and start making undesirable shortcuts. And each time we do, we make sure to take a step back, improve our process and communication, find things to learn to do better and refocus for the next update. Admittedly problems with our planning led to certain parts of our game being under-prioritized longer than they should have, resulting in issues that were avoidable in hindsight. We are far from perfect, but we always try to learn.

[h3]The Compound Effect[/h3]
In the game development, there is a tendency for features to compound the complexity of everything that comes after them. Every feature, even the smallest one, has the potential to collide with something else, or at the very least increase the scope of the testing cycle we do before each update. This means that as we move throughout the development, it is increasingly more time-consuming to ensure the game is balanced, stable, and relatively bug-free.

The earlier a feature is done, the more time it will take overall during the full development process to be maintained. This is crucial for our planning, to prioritize certain features first. And it means that overly focusing on maintaining a perfectly polished experience during early access would be highly inefficient and if we would, the game would suffer from a lack of content. This is the main reason why balancing and AI optimization takes a long time to get right. Not only because there is a lot of iterations for us to learn and find a sweet spot with feedback, but even more so because they get impacted by nearly everything new added to the game and we have to exert significant efforts to iron out systems that have already been polished multiple times before, while also aiming to improve them every time.

[h3]What Is Next?[/h3]
So how do we plan to approach these issues moving forward? What are our plans for future content? After the minor update goes live, the next thing to look forward to is our last early access major update, what we internally call The Ruling Update. This update will be one that marks the end of the early access and it will focus on the ruling family and expand some of the fantasy and storytelling elements around being a ruler.

We will introduce a high council with important positions such as Master of Coin and Master of Law, but also already existing titles like bishop and minister. You will be able to select privileged villagers from the ranks of clergy, nobles, military, and your own ruling family to sit at the table with you. These positions give you access to new ruling actions, such as collecting intelligence about villagers, ordering propaganda to improve your reputation, or faking the tax reports to the royals so you can get away with paying less.



We will also introduce a town hall with hearings - a weekly event where selected villagers will approach you with problems in a more personal way. This update also focuses on community requests more than others, so you can expect some long-requested features to be added. We are not ready to confirm anything specific yet, so stay tuned for more details later.

Since the Ruling Update marks the end of early access, the amount of new content added in this patch will be smaller compared to the updates released previously, so that we can focus more of our time hunting down bugs, balancing the game, adding community requested features, and improving the AI and performance of the game. We will also take longer than usual to deliver this update, to give ourselves more time to improve the game, though we don't have any specific dates to anounce right now.

Hopefully, with this post, we’ve been able to give you an interesting insight into some of the challenges we face when developing this game. Our goal with this article is in no way to diminish the problems our game currently has and the criticism that our players share. They are important to us and we are doing what we can to address them as soon as possible. We also understand that the game industry is often not delivering on the promises that game developers make and players feel rightly skeptical. This article is not trying to change that.

Sometimes, in all of the excitement for video games, it is easy to forget that video games are made by people that have their limits. The game has been developed by four people, two of which have now moved to new projects as we reach the final stage of the development, and there are a lot of roles outside of making the game itself, that are part of our responsibilities. For many of us on the team, this is our first big game made so we are also making more mistakes and it has been a big opportunity to learn for us. Despite these issues, we are immensely proud of what we managed to make, and we simply hope that players will stick with us for the journey and that our work will sooner or later speak for itself. Many have already found great joy and satisfaction with what we do and we hope to grow our audience further and further for as long as we can!

Thank you for being with us on this wonderful journey! If you have some extra questions or comments, please leave them below or come join us on Saturday for the Q&A livestream!

To end with something more positive, we will leave you with screenshots from a community challenge that we’ve recently had on our discord. These settlements are nothing short of amazing so we hope you will love them as much as we do!

Made by Else:

Made by Calicoo:

Made by Raedzara:

Made by Tiaan:

Made by Liraine:

Made by Taggianto:

Made by Nowei:

Made by BambiAmby:

Behold, Lords and Ladies,

The Military and Criminality update is here! Watch the trailer below to find out what's new!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Lords & Villeins will also be a part of Steam Summer Sale that starts June 23 (7PM CEST). You are now able to get the game at 20% off! The sale ends on July 7.

[h3]Important notice[/h3]

Due to major refactoring of data structures, that aims to decrease the save file size and optimize loading times, we were unable to secure a backwards compatibility. As a result, your save files from previous versions will fail to load. We do our best to avoid this scenario as much as we can, but in this case we would simply not be able to continue our efforts in optimizations without it. We apologize for this complication and thank you all for your support and understanding!

We have also added a support for Steam cloud saves and relocated save files to a unique folder generated for each active Steam account. If there is more than one account playing on your machine, please be mindful that the first account that launches the game, will "claim" all existing save files and they will be automatically moved to their respective folder. When different steam users log on the same computer, they will not see the save files of the other account. Sharing is still possible by manually placing the save file in a different folder. Save files can be located at: C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Honestly Games\Lords and Villeins\SaveData\.

[h3]How to access older version to be able to play your old save file[/h3]
To give you an opportunity to continue playing your older save files and switch to the new version at your own pace, we have created a beta branch, where you can continue to access the pre-launch build. Due to the changes for Steam cloud, your save files will be copied to a new location once you launch the game after the update and the older version of the game will not be able to see them. In order to access them, these are the steps you can follow:

• Right-click on Lords and Villeins in your Steam library and select Properties - Beta Version
  
• Select the "oldversion" Beta branch
  
• Navigate to save date folder C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Honestly Games\Lords and Villeins\SaveData\
  
• If any of your save files were copied to a subfolder within the SaveData folder (usually a folder with series of numbers), make sure you copy these save files back to the root of the SaveData folder.
  
• Wait for the game to update and enjoy the game!
  

[h3]Changelog[/h3]
The changelog does not list smaller bugfixes and UI improvements (we had to cut it somewhere! 😅) so be prepared for some delightful discoveries! Jump in the game right now and find out all that has changed!

With this update, we are slowly approaching the end of early access. We have only one major update ahead of us, before we start focusing on the final polish, bugfixes, localization and optimizations for the final release, so stick around for more news of what is next! Thank you for your support, big thanks to our numerous beta testers who contributed tremendously with their feedback and last but not least our players, who continue to enjoy our game and share their delight with the community!

And as always, you are welcome to join us on our Discord, and share your feedback in many of the places we follow - here in the comments, on Steam forums or on Reddit! For some occasional teasers and small news, make sure to follow us on Twitter too!

[h3]New Organization Type: Demesne[/h3]

• Demesne consists of the ruling family, the servant groups and military regiments.
  
• Players can manage military regiments in the demesne tab of the villager book.
  
• New regiments can be created or removed. Regiment types support the daily guard, night guards nad soldiers.
  
• Ruling family can now own animals and seize, grant, sell or buy them on market.
  
• New animal Horse added, as well as Stables zone managed by servants, where they can be prioritized together with other player-owned animals.
  
• Villagers can now ride horses. Nobles ride them for fun, and soldiers to train for war.
  
• New horse-riding skill added.
  

[h3]New Designation: Servant[/h3]

• Player can enlist peasants to join demesne as servants. They can be assigned to different work groups and perform duties for the player ruling family.
  
• Servants will perform different tasks based on their assignment. Cooks can cook for the military and ruling family, stablehands take care of animals (mainly horses), laborers haul resources and deal with basic construction tasks.
  
• New Servant Zones: Cottage, Stables and Kitchen utilized by servants to provide housing, cooking facilities and space for animal husbandry.
  

[h3]New Designation: Military[/h3]

• Special regiments in the Demesne tab determine duties of all assigned villagers.
  
• New Barracks zone added. Soldiers sleep there and use Training dummies to train combat skills.
  
• Guards occupy the guard posts and chase and capture any criminals.
  
• Soldiers train with their equipment and prepare themselves for war.
  
• Soldiers reside in the barracks and eat food from the warehouse. They receive soldier pay once a season, that the player can manage in the villager book.
  
• Soldiers can be promoted to generals. This improves survival chances for soldiers in war.
  
• New weapon-mastery skills added
  

[h3]New Royal Tax Type: Regiments[/h3]

• Soldier regiments can be sent to war. Some of the soldiers may return alive after the war ends.
  
• Player can manage equipment preferences for military regiments. Members of the regiment will seek to equip this equipment if available in the warehouse.
  
• Royalty demands soldier regiments as part of the yearly targets. First year does not demand any soldiers. System is slowly ramping up through the first five years, when it reaches maximum (but still randomized) demands.
  
• Regiments requested by the king in the current year generate an equipment template. Players can set this template when managing equipment, to make sure that the regiment meets the royal requirements.
  
• Regiments have a soldier pay, which must be maintained to keep high morale. Soldiers donate portion of this money to their original family.
  
• Soldiers can receive war veteran status if they survive the war. This improves their chances to survive another war and make them more valuable as generals.
  
• New clergy zone Shrine allows regiments, that are marked to be blessed, to participate in the blessing ceremony. Blessing costs holy water and it improves their chance of survival in battle.
  

[h3]New Construction System: Builder Professions and Builder Tiers[/h3]

• Each structure is marked with a tier - default tier can be built by anyone without restrictions. Other structures needs either a carpenter family or architect family.
  
• New professions of Carpenters and Architects and a new Carpentry and Builder's Guild zone. These families take care of construction of advanced structures.
  
• They also produce basic and advanced repair kits, which villagers must purchase to perform repairs.
  
• Added optimization of hauling resources for multiple blueprints at once.
  

[h3]Health and Happiness Update[/h3]

• Villagers can now develop health conditions. These include injuries, fractures and sicknesses. Injuries and fractures can happen as a result of labor or combat. Sicknesses develop randomly over time. When villager is freezing, the likelihood is increased. Sicknesses also spread through proximity to other villagers.
  
• Added new hospital zone and a tending station structure where people can heal their injuries and isolate with sickness. Clergy can assign nurses that will feed the sick and treat them with salve, bandages and cure.
  

[h3]Extended Tutorial[/h3]

• The tutorial has been redesigned and significantly extended to include new chapters that guide players through all features of the game:
  
• Regular construction tasks are replaced with quests introducing the builder professions and enlisting servants to perform work previously done by ruling family.
  
• After the inn is built, the tutorial continues with quests about establishing clergy, building churches, tavern, welcoming first noble family and donations with clergy. It also introduces new content by guiding the player through military content, creating regiments, recruiting soldiers, changing their equipment and preparing barracks, jail and execution.
  
• We strongly recommend playing through the new tutorial before engaging with the new content, as it can clear out a lot of confusion about the game mechanics.

[h3]New Activity: Criminal Acts[/h3]

• Villagers can now commit criminal acts of vandalism, theft and murder.
  
• Villagers can lockpick doors when attempting criminal acts. Any door can be lockpicked, but it slows them down.
  
• Villager committing a crime has a chance to be spotted by nearby guards. Chance is higher if they are closer to the guard and they will also pick a path that does not get too close to guard posts.
  
• Added ability to imprison criminals and manage their sentence length, including execution order.
  
• Changing sentence lengths can improve or damage reputation with impacted family.
  
• New Executioner special role added. Soldiers can be assigned to it and the selected executioner will perform executions.
  
• New Jail zone with Jail bench and Jail chair structures for captured prisoners.
  
• New Execution Site zone with execution display and public stage structures to perform scheduled executions. Executions apply settlement debuff that reduces criminality chance, but hurt relationship with affected families.
  

[h3]Minor Features[/h3]

• Added support for Steam cloud saves and unique Steam ID accounts.
  
• Villagers and animals have the ability to flee from combat and be chased by the agressor.
  
• Villagers now go to sleep at semi-random times, to prevent behaviour of everyone getting up to sleep at the same time.
  
• New arrow indicators on access points to help identify direction of usage.
  
• New UI for ground storage restriction.
  
• When selecting a wild animal, players can mark the animal to be either leashed away or killed. This will trigger guards to leash the animal outside of the zone boundaries, or killed pre-emptively. Hunters can still collect the corpses but only if they are within the hunters area (this may be addressed later).
  
• All zoned corpses are now automatically claimed by the ruling family and stored in the knackery by servants. This should help clearing them out so they don't block construction.
  
• Time during night speeds up earlier and it is significantly faster to reduce waiting times during night. It will automatically slow down if a nightly special event occurs (i.e. theft attempt).
  
• Both mood and happiness is now displayed in the population book.
  
• Expanded description in the detail of villagers to give more information, including progress of studies for novices in clergy.
  
• Added terms of service page in menu.
  
• Added an option to opt out of analytics in the settings and secured general compliance with GDPR.
  
• Added settings to manage monitor in fullscreen.
  
• Walking speed is now impacted by injuries and weight of equipment.
  
• Added indicators of pregnancy to the population book.
  
• Walls, roofs and structure now indicate durability and insulation qualities.
  
• Villagers now have underwear when they have no clothes.
  
• Added several types of pies as a recipe for bakers. They consume flour and fruits.
  
• When resources are granted, the purchase list is immediately updated. This results into immediate update of the tooltip for what family needs.
  

[h3]Balancing Changes[/h3]

• Need system has been rebalanced. Happiness and mood is calculated more accurately and it now also takes into account player reputation.
  
• Added rope as a cost requirement to several structures.
  
• Updated starting resources both in tutorial and standard game.
  
• Updated balancing of combat strength and defense.
  
• Significantly increased amount of gold for nobles, as well as their passive yearly income.
  
• Removed secondary bonus/penalty on relationships with families when granting or seizing. Now only relationship with target family is impacted. This was causing undesired effects and was especially troubling with nobles, and made them leave settlement.
  
• Balanced insulation and durability qualities of walls, roofs and structures to reflect quality of used material better.
  
• Redesigned system of joining combat to protect kin. Animals and villagers now have a chance to join combat or flee from danger.
  
• Animals will not fight back during tutorial mode active.
  
• New structure Blast Furnace added and replaced Oven in selected zones, to split the amount of recipes put on one structure type.
  
• General improvements around economy stability, pricing, nobles satisfaction, clergy demands and taxation.
  
• Regular game now begins with default servants and guards enlisted.
  
• Increased yields of crops by 15-20%
  
• Optimized resource prioritization for animals - first they consume acorns, then grain, then straw and then everything else. Purchasing behavior of these ingredients is still driven by cheapest price per weight.
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Significant performance optimization around memory usage and loading times.
  
• Roofs can now be built over a bar that is occupied.
  
• Caravans will now store gold in their storage to allow sharing it for purchasing.
  
• Fixed issues with families leaving with their animals.
  
• Warehouse book was slightly redesigned and optimized to reduce stuttering when switching between pages.
  
• Several fixes regarding AI crashes, leading to Doing Nothing behavior.
  
• Fixed a minor bug with flailing spot.
  
• Fixed visual error with statues in ground storages.
  
• Fixed sorting issues with graves and plants.
  
• Fixed issue with smelters harvesting clay in their households,
  
• Nobles will now properly reduce their interest to stay if the tavern is not able to serve them excellent meals.
  
• Fixed a bug with nobles causing them to spawn with low amount of money.
  
• Fixed issue with scrolling the map at the edge of the screen with mouse cursor.
  
• Fixed issue with incorrectly initializing lights and weather effect after loading.
  
• Fixed issue with roofs sometimes incorrectly masking off weather effects.
  
• Head of the ruling family starts with reading and writing learned.
  
• Improved generation of structures in the starting area.
  
• Fixed issue with chickens not laying eggs.
  
• Several issues and crashes present in the previous version identified and fixed.
  

The release of the new update is approaching very soon, so here is a last update teasing the upcoming content! Today, we are focusing on the criminality, law and health aspect.

Villagers will have the capacity to commit some truly evil acts! They will take out their frustration on the property of others and vandalize construction, causing it to be immediately in need of repairs. They will sneak in the zones of their neighbors, especially your warehouse, in attempts to steal, and to sort a truly deep and hurtful conflict, they may even resort to a murder.



[h3]Sneaky Little Devils[/h3]
Of course, aside from vandalism, which is quite impulsive, your villagers will not be so blatant about it. They will try to perform their crimes fast and before anyone can see them. And they will not be stopped by a mere door! Picking locks takes time, but eventually, they can get through any door. However, they are a strategic element in stopping them before it is too late.

As we covered in our fist update, you will be able to recruit soldiers and assign them to regiments with selected gear. One of these regiments are day guards, night guards, day jailers and night jailers. As the name would suggest, guards would be in charge of protecting your settlement, while jailers look over the prisoners in the new Jail zone.

For you, guard is a strategic resource. You can only manage to have so many, and it is impossible to guard the whole village. Place down guard posts in the areas that you hold the most dear. Your guards will occupy them and look out for any criminal on sight. Once a villager enters their sight range during a criminal act, they have a chance to be discovered. And, the longer they can stay within that range, the higher the chance they will not go unnoticed. So, a guard post in front of a door is probably your best chance of catching them.

[h3]Path of A Criminal[/h3]
While you can go the way of the muscles and set up guards wherever you can, maintaining villagers' happiness is still your best chance of reducing crime. The more unhappy your villagers grow, the more likely they are to start committing crimes. And they will typically target those who have a bad standing with them. Thus giving raise to the vicious cycle of criminality. Lower happiness means bad relationships, which fuels criminal acts, which fuels more frustration.

And, if you are successful in catching a criminal, they will end up in jail. You can now place down a jail bench or jail chair, which determines an area of a cell. Each criminal, once defeated in combat, is dragged to their designated bench, and left there to rot. Jailers will regularly bring them food and once their sentence is over, release them to freedom. Each sentence is determined automatically based on their crime, so you don’t have to worry about it, if it is not your cup of tea. But, you can update this sentence to any length you wish. Making it shorter will gain you favor with their family, while extending it will hurt your standing with them.



There is, however, one type of sentence, which is final. Once you order an execution, it is truly an end for them. But first, you will need to dedicate one of your guards to be an executioner, and build an Execution Site - a new zone with Execution Display and Public Stage. Here, the head of your family will gather with the rest of your village to publicly execute any incriminated person. This will send the message that no criminal act will be tolerated, and for a time, you may see them withhold from any cruel actions, despite their frustrations. However, executing a criminal significantly hurts your standing with their family, so choose wisely.



[h3]Healthy Body, Healthy Mind[/h3]
New update will also introduce the mechanics of injuries, fractures, and sicknesses. Villagers can hurt themselves in combat or during heavy labor. They can also get sick as a result of bad weather, or when they come in contact with an infected visitor.

Illnesses and injuries reduce their chance of survival, slow down their movement and reduce their mood and happiness. For severe injuries and illnesses, they will seek treatment at a local hospital and obtain salve, bandages or cure - new healing material produced in the apothecary by the clergy.

Especially for illnesses, they want to be isolated, so they don’t spread the sickness to others, so you should make sure to build a hospital - new clergy zone, where all sick people seek treatment from nurses - a new clergy order.



We hope you will enjoy this new update! We have covered a lot, and yet so much is still not mentioned. From the numerous bugfixes, balancing updates, UI improvements, performance overhaul, or even cloud save support, there is so much to desire! The update will arrive soon, so stay tuned, join us on Discord, and let us know in the comments, what is your favorite feature!

We are approaching the release of the new Military and Criminality update, so it is time to take a look at another major part of the awesome new features - your demesne!

A lot goes into governing a feudal land. Not only does your ruling family need a place to stay and infrastructure to manage resources they exploit, they need to make sure everyone follows the rules, fulfill their duty and develop economies of great craftsmanship and care. All of this is a lot of labor, quite too much to rest on the shoulders of a few noble aristocrats.

To solve this problem, we are introducing servants. You will be able to recruit peasants in their ranks and assign them various duties that are all necessary to keep your manor clean and functional.

[h3]Hard Work For Lay Folk[/h3]

Once you recruit a servant, they will leave their families and join your demesne. They still maintain relationships and contact with their loved ones, but their daily lives are governed entirely by you and the kind of responsibility you assign to them.

Labourers are in charge of any heavy labor. They will handle basic construction, manage and store resources, relocate animals and corpses, tune the temperature in your manor and other public areas and perform regular repairs of your equipment.

Cooks are the masters of good taste. They will occupy your personal kitchen, a new zone with cooking facilities dedicated specifically to your servants. They will use resources from your warehouse and cook for your whole demesne. Not only for you, but for the entire serfdom, your soldiers, guards and other employees.

Stablehands are the animal caretakers of your herd and they are in charge of stables, a new zone dedicated to animals that you personally own, including the newly added horses. They make sure the feeders are full, your horses are groomed and ready for a ride, they milk your cows, shear your sheep and collect the eggs from your chicken. They will also purchase animals from the market with your money, much like farmers would for their own family, or attempt to tame them from the wilderness.



[h3]Take Charge of Your Animals[/h3]
With servants introduced to the game, we have now been able to support the ability to own and care for any kind of animal by the ruling family as well. Not only will your servants extract the benefits of animal husbandry solely for your benefit, you now have access to animals in the warehouse book, and you can freely buy, sell, grant or seize animals from others!



[h3]Construction Professions and Tiers[/h3]
Another major change coming with the new update, is streamlining the construction and outsourcing it to dedicated families of builders. We are introducing two new zones and professions - Carpenters and their Carpentry, and Architects and their Builder’s Guild.

Without them, your villagers will be able to build only a basic set of objects. Hay wall, some simple beds, a fireplace, storages and basic necessities needed to survive under any circumstances. To upgrade yours and theirs lifestyle, you will need to deploy specialized families on your land.

While there are some exceptions, generally any wood-based construction is handled by the carpenters, while anything made from stone or steel is handed to the architects. Each structure will now indicate who can build it, and the blueprints will have a different color - white tint remains for the basic structures, while blue represents carpenters and orange represents architects.



Everything else is streamlined! Once you put down a blueprint, the responsible family will walk to a storefront of a nearby builder and place an order. These builders now have a contract for construction. They will purchase any resources needed and furnish the construction at once. And if the responsible family has a surplus of the needed materials (that is they would otherwise try to sell them), builders will use them and reduce the price for their services by their cost. Once the construction is finished, the family will make the payment for the cost of the material and some extra margin to pay for their labor.

This applies not only for regular families, but also for you, so make sure you have some gold prepared, so that you can motivate them to work for you. These builders are also using their Builder’s Desk to produce Repair Kits, a new resource allowing villagers to perform repairs on a deteriorated structure.



With this change more than ever before we have seen the need to optimize the resource management during construction, so in the next update you will also see villagers pickup resources for several constructions at once, significantly speeding up any construction.

So, what do you think? Are you excited to enlist servants in your demesne? Do you like the new tier system? While it may introduce some obstacles in your constructions, we believe these types of challenges are a lot of fun and make the game a lot more immersive and interesting. Let us know what you think!

As always, you are most welcome to join our Discord server and become a part of our community. We will be really happy to see you there!