September Progress Update
Hello, everyone.
First of all, thank you all for the feedback on the demo. You've been incredibly helpful in identifying three key areas we need to focus on before the release. These are bugs, interfaces, deficiencies in strategic planning, and insufficient replayability. I'll tell you what we're currently doing about these issues and our plans.
But first, a couple of organizational matters.
- Translations
We received many responses from native language speakers willing to help with translation editing. To all those who want to participate, please sign up using this form. Once we stop actively changing the game's text, we'll get in touch with you - and thank you so much!
https://forms.gle/DHYb4BzDKkkjUyTr5
- Early access release - 4th quarter of this year. We are pushing the release date back a bit again - I'll explain why at the end.
- Regarding pricing, we will announce it definitively when we enter the final polishing stage and evaluate the project's state at that moment, which will be approximately a few weeks before release. In any case, it will be within genre standards.
- We're closing the demo because it's become outdated, and maintaining this version requires effort. Too many mechanics need explanations in tutorials, and they will continue to change. Some interfaces are still rough (again because mechanics are being adjusted), and so on.
- We have started inviting new testers for mid-game beta testing from those who submitted applications through our form. Dozens of people will join this closed group, but we will also actively use Steam playtests later on, so our game development policy, together with our wonderful community, will continue.
- We have also reached 250,000 wishlists and we are all very grateful to you for that.
Now, here's what has already been done or will be ready soon.
Judging by the GitHub logs, in the last 2 months, we've implemented 163 enhancements (and features) and 633 fixes, including 224 noticeable bugs.
[h3]1. Initial Settings[/h3]
- Now you can customize the composition of your family, as well as all their skills and parameters. However, for high skills, you'll have to pay with age.
- You'll be able to choose one of 8 provinces for the start, each with a unique map. When we implement climate and seasonal changes, the differences between them will be even more noticeable (but that's after early access, I guess.).
- The most interesting part is that you can also fully customize the political and ethnic map of the world. For each province, you can set the ethnicity, level of ambition, caution, population size, army strength, and political position. Do you want to start as an emperor who has subjugated other peoples? Or create two kingdoms that don't like each other? Or an enclave of a dying people surrounded by aggressive kingdoms? Or perhaps start in a peaceful province where everyone respects each other? The choice is yours.
- Any province can also be made abandoned, allowing you to engage in colonization without neighbors.
- We'll add starting scenarios, game modifiers, and difficulty levels a bit later.
[h3]2. Crime Reform[/h3]
- We've renamed criminals to avoid implying guilt through their names. Now there is a class of vagabonds who can commit crimes.
- When they commit unnoticed crimes, they and a couple of other vagabonds gain the "suspect" trait. Now executioners search for suspects and bring them to the gallows, where spectators can identify them - in this case, they face punishment. If they are innocent, the suspicion is removed. In their free time, executioners engage in crime prevention by intimidating vagabonds to temporarily deter them from criminal activities. Thus, crimes require effort and cannot be punished manually without initiating terror.
- The scafolds now require a brief inspection once a day.
- On the other hand, guards no longer let caught criminals go home and react if they leave a building with loot.
We thank our player Ali Garh for participating in the design of this reform.
[h3]3. Archers and Tactics[/h3]
- Archers have been added to the army. They are quite deadly, but armor provides very good protection against arrows, especially shields. You can order soldiers to protect your archers, or you can attack the enemy unit with armored warriors while your archers shoot them from a safe distance. Alternatively, you can use axemen to "strip" the enemy of their armor and make them vulnerable to your arrows.
- You can order your commander to stay behind and not engage in battle until the last moment. This will save their life but reduce the morale of the warriors in the unit.
- You can send multiple squads to the map during wars. For example, to attack enemy archers or the commander.
- Attacking a warrior from behind ignores their combat skill and is always successful. Using a second unit to flank the enemy also makes more sense now.
- Warriors and lords now actively surrender, raising their hands.
- You can now see the composition of armies and garrisons on the global map, and AI players build various sets of armies depending on their preferences and capabilities. It makes sense to choose your army composition before battle.
- We'll teach the AI a few more tactical tricks, like flanking, but overall, military tactics in early access will remain as is (we'll improve them later).
[h3]4. Economy[/h3]
- Slaves now work 3 hours longer. They are cheaper. An economy based on slavery now makes economic sense.
- You will also see how many nectar-dependent peasants and slaves you have. They also work 30% faster, but nectar now has a strong side effect - characters may fall into a rage more often with increased consumption.
- You can customize who will work in a particular building - slaves, nectar-dependents, etc.
- You will also be able to appoint a clerk from a specific office to serve each building.
[h3]5. Church Reform[/h3]
- Now the church's opinion of your king is represented by the opinion of the Matriarch. It takes into account not only the bishop's opinion of your king but also other factors.
- What matters much more to the church is the number of fanatics and the king's sinfulness. Also, your actions on the global map (more on this later).
- For fanatics, it has become much more important to have enough churches. You'll have to watch this closely.
- The better the relationship, the more goods will be available from the Holy Caravan (and the worse, the less). Don't want fanatics? You'll have to build your own production to get good weapons.
- With good relations, you can also receive a blessing, and then, among other things, fanatical peasants and warriors will join your army. With bad relations, expect uprisings (whether to make soldiers fanatics who will rebel against you during a religious uprising is your decision).
[h3]6. Titles[/h3]
- Now you have a total of 5 titles for lords. Choose carefully whom to admit to the family. Reserve titles for children, or they will have to become free lords.
- Sometimes you will have to expel someone, depriving them of their title - this lord will go to the neighbors (where they will spread dirty rumors about your king) or become a free lord.
- However, you can admit free lords and warriors into the family, but due to their low birth, they will not be well-liked.
[h3]7. Building rotation[/h3]
We continue to design building angles so that you can easily rotate them and create streets and squares. Residential buildings will rotate fairly, while production buildings will have different entrances from the street to the courtyard since production buildings need to be easily recognizable. Interior customization and family houses for lords? Also in progress!
[h3]8. Interface. [/h3]
We've postponed work on the interface for later because this work won't generate many errors, and some things are not ready yet. But even now, you can see the lords' assignments, who is managing where, and change it with the right mouse button. There is also consumption statistics (another suggestion from our community.).
[h2]What's next?[/h2]
In the coming weeks, we will add diplomacy and trade on the global map, lords gaining experience, a new social stratum of loyalists, dynasty prestige, governance goals, peoples and languages - and then we'll tell you how it turned out.
So why did we postpone the release?
Honestly, ethnicities and languages are such an interesting mechanic that we simply can't imagine the game without it. That's partly why we decided to delay the release a bit. On the other hand, it's new, and no one has done anything like it before, so we don't know exactly how long it will take to produce. In any case, we'll announce the exact release date a few weeks before it happens.
Stay tuned, we're just getting started!
Feel free to ask questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer.
(Wolves still sometimes wear hats. We won't fix this bug as long as it's possible because it's very funny)
First of all, thank you all for the feedback on the demo. You've been incredibly helpful in identifying three key areas we need to focus on before the release. These are bugs, interfaces, deficiencies in strategic planning, and insufficient replayability. I'll tell you what we're currently doing about these issues and our plans.
But first, a couple of organizational matters.
- Translations
We received many responses from native language speakers willing to help with translation editing. To all those who want to participate, please sign up using this form. Once we stop actively changing the game's text, we'll get in touch with you - and thank you so much!
https://forms.gle/DHYb4BzDKkkjUyTr5
- Early access release - 4th quarter of this year. We are pushing the release date back a bit again - I'll explain why at the end.
- Regarding pricing, we will announce it definitively when we enter the final polishing stage and evaluate the project's state at that moment, which will be approximately a few weeks before release. In any case, it will be within genre standards.
- We're closing the demo because it's become outdated, and maintaining this version requires effort. Too many mechanics need explanations in tutorials, and they will continue to change. Some interfaces are still rough (again because mechanics are being adjusted), and so on.
- We have started inviting new testers for mid-game beta testing from those who submitted applications through our form. Dozens of people will join this closed group, but we will also actively use Steam playtests later on, so our game development policy, together with our wonderful community, will continue.
- We have also reached 250,000 wishlists and we are all very grateful to you for that.
Now, here's what has already been done or will be ready soon.
Judging by the GitHub logs, in the last 2 months, we've implemented 163 enhancements (and features) and 633 fixes, including 224 noticeable bugs.
[h3]1. Initial Settings[/h3]
- Now you can customize the composition of your family, as well as all their skills and parameters. However, for high skills, you'll have to pay with age.
- You'll be able to choose one of 8 provinces for the start, each with a unique map. When we implement climate and seasonal changes, the differences between them will be even more noticeable (but that's after early access, I guess.).
- The most interesting part is that you can also fully customize the political and ethnic map of the world. For each province, you can set the ethnicity, level of ambition, caution, population size, army strength, and political position. Do you want to start as an emperor who has subjugated other peoples? Or create two kingdoms that don't like each other? Or an enclave of a dying people surrounded by aggressive kingdoms? Or perhaps start in a peaceful province where everyone respects each other? The choice is yours.
- Any province can also be made abandoned, allowing you to engage in colonization without neighbors.
- We'll add starting scenarios, game modifiers, and difficulty levels a bit later.
[h3]2. Crime Reform[/h3]
- We've renamed criminals to avoid implying guilt through their names. Now there is a class of vagabonds who can commit crimes.
- When they commit unnoticed crimes, they and a couple of other vagabonds gain the "suspect" trait. Now executioners search for suspects and bring them to the gallows, where spectators can identify them - in this case, they face punishment. If they are innocent, the suspicion is removed. In their free time, executioners engage in crime prevention by intimidating vagabonds to temporarily deter them from criminal activities. Thus, crimes require effort and cannot be punished manually without initiating terror.
- The scafolds now require a brief inspection once a day.
- On the other hand, guards no longer let caught criminals go home and react if they leave a building with loot.
We thank our player Ali Garh for participating in the design of this reform.
[h3]3. Archers and Tactics[/h3]
- Archers have been added to the army. They are quite deadly, but armor provides very good protection against arrows, especially shields. You can order soldiers to protect your archers, or you can attack the enemy unit with armored warriors while your archers shoot them from a safe distance. Alternatively, you can use axemen to "strip" the enemy of their armor and make them vulnerable to your arrows.
- You can order your commander to stay behind and not engage in battle until the last moment. This will save their life but reduce the morale of the warriors in the unit.
- You can send multiple squads to the map during wars. For example, to attack enemy archers or the commander.
- Attacking a warrior from behind ignores their combat skill and is always successful. Using a second unit to flank the enemy also makes more sense now.
- Warriors and lords now actively surrender, raising their hands.
- You can now see the composition of armies and garrisons on the global map, and AI players build various sets of armies depending on their preferences and capabilities. It makes sense to choose your army composition before battle.
- We'll teach the AI a few more tactical tricks, like flanking, but overall, military tactics in early access will remain as is (we'll improve them later).
[h3]4. Economy[/h3]
- Slaves now work 3 hours longer. They are cheaper. An economy based on slavery now makes economic sense.
- You will also see how many nectar-dependent peasants and slaves you have. They also work 30% faster, but nectar now has a strong side effect - characters may fall into a rage more often with increased consumption.
- You can customize who will work in a particular building - slaves, nectar-dependents, etc.
- You will also be able to appoint a clerk from a specific office to serve each building.
[h3]5. Church Reform[/h3]
- Now the church's opinion of your king is represented by the opinion of the Matriarch. It takes into account not only the bishop's opinion of your king but also other factors.
- What matters much more to the church is the number of fanatics and the king's sinfulness. Also, your actions on the global map (more on this later).
- For fanatics, it has become much more important to have enough churches. You'll have to watch this closely.
- The better the relationship, the more goods will be available from the Holy Caravan (and the worse, the less). Don't want fanatics? You'll have to build your own production to get good weapons.
- With good relations, you can also receive a blessing, and then, among other things, fanatical peasants and warriors will join your army. With bad relations, expect uprisings (whether to make soldiers fanatics who will rebel against you during a religious uprising is your decision).
[h3]6. Titles[/h3]
- Now you have a total of 5 titles for lords. Choose carefully whom to admit to the family. Reserve titles for children, or they will have to become free lords.
- Sometimes you will have to expel someone, depriving them of their title - this lord will go to the neighbors (where they will spread dirty rumors about your king) or become a free lord.
- However, you can admit free lords and warriors into the family, but due to their low birth, they will not be well-liked.
[h3]7. Building rotation[/h3]
We continue to design building angles so that you can easily rotate them and create streets and squares. Residential buildings will rotate fairly, while production buildings will have different entrances from the street to the courtyard since production buildings need to be easily recognizable. Interior customization and family houses for lords? Also in progress!
[h3]8. Interface. [/h3]
We've postponed work on the interface for later because this work won't generate many errors, and some things are not ready yet. But even now, you can see the lords' assignments, who is managing where, and change it with the right mouse button. There is also consumption statistics (another suggestion from our community.).
[h2]What's next?[/h2]
In the coming weeks, we will add diplomacy and trade on the global map, lords gaining experience, a new social stratum of loyalists, dynasty prestige, governance goals, peoples and languages - and then we'll tell you how it turned out.
So why did we postpone the release?
Honestly, ethnicities and languages are such an interesting mechanic that we simply can't imagine the game without it. That's partly why we decided to delay the release a bit. On the other hand, it's new, and no one has done anything like it before, so we don't know exactly how long it will take to produce. In any case, we'll announce the exact release date a few weeks before it happens.
Stay tuned, we're just getting started!
Feel free to ask questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer.
(Wolves still sometimes wear hats. We won't fix this bug as long as it's possible because it's very funny)