Field of Glory: Kingdoms News

We are continually striving to enhance the game to provide you with an ever-improving gaming experience.

We are pleased to announce that Patch 1.03 has been rolled out and is now officially available.
The Patch 1.03 adds 120+ new entries and introduces many updates.



KINGDOMS 1.03.4
August 28th, 2024
Approximatively 120 entries.

SCENARIOS SETUP & FACTION SPECIFICS
- Norman events now work for Humans in SP (only). Overall improvements made to it.
- Al-Andalus AI can expand without restriction (was unable to cross the Pyrenees).
- Paris gets its own flag.
- When a law benefits the Emperor (of the HRE), all HRE members will be displeased.
- Fix to Italian Maritime Republics losing the Large Merchant Fleet perk when they progress to Late Tier II (and higher) Realm.
- Fix to a rare issue preventing Apulia from declaring the Kingdom of Sicily when Sicily is under control.
- Wales starts as a Minor Kingdom, not a March (resulting in more Authority gain among other things).
- Welsh culture now provides extra Military Expertise (instead of bonus XP).
- Russian modifiers become Rus' modifiers.
- The Byzantine Empire easily agrees to a passage rights treaty with non-hostile Crusaders.

UI/QOL
- You can now search for any buildings using the Find tool (e.g., where is my master armorer or how many Venetian Fondachi are in my territory).
- Province building queue enabled (see the tooltip on the right-hand side of the panel).
- A message will be issued if you can't recruit and a unit queue is canceled.
- Fixed wrongly formatted messages when a vassal gives you troops.
- Fixed an issue with not seeing your token progress chance in some rare cases in the Nation Panel.
- Scrolling arrows added in the unit queue (region panel).
- More messages are now private to reduce clutter.
- Provincial units are shown in single regions for reference.
- Fixed a display bug for the end year of the last military reform.
- No message is issued when you gain and lose a capital on the same turn.
- Fixed PBEM Lobby display issue.
- Fixed the visual bug of Devastating Charge showing only a +1 bonus.
- Health prediction is correctly shown for all structures.
- Selling a RGD will now be a request to sell and won't be immediate anymore, making it harder for cheaters to spoil the fun for everyone.
- Multiplayer login improved (see button tooltip on the relevant screen).
- Fixed Wales being described as part of Western England.
- Fixed Norwegian adjective (from "Norweigan").
- Leaders' lists now have an indicator for loyalty.
- The province panel shows stockpiles.
- Fixed Georgian and Byzantine portraits having a mix-up for 'Sons'.
- Fixed a possible rare crash when displaying a battle.
- Added history in the Ledger for Military Expertise, Piety Ranking, number of wars, and Net Commerce.
- The Legacy inter-turn display now shows gains in addition to totals.

WARFARE & UNITS
Mercenaries
Significant changes have been made to Mercenary distributions. The goal is to offer alternative mercenaries to the original owner of each Domain, reducing redundancy. For example, France will no longer have French mercenary knights in the Paris domain but will have Sergeants, while other nations will still have these knights. Overall, efforts have been made to propose plausible units (historical or from neighboring regions). Here are some examples:
- Champagne: Brabançon Mercenary Spearmen
- Cordoba: Christian Mercenary Knights
- Edessa: Mercenary Turcopoles
- Estonia: Western Mercenary Crossbowmen
- Belaya Rus: German Mercenary Knights
- Damascus: Frankish Mercenary Crossbowmen
Turkish nations, notably the Seljuqs, get enhanced army lists
Many nations now have better 'coverage' in unit types

The rest
- Fixed some minor issues in Military Reforms bonuses.
- All ships are now levies.
- Fixed charge working in hills.
- Levies units cost a bit more upfront in manpower but 50% less in money upkeep.
- If a region revolts and the legitimate owner is under occupation, rebels will be of his nation.
- Revised Light Cavalry and Horse Archers recruitment and upkeep costs, with Horse Archers aligning more toward the cost of Light Cavalry.

DYNASTY & COURT
- Ruler's stats change by ±5% Court Expense, Conversion, Authority (was ±10%).
- Court Expense reduction can't go above 75% (was 90%).
- Court Expenses revised to be less punishing.

SYSTEM
- Improved launcher logic when launching FoGM.
- New functionalities added to PBEM chat.
- In PBEM, files are always saved locally to reduce issues with cloud saves generating OOS.
- Development Speed (faster game) / AI Aggressiveness PBEM options (works in SP too with more granularity).
- Fixed terrain sounds rising the sound volume progressively.
- AI Search depth option can't be changed in MP.
- Handles DPI better and correctly when the options file is set.
- Enabled forcing the game to open on another monitor.

RELIGION
- First Muslim can also be Shia.
- Fix to some religion names sometimes not showing correctly.

DIPLOMACY
- Allied wars (i.e., triggered because of an alliance) will automatically trigger a white peace once the initial protagonists are at peace.
- When in an alliance, the default is to help if relations are Amiable (was: Always).
- More controls on invalid transactions.

VASSALS & PEERS
- A vassal can only be absorbed by his liege.
- Fixed: Peer of the Realm becoming vassals will not transform (uncommonly) to independent regions.
- Vassals won't gift surrounded lands to their liege if the liege has reached Max Demesne.
- Vassals will retrocede less easily isolated regions within a liege territory if these regions are adjacent to their capital.
- When made vassal, return all regions not legitimately owned (in case of ongoing wars, for example).
- Embezzlement is now more dependent on governor loyalty.
- No money received in case of partial failure in a trial.

REGIONS & BUILDINGS
- Buildings producing trade goods are more informative about the local availability of them.
- Single Trade Goods display mode (in Trade Panel) works for all categories of Trade Goods and is more informative.
- When an epidemic or a plague is removed in a region, an 'immunity' bonus is provided for 8 turns to prevent reoccurrence.
- Fixed: Barracks never being allowed won't be listed as a 0 slot.
- Added Clockwise Stairs and Dormant Bridge as new Fortification buildings.
- Added Precious Stone Mine.
- Slightly rebalanced temporary Fortifications.
- Fixed: Paved Roads were not buildable.
- Slave workforce will be properly removed by Orthodox populations.
- Reworked slightly the Local > Town > City watch line of buildings.
- Toll bridge won't be added if only one building slot remains.
- If you disband buildings, in addition to lowered loyalty, revolt risk will also increase exponentially if non-zero.
- Woad Harvest costs a single slot.
- Detinet costs no slot.
- Trench & Stakes provide 1 peasant unit (mini-event).
- Reinforced Gate provides 2 peasant units (mini-event).
- King's Herald gives twice as much Stewardship as there is Loyalty (doubled).
- Shell Keep was not buildable, fixed.
- Several buildings can store more Equipment (Notably, the Minor Stockpile 5>20).
- Fix to Mentoring and Builder Halls having the wrong modifier.
- Fix to Bulwark Tower not being buildable.
- Horses Herd has no prerequisites for tribals.
- Precious Stones Mine added.
- Plague protection bonus doubled to +50 if you had an epidemic recently.
- The blacksmith produces more equipment and does not cost any metal per turn (reminder: there is always a chance it becomes a master blacksmith over time).
- Fixes to a few typos in structure bonuses.
- Baronial vassals have an anti-raid strength of 25 (hefty).
- Astronomer workshops produce slightly more.

DECISIONS & EVENTS
- Recruit non-standard unit RGD is less generous by 1/3.
- Fondachi can only be placed in coastal regions.
- Some other changes to RGD.
- Extra test for the free anchorage event.
- Minor fiefdom can provide one of these 3 missing RGDs: Remove Civilized, Absorb Vassal, Form Vassal.
- Promote to Clergy will always produce a clergyman of your state religion.
- More explicit testing on Place Holding, relative to the gain of resources.
- Knightly Orders can now be removed with 'Remove Civilized'.
- Restore Order works in occupied regions.

AI
- The AI is less likely to restart a war with someone it was recently at war with or someone who has beaten it several times.
- AI will more often propose being absorbed or becoming a vassal if soundly defeated.
- AI is less prone to propose peace for new wars.

MAP & ART
- Cyprus harbor moved slightly.
- Fixed a region connection near Wales.
- Fix to a connection problem in Tabriz.

[h3]Everything but the Kitchen Sink[/h3]

Dynasties and Characters
The aspect that perhaps required the most work in Kingdoms was evolving the rather simple system of Empires’ generals into a much more developed one. The task initially seemed monumental because it’s no secret, and it’s even obvious, that players need to identify a game’s signature by comparing it to another. So, when you see a medieval strategy game announced, you wonder how it compares to Paradox’s Crusader Kings III, which is the current benchmark for many. Of course, it would be presumptuous to believe that Kingdoms could equal CK3 in every way, and that wasn’t the goal anyway, as what we wanted with this new game was primarily to create a military and economic strategy game, so we had to strive for an achievable goal.

Ebb and flow, one of the goals of the game. The changes in Byzantine dynasties are clearly identifiable here.


We thus asked ourselves what was imperative and what was more about simulating the life of a ruler and their court (which is the core gameplay of CK3, and so not something we wanted to tackle). The choices are quite pronounced in Kingdoms, as everything revolves around the sovereign and their kingdom, and this is where we stop, by design. The court is defined in relation to them, and even though there are nobles who are not of their lineage, other characters can be entirely removed when the sovereign changes. There is thus no proper historical record of all the dynasties of the nations on the map; this is intentional, partly to maintain the focus on the main experience of Kingdoms, namely military campaigns, economic developments, and of course the rise and fall of nations, but also because trying to compete with CK3 on what it does best would make little sense.

Hats off to the artist who made 900 portraits by hand. No generative AI was used!


To summarize, we aim to offer players a different experience, not a copy of another game. This is something to consider if you are designing your game: what are its identity(ies), its strengths (marketing department would name that Unique Selling Points or USPs!)? What does it want to achieve, what are you willing to put in the background to ensure the player’s experience is what you want? A game is not a hodgepodge of ideas…


Religions
Religious conflict, in the context of a game only (sic!), is good! It creates what we call fault lines and is thus a rather effective engine for generating tensions. In parallel, if you impose some disadvantages for attacking your co-religionists while offering bonuses for waging war on nations of another faith, you effectively recreate what happened historically. In Kingdoms, there’s no need to do anything for Christians in Spain and Muslim Taifas to go to war (though we added an event that unites them with the arrival of the Almoravids). The progressive deterioration of relations (which can be avoided if you have a treaty, as happened historically between some nations) will naturally trigger the algorithm giving claims of one nation to another, which will also cause a quicker deterioration of relations, leading to war!

This is a crucial point for good historical design: always try to ground your design elements to reality. When you start imagining mechanisms that are too convoluted and have little to do with what happened historically, you can be sure you will lose some players, and ultimately the situation you achieve will be implausible. Conversely, designing rules inspired by history that are logically linked will lead to a game that is essentially historical or plausibly historical. The beauty of these logical sequences is twofold. Firstly, these sequences are quite resilient against divergences (while not being totally constrained, it is possible for a player, with directed effort, to counteract them), so even if something does not happen historically, the system naturally returns to a historical state via the pressure exerted by different mechanisms supporting each other.

A Crusader detachment made up of 2 Danish Huscarls, Polish Armoured Nobles, and 2 Spearmen from Saxony.


Secondly, a logical design inspired by history that is a series of small interdependent rules has the advantage of being easily memorable for the player. It’s a bit of “go with the flow,” an easy mnemonic for them. Just think that religious tensions degrade relations, that you claim the territories of nations you covet or dislike, and there you go, you know the rule without learning it (and you anticipate what will happen, which provides a geopolitical context) because everything seems natural: I play a Christian from Spain, I know I must prepare for a series of conflicts with my southern neighbors. And I also naturally understand that my Christian neighbors will also go to war, which will bring us closer together. From there, the player chooses their path(s), including some possible devious ones! (for example, being the best friend of a Christian neighbor, then completely absorbing them). The possibilities are numerous and replayability is improved.


An Engaging Experience
The last point I wanted to address was the computer opponent that players face and what is ultimately its role, as the adversary. Even though things may change in a few years with the emergence of generalist AIs, I realized over 20 years of developing strategy games that it is vain (or even vainglorious) to believe that a so-called AI (which isn’t an AI, of course, it’s a linguistic shortcut) could rival a player, even an average one. The game’s AI, an opponent of a few thousand lines of code, does not compete with a human brain of 100 billion neurons developed iteratively over tens of thousands of years, that’s obvious. As a result, one must then ask whether the AI can be anything other than a roadblock or a foil. But consequently, is the player’s experience of the game engaging and interesting? Not necessarily, if you quickly find yourself in a mop-up phase or a “push mindlessly my armies,” ad repetitam (and often ad nauseam).

The Papacy is AI-only by design. Achieving historical limitations and behavior for a playable Papacy would require extreme difficulty and months of work.


A beginning of a solution can be found in the approach taken in pen & paper role-playing games (and I was a game master for many years in several campaigns!). The goal when you are a game master is not to make the players (your players) live a miserable experience that ends in mud, blood, and oblivion. With a clever mix of tension, twists, and also benevolence, you guide them towards epic adventures that end in a grand apotheosis. This is indeed the approach used by Rimworld and to a lesser extent AI Wars, both very good games with different profiles but sharing the concept of storytelling.

That’s why AGEOD’s games also take, modestly and in a measured way (I want to emphasize this!) this approach to AI difficulty levels. Some players struggle with the concept that not all game rules are symmetrical between human and computer opponents, and that even the default level, the balanced one (named so for a reason), makes adjustments, either for the computer or the player. The goal is to have a strategy game that offers challenge and tension, maintaining this for as long as possible. This doesn’t mean everything is leveled and neutralized to achieve this trajectory, but let’s say there are some rubber banding mechanisms to dynamically balance difficulty and obstacles, and there are rule adjustments.

Having the AI comment on your kingdoms is also part of the storytelling experience.


But again, the goal is not to make the player’s life miserable, to punish them; that’s where the benevolent aspect, derived from role-playing experience, is a plus. When you are human, you don’t want your troops to be automatically controlled by your suzerain, and this is not the case in Kingdoms, and it is indeed a ‘human’ privilege that the computer opponent does not have. But similarly, the computer player will be less likely to face a coup from a disloyal peer because it does not optimize as well as a player, taking into account dozens of constraints, and the distribution of its peers. It’s also in some way pragmatic. You don’t need more vanity than necessary when developing a complex game. Do you really want to spend two more weeks of development (which will cost you the non-development of many other features or UI improvements, everything has a cost in time) just to boast that your AI is almost as capable as an average player (and no better) at assigning its governors, taking into account loyalty, weighted by the bonuses they provide, contextually in each situation? What does this ultimately change to the player’s experience if the AI still suffers civil wars? (and it will, because it does not manage loyalty rules as finely as the player, regarding who can be army commander or peer of the realm, but it’s a bit less tied to each peer’s loyalty). Not much, AI nations suffer civil wars, and this remains generally linked to loyalty rules, period. Equity and balance remain.I am well aware that this is also a divisive approach, but it is the result of many years of experience and hundreds of feedback and game analysis. For better or worse, it is AGEOD’s approach… While awaiting the supposed advent of super-game opponents driven by AI. Not sure players will appreciate it either, because it comes back to what makes a good game experience. Not necessarily a game where the ruthless, logical opponent crushes you, but a game where there is constant tension, twists, and perhaps, ideally, a great comeback, giving you memorable moments. Your best games are those that unfolded like a good movie tells you a story that keeps you glued to the cinema seat at the end… not a factual documentary, interesting, but a bit too conventional.

Until next time,
[h3]Philippe Malacher aka Pocus, July 2024.[/h3]

We are happy to announce that the new Open Beta Patch 1.03 is now available with 80 new entries.
You can now opt-in to the Public Beta on Steam.


[h3]FIELD OF GLORY: KINGDOMS 1.03 BETA[/h3]

SCENARIOS SETUP & FACTION SPECIFICS
- Norman events now work for Humans in SP (only). Overall improvements made to it.
- Al-Andalus AI can expand without restriction (was unable to cross the Pyrenees).
- Paris gets its own flag.
- When a law benefits the Emperor (of the HRE), all HRE members will be displeased.

UI/QOL
- You can now search for any buildings using the Find tool (e.g., where is my master armorer or how many Venetian Fondachi are in my territory).
- Province building queue enabled (see the tooltip on the right-hand side of the panel).
- A message will be issued if you can't recruit and a unit queue is canceled.
- Fixed wrongly formatted messages when a vassal gives you troops.
- Fixed an issue with not seeing your token progress chance in some rare cases in the Nation Panel.
- Scrolling arrows added in the unit queue (region panel).
- More messages are now private to reduce clutter.
- Provincial units are shown in single regions for reference.
- Fixed a display bug for the end year of the last military reform.
- No message is issued when you gain and lose a capital on the same turn.
- Fixed PBEM Lobby display issue.
- Fixed the visual bug of Devastating Charge showing only a +1 bonus.

WARFARE
- Fixed some minor issues in Military Reforms bonuses.
- All ships are now levies.
- Fixed charge working in hills.
- Levies units cost a bit more upfront in manpower but 50% less in money upkeep.
- If a region revolts and the legitimate owner is under occupation, rebels will be of his nation.

DYNASTY & COURT
- Ruler's stats change by ±5% Court Expense, Conversion, Authority (was ±10%).
- Court Expense reduction can't go above 75% (was 90%).
- Court Expenses formula tweaked for extremely high national treasury.

SYSTEM
- Improved launcher logic when launching FoGM.
- New functionalities added to PBEM chat.
- In PBEM, files are always saved locally to reduce issues with cloud saves generating OOS.
- Development Speed (faster game) / AI Aggressiveness PBEM options (works in SP too with more granularity).
- Fixed terrain sounds rising the sound volume progressively.
- AI Search depth option can't be changed in MP.

RELIGION
- First Muslim can also be Shia.

DIPLOMACY
- Allied wars (i.e., triggered because of an alliance) will automatically trigger a white peace once the initial protagonists are at peace.
- When in an alliance, the default is to help if relations are Amiable (was: Always).

VASSALS & PEERS
- A vassal can only be absorbed by his liege.
- Fixed: Peer of the Realm becoming vassals will not transform (uncommonly) to independent regions.
- Vassals won't gift surrounded lands to their liege if the liege has reached Max Demesne.
- Vassals will retrocede less easily isolated regions within a liege territory if these regions are adjacent to their capital.

REGIONS & BUILDINGS
- Buildings producing trade goods are more informative about the local availability of them.
- Single Trade Goods display mode (in Trade Panel) works for all categories of Trade Goods and is more informative.
- When an epidemic or a plague is removed in a region, an 'immunity' bonus is provided for 8 turns to prevent reoccurrence.
- Fixed: Barracks never being allowed won't be listed as a 0 slot.
- Added Clockwise Stairs and Dormant Bridge as new Fortification buildings.
- Added Precious Stone Mine.
- Slightly rebalanced temporary Fortifications.
- Fixed: Paved Roads were not buildable.
- Slave workforce will be properly removed by Orthodox populations.
- Reworked slightly the Local > Town > City watch line of buildings.
- Toll bridge won't be added if only one building slot remains.
- If you disband buildings, in addition to lowered loyalty, revolt risk will also increase exponentially if non-zero.
- Woad Harvest costs a single slot.
- Detinet costs no slot.
- Trench & Stakes provide 1 peasant unit (mini-event).
- Reinforced Gate provides 2 peasant units (mini-event).
- King's Herald gives twice as much Stewardship as there is Loyalty (doubled).
- Shell Keep was not buildable, fixed.
- Several buildings can store more Equipment (Notably, the Minor Stockpile 5>20).

DECISIONS & EVENTS
- Recruit non-standard unit RGD is less generous by 1/3.
- Fondachi can only be placed in coastal regions.
- Some other changes to RGD.
- Extra test for the free anchorage event.
- Minor fiefdom can provide one of these 3 missing RGDs: Remove Civilized, Absorb Vassal, Form Vassal.
- Promote to Clergy will always produce a clergyman of your state religion.

AI
- The AI is less likely to restart a war with someone it was recently at war with or someone who has beaten it several times.
- AI is less prone to propose peace for new wars.

MAP & ART
- Cyprus harbor moved slightly.
- Fixed a region connection near Wales.

We are constantly continuing to improve the game to give you a better and better gaming experience.

We are happy to announce that Patch 1.02 has been released and it's now official. This patch includes more than 60 updates and improvements. The official release adds the following new updates compared to the 1.02 beta:

• Improved PBEM stability
  
• Smoother liaison with FOG2: Medieval
  
• Barracks can now be built
  
• Pop-up message about your vassals providing troops properly formatted
  
• More rats (only in the Load/Save panel, though)
  

For more details on the full changelog, please see the previous article:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1985050/view/4244161399625624487

Warfare

Let’s not kid ourselves; war is one of the major interests of players, and Kingdoms tries to represent it with the right balance of complexity, realism, and fun (never forget that the project is a game; making concessions in this regard when there are decisions to be made would be a mistake). AGEOD has a long tradition of wargames and strategy games, having started 20 years ago with American independence and then followed with a large number (over 15) of turn-based games on different conflicts (all WEGOs). Early on, we decided to show that a war is won not by sheer numbers but by qualitative superiority. This ranges from the training and logistics of the basic soldier to the competence of your generals and even your ruler, and by extension, the player. This means that with the right approach, it should be possible to win even when significantly outnumbered. Everything is, of course, based on military history in general and thus well-grounded on a concrete basis.

However, this can be frustrating for new players or those used to more casual games where accumulation leads to victory. On numerous occasions, we’ve seen rage on forums where, for example, in Empires, the valiant Roman legions struggled against the nations of the Apennines or later in Dacia or Germania (Varus, give me back my legions!). The same goes for Kingdoms, where players might believe that their very (very) costly knights are the ultimate answer to everything. Or, more moderately, that piling up a large number of heavy infantries will suffice. This is, of course, false (unless your nation is so powerful that you can field a knight for every opposing peasant, perhaps), and this is where the game becomes an intellectual exercise, trying to find the right combination of troops to fight the enemy at the least cost. This creates a game with multiple levels and thus replayability, even in solo play. Initially, unfamiliar with the system, you might choose an easier nation and win in a relaxed, pressure-free way. Later, instead of increasing the difficulty level, you might choose a more challenging nation (for example, Wales, often up against England, or even the Abbasids, a small decaying entity facing the powerful Seljuqs), requiring you to play all your cards cleverly.


Blood on the snow … the integrated battle system


To talk more practically about what we’ve done to favor quality and strategy over brute force, the integrated combat system, a kind of automated chessboard, deserves some explanation. We needed to achieve a completely hands-off battle module where very different parameters resulted in very different ‘flavors.’ The worst would have been to combine unit power, experience, fatigue, and commander competence arithmetically into a single number to determine an outcome. So, we developed a three-dimensional system, where pushing the slider on one aspect does not increase more than that aspect without affecting the other two. This is what we called the triangle rule, which deserves attention. First, the unit has a base combat value, easily imagining that a knight is worth much more than a quick levy. This value is, however, modified by the terrain, where the optimizer player can already act by choosing battle locations, for example, luring the enemy into a swamp or forest.


Italo-Normans knights will stay put in this city assault, while their spearmen lead the charge


Secondly, troop experience and fatigue are very determining factors in the outcome of a battle. These values do not increase combat value but will generate better dice rolls. This is the second dimension of this triangle rule.
Lastly, the commanders are also crucial. How do they impact without improving unit power or dice outcome? By allowing a general to roll multiple dice (and you take the best, knowing that the best is already improved by the unit itself!).
Thus, we create rather realistic battles where inexperienced but numerous troops can be defeated by a tactical genius with a few seasoned troops on chosen terrain.


Standing army units will need a backup of levies to perform optimally


Moving away from the battlefield level and discussing how armies were raised and demobilized during the medieval period, we also wanted to introduce a marked difference between medieval levies, drawn from the population with very rudimentary combat training, and permanent units always ready for combat and regularly trained (mercenary corps, nobles, nomadic warriors). One difficulty was to make players accept that the game's tempo was not that of reality, as military campaigns often stopped in winter and population levies could last only a few months. Therefore, one of the things players must accept is that your units are levies but can be present on the map for the equivalent of several years. The same goes for the famous movement speeds, which are heavily abstracted. Some players point out that an army doesn’t take two years to cross France and that one should be able to embark in Venice and arrive in Jerusalem in a few weeks, not six months. These are compromises necessary for this turn-based strategy game to work, as we cannot stress enough; it’s not a simulation but an abstraction and simplification of reality. Again, the main point is not to evaluate each subsystem in isolation but to see if, when combined, they most often yield a plausible result in line with historical accuracy. For the more skeptical, it’s possible to rationalize some rules. For example, saying that the ability to disband a levy unit and recover most of its initial cost simulates a constant flow of new soldiers while the older ones return home. It’s also interesting to note that some concepts are never questioned, although completely impossible, such as having an immediate view of the map (at a time when most people had no idea of Europe’s shape) with instant communication between armies (radio technology was not very widespread ). In a way, players have blind spots; they accept what has become a game convention (and a sacrifice to playability) over the years but still struggle with the rest.


Castles and Fortresses are built progressively thanks to the Fortifications system, with temporary buildings enabling more permanent structures


The last point to address is the construction of castles and fortresses. This was a major element defining the medieval period, with the creation of hundreds of fortified sites. We had to solve the problem of making these tasks both titanic and progressive. We didn’t want to ask players to invest hundreds of infrastructure points without seeing any result and then suddenly have their castle appear. On the other hand, the system had to integrate naturally with Kingdoms' existing system of buildings classified by category and tier. This is where we introduced the concept of fortification points in each region, a value from 0 to 100. Based on this value, a more or less powerful fortified site is offered, but with a relatively modest cost compared to all the advantages it provides. The system’s beauty lies in the prerequisite of these fortification points, which you can increase via temporary pseudo-buildings representing castle elements. Indeed, it would be rather anecdotal (and would clutter the military buildings line too much) to ask the player to build and maintain elements as modest as a guard post, a drawbridge, or machicolations. However, defining them as temporary modules that improve the region’s fortification points allows you to propose and illustrate them appropriately and immersively.