Strategos News

Hello! We remain hard at work on Strategos, always updating and improving based on feedback in the ongoing pre-alpha playtest.



For settings and UI, we've added settings to the in-game battlemap menu, banners are more readable in the woods and on elephants, we’ve fixed bugs that broke the combat log, added a UI size scaling option, draggable windows, on-hover over dropdown options that display unit details, various campaign UI updates like pagination, lasso size options, an improved pause functionality, an ammo UI bar to the unit banners and cards, a free look gamepad camera mode for cinematic shots, background music for the menu and in-combat (including randomization of tracks, all music from Tyler Cunningham: https://www.pond5.com/artist/tylercunningham), an FPS display settings option, new custom map image previews, a black lasso and unit placeholder UI visual for maps with white snow or sand background, some tutorial text updates, a toggle to disable text popups, and changes to popup size and font, and speed up zoom controls, and we no longer show unneeded idle or moving state icons. We also added a quality difficulty setting for all battle types (in addition to existing quantity setting), a display for shift modes on banners, fixes to map borders, edits to post processing and grass settings inputs, and we added a button for highlighting all player and (visible) enemy units at once.

We very significantly improved performance (>50%) with a total overhaul to the movement of men, the use of an update manager for soldier and projectile movement and animation, and improved unit coordinator code. We also removed unneeded components and gameobjects from soldiers after initializing, edited build settings, and changed pathfinding calculations to make them async in order to fix fps spikes on moving many units at once.



For maps, we've added a new map entirely for the battle of Issos, and overhauled the maps for Trebia and Raphia. We’ve also made large updates to the quality of the grass and its blending into the terrain, along with wind and shadow effects, map lighting and better color matching on existing maps.

For gameplay, we've slowed down the general pace of the game, including unit speed and especially the rate of unit rotation for more realistic movement, made some changes to early battle command and control, and rebalanced light horse pursuits and evades. You can now give queued up commands to un-commandable evaders, pursuers and recoilers so that once commandable again they execute the move. We’ve tweaked rally checks and made fixes to courier movement, and updated the deployment mode experience. Routing units now can't rally when overlapped, goading has been fixed to be less annoying in extreme cases (ie no goading repeatedly off the map altogether), and we’ve made many move-to-shoot fixes so that behavior is more intuitive. We’ve added the use of historical battle maps in custom battles, and made recoil fixes to integrate them better into gameplay. Ranged units now become “50% shooters” beyond 20 shots (with accompanying ammo bar).

The line shift modes have been substantially updated, and now units in mutual melee passive can rally check. Pushback mode units don’t go back into melee passive, and still push further, but suffer greater morale shock when losing, as do units in fallback mode. We also fixed some overlap bugs from line shift modes.



For the AI, we've improved cataphract, heavy infantry line, and elephant deployment. We’ve massively improved AI flanking maneuvers, and improved the AI's ability to skirmish and recover skirmishing positions after evading. Peltasts do a better job of standing and fighting sometimes, and bowmen and skirmish group moves have been improved. Fragmented AI seek out a commander to rally, and sparabara/bow line infantry are now better at taking nearby available auto drop flanks. The AI make better use of reserves, and are much better at navigating around combats and into flanking positions. We’ve also fixed bugs to AI hindrance on overlaps ending, and light/ranged cavalry who are out of ammo are now more likely to charge if available to do so.

For various visuals, we've updated the animation controller and soldier orientation on slopes for combats at steep angles. We’ve improved the smoothness of transitions between shooting animations, added dust particle effects, and improved idle animation randomness. Shooters face their targets better, and we’ve made improvements to animation visuals updating at long distances. Units are better at changing back to melee weapons after throwing javelins, and fixes have been made to pikemen coordinating while shifting in and out of combat. Deaths while dispersing, courier movement, soldiers moving out to meet flankers, and soldier scaling have all been improved. The initial offset position of projectiles is much better, and various new types of trees have been added.

For other content, we’ve added Syrian heavy bowmen, Machimoi pikemen, Machimoi swordsmen, and Germanic axemen, along with Aitolian and Dacian allies. We’ve updated the Ptolemaic, Seleucid and Marian and Polybian Roman lists to be more comprehensive and historically accurate. We’ve also added more battles to the existing Alexander campaign (Jaxartes and Chaeronea).



We’ve also fixed many combat and UI bugs, including to stopping multiple units at once, double clicking unit card movement to destroyed units, selection faction randomization, some return to menu buttons, and some issues with units stuck in place after combats in rare circumstances, as well as various other bugs which are always being squashed.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for future updates!

We are still hard at work updating Strategos (barring some down time over the holidays) and have a few updates for you.

We've started work on a very WiP basic campaign that simply strings battles together in a thematic way with some unit selection and some mandatory units. The first test one is based around the campaigns of Alexander the Great, and has battles across different maps vs the Thracians, Illyrians, Thebans and Persians:

We've also added more maps in the new style, including more desert or arid themed maps:


There are now highlights to show final unit position on movement:


We've added unit card drag and drop, increased unit appearance randomization with disorder/cohesion loss, many deployment and AI tweaks (especially to Parthian style deployments), added vsync, small unit sizes, and detail density options for older computers, made grass and shadow improvements, did some animation fixes on swapping between ranged and melee hands, fixed many tutorial scripts, and made many bug fixes.

And, last but not least, perhaps the main improvement since the last update has been many minor optimizations to formation movement and combat, which have collectively improved performance substantially on larger army sizes.

Hello! We've been hard at work since early October with a large number of Updates:


For new units, most notably we've added a large number of Cataphract visuals and variations, including Parthian, Anatolian, Sassanid, Kushan, Early Roman, Hellenic and Early Hellenic Cataphracts, and some visually related Late Companions, Persian Guard Lancers, Kappadokian Cavalry, and Hippeis armored Greek cavalry from the Hellenic era. For the Apulian region Italians we've added Daunian Warriors and Iapygian Warriors. The Galatians now have their own Galatian Armored Cavalry, and there are a few variations of eastern spearmen in the game now, including Sassanid defensive spearmen with their characteristic large shields. Tarantine mercenary cavalry are now a distinct unit and visual from native Tarantine Cavalry, and the Romans now have dedicated Equites Sagittarii in the late period. The Ligurians have their own veteran warriors, and ancient Lydia was added with Lydian irregulars, Lydian Armored Hoplites, and Lydian Lancers, and so was Lycia/Caria with Lycian Warriors, and Armored Veteran Hoplite visuals were added to some of the older Greek lists. With new assets, we also updated many existing units with new helmets and weapons like Italian Cavalry, Steppe Lancers, Agema Cavalry, Auxiliary Infantry, Celtiberian Infantry, and more.




For new factions, the game now features Atropatene (early/late), Georgian, Caucasian, Indo-Skythian, Indo-Parthian, Arab City, Dacian, Germanic Foot/Horse tribes, and a few other choice additions to fill out the Near Eastern areas especially with more lists.




The AI has undergone various improvements to behavior and deployment. They are able to pick auto drop flanks better, move and maintain their line better, deploy and use horse archer armies more intelligently, and I've added more and better bespoke AI for Lancer lines, overwhelmingly light foot armies, medium foot armies, and bowmen deployments (including some bespoke deployments for bowmen armies that mix staggered lines of bowmen and infantry to protect their shooters, and for certain medium foot armies that will post up in terrain and draw you in with light troops/shooters). There are fixes to pursuit to charge, pursuing and evading with intervening routed units, moving and attacking coherently in formation, using more reserves, having multiple units coordinate against single targets, more intelligent evades based on matchup, pursuers pursuing other pursuers, and fixes to pathing around combats.




We have a few new Desert style maps now, and are in the progress of integrating various Gaia terrain plugin features like GTS, which we're using for terrains and foliage etc...I've also updated the Unity version, and significantly updated the plugin versions for GPU instancing and Pathfinding/Navigation, so those features are more advanced and performant now. I've also greatly expanded the tutorial and added a second tutorial for advanced concepts.




Couriers are now all cavalry in a light cavalry style appropriate to a faction, rather than just being drawn from soldiers in the General's unit, which is more appropriate and visually consistent, and generally looks better. For settings, FPS caps, VSync, many keybinds and other options have been added, and more and better UI support for different resolutions are now in. There have been many tooltip updates as well, including on hovering terrain, showing unit portraits and descriptions on unit selection, displaying allies and era information in the in-game menu, and many more small things. There are also many more allied faction selections and optional randomization of allies with randomization of factions.




Localization has made much progress with localized unit names and descriptions, faction names and descriptions, menu items, and tooltips, and new font atlases for Cyrillic (right now we are localizing into Spanish, French, German, and Russian).

Thanks for reading, and we'll keep you updated with the latest as we make more progress!

We've been making steady progress on Strategos over the past few months, so I thought I'd update the steam community here. We've added visuals and army lists for Gallic, Germanic, Dacian and Galatian tribesmen, including warband and other infantry, noble cavalry, light horse javelinmen, and light foot, as well as a huge variety of unique and characterful units added to existing factions like Germanic Symmachiarii, Roman Marines, Palestinian Clubmen, Sassanid Armored Horse archers, Falxmen, Anatolian Levy, Spartan Pikemen, Ligurian and Lucanian Warriors, and many more. There are many new unit lists (we are nearing 100 total army lists!) and screenshots you can see on the store page as well.



Cataphracts are in progress currently, as are new maps. I am also about half way done with localization of the game to German, French, Spanish and Russian. We're also experimenting with unit card portraits, and of course always improving the gameplay code and squashing bugs.



There's no update on the release date for now, but progress is steady and the game is playable and fun!