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Feudums - 2025 Recap & Early 2026 Direction

[p]If you'd like more consistent, bite-size updates, or don't want to miss the updates on the single-player version, consider joining our Discord, where I’m more active. Alternatively, I have a newsletter for milestone community polls and major game updates.[/p]
[p][/p][p][/p][h3]Hoi everyone,[/h3][p][/p][p]First of all: happy 2026! I hope this year brings all of us plenty of pleasant, innovative indie strategy (or other) games.[/p][p]A few of you suggested (and you were right) that it’s time for a short recap of the last year, plus a look at what’s coming next. While plans rarely survive first contact with reality, but at least this gives us something solid to adapt from.[/p][p][/p][h2]Recap: 2025[/h2][p]Unfortunately, indie game development didn’t get any easier last year — quite the opposite. A non-trivial part of my time went into making sure neither my kids nor I starve... but development never stopped. We’ve survived worse.[/p][p]Over the year, 6 larger updates and many patches went live. [/p][p]These mostly prepared the community-voted major feature group (siege + advanced occupation mechanics and some vassalage basics), while also adding a lot of concrete improvements, including:[/p][p][/p][h3]For the warlords[/h3]
  • [p]Added some new military units and a fully reworked military edges system, with roughly double the unique traits and new synergies![/p]
  • [p]Implemented terrain categories that fundamentally affect combat values, enabling more tactical depth.[/p]
  • [p]Enhanced traversability rules, making previously impassable terrain crossable with the right units, promoting new strategies[/p]
  • [p]Expanded rules for winter troop movement further stress the seasonal nature of warfare.[/p]
  • [p]Tile improvements and terrain now affect battles through not only flat modifiers, but they also alter battlefield widths per battle roster, promoting new tactics and more situational army builds.[/p]
  • [p]Expanded virtue rewards for winning battles (e.g. separate rewards for repelling raiders)[/p]
  • [p]Military companies can now claim regions that are not adjacent to your own territories.[/p]
[p][/p][h3]For economic masterminds[/h3]
  • [p]Fully reworked early-game pacing[/p]
  • [p]New labourers, continuous tweaking of existing economic rules and dynamics based on your feedback[/p]
  • [p]Redesigned population dynamics (major needs, food rations, morale, stability)[/p]
  • [p]Added charts to visualize feudum inputs and outputs, and a wider variety of economic reports.[/p]
  • [p]Added the ability to cycle through past reports of any kind, making it much easier to track what happened while you were away.[/p]
  • [p]Custom labour policies can finally be saved and reused across feudums — even across games (if the rulebook matches)[/p]
[p][/p][h3]For schemers and social nobles[/h3]
  • [p]private messaging alongside public in-game channels (plus reporting — thankfully rarely needed so far) enables better scheming - or tactical discussions.[/p]
  • [p]Added a gossips & rumours system, so you can learn about important events even outside your influence range. Fair warning: gossip can be inaccurate![/p]
  • [p]Alliance victory conditions now scale with member count, allowing small but tight alliances to compete with large ones[/p]
[p][/p][p][/p][h3]For quality-of-life enjoyers[/h3]
  • [p]Added various accessibility options (toggle flashing effects, depth of field, etc.)[/p]
  • [p]Dozens of new animations, from WYSIWYG workers to chimney smoke and tower flags, plus updated weather effects[/p]
  • [p]Multiple visual enhancements across the map and its UI.[/p]
  • [p]Dozens of UX improvements (e.g. items in a command queue hovers their target, proper cycle-navigation for wasteground tiles, etc)[/p]
  • [p]clearer and more informative tooltips, context-sensitive map highlights, and redesigned problematic commands (such as claiming, manage units, manage company, labour assignment)[/p]
  • [p]200+ bug fixes[/p]
[p][/p][p]...and plenty of other improvements and additions (you can find the past year's changelog at the end of the post).[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]What Comes Next[/h2][p]Given the current circumstances, I’m not brave enough to publish long-term schedules — but the first quarter is fairly clear. Then I’ll most likely reassess and share plans for the next quarter once we get there.[/p][p]Realistically, I’ll still need to split my time between game development and projects that actually pay the bills. If that bothers you, any support through Patreon helps a lot — as requested, I’ll also look for options that don’t require another account and are ideally more EU-friendly, as soon as I have the bandwidth.[/p][p][/p][h3]Q1 Goals[/h3]
  • [p]Early February: extended occupation mechanics, including the ability to annex other players’ territories and an updated version of the current claiming process with an open bidding.[/p]
  • [p]Mid March: the new siege mechanics system, with its own phases, items and layouts, finally moving sieges away from the current "battle with some extra rules" resolution.[/p]
  • [p](Plus pending UX/QoL features continuing on the side)[/p]
[p]These features are being developed together, but I want to roll them out step by step and test them with the community, rather than dropping everything at once.[/p][p]Once these are out, there are a few loose ends I’d still like to wrap up:[/p]
  • [p]The basics of vassalage and enhanced war dynamics (e.g. "war scores")[/p]
  • [p]Further UX improvements, with more focus on in-game tutoring and onboarding / first-time user experience, because these are still pretty rough[/p]
  • [p]Setting up the language files and process for community translators[/p]
  • [p]And then we'll have a new community vote to reprioritize the remaining major features[/p]
[p][/p][p]The story-heavy single-player mode will be slightly sidelined this quarter so I can focus on shipping these major systems properly. Around the voting period, I’ll switch focus to it — and there might be a small surprise as well, but too many things influence that right now to say more.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Okay, I’d like to wrap up this post with a final thought: please keep the feedback coming. Development is fully transparent — the playable builds show exactly where the game is right now and where it’s heading, and your feedback and votes genuinely shape it. I think there aren’t many projects built this collaboratively, but I couldn't imagine doing Feudums any other way. [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you for walking this road with me.[/p][p][/p][p]- Mat[/p][p][/p][p]Previous changelogs for the recap:[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p]
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