Kingdoms and Castles News

Hi Everyone,

It's time for another big update! As we mentioned in our last development post, the AI rivals will need a lot of big tech changes and we’ll be rolling some of those out early as we finish them. The first early tech change we’re launching for this update is a big rework of the map generation.

If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at [email protected].

Here's the details:


We've reworked map generation algorithm. Now distinct landmasses will be farther apart (no more landmasses separated by just 4 tiles). Additionally maps have a chance to spawn with shallow water rivers. Map island shapes should in general be more interesting. All landmasses are guaranteed to be above a certain tile count and wolves also won’t spawn on small landmasses. Finally, maps got a bit bigger! The number of build-able tiles increased by 20-30% per map size.


These will match up better with wooden walls, and are cheaper than stone gates.


These bridges fit together with stone roads and provide the same movement bonus. They are impassable by ship so be careful you don’t box in your transport ships. Viking ships can't pass through them or destroy them.


You can augment the automatic volunteer peasant firefighters with actual firefighters who hang out at the Fire Brigade building until needed. These professional firefighters run very quickly and put out fires much quicker than normal peasants. With the right Fire Brigade placement, you’ll now be able to put out fires that would have destroyed buildings when the peasant volunteers were too far away to arrive in time.


If you'd like, you can turn on streamer mode in the settings. A twitch icon will appear on the side of the screen, enter your username there, start streaming and viewers can vote on what befalls your kingdom: bonuses, disasters, and other events!


The tax rate used to go from 1 to 3. Now it can do half increments (so 0.5, 1, 1.5, etc). As a stylistic choice we’ve changed the display to show a percentage so if you had a tax rate set at 3, it’ll now show as 30%, but all the internal math will remain the same. This will allow you finer grain control over taxation vs. your kingdom’s happiness.


Windmill bonuses no longer stack with adjacent windmills and instead each does a flat +3 per tile. It turns out with overlapping bonuses a really strange formation of farms and windmills is optimal (long rows of windmills with a row of farms in between). We wanted to make it so you don't have pack windmills in a line to get optimal food output.

• For older mac users who weren’t able to see trees, you can now turn on ‘Mac Compatibility Mode’ in the settings to address that.
  
• Optimization pass
  
• Dragons are less punishing in terms of how many people they kill (especially large dragons)
  
• Stockpiles are treated as stone roads regarding peasant walk speed
  
• Added dirt under the stone roads so they match up with regular roads/gardens better
  
• Baker bakes faster (10s per bread from 15s)
  
• Right click now also deselects tower range UI
  
• Previously viking ships would phase through drawbridges, now the drawbridges go up when any ship comes through
  
• Display charcoal maker yearly output
  
• Reduced costs on castle blocks
  
• Tweak castle tower ballista/archer ranges
  
• Reservoirs can be built anywhere (ignores road territory)
  
• Fix issue where vikings spawned in creative mode wouldn’t always leave on their ships properly
  
• Fix mason not repairing walls
  
• Fix case where peasants could end up in deep water
  
• Fix case where doctors could end up in deep water/floating in air
  
• Fix garden not receiving adjaceny bonuses if under aqueduct
  
• Fix armies not able to stand in town squares
  
• Fix not being able to build castle blocks on top of a gate that had a garden underneath
  
• Fix issue where delivery workers could carry their goods with them if they switched jobs
  
• Other small fixes/tweaks
  

And of course, other updates will roll out new pieces of the tech we need to make rival kingdoms possible. Very excited to share what's in store!

-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to share some progress we’re making on the next update, tentatively called Infrastructure II. It’ll include some new stuff and also lay some groundwork for our future AI Rivals update. Here’s a preview of what’s coming up:


We’re adding a few new infrastructure themed buildings for this update. We’ve got a a Firehouse coming up that employs very effective professional firefighters. We’re also adding a wooden gate:



The AI rivals update needs a lot of tech changes and we’ll be rolling some of those out early as we finish them. The first early tech change we’re launching for this Infrastructure II update is a rework of the map generation.

We're working on a new algorithm based on your feedback, with these goals in mind:

• Guarantee landmasses are not too close to each other, aiming for minimum 10 tile distance
  
• Landmasses guaranteed to be above a minimum size
  
• More interesting landmass shapes
  
• Bias fertile farmland towards water
  
• Higher chance of interior lakes, bays, and setting up rivers.
  
• Total map size a bit bigger, and the number of usable tiles (tiles that aren’t deep water) will increased compared to the current version.

Here's a sample of one of the maps generated by the new work-in-progress algorithm:


If you've got other ways you'd like to see the map generation improved, head over to the discord and @ me (@Pete)!



As mentioned above we’re reworking the map generation algorithm to work better for AI rivals. We’ve also been making progress on the city building AI system the rivals will use.

This is still very work in progress and not ready for primetime, but here’s a video of how the city building AI in action: https://streamable.com/ryuam

In the video, on the right you can see some debug display for how the AI is planning out the city. You'll also notice the roofs are a different color! While this won't be in this Infrastructure II update, we wanted to show the progress we've been making for the AI rivals.

Until next time,
-Michael & Pete

Hi Everyone,

We've got a Halloween themed update for you with a bunch of new game mechanics! If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at [email protected]. Here's what's new:


Now when peasants die, their bodies will need to be taken to a cemetery by a grave keeper. We’ve added a grave keeper’s hut which employs three grave keepers. We've also added a cemetery tile that will fill up with gravestones as grave keepers bring people back to be buried. You’ll need to find the right balance of grave keepers and cemeteries for your town layout. If bodies are left on the ground they will have a chance of starting a plague, plus it’ll make your peasants unhappy. (Note: the individual spaces in each cemetery are able to be reused every 5 years or so, so you won't need to endlessly grow cemeteries.)


Maps now have a witch hut. The witch can be talked to and depending on how the relationship goes she’ll work with you and provide access to powerful spells, or she’ll curse your kingdom. Old saves will get a witch placed as well (if there is room).


Maps now spawn with empty caves. After you place your keep, caves farther away from your keep will populate with wolves. Wolves will eat anything that comes near them (including vikings), except for peasants employed by foresters. They can be killed by archer towers, ballistas, and armies. Once empty, caves can be removed with the rock removal building. Like the witch, old saves will get caves and wolves when loaded.


Plague now can spread over time from its starting location, and most often will start in residential areas. You’ll need to make sure your doctors have good and fast access to your kingdom, especially the heavily populated or high traffic areas.


The clinic is a 1x1 building that houses two doctors. It costs less than the hospital and is a good way to get doctor coverage early and a good way to provide doctor coverage on the edges of your kingdom where a full hospital might be overkill.


We did a visual revamp to the town square so it links with stone roads better, and added some festive jack-o-lanterns.

• Charcoal maker, Forester, Iron Mine, and Quarry now come with delivery people who can take their output to a stockpile on their own.
  
• Lots of tweaks and tuning to building costs and wages
  
• Archer towers are less effective vs. ogres and dragons, but more effective against vikings
  
• Ballistas are less effective vs. vikings, but more effective vs ogres and dragons
  
• Increased noria water pressure by 50%
  
• Noria requires all three tiles for its wheel be in water (instead of just one)
  
• Increased amount of water bathhouse uses from noria
  
• Gardens can provide ‘road access’ bonus for houses
  
• Reduced speed bonus for gardens, it’s now faster than nothing, but slower than a real road
  
• Add hot key for rebuild (r)
  
• Fix issue where you could build anything on top of rubble which was on top of a castle block
  
• Fix irrigated gardens not clickable on piers
  
• Fires go out faster in rain/snow
  
• Roads, stone roads, and gardens can all be built on top of each other without first demolishing
  
• Fixed armies jittering like crazy at low fps
  
• Foresters will plant faster if they have access to tools
  
• Tweaks to how resources are counted - if they are being transported in someone's hand they are not counted until they are deposited back in a stockpile.
  
• Other small fixes and tweaks
  

Hope you enjoy! Excited to share some rival AI progress soon!
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to give a quick update on our development progress. In our next free content update we’re adding a bunch of new stuff with a bit of a spooky theme (since we're approaching Halloween). Here's a little preview of just a few of the new additions:



We'll put out the full notes on how the cemetery and witch hut game mechanics will work when update launches. While these happen to be Halloween themed, they'll all be permanent additions to the game. And of course there's a whole bunch more included in this upcoming update as well. Look for this update to hit the beta branch in the next week or so.


Currently we’re working on the part of the AI that will build its own cities. This is still very work-in-progress, so there's not much to show right now. More news on this as we get farther along.

Email us at [email protected] or chat with us on discord with any questions!

-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

While we're still hard at work on other updates (Rival AIs, VR, twitch integration, and secrets), we've got the Beautification Update ready for you now! If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at [email protected].

Now let's get to what's new:


Added gardens, they provide happiness in a radius and provide bonus happiness if they’re on irrigated soil or near other gardens. The gardens work like roads and they change appearance based on if other gardens are adjacent.


Added a new statue, Lord Nextraztus, a monument to the mighty dragon!


Added small and large fountains. They provide all the benefits of a well, but in a larger radius with extra happiness. However, they must be on irrigated land to function.


Workers will slowly forget skills they aren’t using. The person UI now shows this and better shows what skill they are currently learning. Archer Towers and Ballista Towers also now have some visual decoration when their workers are highly skilled (see the tower on the right who are grandmaster archers vs the left who are apprentices).


You can now build aqueducts through castle walls and castle walls on top of aqueducts. No longer will your irrigation system be a hole in your defenses!

• Added happiness bonus for killing vikings
  
• Adjust tax happiness curve
  
• Some performance improvements
  
• Reorganize building menu, now at the bottom center of the screen and the ‘Town’ category is split into ‘Town’ and ‘Advanced Town’
  
• Archer Tower and Ballista Towers won’t shoot unless the workers are actually there.
  
• People working at Archer and Ballista Towers won’t leave their jobs during combat (unless you manually disable that job) even if a job is placed above it in the priority list.
  
• Granary workers will now pick up wheat dropped by other workers
  
• Fixed issue where w or s could scroll the kingdom log
  
• Fixed issue with bakeries reporting inflated food amounts in the food report
  
• Some performance improvements
  

We'll have more info on the progress of the Rival AIs update as well as other updates in the next month or so!

As always, email ([email protected]) or direct chat on discord is the fastest way to get in touch with us: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael