Kingdoms and Castles News

Hi Everyone,

Today we've got an update for you themed around Warfare! We've implemented lots of new system and features - all in support of our future AI Rivals update.

Any bugs, issues, or have any feedback? Let us know on discord or email [email protected]. Big thanks as always to all our beta testers and translators! Here's what’s new:


We have streamlined the military system. Barracks now produce a full 1 tile fully functional 16 footman unit complete with a general with one click (rather than the old way of having to separately train a general, then individually train and recruit units at the barracks). This should feel a little more like an RTS. If you have an old save with bigger armies it will be split up into individual units and we have removed the 3 unit cap. Additionally:

• Left click and drag will select multiple units, shift and ctrl click work as well.
  
• Chamber of War no longer recruits generals, instead it can activate a ‘Hazard Pay’ bonus which doubles all unit damage in exchange for higher soldier wages while active.
  
• Units can walk on walls and towers (more on this below)
  
• Units can be queued up at a barracks/archer school (like in an RTS)
  
• Units can be disbanded
  
• Partial strength units can ‘recuperate’ at the barracks to return to full strength
  
• Military units now need to be paid wages (previously only tower emplacements were paid wages) and will disband themselves if they aren’t paid for a few years.
  

We’ve added an archer school building that works just like the barracks except it produces archer units. They can attack enemies with their ranged attack but are very weak when engaged hand-to-hand. They also gain the same range bonus when stationed on walls that normal archer towers get. And on that note…


You can now build castle stairs which allow units access to walking on your castle walls and towers. We’ve completely revamped the pathfinding tech to make this work and set up little doors automatically when a tower meets a wall. One set of stairs will allow access to any contiguous piece of wall, but you’ll probably want multiple sets of stairs for quick access.


You can now build troop transport ships and use them to move your armies across deep water and on to other landmasses. Each ship can carry three units. To load units, select them and order them to move to a transport ship. To unload, select the transport ship and right click anywhere on land.


Viking thieves move faster and don’t start fires, but if they make it to your treasure room they will steal 100g. Make sure to kill them before they escape back to their ship to reclaim the gold!


Viking raids can now launch on multiple fronts and they can also leave on any viking boat, not just the boat that brought them. Viking boats are more reactive to picking up escaping vikings. Viking raid escalation tweaked to better adapt to player skill.

Note: if you are using an old save the next few raids will be weak until it catches up with your progress.


You can now click and drag to place multiple roads, farms, orchards, aqueduct, castle blocks, cemeteries, and piers. You'll be able to place up to 100 buildings per drag placement.


You can now click and drag to order peasants to chop multiple tiles of wood, rebuild large areas of rubble, or demolish lots of buildings at once.


We have flipped left and right mouse click. Instead of moving the camera on left click, now left click is used for select and drag select. Right click and drag moves the camera and issues troop orders. Middle click and drag is still camera rotate. If you hold down the alt key, the controls will revert back to functioning like the old version.

Note: If you’d prefer the old method permanently, you can toggle ‘legacy mouse controls’ in the options menu. In legacy mode click and drag selecting and placement require holding the alt key to start the drag.

• Rebuild now works as expected on castle towers and tiles with aqueducts
  
• Aqueducts can be built over hovels
  
• Fixed gates not visually closing when vikings were nearby
  
• Map generation tweaked to better guarantee viable amounts of stone and iron
  
• Fixed some load/save exploits with the witch
  
• Fixed cemetery orientation getting lost after a load/save
  
• Fixed generals not attacking ogres
  
• Reduced gravekeeper walk speed from 2x to 1.5x
  
• Military units get same speed bonuses on roads that villagers do
  
• Roads can be placed anywhere and do not need to be connected to other roads
  
• Other small fixes
  

Hope you enjoy! Remember, you can:

• Follow our developer page on Steam
• Chat with us on discord
• Follow on twitter

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

This update is taking a little longer than our previous updates because we're adding a bit more new stuff than usual (thanks for being patient!). We're getting close! Here's another preview of some of the upcoming new stuff.


Last time we preview the 'click+drag' placement of roads. We are also adding a rectangle mode for click+drag placement to work with fields, orchards, cemeteries, and piers. Here's what it looks like:



We're adding a new viking unit which walks faster than normal vikings and instead of starting fires, they try to find your treasure rooms and steal your gold. If you can kill them before they get away you'll be able to recover the gold:


We'll post again when the update is ready for testing and feedback. In the meantime you can:

• Follow our developer page on Steam
• Chat with us on discord
• Follow on twitter (https://twitter.com/LionShieldGames)
  

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

We wanted share some of the progress we’re making on the next update, we've got some pretty interesting changes coming up.


As mentioned earlier, we're upgrading core parts of the game to better support AI rival kingdoms and we want to release these upgrades as they become ready. For example, in the last update (Infrastructure II) we upgraded the map generation. In this coming update, we'll be upgrading how armies work. You'll be able to click+drag select them, load them on transport ships, send those ships to a new landmass and unload them (ship art is not final):



We're also introducing click and drag placement for placing certain building types like roads, aqueducts, and castle walls. It especially makes creative mode more fun. Here's a preview of where that's at:

We'll also be extending this to support click+drag for other stuff like designating tiles for chopping.

Lots more interesting stuff in store as well, we'll make another announcement later on when this update is ready for beta testing and feedback!

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

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