Kingdoms and Castles News

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

Hi Everyone,

It's been a little over a year since we launched Kingdoms and Castles and the game has grown and improved quite a bit. But we won't rest. Looking into the future, we've got lots more new stuff planned!

On a personal note, it's been a life changing year for us, and we wanted to say thank you all for ideas, bug reports, and for playing!

Here's a quick update on what we're working on next:


This is gonna be a big one with lots of hefty new features, so it’s going to take a while. The AIs will need to build cities on their own and we’ll need to work out the consequences for sending armies across landmasses, attacking with soldiers and towers, and how to handle diplomacy. We’re laying the groundwork and setting stuff up for this now.

Since it’s going to take some time we’ve got some quicker updates coming out soon while you wait. You can look forward to our upcoming...


We’ll be adding some new stuff for your villagers to enjoy, including royal gardens, a new statue, and fountains that tie in with the aqueduct system. Here’s a little preview of the gardens, they use a tile based system like the roads that changes how they look based on how you place them:



Questions, suggestions? You can always reach out to us on discord (http://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles) and [email protected].

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,
After incorporating lots of your feedback, the Grand Buildings Update is now out for everyone! If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at [email protected] (or post on the forums here).

Thanks to all the beta testers, we really appreciate your efforts. And another super special thanks to our translators - a bunch more languages have been added!

Here’s what’s new:


You can now build cathedrals, which are very expensive and provide happiness in a large radius. Cathedrals can also strike awe into invading vikings who get near and convert them to peasants. If this happens you’ll notice a bolt of lightning hitting the viking army.


Great libraries are also available to build. They too are very expensive but provide a lot of happiness in a large radius. They also increase the maximum happiness of small libraries within their radius. And perhaps most importantly you can research upgrades to your kingdom from the great library.


When towns reach a certain size the peasants will start wanting a place to bathe. So once you’ve got a noria and aqueducts set up, pipe some water over to a town center and build a bathhouse! Bathhouses aren’t as expensive as the new cathedral and great library, but provide lots of happiness in a pretty big area.


Now when you click to show/hide the happiness visuals, you’ll see the happiness of each tile displayed from red to green.

We’ve also reworked the happiness radius and overlay system to feel a little more natural. The happiness provided by wells, churches, libraries, etc is now a gradient.This means a house right next to a tavern will get more happiness from that tavern than a house far away from the same tavern. The overlay visuals now show this as well. While placing or clicking on a happiness building you can see the coverage gradient that type of building provides.


Dragons are now more of a threat. They do more damage and escalate their attacks over time. We’ve added some new burning behaviors and you’ll find them much more of a threat to contend with. Since this makes the game a bit harder, please let us know your thoughts on the tuning here.

• 7 new languages (Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian)
  
• Added health bars to ogres, dragons, player and viking armies
  
• Rubble has a button that will rebuild what was once there. (Only works on rubble created after this update)
  
• Added info to show when the next dragon and viking attacks will arrive. This can be turned on and off in the settings.
  
• Taxes collected depend on working tax collectors
  
• Forester is now a prerequisite for charcoal maker
  
• Performance optimizations
  
• Lots of small tweaks and other fixes
  

It’s coming along! Here’s a work-in-progress snapshot: https://streamable.com/86ler



One request that comes up a lot is AI controlled rivals. This would be a big change with lots of new code, design, and possibly art, so our next focus will be investigating how feasible this is and what we can do. If it does turns out to be feasible, it would end up being one of our larger updates, so there could be smaller updates in the meantime, but we’ll keep you posted.

As always, direct chat on discord is the fastest way to get in touch with us: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael