Kingdoms and Castles News

Hi Everyone,

Creative Mode is now live! Issues, questions, ideas, feedback, bug reports? Chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at [email protected] (or post on the forums here).

Thanks as always to all the people who tried out and provided feedback on the beta. And super special thanks to our translators because we were able to add Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch for this update and more languages to come later!

(City in the cover photo courtesy of @Dizzythepanda of discord)

Here’s what's new:


You can now choose between standard mode and creative mode. In creative mode you can modify your map before you play, and tweak all kinds of settings and spawn all sorts of things while in game. Note that achievements won’t be triggered when playing in creative mode.



If you’ve chosen creative mode, once you pick a seed you can edit your map however you wish. Use the brushes to paint land, water, rocks, and more.


During gameplay you can toggle all kinds of settings that will take you as far from (or as close to) standard play as you want, everything from building for free to whether people eat or not. You can additionally spawn things like dragons (I spawned a whole bunch in the screenshot above), vikings, trees, ogres, and resources of any type.


You can now use your own banners, just add an image file to the banner folder (which you can find when selecting a banner) and chose it. We’ve included a template image file which you can use to make your banners fit correctly.

• Armies can now target ogres
  
• Armies do double damage to ogres
  
• Fix issue where it looked like armies weren't damage ogres at 3x speed
  
• Fixed storage calculation issue with stockpiles/docks
  
• Added option to open or close a dock to foreign merchants
  
• Added new attack tower range indicator
  
• Attack tower ranges stop increasing after 8 blocks high (while you can still build ultra tall towers if you want, this eliminates the degenerate strategy where a super tall central tower covers the entire map)
  
• Re-tune viking invasion progression, will also appear a little earlier
  
• Fix input boxes mysteriously taking keyboard focus
  
• Ability to rename transport ships
  
• Added more new sound effects
  
• Libraries cost more gold to build
  
• Small optimizations
  
• Add Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch localization (thank you translators!)
  

Going forward we’ll be prioritizing new content for the mid and late game experience. Right now we’re working on some new large buildings for our next update (cathedral, bathhouse, great library).



Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,
We’re excited to announce the new Merchants and Ports update is now available! Thanks to all the people who tried out and provided feedback on the beta, we could not have done it without you. Also special thanks to our translators!

As always, if you have any feedback or bugs to report, or any trouble post in the forums or come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Here's what’s new:


You can now play on small, medium, or large maps. Medium maps are slightly larger than the original map size, and large maps have about twice the buildable tiles that medium maps do. You can also choose between island biased or land biased maps. There is also now a concept of deep water vs. shallow water. Deep water cannot be built on or crossed except by boat.

We’ve reworked the simulation code so you can now have multiple settlements completely separated by deep water.

But how do you start a new settlement? Try building a...


You can now build outposts on land that is separated by deep water from your original settlement. You’ll find the Outpost in the new Maritime tab. Placing an Outpost is how you start a new settlement, and it comes with some starting wood, stone, and food - much like when you place your first keep.
Note: Outpost are not available on maps with just a single landmass (i.e. all old maps without deep water).

Now you’ve got a new settlement, how do you transport goods between them? First build a…


Docks can be placed adjacent to or in shallow water. You can set the amount of resources you want the dock to prepare to ship out (and also lock the resources so other workers won’t take stuff you intend to export).

Once at least one dock is built, you can look forward to…


Every so often merchant ships from afar will arrive at one of your docks. You can buy and sell them goods from you dock. Occasionally they will offer special permanent upgrades to your kingdom, so keep a lookout!

Now that we’ve got some docks, let’s get some shipping routes set up between our islands with...


Once you have at least two docks, Transport Ships can be used to move goods from dock to dock. You can program them with your docks as destinations and what to pick up and drop off. Use them to set up shipping routes to transport goods around your kingdom.

But you’ll want to make sure they can reach their docks, so you may need to replace some bridges with…


These automatically open to allow ships to pass through.

But with all these new buildings, you’ll probably want more control over what workers are doing, so check out the new…



Re-prioritize jobs per island by dragging and dropping the the jobs in the order you want them filled. Jobs at the top will be filled first by idle workers, or if you have no idle workers, people will leave jobs at the bottom. You can also mass open and close entire building types per island.

• You can now rename any building, just click on the little edit button next to its title
  
• Reworked UI a bit and how resource tooltips are accessed (now you click on them to view the info).
  
• Tax rate is now set on the UI in the bottom left rather than on the Treasure rooms
  
• Lots of new sound effects
  
• You can now specify specific desired amounts of resources per stockpile. Anything above the amount you have specified will be removed by people seeking resources.
  
• Granaries now employ more people, but those people help bring in the grain and can carry twice as much as farmers (much like market workers).
  
• Library, Church, and Tavern provide bonus happiness in a radius as before, but you just need to build a certain amount of them rather than requiring you to provide total coverage. The happiness ui explains more in-game.
  
• Other small tweaks and tuning to worker counts and bonuses
  
• Fixed bug where villagers would sometimes not collect bread from bakers even if they were hungry
  
• Fix for Gates not visually closing when vikings are near
  
• Lots of other small fixes and tweaks
  
• Optimizations to loading time for save games.
  
• Optimizations to many other game systems, most notably pathfinding (and more on the way)
  

Now that this update is out we’ll working on the next update right away! We’ll announce more soon, but look forward to a ‘Creative/Sandbox Mode’ coming next!

Thanks!
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,
We’re excited to announce the new Merchants and Ports update is now available! Thanks to all the people who tried out and provided feedback on the beta, we could not have done it without you. Also special thanks to our translators!

As always, if you have any feedback or bugs to report, or any trouble post in the forums or come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Here's what’s new:


You can now play on small, medium, or large maps. Medium maps are slightly larger than the original map size, and large maps have about twice the buildable tiles that medium maps do. You can also choose between island biased or land biased maps. There is also now a concept of deep water vs. shallow water. Deep water cannot be built on or crossed except by boat.

We’ve reworked the simulation code so you can now have multiple settlements completely separated by deep water.

But how do you start a new settlement? Try building a...


You can now build outposts on land that is separated by deep water from your original settlement. You’ll find the Outpost in the new Maritime tab. Placing an Outpost is how you start a new settlement, and it comes with some starting wood, stone, and food - much like when you place your first keep.
Note: Outpost are not available on maps with just a single landmass (i.e. all old maps without deep water).

Now you’ve got a new settlement, how do you transport goods between them? First build a…


Docks can be placed adjacent to or in shallow water. You can set the amount of resources you want the dock to prepare to ship out (and also lock the resources so other workers won’t take stuff you intend to export).

Once at least one dock is built, you can look forward to…


Every so often merchant ships from afar will arrive at one of your docks. You can buy and sell them goods from you dock. Occasionally they will offer special permanent upgrades to your kingdom, so keep a lookout!

Now that we’ve got some docks, let’s get some shipping routes set up between our islands with...


Once you have at least two docks, Transport Ships can be used to move goods from dock to dock. You can program them with your docks as destinations and what to pick up and drop off. Use them to set up shipping routes to transport goods around your kingdom.

But you’ll want to make sure they can reach their docks, so you may need to replace some bridges with…


These automatically open to allow ships to pass through.

But with all these new buildings, you’ll probably want more control over what workers are doing, so check out the new…



Re-prioritize jobs per island by dragging and dropping the the jobs in the order you want them filled. Jobs at the top will be filled first by idle workers, or if you have no idle workers, people will leave jobs at the bottom. You can also mass open and close entire building types per island.

• You can now rename any building, just click on the little edit button next to its title
  
• Reworked UI a bit and how resource tooltips are accessed (now you click on them to view the info).
  
• Tax rate is now set on the UI in the bottom left rather than on the Treasure rooms
  
• Lots of new sound effects
  
• You can now specify specific desired amounts of resources per stockpile. Anything above the amount you have specified will be removed by people seeking resources.
  
• Granaries now employ more people, but those people help bring in the grain and can carry twice as much as farmers (much like market workers).
  
• Library, Church, and Tavern provide bonus happiness in a radius as before, but you just need to build a certain amount of them rather than requiring you to provide total coverage. The happiness ui explains more in-game.
  
• Other small tweaks and tuning to worker counts and bonuses
  
• Fixed bug where villagers would sometimes not collect bread from bakers even if they were hungry
  
• Fix for Gates not visually closing when vikings are near
  
• Lots of other small fixes and tweaks
  
• Optimizations to loading time for save games.
  
• Optimizations to many other game systems, most notably pathfinding (and more on the way)
  

Now that this update is out we’ll working on the next update right away! We’ll announce more soon, but look forward to a ‘Creative/Sandbox Mode’ coming next!

Thanks!
-Pete & Michael

Today's Deal: Save 25% on Kingdoms and Castles!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Saturday at 10AM Pacific Time

Hi Everyone,

Hope you're all having a good new year so far! The beta version of our latest update is now available for testing in the next-version-preview branch here on steam. The major features to look for are bigger maps, merchant ships, transport ships, independent islands, and a job priority system.

We've been hot-patching the beta a few times a week and fixing bugs as people report them, but remember this update is a beta so there are likely more bugs we have yet to squash. Thanks to everyone who has tested so far!

Here's how to try it:

• Select Kingdoms and Castles in your library, right click it and hit properties.
  
• In the menu that pops up click the "Betas" tab.
  
• Select "next-version-preview-" in the dropdown menu. Your game will update to the latest beta of the new update.
  
• NOTE: No code is necessary
  

Leave feedback in the forums here or on discord here: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles