Kingdoms and Castles News

Hi Everyone,

We’ve got another free update for you called War & Diplomacy! It expands upon the AI Kingdoms update a bit with your feedback and comments. New conversations, new diplomatic options, and more. Here’s the notes:

[h2]Conversation Expansion[/h2]
New Conversation - Birthday - the AI will talk to you about their birthday, and you have the option or not to give a gift.

New Conversation - Theater Event - the AI has written a play and would love it if you’d show it in your theater. Let’s hope their work pleases the peasants!

New Conversation - Origins of Power - The AIs discuss how they came to power, different for each personality type. Some of these conversations can take a dramatic turn!

New Conversation - Broker Peace - If you are war long enough either your ally or a neutral AI may try to broker peace between you and your enemy. You can agree and end the war or disagree and see what might happen.

Ignore Response

The AIs will respond if you ignore or dismiss their diplomats. Depending on personality, how they feel about you, and how much you’re ignoring them they may decide to go to war against you.

[h2]Tribute[/h2]
Player Tribute

When your diplomats visit an AI Kingdom you can now demand tribute from them if you’d like. The results of this demand will depend on their personality, relative military strength, mood, and if they can afford it.

Resolution for AI Demanding Tribute

If you refuse to pay tribute, go to war, then win and let AI stay in power they now show some deferrence to your grace. After being defeated in a war they acknowledge their defeat and will no longer demand tribute.

[h2]Warfare[/h2]

We’ve made a few changes to improve the combat:

• Archers now fire from ships
  
• When stopped, catapults auto-attack military buildings if in range
  
• Increased catapult damage to non-stone buildings
  
• Increased catapult range by 1 tile
  

[h2]Viking Catapults[/h2]

Vikings can now deploy catapults against you! Generally they appear later in the game. In harder difficulty modes more viking catapults will appear sooner.

[h2]Greek Fire Tower[/h2]

We’ve added a new tower type that shoots out a blast of greek fire! It is extremely effective against ground units and ships - a fully skilled Greek Fire Tower can completely sink a ship with a single blast. However, it has some drawbacks. It requires 8 people to operate it, it has a very short range and can’t attack dragons. It also consumes charcoal when fired and takes a while to reload. If it catches on fire it has a chance to explode and start fires around it. Give it a try and be careful!

[h2]New Dragon Type[/h2]

There’s a new dragon in town! This one flies more slowly than the others but specifically targets your military infrastructure (archer and ballista towers, blacksmiths, archer schools, etc). It appears a little later than the others, depending on difficulty mode.

[h2]Improvements and Fixes[/h2]

• Added option to permanently decline an AI trying to abdicate
  
• Peasants now become unhappy if you betray an ally or treacherously surprise attack someone.
  
• Increased happiness radius of all 1x1 and 2x1 statues
  
• Fixed issue where sea gate pathing cost was wrong for vikings
  
• Fixed issue where you could build a happiness building and then close it but still get credit for happiness debuffs.
  
• Fixed issue where AI would immediately demand troop removal after you had defeated them in a war and spared them.
  
• Fixed bug where AI would demand payment to end a war after the war had already ended
  
• Fixed bug which caused archers to sort of ‘dance around’ when using auto targeting behavior
  
• Fixed case where AI would have trouble balancing tax rate vs happiness
  
• Fixed bug where AI would not build a theater
  
• Fixed bug where AI would build too many masons
  
  

[h2]What's next?[/h2]
It's finally time, we've got VR coming up next! This is a free update, totally optional, and won't impact you at all if you don't want to play in VR. We're supporting the VIVE, Index, and Occulus Rift. Expect VR to hit the beta branch in the next week or so! And after VR we've more pure gameplay content updates planned as well.

Also, don't forget, we've got a Parks & Statues DLC available if you want to decorate your kingdom!

Until next time!
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

We've got the beta available for the next update - War & Diplomacy! We've got a sticky thread in the forums where there's a more detailed list of all the new changes that are ready for testing, but here's a little preview of just a few of the things you can look forward to:

[h3]New Dragon Type![/h3]


[h3]New Defense Type[/h3]


[h3]And more![/h3]

Of course, we'll do our usual a big update post when the War & Diplomacy update is ready for final release, and that'll be on... September 22nd!

If you'd like, you can try it out now by switching to the beta branch (keep in mind there will be bugs and things to fix). Here's how:

• Right click on the game in the steam library
  
• Click properties, then choose betas
  
• Choose the next-version-preview branch

No code is necessary, your game should automatically update once you switch. Everyone who has been playing on the alpha branch will be kept up to date as well.

Please send your feedback and bug reports to [email protected], chat with us directly in our discord, or post here in the forums!

-Pete, Michael, and Sam

Hi Everyone!

Hope you’ve all been enjoying the AI Kingdoms update (and the Steam Deck controls if you have one)! It's been fun to see folks interact with the AIs. We're now working on the next couple of updates, here's a little preview of the progress we're making:

[h3]VR[/h3]
We have been working very hard to get the game playable in VR. This is our last crowdfunding campaign goal and it’s important to us to follow through on our word. This will also be a free update and completely optional. The game is now mostly playable in VR, but has some rough edges we’ll be working out before it's ready for beta testing.

[h3]AI Kingdoms - Diplomacy+[/h3]
Thanks for all the feedback on the AI Kingdoms update! We’re preparing another update with a new conversations to expand your interactions with the AI as well as the ability for you, the player, to demand tribute if you’d like, and a bunch more things folks have asked for. We're also working on more optimizations. We should have this up on the next-version-preview branch soon for beta testing.

[h3]Note on Price[/h3]
Over the last five years, we’ve improved the game significantly and added tons of new features and mechanics. So far we’ve done 11 big content updates, all completely free. On August 9th we're raising the price of the game to $14.99 (if you’ve already bought the game this has no impact on you). We feel this is still a great value but better represents all the work we’ve put in to the game over the years.

Until next time,
-Pete, Michael, & Sam

• Restore peasant rotation after being freed from vikings
  
• Fixed ogres damaging archers when attacking a tall tower
  
• Fixed extra gold being deducted when building an outpost from an exploration ship
  
• Fixed rare issue where you could get stuck in the feast diplomacy menu
  
• Fixed the church getting mad at you for using the witch if you didn't have any churches but the AI did
  
• Fixed being able to end a war without being able to afford it
  
• Fixed issue where towers with archer emplacements were collapsing too soon when damaged
  

-Pete

Thanks for all the bug reports! If you run into any issues, send us your save game. Saves are in %AppData%\..\LocalLow\LionShield\Kingdoms and Castles\Saves\, email to [email protected]