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 contact@lionshieldstudios.com. Big thanks as always to all our beta testers and translators! Here’s what’s new:
Military System Revamp
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.
New Unit – Archer
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…
Units Can Walk on Walls – Castle Stairs
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.
Troop Transport Ships
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.
New Viking Unit – Thief
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 Raid AI Improvements
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.
Drag Placement
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.
Drag Chop, Rebuild, Demolish
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.
Control TweakWe 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.
Other Fixes/Improvements
- 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:
Until next time,
-Pete & Michael