The big 2026 Update is here: Architecture, Economy and Sailing !

A MAJOR CITY BUILDING UPDATE!

An update with many features for people who like to focus on the city building elements of the game. It overhauls wall/walkway building allowing you to make curved settlements. It adds a new way to control a neighborhood theme via a tower cap, it overhauls tower building and adds new floors and caps so there is more variety in the actual core shape of towers. It improves interactions, it overhauls the economy and put in some foundations for more depth and challenge when designing resource locations, and it makes the ocean much prettier to look at, and every ship you own sailable. So this started out as the prep work to connect Bulwark to my ShipShaper Ship design game, so you can use that as a design tool for Bulwark. But it ended being perhaps the most fundamental citybuilding update since release! Enjoy and let me know if I did a good job. here's a link to shipshaper so you can check that out (exporting to bulwark will be part of the release, not the demo) ShipShaper

The Salt of the Sea!

Don't forget to leave a review for Bulwark, I know a lot of you already have but I think a lot of folks who tried Bulwark 2 years ago might find a completely different game and I would love to see some older reviews reflect all the care and effort that's gone in this game !

ANNOUNCING THE "MEDIEVAL DLC"

oops I also am working on a new Bulwark DLC. This is slated to release in the future to support the ShipShaper release and Bulwark further development. I will be adding a bit more to this theme pack over the summer, ideas are always appreciated.

Bulwark Falconeer Chronicles Medieval Houses DLC

On with the update!

Wall building Changes

• you can now build curved walls of any type and any length and varying angles .

• the curved walls are flexible and controllable based on the incoming walls on a tower, it tries to continue the existing walls as a starting tangent.

• place a wall from an unconnected wall to make it straight or make it very short or long to force a straight wall

• curtain walls placed underneath skyways also can be curved

• improved the wall building algorithm to prevent edge cases where walls end up too high or flying in the air

• high bridges are placed to actually cover gaps in the rocks

• no curved walls for harbors

• Harbor walls are forced to connect at water level.

• Old non flexible curved sections removed and remade into new straight bridge sections that may spawn.

• Some stone walls given deeper foundations so they look better

Steam post image You may get curves, but you may not get order!

Resource Changes

• The resource algorithm now counts the resource paths to find the highest providing path, not just the first calculated , providing a more predictable and logical outcome.

• resource industry buildings can now spawn on foundations as well

• resource power and outpost worker output counts second generation towers as well (so you can make more complex /diverse resource setups)

• trade route profits vary based on distance and amount of resources transported (longer and more resource output equals a higher splinter profit)

• the accurate profits are shown in the captain selector screen for the harbor

• all captains get bonuses from trading with a trading post.

• merchant princes get an overall 40% trading bonus

• A endpoint or trading harbor will show blue if captains are assigned

• resource buildings can spawn on foundations

• resources are counted from towers two hops away from the extractor

• resources are counted through a new system that is a bit more stringent and balanced to be a tad harder

• resource flow paths fixed stretched icons

• top tier iron industry buildings added if you supply an extractor with stone and wood

Dreadfully boring all that economy stuff, so I did at least set out to make the iron works look a lot more metal.. cuz metal..

Sail Any ship and ShipShaper preparations

• you can select any ship on a trade route you own to sail around

• if you sink a ship its captain is removed, (there is a risk with sailing a battleship into combat)

• your surveyor and escorts will stick around your sailing ship

• after you deselect the ship it will travel back to its trade route

• new much higher quality water shader and waves

• prevented ships from shortcutting through the maw via further pathfinding improvements

Pretty waves, basically the entire Ursee is just a tech artist's quest to ride the perfect wave!

Tower Building/cap improvements and neighborhoods

• you can now change any floor easier by pressing the build floor when a floor is selected on a tower with a cap

• you can easily swap a cap by pressing the build button selected (if no commander is present)

• added new floor models

• added new cap models

• some caps are special and will spawn a certain architectural neighborhood, making a related set of craft houses spawn dominantly

• a new type of craftsman house added and NPC encounter

• any tower gets the same floor based on position seed as a default

• after capping a floor simply pressing build on any floor, replaces that floor with the next type

• the balconies now no longer have a random height and can be placed at level heights for more symmetrical towers.

Steam post image Towers!.. but check out those waves!

Strategy Changes

• fortresses don't destroy traceroutes (to prevent trade routes mis-connecting to the wrong harbors)

• Wrekker and Verne more expensive

• piranha and Murenal cheaper

• wonder quest may spawn if you kill or vassalize a faction (or absorb), if you meet the 5000 pop criteria

• friendly gun turrets ignore friendly items blocking them

• if a command tower with a unit commander has no access to workers or is unconnected, the command interfaces will not be availlable to buy or set modes and the commander will mention needing workers to operate

• fixed a bug where capital airship commanders weren't checking for workers at all

General changes

• free build has a bunch of new starting locations

• trees spawn further away from the source also

Interaction Changes

• added double click, static click and shorter hold mouse to open the captain selector and world events

• mouse cursor remains visible on the build line always

• build line hides and goes to cursor only at ranges to far to connect or build, so the game feels more conventional on MKB.

• selecting the trade route now doesn't override if the cursor is over a legit tower

• the hidden build cursor setting removed,.

As always all this support is only made possible by your support and patronage, the game is now on a big sale, the lowest it will ever go and the support is ongoing. There is no best time to get in , except right now or re-discover the game. Things that help is adding a user review or following my developer profile https://store.steampowered.com/developer/TomasSala or my youtube channel: ! Following or reviewing influences all the algorithms to keep all this support relevant and visible in the tsunami of new games also rightfully vying for your attention.! So thank you and let me know if any bugs appear!