Update #8 - New Features

Time to take a look at today’s major update and how it significantly changes the mid and late game experience.

To start things off - any of the player`s armies can now engage in RTS combat, instead of requiring a hero. A hero`s presence in a city still allows that city to be defended, but now simply having an army near a city will do the same. This opens up a lot more strategy as your realm grows, especially once you start gaining colonies and distant holdings.

For example, you can now keep one army near your Home City, while another army protects your colonies in the Holy Land. It is also now viable to build up cities focused entirely on economy, while using a nearby army as the garrison in case of a siege.

Call to Arms and Lord Management have also been reworked from the ground up. Calling lords to defend or attack areas now works reliably and quickly, and lords become a powerful force in the mid to late game. Managing lord stances, summoning armies, and asking lords for silver is now an important strategic part of the campaign.

This update also includes major tutorial and localization improvements, along with various other fixes and polish. The patch notes below only cover the main-level changes.

And once again - thank you so much for the reports, feedback, and support during Early Access!

And now, here are the full notes for this update:

New RTS Battle Rules

• Any of the player`s 5 armies can now engage in RTS combat

• Inviting any army to a city without a hero also enables RTS combat

• Rebalanced the game to support the strategy of keeping armies near cities in different regions as garrisons

Reworked Call to Arms

• Calling lords to defend or attack an area now works much more reliably

• Fixed all issues with lords not sending armies after Call to Arms

• When a lord`s army arrives at the player-set coordinates, it will patrol the area and look for enemies

Reworked Lord Management

• Greatly increased the price of setting a lord`s stance to Serve in the Diplomacy menu

• Lords in Serve stance will create a new army within 2-4 months and await commands

• Lords now generate silver several times faster

• Asking lords for silver from time to time is now a viable strategy

• Greatly increased the price of summoning lords to defend or attack an area

New RTS Enter Town Rules

• Player can now enter a town if a hero is in an army near the city

• Transferring a hero to the city also allows the player to enter the town

Tutorial Improvements

• Major improvements to the tutorial in all localized languages

• All languages now use the same wording in both tooltips and objectives

• Reworked tutorial translation to be error-free in all languages

• Fixed major tutorial issue when starting it from a pop-up after clicking the Granada or Novgorod campaign

• Fixed lag when training four peasants during the tutorial while building repairs were in progress.

• Updated the messenger’s voice acting in the tutorial.

• Relaxed the troop-type requirements for completing certain tutorial objectives.

• Fixed an issue where the player’s army could not enter RTS combat after completing the Siege of Savona without restarting the game.

• The tutorial will no longer rearrange the player’s buildings after Genoa is developed for the first time.

Other Fixes of Note

• Fixed issues with gates not auto-closing when a city is under attack

• Fixed issues with gates sometimes being closed after entering a city

• Various localization corrections

• Mouseover of trade goods on the world map now shows correct backgrounds

• Improved the look of trade goods tooltips

• Reduced the number of citizens in Genoa, making the city less crowded and improving performance.

• Improved the starting position of the player’s army near Genoa to prevent overlapping banners from obscuring or confusing army selection.

• Reduced world map music volume slightly, allowing voice acting and sound effects to stand out more clearly.

• Reduced RTS camera rotation speed.

• Fixed the Novgorod and Granada heroes displaying incorrect names in the campaign.