Heights of Talavera - Duckoleon EA Update 0.0.06 Released

First, let me start off by saying Happy New Year! 2025 was huge for us, so lets go over whats new with us first & then some updates on our plans:

• From a one man team to now 10 Development staff & a few helpers, we now are now international! From sound designers in North America, to Art team in Scotland and a programmer in Czechia, we are all passionate to work on Duckoleon! However, we want to be transparent that more than half of the team are University students, so we expect that some months will have only small amounts of content released, while in the summer you will be more then spoiled.

• From a small Beta group of less than 150 players, we have reached almost 2500 copies of the game sold on Steam! This means we actually beat our expectations of where we would be at by the end of 2025. We also know that there is a large number of people who wishlisted the game, almost 9000 in fact! We hope the next few updates to come will bring more players so we can host even bigger events!

• Speaking of big events - Dedicated servers! We are now hosted by BMG, so now you don't need staff for hosting dedicated servers from their own computers.

• 2026 Roadmap - We know lots of people are eager to know of our plans for this year, rest assured plans are being laid to help ensure we meet our own internal goals and player expectations, along with finding the right time for us to work as best as we can. Expect our roadmap for 2026 to drop before the end of this month!

• Game Mechanics & Tutorials - We've heard that some people want more detail behind mechanics of the game, we will release documentation regarding the mechanics in a Development post by the start of Q2 2026, we want to rebalance a few things and update our UI before we share full details, but the new UI will help make things a lot more clearer once its ready. As for game Tutorials, we are in the process of sorting a fully voiced and playable tutorial in-game, once its ready we will have it out.

Heights of Talavera, our new map!

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In the heat of the Iberian sun during a two day clash in late July 1809, Sir Arthur Wellesley and General Gregorio de la Cuesta attempted to halt the French Marshal Claude Victor & the then King of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte's offensive as they tried to push into Portugal. From repeated assaults on Medellin hill to intensive infantry brawling along the whole of the Portina stream, the British held the line leaving a costly loss for the French forces who silently withdrew on night of the following day.

Of course, it wasn't just the British holding Talavera...

New Faction - The Kingdom of Spain

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We know people have been asking for ages for the Spanish to be added, so having a non-Bonaparte aligned force made Talavera the perfect excuse to add them! But that's not all...

New Faction - Duchy of Warsaw

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Polish Regiments were also involved in Talavera under the French banner, so adding them now made the most sense.

Both these nations will receive more regiments in the future, so don't worry about only having two regiments per minor nation. Talavera is just the start of whats to come next.

As for other changes, here's what else is new:

• We've added Ammo pouches to some models so our ducks aren't as bare as before.

• Reworked weapon loading - after you reload, you now need to make ready before being able to shoot, hip firing is not possible anymore.

• New unlockable cosmetic items, a Monocle & Glasses.

• New Instrument - The Bugle! Playing it will help recover morale of allies around you and can assist Officers in commanding their troops. This is available to all Cavalry & Skirmisher unit types.

• New Infantry Class - The Colour Sergeant. They act as Second in command of lines, wielding either a spontoon or Halberd.

• Crouching - Makes you harder to hit, but at the cost of being unable to move.

• When at low health, a red vignette will appear on screen now.

• Cavalry can now jump.

• We've updated hitboxes for melee weapons, hopefully you should have an easier time in melee!

• Cannon fire & cannonballs in motion now add camera shake if you are close to them.

Balance changes:

• Decreased range of Cavalry when mounted - We've noticed that they seem to be able to dominate in charges too easily even after we added a dedicated anti-cavalry stance for bayonet wielding units.

• Increased range of Cavalry when dismounted - On the flip side, Cavalry is very weak when dismounted, so we've buffed their range to help them out after you've killed their poor goose mount :(

• Skirmisher shot spread has been increased to 70% from 60% - we've found they are a little too accurate currently.

• Decreased AOE of canister shot from 3 m to 2.5 m - some deaths were frustrating due to the range being larger than it appears.

• Flags can no longer be picked up by the enemy after being respawned before they are first picked up by a friendly - This is to prevent score farming of empty regiments.

Bug fixes:

• Respawn UI not disappearing after respawning.

• Stamina being removed when jumping when controlling a cannon.

• Regiment counter going below zero when people are actually in it.

• Being stuck within the pause menu.

• Issues with Jump and changing fuse time bindings missing from the options menu.

• Sapper structures being incorrectly highlighted when looking at them.

Interested in wanting to know what's coming in our next updates? Check out our discord for teasers & events! https://discord.gg/sbMhesvStY