Update #21 - Voice of the People

​Hey everyone!

Today, we are pleased to share with you the release of our next major update, Voice of the People.

We did a video to summarize the main highlights of the update.

Please check it out, and if you like the format, let us know so we can keep doing it!

Now, let’s do a deep dive into the update. 🔥

HIGHLIGHTS

🎭 Public Opinion Changes

​Our Lead Game Designer recently released a blog with more information on the rationale behind the changes, so allow me here to quote him;

Let's be honest: diplomacy in its previous form had a bit of a goldfish problem.

• Raze an empire's city? They're naturally upset for a while.

• Raze it again? Still upset, same amount.

• Raze it a third time, burn down their Ministry, occupy half their territory? Still... the same upset.

The world had no sense of escalation, no memory. You could be the most relentless conqueror in the history of Saiadha and the other empires would essentially treat each act of aggression as if it were the first.

In order to help with this situation, we introduced 2 main changes:

Cumulative Public Opinion

There are certain actions that will stack Public Opinion from other empires.

Each time you perform a hostile (or friendly) action toward an Empire, a counter climbs.

The Badge System

Badges are the centerpiece of this update. They represent a pattern of behavior so consistent that it defines how the other empire sees you.

This helps the AI remember what your behavior has been like towards them in the early game, so no more “we are super friends after you destroyed half of their empire”. This is not an impediment to having diplomacy with them, but it will be a bit harder, as players will be accountable for their behavior.

Here is an example of how it works

Attack Escalation

• First attack → Attacked I (-10, 15 turns)

• 2–4 attacks → Attacked II (-20, 15 turns)

• 5+ attacks → Attacked III (-30, 15 turns) → Bully badge (-20, permanent)

If you want to de-escalate the situation, you must go one level at a time. Let’s assume you are currently in “Attack II”, you will need to wait 15 turns in order to go to Attacked I.

💡 DEV QUESTIONS

• Does the escalation feel fair?

• Are the badge thresholds in the right place?

• Are penalties too punishing or not punishing enough?

🏰 Kin of Sheredyn Rework

Kin of Sheredyn has been the most used faction in the entire game (excluding the tutorial), and this is especially important for new players joining the game. This makes it more challenging, as it needs to be easy to grasp while having some asymmetry.

Some previous issues ​

• As it was a faction designed as a more "generalist" option for new players, there were occasions where it lacked direction, as you could expand the faction toward any archetype

• You ended up with a faction that could do anything, but you didn't know why you wanted to do that thing

• You were encouraged to build around fortification, but it was not giving you a "nice return" (any additional cool effects)

After the changes the team did to Necrophage, they have been cooking some nice changes to the Kin of Sheredyn 👨‍🍳

Main Plan for the faction 📝

1. Faction is naturally defending itself as it expands its cities

2. They become the best city-builder archetype thanks to their focus on optimizing districts up to level 3

3. Keeps become a real tool with meaningful payoff compared to before, instead of just stacking fortification.

Main Changes

🏗️ They become the only faction that can have level 3 districts.

🏯 KEEP DISTRICT CHANGES

• They build foundations around them automatically

• They count as x2 for leveling up districts

👑 DIVINE POPULATION CHANGES

Now they are more "divine" 🤣

• They have strong effects, but they like to be just with themselves.

• No worries, though, as you might have a counselor who can "calm them down"

• They are the best population in terms of what they can provide you 👀

🦸‍♂️ A "HERO-CENTRIC" FACTION

You will notice that several of the Kin technologies now also provide cool weapons, armor, and amulets!

Divine population collection bonuses will make your heroes stronger

🤷‍♂️ KIN CAN NO LONGER GUILD FORUMS DISTRICTS

Do not worry, there are other ways to generate influence!

• Level 2 districts will grant +2 influence

• They have a new dedicated building > Divine Monument Be careful: you can build only one per territory

💡 DEV QUESTIONS

• How do the new Kin of Sheridyn feel?

• Do you think there is a particular area that makes them “super OP”?

• Do you feel a clear vision of what to do with the faction?

🏞 Anomaly Districts

We noticed that all fans of the first Endless Legend were missing this and we agree with you!

The Anomaly District (called Altar, as a reference) will enhance the gains of the anomaly as it grants a +100% of the FIDSI per level

Remember that in order to unlock the district, you will need to unlock the Geology tech (era 3).

🥋 Army Panel

This new window will help all players access all relevant information about their armies at a glance. Here you can see army strength, Whether it contains a hero, upkeep cost and location.

This feature has been highly requested since we introduced the All-City panel!

Do not forget to rename your armies to make them easier to recognize 🧠

🎮 Gamepad support

Do you play with a controller due to accessibilty needs? We’ve got you covered 💪

Do you want to play the game while chilling out on the couch? We’ve got you covered 💪

Do you simply prefer using a controller? We’ve got you covered 💪

The game now has official controller support, so please try it out and let us know what you think about it. Are there areas that feel difficult to navigate? Is the experience smooth overall?

When you connect a controller, you’ll get a popup asking you to confirm the switch. Don’t forget that if both inputs are connected, you can change this in Settings > UI.

📅 UPDATED ROADMAP

Perfect timing to update the roadmap, as the previous one ended in March 😎

We will go into more detail in a dedicated blog, but here are a few things we know people are excited about 👇

• Improvements to narration are on the way. This requires extra time as the team is enhancing the presentation and adding more art.

• The team is experimenting with several solutions for district scaling costs. More details will come once a clear direction is chosen.

• Combat retaliation is just around the corner! Alongside this, expect changes to combat and units to align with upcoming content.

• Our art team is bringing community minor factions to life. Early visuals will be shared soon.

✨ Special mentions

Here is a small section to highlight additional improvements that are easy to miss in the changelog but still deserve some attention 👇

✨ Added a setting for fog of war visibility in the city screen (100%, 50%, or none) Settings > Gameplay > Settlement Darkening (by default 50%)

Here an image to illustrate the darkening from 50% > 100%

✨ Added random selection of an unused major faction when adding a lobby slot

This is a small change, but it will help with the variety of factions and also avoid the "manual change" for unused factions.

✨ Added population effects in the custom faction creation screen

✨ Made Lone Wolf events easier to trigger (thanks BeagleJack for the report!) ✨ Fixed the Master victory condition being too hard to reach ✨ Added a “World Details” setting (full detail, none, or adaptive with zoom)

We heard your feedback, and we made this an option, as some of you wanted to see all the details on the world of Saiadha. To give you an example of what will hide > The bushes.

It makes the world a bit less crowded and more "easy to read" on the type of terrain.

​

✨ Tuned down Minor Faction armies

✨ Improved how the AI handles quests and objectives

CHANGELOG

Known issues

• Going back to the world map after a battle makes the setting “World Details” forced back to “Distance hide”

• Some really specific world generation settings cause the game to not start (we’re looking into which ones exactly)

Kin of Sheredyn

Faction trait (all changed) ⛵

Technology Updates 📖

Divine pop retakes 👼 : Effect of the pop from +1 Dust/Industry & influence to :

Pop Collection bonus changed from fidsis on Divine to :

• Tier 1 collection bonus (3 pops): +2 Might on all heroes of the empire

• Tier 2 collection bonus (6 pops): +2 Resilience on all heroes of the empire

• Tier 3 collection bonus (9 pops): +2 Intuition & Determination on all heroes of the empire

Pryzja councilor trait changed to : +3 Stability on all divine pop (it'll compensate their maluses)

New content 😁

​

Diplomacy

Reworked the Public Opinion

Adding new Public Opinion Status for the Diplomacy

As the table is broken: New Public Opinion Status // Trigger // Public Opinion // Duration (in turn)

​

Add a new cumulative public opinion status to diplomacy.

Each threshold is mutually exclusive from the previous one. Once a threshold is reached, a permanent badge is triggered.

For example: If an empire reaches Attacked III, the Bully badge is triggered and remains for the rest of the game, even if you stop attacking that empire. So the idea is that when you attack the same empire too many times, it remembers that you're a bully for the rest of the game.

As the table is broken:

New cumulative Public Opinion Status // Trigger // Public Opinion // Duration (in turn)

• Added more context to the Public Opinion effect Resources Coveted & Resource Desperation

• Fixed “Influence” displayed twice in the failure flag when enacting or revoking a declaration

• Fixed an error when razing a city triggers the "butcher" status

Custom Factions

• Added the population effects in the custom factions creation screen

• Added a custom faction trait “Back to Basics” which gives free foundations around all built districts

• Updated the following traits:

  • “Trade War” from +1% Damage per Dust to +5% Damage per Trading Post

  • “Friends of Saiadha” from 15 CF points ; +5 slots to 20 CF points ; +3 slots

  • “Barter System” from 5 CF points to -10 CF points

  • “Military Expenditure” from -90% to -50% reduction on military districts

  • “Field Scientist” from 100 + 100 /era to 50 + 50 /era additional Science

  • “Active Reader” from 100 + 100 /era to 50 + 50 /era additional science

  • “Military Drills” from -90% to -50% reduction on unit specialization

• Improved the handle of the Tahuks affinity and the traits needed for it to be working correctly

• Balanced the trait “Suburban Dream” from 90% to 50% Industry cost on population

• Fixed wrong tooltip for “Military Drills”

• Fixed the tooltip of the traits “Alchemist”, “Field Scientist” and “Watchful Neighbors”

• Fixed Tahuk’s affinity not giving SGE

• Fixed wrong message about the AI not being able to play the traits

• Fixed video cinematics playing wrongly

• Fixed the trait “Suburban Dream” showing the districts twice

Economy

• Added districts for anomaly: they double the yields from the exploited anomaly (+100% per level) and have the base cost of 10 Hyperium

• Reduced the effects of the minor faction populations of Foundling, Ochling, Sollusk and Xavius by replacing “per population type” by “if there is another population type” (so it doesn’t multiply)

• Added an unread red dot on newly unlocked districts in the list

• Reduced the amount of luxury resources given in curiosities

• Increased the buyout cost from 2.5 to 3 times the Industry cost

• Updated Admin centers and extractors to be able to level up

• Fixed the illustration for the Monument of the Lost district for the Aspect

• Fixed tooltip showing missing text on the Monument of the Lost district

• Fixed extractor pins still shown although the extractors is built when you have multiple times the same resource in the territory

Military

• Added a screen to see all your armies in your empire, similar to the all cities and camps

• Added a new super cool ability for the Keeper world hero

• Updated the Jinxed status to heal the future attacker by 15% (Jinxed I) or 30% (Jinxed II) of the damage dealt

• Updated “Keensight's Katana” from +2 Determination, +1 Might, +10 Defense to + 2 Determination, 3 Might, +10 Defense

• Fixed World Heroes base stats

• Fixed skill “Hurricane of steel” (no longer ignore defense if the target is encircled, range from 1-2 to 1, teleportation on the targeted tile if the target is killed)

• Fixed “Shield Dome” ability (thanks to Drunkman for the report!)

• Fixed reinforcement army resetting when confirming (thanks Dilgear for the report!)

• Fixed the skill “Force Blast” (thanks Captain America for the report!)

• Fixed the “Possessive Impulse” trait for Necrophage councilor (thanks Tema for the report!)

AI

• Forbid the AI to attack a fortress if the human player have planned to do it first

• Reduced the AI aggressiveness in peace situation

• Reduced the use of Closed Borders treaty when there is no trespassing recently

• Improved how AI handle quests and objectives

• Improved how AI perceives threats in the world

It's a subtle change... Basically, to decide which army can perform which military mission where, the AIs maintain a metric that states how dangerous each region is. To compute this metric, it looks at all the foreign armies in each region, assesses the threat it represent, and gets a magic number. The threat generated by each army can be propagated from one region to another. So far, this propagation was a bit simple (as in "the threat can propagate through x regions"). The issue with this approach is that the regions we consider are not equally sized. Some are as large as a territory, others as small as a borough... My goal here is to account for these different sizes when computing the propagation.

So it does affect the way the AI looks at all the other armies, so its decision-making should be generally a bit better, but it won't make a night-and-day difference

• Fixed an issue where the AI would start and immediately give up when settling in a Territory

• Fixed an issue where the AI would move an Army on top of a Burrow and remain idle

• Fixed an issue where the AI would be blocked on a task it cannot perform

• Fixed an issue where the AI would sometimes launch Sortie or Assault it will lose because it considers it will get reinforcement from a nearby Army which is still out of range

• Fixed an issue where Last Lords' AI would look for food gains

• Fixed an issue where the AI's Armies would not reliably wait before declaring war and attacking

• Fixed an issue where the AI would often win a Siege and not follow-up with Subjugation.

• Fixed a technical issue with exploring the world motivation

• Fixed AI standing in place and not moving for multiple turns in some cases

• Fixed an issue for AI around building partner dens

General UI

• Added a setting to be able to switch between the mouse & keyboard and the gamepad UI (available also on Steam Deck)

• Improved greatly the deeds UI and tooltips

• Added a setting for the fog of war around the territory while in the city screen (100%, 50% or none)

  • By default is on 50%

• Added tooltips on the all settlements window

• Improved the lobby by using new backgrounds

• Added random selection of an unused major faction when adding a slot in the lobby

• Improved the tooltip for heroes and abilities

• Added a “Cadaver” category for the districts for Necrophage only

• Added icons for 2 missing abilities

• Added the equipment full tooltip in the technology screen

• Added the full name of resources in the notifications

• Hide the terrain tooltip when reading hints

• Removed translation on save files

• Updated the icon of the tutorial button in the main menu

• Updated the icon of unpin button on the quest panel

• Fixed wrong tooltips on the camp screen for Dust and Influence

• Fixed an overlapping in the tooltip for the corruption from Doomwraith

• Fixed overlapping texts in the “Strength of our Zeal” gauge upgrades notification

• Fixed the nested tooltip for the Glass

• Fixed cropped information in the Heroes' circle screen on Steam Deck

• Fixed missing wandering status icon

• Fixed missing text in the Matriarch’s Eye district’s tooltip

• Fixed wrong icon and status displayed on assimilated minor faction villages' pins

• Fixed protectorate icon shown on unpacified minor faction villages’ pins

• Fixed hints for Public Opinion, Resource Conversion, Justified War not triggering

• Fixed the “Tower Defense” trait’s tooltip

• Fixed the “Governor’s Soiree” technology’s unlock tooltip

• Fixed the Pirasi partner’s tooltip

​

Visual

• Added a setting “World Details” to be able to choose if you want to see all details, no details or an in-between where details disappear after a predefined level of zoom

• Fixed visual effects in UI causing transparency in full screens such as the diplomacy

• Fixed a number “5” appearing on the FIDSI when using the latest Nvidia drivers

Multiplayer

• Added a proper feedback letting you know when a player is currently in battle on the end turn button

• Added the possibility to select the empire slot when joining a game that already started

• Fixed battle preview not shown on Steam Deck

• Fixed one of the most recurrent desync happening in multiplayer

Quests & events

• Made Lone Wolf events easier to trigger (thanks BeagleJack for the report!)

• Replaced the reward of the “Thorny Problems” which gave turn cost reduction on cut forest action by the unlock of the technology “Plant Forest”

• Removed the randomness of traits gained in the key beats

• Removed an impossible objective for the Necrophage

• Updated the quest “The Collector” to be harder

• Removed temporarily the quest “Dark Skies” which asked to build a bridge that could not be completed

• Removed the pacification quest’s objective for the Kin of Sheredyn which asked to build Forums (thanks to Arice for the report!)

• Fixed rewards sentences in Something on the Shore key beat

• Fixed wrong speaker highlighted in multiple quests and events

• Fixed the tooltip of the “Saiadhan Spore” trait for the Strangers Call quest

• Fixed “Virgin Lands” quest’s objective increasing when other empires would destroy minor faction villages

• Fixed “Curious Minds” trait’s tooltip (thanks Mercury26 for the report!)

• Fixed “Crafty Masses” trait’s tooltip empty

• Fixed wrong speaker in the pacification quest “Long Winter’s Nap”

• Fixed Hydracorn’s pacification quest branch triggering when it shouldn’t

• Fixed locate button not working on the “Rust and Rot” quest

• Fixed missing text in the tooltip of the reward of the quest “The Bastion”

• Fixed the pacification quest “A Fine Beast” impossible to complete

• Fixed missing text in the “Curiosity collected” notification

• Fixed issues with the army spawned with the quest “Rotten Flowers”

• Fixed missing reward in the quest of the Last Lords

• Fixed wrong tooltip in Tahuks' quest mentioning larva units

• Fixed “The Fork in the Road” choices

• Fixed wrong name displayed in the Hydracorns pacification quest

• Fixed the quest “Still Waters” for new saves which asked to build 7 territories (it was asking something with the gauge before)

Victory conditions

• Improved feedbacks (timer, paths, imminent victory) on victory conditions screen

• Reduced the population cost bonus in the trait of the Worship victory path from -50% to -25%

• Updated the traits given in the victory paths:

  • Peaceful Minds gives +3 Influence per pacified village in settlements

  • Watchful Minds gives +50% fortification on military districts

  • Curious Minds gives +2 Science per Scribe properly (thanks to Mercury26 for the report!)

• Updated the following traits given by the victory quest:

  • “Fasting Masses”: From -0.3 food consumption on cities to -2 food consumption/Dust consumption on population

  • “Crafty Masses”: From +2 Food on farms to +1 Industry per population

  • “Resourceful Masses”: From +5 Industry on extractors to +5 Dust per extractorUpdated the following traits given by the victory quest:

• Fixed Master victory condition too hard to reach Apparently, the formula was not working as intendeed and now it should be much better! Let us know

Minor Factions

• Tuned down Minor Factions armies

• Fixed the tooltips for the population of the Foundling, Ochling, Sollusk and Xavius (thanks to Barrioh for the report!)

Last Lords

• Improved the tooltip of the Primordial Last Lord

Audio

• Added sounds for the opportunity attack

• Added settings to test the audio settings with an audio loop

• Added settings to filter low and high pitch sounds

Misc

• Ordered the “Settlement Darkening” setting’s values

• Fixed 22 technical issues

• Fixed a technical issue with priorities in audio

• Fixed a technical issue in all armies window

• Fixed a technical issue with pins

• Fixed symbols visible in quest dialog

• Fixed translation for “draw” too long in Polish

• Adding missing texts

• Fixed a technical issue when switching from PC to Gamepad layout

• Added the update “Voice of the People” to the content management screen

• Fixed a technical issue with quest validations

• Updated localization throughout the game and fixed multiple localization bugs

Thanks for all your continuous support 🤗

Have a nice day ^-^