Open Alpha (Demo) updated!

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Dear Ladies and Lords,

The update is now live and games are running again.

This update brings a mix of systemic improvements and community-driven refinements.

The larger gameplay changes — such as Battle Fatigue and the uniformized, Safety-based passive protection model — integrate naturally with the existing systems while opening up new strategic possibilities around warfare, attrition, and territorial pressure.

The Administrative Reserves rework serves a different goal: reducing player load and giving more control over when reserves are spent. This should make it easier to react to emergencies, catch up when needed, and generally manage limited playtime more effectively.

Most of the remaining changes focus on quality of life improvements, usability tweaks, and fixes, many of them addressing issues reported, or suggestions made by players.

In fact, roughly 90% of the changes in this update originated from discussions on Discord, where many of you helped refine ideas, highlight edge cases, or point out friction points in everyday gameplay.

Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback and suggestions!

The full changelog can be found at the end of this post.

As always, with changes touching multiple systems, the occasional bug may still slip through. If you notice anything odd, please report it directly in-game by clicking the small yellow cloud icon in the bottom right and selecting Bug Report in the panel that appears.

I’ve been a bit slowed down over the past few days thanks to a cold, which is partly why this update took a little longer than usual — hopefully I didn’t miss anything in the rulebook changes while working through it.

Thanks again for the feedback and support — and happy skirmishes!

- Mat

Changelog

Gameplay & Vibe

• Battle Fatigue

  At the final regroup of every battle tick, all active units lose a bit of Morale. This can cause exhausted units to be rotated out during the regroup phase (or attempt to retreat, if no reserve units are present) and ends the era of endlessly resilient elite defensive units in super-fortified positions :)

  From now on, even the strongest formations will gradually suffer attrition and can eventually be worn down.

• Administrative Reserves reworked

  Administrative Reserves are no longer auto-consumed by eligible commands. Instead, there is now a toggle on each eligible command, allowing you to explicitly decide which commands should use them. This should help players with limited playtime make better use of their play sessions.

• Safety / Passive Protection changes

  The former Passive Protection system has been replaced with a unified Safety-based model. Safety now governs passive resistance against Tile Blocking, Raiding, and Occupation, reducing the effectiveness or speed of hostile actions with different efficiencies.

  Instead of providing a separate Passive Protection value, now every garrison and patrol (including allied companies) contributes directly to local Safety, which is then used as a mitigation modifier against these hostile actions. More importantly, labourers generating Safety are now also part of the resistance.

  The estimated effectiveness can be checked on the Feudum Card, while opponents must either estimate it or actively attempt to reduce it, as the exact Safety value is not public.

  Together with the recent change preventing claims inside the Area of Control of an active Garrison, this should provide clearer, more predictable, and