Update 1.4.0 — Fog of War, Smarter AI & New Music

1.4.0

Fixed: Armies were getting deselected when one of the sides withdrew from battle.

Fixed: Players could not continue bombarding a castle with trebuchets once its defence was reduced to the minimum value, even if some walls were still damaged or intact. Players can now continue bombardment to destroy additional walls, although defence will not be reduced below the minimum value.

Fixed: Enlarging the map preview image was not working for scenario and campaign maps.

Fixed: Trade pricing is now correctly saved and loaded.

Fixed: AI region promotions were not granting all the bonuses received by human players.

Changed: Trade prices now change more gradually, with fairer minimum and maximum rates based on each resource’s base value. Markets also recover faster over time, and strong resource production helps prices return to normal more quickly.

Changed: Population tax income has been rebalanced to reduce excessive tax income in the late game. Developed regions still benefit from promotion, but their tax growth is now more controlled.

Changed: Improved AI army composition to better counter late-game, heavily armoured armies.

Changed: Redesigned AI region promotion strategy. The AI now manages its economy more effectively.

Changed: Some unit statistics have been adjusted:

• Horsemen attack: 15 → 18

• Knights cost: 6 → 7

• Mounted Knights cost: 8 → 10

• Royal Guard cost: 12 → 14

Changed: Redesigned some AI behaviours and tactics. Most of these changes affect Normal and Hard difficulty:

• The AI is harder to surround and cut off, reducing situations that lead to easy army destruction.

• AI armies are less passive. They will try to find better positions, gather recruits, or attack distant regions instead of standing idle in some situations.

• AI armies will avoid battles against stronger enemies and withdraw more effectively to better positions.

• The AI now better predicts battle outcomes based on collected intelligence and is less likely to attack armies it cannot defeat.

• Rebalanced army-raising logic. The AI will now raise armies it actually needs, reducing the total number of armies in many situations.

Added: An option to return to the map list from the Bonus Card selection screen.

Added: Peasants now have the “Local Militia” trait. Garrisoned peasants pay only half food upkeep.

Added: Fog of War for Skirmish mode only. Fog of War hides the whole map from players. Defensive structures and armies have a vision range of 1, meaning they can see neighbouring regions, while owned regions have a vision range of 0, meaning they only reveal themselves. The game remembers the last visible state of each region, including castle level, region level, population, and resources.

Added: “Random” starting location. Players can now choose this option to be placed randomly on the selected map. This works especially well with Fog of War and random maps. The location is calculated using the same system the AI uses to place its own castle, meaning the random starting location should be fair and strong enough.

Added: 7 new music tracks.

Added: Players can now rename all factions, such as “Player 1”, “Player 2”, and so on.