Farms and Villages

I will use this news channel on Steam for more frequent updates, but still share one or two videos on YouTube.

So the initial map, which was manually sculpted, needed to grow as it seemed too small for more than 2 farms. In order to save time, I dived into procedural generation and with it created the general layout of Euroza continent, with trees and settlement placements included. Now with the continent, settlements and roads, few details were added to make settlements come to life (fires, decorations, peasants, animals).

Every settlement has a leader that the player can interact with, it provides an interface to trade goods, recruit peasants and managing a settlement once it is conquered.

With this settlements can now be looted, conquered, and burned to the ground. They burn for a day or two, then slowly regain population and rebuild houses within a week. Peasants need to be recruited from settlements, by force or free will if you have conquered them. Nearby settlements might retaliate and try to retake the settlement. Thus it is not always in your interest to conquer and defend it.

To keep settlements (or your army) from creating resistance, you will need to keep up the fear or loyalty in your followers, depending on your play style. But this feature will most likely be disabled in the demo.

My next milestone is to finalise the settlements behaviour and their relationships between them. Some of the mentioned events are still missing. Each settlement belongs to a Clan and they work together to defend their settlements and share resources between them via 'Convoys'. Player can also destroy and loot the convoys, but obviously impacts his standing with the Clan.

To avoid this first post being too long, here is a short list of other things that were done in the past few months. Granted they still need some time and dedication for polishing before the final demo version.

• Extensive open world optimisation

• Unit optimisation (can now show 3x as many as before and still animated in real-time)

• Inventory system (players can buy gear and weapons)

• Unit progression and upgrading (units need to stay alive for few fights before they can be upgraded)

• Unit recruitment via settlements

• Throwing weapons like knives and javelins (yeah!)

• Repair and supply station for players' camp (items' durability and throwing weapons)

• Bandits (roaming parties of hostiles)

• Traveling Merchants (can be also killed and looted, but each such encounter will decrease a chance for another merchant to come)

Thanks to everyone who is following the development of this game! I will try to post more updates and hopefully you can all try the game soon! :)