Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Strategy, Tactical, Indie
Becastled
Combat update release date announcement!
Hey everyone, we have some great news for you today: the Combat Update will be released on March 24! If you’d like to play it a bit earlier, you can join our public beta starting on March 13. See the end of this post for details on how to join.
Check out our updated game trailer, which showcases our new vision for the game:
Our goal was to focus on improving the combat aspect of the game. Everything has been built from scratch to deliver a deeper and more engaging combat simulation experience. Performance has also improved significantly.
You will be able to create and share your own maps with the upcoming update. Modify the terrain and place resources as you see fit. Share your map with the community or download maps created by others.
And there is also sandbox mode, build and fight without any restrictions.
We've added mini bosses with this update, they are bigger versions of regular units but they are much tougher. Killing one of them will give your units a lot of expirience.
If all of your troops fall in battle, you can summon a militia. Every villager will pick up a weapon and join the fight. However, be careful—this is your last line of defense.
To help you prepare for night battles, we’ve added a feature that shows enemy attack paths. This will be extremely useful when building walls and gates, allowing you to guide enemies into a deadly trap!
There are many other changes as well, and we’ll post a full list on the release date!
How to join the open beta:
Right-click on Becastled in your Steam library.
Select Properties -> Betas.
Under Beta Participation, choose beta.
That’s it! You’ll just need to wait until March 13.
That's it for today, see you soon!
Devlog: progress on the combat update #2
Hey everyone, it's been a while, and we have some news on the progress of the upcoming combat update.
Map win condition
Now you can win a map! There are 4 enemy towers on each side of the map, if you destroy all of them and survive the final enemy wave you win. You will still be able to play after that if you want to, but if you’re looking for a challenge, now you have it. Make sure you are ready to defend your castle, as a destroyed tower will summon a much bigger wave of enemies at night. And if you will destroy all towers you will have to defend against the final and strongest enemy wave.
Better unit roles
Since the release, we've struggled to find a good balance between our units, but I think we've found a good solution.
Swordsmen will now have shields by default, and they can use them to protect themselves from arrows. Along with better armor, this allows them to take significant damage and still survive
Knights still wield a big two-handed sword that deals splash damage, making them the most dangerous unit in melee combat.
Pikemen now have long spears, which allow them to have greater attack range. By combining pikemen with knights or swordsmen, you can create a squad that fits your needs in terms of damage or defense
Archers are mostly unchanged, but they have almost no armor. So, leaving them alone in an open field at night might not be the best idea, as enemies also have units with shields.
New levels
Levels make units more powerful than before, and you can easily see the unit level icon. Control and position your troops in a way that allows them to gain experience in each fight, and try not to lose too many of them.
Dead or injured
Speaking of that, you will be able to see how many of your troops died during the fight. A skull icon represents a unit that died, and a cross represents a unit that can be healed in a hospital. The more skulls, the bloodier the fight was. You can hire more doctors to increase the chance that a unit will not die in a fight.
Banners
Also we've added banners that you could give to any unit, each banner will have different aura that will affect your troops. So now you will have much more tools to create unique defence strategies.
Smarter enemies
You’ll need to be more creative defending your castle, as there will be more enemies, and they will be smarter this time! Enemies will bring siege ladders and towers only when it makes sense, saving time to reach the castle keep. They will also use rams to break through gate doors now.
You will be able to see the possible enemy paths, which will help a lot when planning your defenses. The visuals are still a work in progress, but you can already see how enemy attack paths change when you place a wall. Enemies will choose to run around if it’s much faster than breaking down the wall, but if the detour is too far, they will try to break through the wall and might even use a siege ram to help them.
New map
All these new combat mechanics need a better world to truly shine. That’s why we’re working on new map types, along with a map editor, so you’ll be able to create custom maps with interesting designs and challenges. If you’d like, you can also share them with others through the Steam Workshop later on.
When it's going to be released?
We wanted to release it much earlier, but as usual, things grew out of scope. We want to ensure this release is the most polished yet and that we deliver the best possible experience with it. We still aim to release it in a few months.
Let us know what do you thinkg about the upcoming update in the comments!
Devlog: progress on the combat update
Hello everyone,
We want to share some progress we have made on the combat update.
As we upgraded our AI, we discovered a cool way to make combat more dynamic. You can see in this clip how knights push archers while they fight. This creates more dynamic and interesting battles. You can feel that the knights overwhelm the archers so much that they push them back.
Check out how the troll pushes knights when moving. Cool, right?
This new technique will allow us to create enemies that cannot be stopped by regular troops. It's not just cool visuals, but also a way to create new combat challenges. Knowing that a troll will go through your troops no matter what forces you to come up with new strategies to handle this.
This technique also allows units to move much faster on walls and ladders.
These movement details bring more life to our simple characters, making them more realistic and alive.
We are focusing on significantly improving siege gameplay. Fights at gates, on walls, and with siege towers and ladders have been completely reimagined and improved. With these changes, we aim to create the best strategy siege simulation game out there.
We are also working on new units and combat content, along with rebalancing old mechanics. We will be ready to share more details next time. Our goal is to make combat more challenging and to bring more depth to this part of the game.
See you next time!
Devblog: working on a combat update & more
Hello everyone!
We want to share with you our progress on the update we are currently working on. Our goal is to bring more depth to combat and siege gameplay. Making it more fun and challenging to defend your city.
Also we are fixing issues related to AI and pathfinding that plagued game experience for many of you. We’ve completely rewritten AI for all units in the game. And it works way faster right now. Though we are not ready to share details on combat changes yet.
We are also working on an upgrade for the game map. The idea is to add more stuff to map generator, so that it will create more unique and interesting defense challenges. And we also want to include a map editor in the game, so that you could create and share custom maps.
Mountains, rivers, water cells and some other stuff. I think we will release these elements gradually with the next updates. For now I can share some concepts and early screenshots on how it looks
And our plan is also to release roads with one of the updates to the map editor.
That’s all for today, see you next time when we share more details on combat changes.
Patchnotes 0.8003
added: new squads binds menu. It's now much easier to create and manage unit binds. Check out the new menu on the bottom left, near the free workers button.
added: ui scale setting
added: workers disapearance progress when mood is low
changed: Golden age was removed for now
fixed: beertroot seed icon
fixed: food bonus from butchery for hunters
fixed: spelling in seasons duration setting
fixed: charcoal worker name
fixed: some game world names dont work correctly
New update: Seasons
Hello everyone, check out our new update: Seasons!
Now each day of the game will progress yearly seasons. Each season has a set of possible weather events and visual effects. For example, heavy rain could start in summer and lightning might hit one of your buildings!
Or you could see aurora in the winter if you get lucky.
You should also prepare to survive a winter. Gather some stocks of food and wood as plants don't grow in winter.
In general new changes make the game world more intractable while creating a challenge in surviving winter.
We also fixed wall gap bug. When enemies were able to squeze between wall/tower and a cliff. No we are filling these spaces with stones that blocks the path.
Patch notes:
added: Seasons! You can select winter duration in game settings
added: new resource: coal. Coal is now used to heat houses in winter
added: map decoration: mushrooms spawn during summer under trees
added: map decoration: butterflies during spring
added: map decoration: fireflies in forests at night
added: new building: greenhouse. It can generate food during the winter
changed: max day time is now 8 minutes
Also a lot of small and big bugs were fixed for this release. Let us know in the comments what do you think about this update!
Patch 0.7011
fixed: ghost of a tower being placed override already placed towers causing bugs later on
fixed: tower loading it's map point incorrectly causing bugs later on
fixed: game crash when destroying towers and walls really fast
Patch 0.7005
added: 3 tiers of garder decoration
added: enemies attack progress is displayed in the cell UI and next to the attack timer
changed: new people will spawn up to -10 mood, as it was before the update
changed: castle gives happiness even when there is no people there, as it can be ignored by workers in some cases in favor of houses
changed: observatory gives mood bonus as library but in smaller radius
changed: storage and mood information moved from building UI to popup
changed: library is back in tech tree
community suggestion: decorations hitboxes reduced
community suggestion: negative buildings mood radius decreased, to allow some zoning while not taking too much space
fixed: tower conecting to wall 2 layers below it's own, causing incorrect behaviour and broken pathfinding
fixed: wall ladder not connecting to a wall during game load in some cases
fixed: on Flat Lands map fishermen hut and walls not building
fixed: fixed happiness visual overlays
New update: Mood mechanic
Hello everyone, the new update is live! This time we update how mood mechanics works. So no more tavern spam, but we hope you will like this change.
Buildings like tavern increase the mood of houses around them
A sawmill or stone query will decrease the mood of houses around it.
So place your buildings carefully now! Positive mood counts toward golden age score, and when progress is full you get Golden Age for a short time. It increases production of all resources.
If your mood gets too low production of all resources is decreased and some workers may even leave your town!
In addition, you can get mood bonuses from nature features on cells, like lakes and forests.
We also added female characters, they can do work in the city or be in the army.
Other changes:
added: added traps menu
added: tower siege machine on/off switcher
fixed: enemies not spawning sometimes
fixed: being able to upgrade / destroy buildings in main menu using hotkey modes
Also a lot of small issues was fixed.
Let us know what you think about the new mood mechanic in the comments!
New update is Live! Hospital, tents and more
Hey everyone, the new update is live! With this update we reworked a lot of the existing systems and added new ones to make the game more balanced and interesting to play. Check it out and let us know what do you think about it.
Full list of changes:
added: new building - Barracks
added: new building - Hospital
added: new building - Tent for injured units
added: new building - Herbalist
added: new building - Training arena
added: new building - Orchard
added: new wheat food production chain
added: new researches in the tech tree
added: combat difficulty can be changed during the game in settings
added: enemy attack force can be seen when selecting cell with an enemy spawn
added: detailed in-game tips on how some complex buildings work
added: animations for amount of resource produced in a sawmill / siege workshop / hunters / traps workshop
added: Manual unit teleportation back home from unit UI
changed: hunters now hunt across the map
changed: woodcutters also cut trees across the map
changed: research tree prices in wood/stone/iron/gold
changed: new market mechanics (resources have amount)
changed: church, library and observatory produce only mood for now
changed: vegetable fields now require seeds for construction. Seeds can be only obtained from trade
changed: upgraded trading UI
changed: farm size reduced
changed: non-combat notifications (like buildings that have no workers) are visible only during the day now. To not distract from combat at night
changed: storage lvl 1 now can store 1500 wood, and lvl 2 - 2250 wood
changed: siege machines now require 15 sun coins as maintenance, but siege ammo costs 20/30 suncoins. This way you can still have significant amount of siege machines on towers while actually using them is pretty expensive
changed: building production amount in ui is shown without
/min* text
changed: new names for melee and ranged barracks
fixed: experience, level and upgrades saves correctly after warrior treatment
fixed: negative mood at night
fixed: stuck workers not teleporting home at night
fixed: building placing collisions during pause
fixed: gate placing while pause
fixed: tower collisions with another buildings while pause
fixed: castle banner now follows direction of all other banners correctly
fixed: windmill and market cloth now is lighted more correctly
