Here's a little preview of what we're currently working on for our upcoming updates:
Rival Kingdoms Progress
We are running various design tests on how trading and diplomacy will work with the other kingdoms. At the same time we're continuing progress on the city building AI. The AI can now build and sustain a city of hundreds, including building food storage, happiness buildings, and defensive walls:
There's still much to do here but the foundation is solid and it's been very cool to see all the work on the city building AI come together to allow it to build thriving cities.
Fishing
We will be adding the much requested fish food source. Eating fish will tie into a new villager 'health' mechanic. You'll be able to build Fishing Huts that will send boats out to catch them and Fish Mongers to store/distribute them:
Optimization
We have also been digging very heavily into optimizations. We're currently testing some optimizations that improved the framerate on our test case city (a completely built out map with 100,000+ total resource stored) from 18fps to 25fps which is about a 30% performance boost (although results will vary based on system specs, city size and composition). We'll be continuing to go as far as we can down this road to try and get more gains.
Until next time,
-Pete & Michael
Warfare Update - Now Available!
Hi Everyone,
Today we've got an update for you themed around Warfare! We've implemented lots of new system and features - all in support of our future AI Rivals update.
Any bugs, issues, or have any feedback? Let us know on discord or email contact@lionshieldstudios.com. Big thanks as always to all our beta testers and translators! Here's what’s new:
Military System Revamp
We have streamlined the military system. Barracks now produce a full 1 tile fully functional 16 footman unit complete with a general with one click (rather than the old way of having to separately train a general, then individually train and recruit units at the barracks). This should feel a little more like an RTS. If you have an old save with bigger armies it will be split up into individual units and we have removed the 3 unit cap. Additionally:
Left click and drag will select multiple units, shift and ctrl click work as well.
Chamber of War no longer recruits generals, instead it can activate a ‘Hazard Pay’ bonus which doubles all unit damage in exchange for higher soldier wages while active.
Units can walk on walls and towers (more on this below)
Units can be queued up at a barracks/archer school (like in an RTS)
Units can be disbanded
Partial strength units can ‘recuperate’ at the barracks to return to full strength
Military units now need to be paid wages (previously only tower emplacements were paid wages) and will disband themselves if they aren’t paid for a few years.
New Unit - Archer
We’ve added an archer school building that works just like the barracks except it produces archer units. They can attack enemies with their ranged attack but are very weak when engaged hand-to-hand. They also gain the same range bonus when stationed on walls that normal archer towers get. And on that note…
Units Can Walk on Walls - Castle Stairs
You can now build castle stairs which allow units access to walking on your castle walls and towers. We’ve completely revamped the pathfinding tech to make this work and set up little doors automatically when a tower meets a wall. One set of stairs will allow access to any contiguous piece of wall, but you’ll probably want multiple sets of stairs for quick access.
Troop Transport Ships
You can now build troop transport ships and use them to move your armies across deep water and on to other landmasses. Each ship can carry three units. To load units, select them and order them to move to a transport ship. To unload, select the transport ship and right click anywhere on land.
New Viking Unit - Thief
Viking thieves move faster and don’t start fires, but if they make it to your treasure room they will steal 100g. Make sure to kill them before they escape back to their ship to reclaim the gold!
Viking Raid AI Improvements
Viking raids can now launch on multiple fronts and they can also leave on any viking boat, not just the boat that brought them. Viking boats are more reactive to picking up escaping vikings. Viking raid escalation tweaked to better adapt to player skill.
Note: if you are using an old save the next few raids will be weak until it catches up with your progress.
Drag Placement
You can now click and drag to place multiple roads, farms, orchards, aqueduct, castle blocks, cemeteries, and piers. You'll be able to place up to 100 buildings per drag placement.
Drag Chop, Rebuild, Demolish
You can now click and drag to order peasants to chop multiple tiles of wood, rebuild large areas of rubble, or demolish lots of buildings at once.
Control Tweak
We have flipped left and right mouse click. Instead of moving the camera on left click, now left click is used for select and drag select. Right click and drag moves the camera and issues troop orders. Middle click and drag is still camera rotate. If you hold down the alt key, the controls will revert back to functioning like the old version.
Note: If you’d prefer the old method permanently, you can toggle ‘legacy mouse controls’ in the options menu. In legacy mode click and drag selecting and placement require holding the alt key to start the drag.
Other Fixes/Improvements
Rebuild now works as expected on castle towers and tiles with aqueducts
Aqueducts can be built over hovels
Fixed gates not visually closing when vikings were nearby
Map generation tweaked to better guarantee viable amounts of stone and iron
Fixed some load/save exploits with the witch
Fixed cemetery orientation getting lost after a load/save
Fixed generals not attacking ogres
Reduced gravekeeper walk speed from 2x to 1.5x
Military units get same speed bonuses on roads that villagers do
Roads can be placed anywhere and do not need to be connected to other roads
This update is taking a little longer than our previous updates because we're adding a bit more new stuff than usual (thanks for being patient!). We're getting close! Here's another preview of some of the upcoming new stuff.
Rectangle Drag Placement
Last time we preview the 'click+drag' placement of roads. We are also adding a rectangle mode for click+drag placement to work with fields, orchards, cemeteries, and piers. Here's what it looks like:
New Viking Unit - Thief
We're adding a new viking unit which walks faster than normal vikings and instead of starting fires, they try to find your treasure rooms and steal your gold. If you can kill them before they get away you'll be able to recover the gold:
We'll post again when the update is ready for testing and feedback. In the meantime you can:
Follow on twitter (https://twitter.com/LionShieldGames)
Until next time,
-Pete & Michael
Development Update
Hi Everyone,
We wanted share some of the progress we’re making on the next update, we've got some pretty interesting changes coming up.
Troop Transports
As mentioned earlier, we're upgrading core parts of the game to better support AI rival kingdoms and we want to release these upgrades as they become ready. For example, in the last update (Infrastructure II) we upgraded the map generation. In this coming update, we'll be upgrading how armies work. You'll be able to click+drag select them, load them on transport ships, send those ships to a new landmass and unload them (ship art is not final):
Click and Drag Placement
We're also introducing click and drag placement for placing certain building types like roads, aqueducts, and castle walls. It especially makes creative mode more fun. Here's a preview of where that's at:
We'll also be extending this to support click+drag for other stuff like designating tiles for chopping.
Lots more interesting stuff in store as well, we'll make another announcement later on when this update is ready for beta testing and feedback!
Until next time,
-Pete & Michael
Infrastructure II - Now Available!
Hi Everyone,
It's time for another big update! As we mentioned in our last development post, the AI rivals will need a lot of big tech changes and we’ll be rolling some of those out early as we finish them. The first early tech change we’re launching for this update is a big rework of the map generation.
If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at contact@lionshieldstudios.com.
Here's the details:
New Map Generation
We've reworked map generation algorithm. Now distinct landmasses will be farther apart (no more landmasses separated by just 4 tiles). Additionally maps have a chance to spawn with shallow water rivers. Map island shapes should in general be more interesting. All landmasses are guaranteed to be above a certain tile count and wolves also won’t spawn on small landmasses. Finally, maps got a bit bigger! The number of build-able tiles increased by 20-30% per map size.
Wooden Gates
These will match up better with wooden walls, and are cheaper than stone gates.
Stone Bridges
These bridges fit together with stone roads and provide the same movement bonus. They are impassable by ship so be careful you don’t box in your transport ships. Viking ships can't pass through them or destroy them.
Fire Brigade
You can augment the automatic volunteer peasant firefighters with actual firefighters who hang out at the Fire Brigade building until needed. These professional firefighters run very quickly and put out fires much quicker than normal peasants. With the right Fire Brigade placement, you’ll now be able to put out fires that would have destroyed buildings when the peasant volunteers were too far away to arrive in time.
Twitch Integration
If you'd like, you can turn on streamer mode in the settings. A twitch icon will appear on the side of the screen, enter your username there, start streaming and viewers can vote on what befalls your kingdom: bonuses, disasters, and other events!
Tax Tweaks
The tax rate used to go from 1 to 3. Now it can do half increments (so 0.5, 1, 1.5, etc). As a stylistic choice we’ve changed the display to show a percentage so if you had a tax rate set at 3, it’ll now show as 30%, but all the internal math will remain the same. This will allow you finer grain control over taxation vs. your kingdom’s happiness.
Windmill Bonus Tweak
Windmill bonuses no longer stack with adjacent windmills and instead each does a flat +3 per tile. It turns out with overlapping bonuses a really strange formation of farms and windmills is optimal (long rows of windmills with a row of farms in between). We wanted to make it so you don't have pack windmills in a line to get optimal food output.
Other Improvements/Fixes
For older mac users who weren’t able to see trees, you can now turn on ‘Mac Compatibility Mode’ in the settings to address that.
Optimization pass
Dragons are less punishing in terms of how many people they kill (especially large dragons)
Stockpiles are treated as stone roads regarding peasant walk speed
Added dirt under the stone roads so they match up with regular roads/gardens better
Baker bakes faster (10s per bread from 15s)
Right click now also deselects tower range UI
Previously viking ships would phase through drawbridges, now the drawbridges go up when any ship comes through
Display charcoal maker yearly output
Reduced costs on castle blocks
Tweak castle tower ballista/archer ranges
Reservoirs can be built anywhere (ignores road territory)
Fix issue where vikings spawned in creative mode wouldn’t always leave on their ships properly
Fix mason not repairing walls
Fix case where peasants could end up in deep water
Fix case where doctors could end up in deep water/floating in air
Fix garden not receiving adjaceny bonuses if under aqueduct
Fix armies not able to stand in town squares
Fix not being able to build castle blocks on top of a gate that had a garden underneath
Fix issue where delivery workers could carry their goods with them if they switched jobs
Other small fixes/tweaks
And of course, other updates will roll out new pieces of the tech we need to make rival kingdoms possible. Very excited to share what's in store!
-Pete & Michael
Development Update
Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to share some progress we’re making on the next update, tentatively called Infrastructure II. It’ll include some new stuff and also lay some groundwork for our future AI Rivals update. Here’s a preview of what’s coming up:
Firehouse, Wooden Gate, and more:
We’re adding a few new infrastructure themed buildings for this update. We’ve got a a Firehouse coming up that employs very effective professional firefighters. We’re also adding a wooden gate:
Map Generation Rework + Size Increase
The AI rivals update needs a lot of tech changes and we’ll be rolling some of those out early as we finish them. The first early tech change we’re launching for this Infrastructure II update is a rework of the map generation.
We're working on a new algorithm based on your feedback, with these goals in mind:
Guarantee landmasses are not too close to each other, aiming for minimum 10 tile distance
Landmasses guaranteed to be above a minimum size
More interesting landmass shapes
Bias fertile farmland towards water
Higher chance of interior lakes, bays, and setting up rivers.
Total map size a bit bigger, and the number of usable tiles (tiles that aren’t deep water) will increased compared to the current version.
Here's a sample of one of the maps generated by the new work-in-progress algorithm:
If you've got other ways you'd like to see the map generation improved, head over to the discord and @ me (@Pete)!
Rival Kingdoms Progress
As mentioned above we’re reworking the map generation algorithm to work better for AI rivals. We’ve also been making progress on the city building AI system the rivals will use.
This is still very work in progress and not ready for primetime, but here’s a video of how the city building AI in action: https://streamable.com/ryuam
In the video, on the right you can see some debug display for how the AI is planning out the city. You'll also notice the roofs are a different color! While this won't be in this Infrastructure II update, we wanted to show the progress we've been making for the AI rivals.
Until next time,
-Michael & Pete
Cemeteries, Witches, and Wolves Update - Now Available
Hi Everyone,
We've got a Halloween themed update for you with a bunch of new game mechanics! If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at contact@lionshieldstudios.com. Here's what's new:
Cemeteries
Now when peasants die, their bodies will need to be taken to a cemetery by a grave keeper. We’ve added a grave keeper’s hut which employs three grave keepers. We've also added a cemetery tile that will fill up with gravestones as grave keepers bring people back to be buried. You’ll need to find the right balance of grave keepers and cemeteries for your town layout. If bodies are left on the ground they will have a chance of starting a plague, plus it’ll make your peasants unhappy. (Note: the individual spaces in each cemetery are able to be reused every 5 years or so, so you won't need to endlessly grow cemeteries.)
Witches
Maps now have a witch hut. The witch can be talked to and depending on how the relationship goes she’ll work with you and provide access to powerful spells, or she’ll curse your kingdom. Old saves will get a witch placed as well (if there is room).
Wolves
Maps now spawn with empty caves. After you place your keep, caves farther away from your keep will populate with wolves. Wolves will eat anything that comes near them (including vikings), except for peasants employed by foresters. They can be killed by archer towers, ballistas, and armies. Once empty, caves can be removed with the rock removal building. Like the witch, old saves will get caves and wolves when loaded.
Plague Rework
Plague now can spread over time from its starting location, and most often will start in residential areas. You’ll need to make sure your doctors have good and fast access to your kingdom, especially the heavily populated or high traffic areas.
Clinic
The clinic is a 1x1 building that houses two doctors. It costs less than the hospital and is a good way to get doctor coverage early and a good way to provide doctor coverage on the edges of your kingdom where a full hospital might be overkill.
Town Square Halloween Edition
We did a visual revamp to the town square so it links with stone roads better, and added some festive jack-o-lanterns.
Improvements/Fixes/Tuning
Charcoal maker, Forester, Iron Mine, and Quarry now come with delivery people who can take their output to a stockpile on their own.
Lots of tweaks and tuning to building costs and wages
Archer towers are less effective vs. ogres and dragons, but more effective against vikings
Ballistas are less effective vs. vikings, but more effective vs ogres and dragons
Increased noria water pressure by 50%
Noria requires all three tiles for its wheel be in water (instead of just one)
Increased amount of water bathhouse uses from noria
Gardens can provide ‘road access’ bonus for houses
Reduced speed bonus for gardens, it’s now faster than nothing, but slower than a real road
Add hot key for rebuild (r)
Fix issue where you could build anything on top of rubble which was on top of a castle block
Fix irrigated gardens not clickable on piers
Fires go out faster in rain/snow
Roads, stone roads, and gardens can all be built on top of each other without first demolishing
Fixed armies jittering like crazy at low fps
Foresters will plant faster if they have access to tools
Tweaks to how resources are counted - if they are being transported in someone's hand they are not counted until they are deposited back in a stockpile.
Other small fixes and tweaks
Hope you enjoy! Excited to share some rival AI progress soon!
-Pete & Michael
Development Update
Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to give a quick update on our development progress. In our next free content update we’re adding a bunch of new stuff with a bit of a spooky theme (since we're approaching Halloween). Here's a little preview of just a few of the new additions:
We'll put out the full notes on how the cemetery and witch hut game mechanics will work when update launches. While these happen to be Halloween themed, they'll all be permanent additions to the game. And of course there's a whole bunch more included in this upcoming update as well. Look for this update to hit the beta branch in the next week or so.
Rival Kingdoms Progress:
Currently we’re working on the part of the AI that will build its own cities. This is still very work-in-progress, so there's not much to show right now. More news on this as we get farther along.
Email us at contact@lionshieldstudios.com or chat with us on discord with any questions!
-Pete & Michael
Beautification Update - Now Available!
Hi Everyone,
While we're still hard at work on other updates (Rival AIs, VR, twitch integration, and secrets), we've got the Beautification Update ready for you now! If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at contact@lionshieldstudios.com.
Now let's get to what's new:
Gardens
Added gardens, they provide happiness in a radius and provide bonus happiness if they’re on irrigated soil or near other gardens. The gardens work like roads and they change appearance based on if other gardens are adjacent.
New Statue
Added a new statue, Lord Nextraztus, a monument to the mighty dragon!
Fountains
Added small and large fountains. They provide all the benefits of a well, but in a larger radius with extra happiness. However, they must be on irrigated land to function.
Skill System Tweaks
Workers will slowly forget skills they aren’t using. The person UI now shows this and better shows what skill they are currently learning. Archer Towers and Ballista Towers also now have some visual decoration when their workers are highly skilled (see the tower on the right who are grandmaster archers vs the left who are apprentices).
Aqueduct Tweak
You can now build aqueducts through castle walls and castle walls on top of aqueducts. No longer will your irrigation system be a hole in your defenses!
Improvements/Tweaks
Added happiness bonus for killing vikings
Adjust tax happiness curve
Some performance improvements
Reorganize building menu, now at the bottom center of the screen and the ‘Town’ category is split into ‘Town’ and ‘Advanced Town’
Archer Tower and Ballista Towers won’t shoot unless the workers are actually there.
People working at Archer and Ballista Towers won’t leave their jobs during combat (unless you manually disable that job) even if a job is placed above it in the priority list.
Granary workers will now pick up wheat dropped by other workers
Fixed issue where w or s could scroll the kingdom log
Fixed issue with bakeries reporting inflated food amounts in the food report
Some performance improvements
We'll have more info on the progress of the Rival AIs update as well as other updates in the next month or so!
As always, email (contact@lionshieldstudios.com) or direct chat on discord is the fastest way to get in touch with us: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles
Until next time,
-Pete & Michael
Development Update
Hi Everyone,
It's been a little over a year since we launched Kingdoms and Castles and the game has grown and improved quite a bit. But we won't rest. Looking into the future, we've got lots more new stuff planned!
On a personal note, it's been a life changing year for us, and we wanted to say thank you all for ideas, bug reports, and for playing!
Here's a quick update on what we're working on next:
Rival AI Kingdoms
This is gonna be a big one with lots of hefty new features, so it’s going to take a while. The AIs will need to build cities on their own and we’ll need to work out the consequences for sending armies across landmasses, attacking with soldiers and towers, and how to handle diplomacy. We’re laying the groundwork and setting stuff up for this now.
Since it’s going to take some time we’ve got some quicker updates coming out soon while you wait. You can look forward to our upcoming...
Beautification Update
We’ll be adding some new stuff for your villagers to enjoy, including royal gardens, a new statue, and fountains that tie in with the aqueduct system. Here’s a little preview of the gardens, they use a tile based system like the roads that changes how they look based on how you place them:
Hi Everyone,
