Of Kings and Men cover
Of Kings and Men screenshot
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Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Indie

Of Kings and Men

dev frame - The Ambush!

Dev Frame - Paying Gold
Next update is planned to bring multiple major changes to De Re Militari, many of which were suggested by the community. Troop sharing will be implemented, troops will safely return to their commanders after battles, and the upkeep system will be completely redesigned, which is discussed in detail in the dev frame!

http://ofkingsandmen.net/2017/10/29/dev-frame-paying-gold/

Changelog - 1.7.1.662.44609

Main changes


 

Exploring Lands


 

A huge explorable area has been added for The Arena mode instead of a closed space! You're now free to do whatever you want when you visit the vast territory, since you're not forced to capture chests anymore, and the rules of the mode allow for Free For All between each player.

 

The area has many villages with farms and fields, watch towers guarding them on hills, lakes with fishermen huts nearby, and many other things to see when wandering around! You still have an option to fight over treasure chests inside a  fortress in the middle of the map, but could easily leave and organize your own events or just fight with players passing by.

 

There is a whole dev frame about some of the things you could do in the new arena - http://ofkingsandmen.net/2017/10/22/dev-frame-exploring-lands/

 



 



 

 

Practice Duels


 

Many players were asking for a flatter area in the lobby to practice with their friends and just duel for fun. The fortress has been expanded quite a lot to allow it, so there is a new big area just outside the castle!

 

If you'd like to see other zones in the lobby, please let us know on our feedback website! The map has been designed to make changes more convenient, so it won't be an issue to provide more expansions for the fortress in the future.

 



 



 

 

Defend the village


 

One of the major issue with battles in De Re Militari has been a system for joining Defence side for neutral fief battles. The problem occurred when a player signed up for defence, but couldn't come to the battle, leaving a slot in his team empty, while no one else could join instead of him.

 

Even when there were teams full of players according to the battle scheduler, there were usually fewer of them on defending side, since attacking commanders could easily choose players who confirmed they're coming, and it wasn't possible for defenders.

 

The system has now been tweaked to allow every player to join defence of a neutral fief as long as there is a free slot after preparation time. If you sign up to defend a neutral village or a castle, please make sure you join before that battle starts or someone else will likely take your spot!   

 



 



 



 

 

Combat changes


 

Draw your sword


 

While we're planning to allow a much more versatile equipment system and introduce a free choice for melee weapons used by bow and crossbow users, a sword has been introduced for ranged players instead of a short axe. Some of the ranged users raised concerns that there is no way for them to defend in melee if a sneaky enemy rushes past a front line.

 

The axe used to be simply too short to be viable, so the only choice left was running away, making it boring for both an archer and his enemy. Now there is a possibility to hold the enemy long enough for friendly melee soldiers to come to your aid.

 



 



 



 

Small improvements


 

Informing soldiers


 

One of the much requested additions for De Re Militari battles was to implement text fields that are visible to players who would like to participate in those battles. There are two different text fields added, each with different intention and visible to different players.

 

Sign up text can be seen at the moment of signing up for a particular side. Battle commanders are free to put any text in there, so potential soldiers can be informed. For example, it could ask to join a voice channel before a battle to be accepted.

 

Team text is for a more private information that shouldn't be seen by the enemy team. It could be used to inform the team about a tactical plan for the battle, ask players to fight with specific equipment sets, or anything else. 

 



 



 

 

Joining battles


 

In order to make scheduling battles on De Re Militari map more convenient and create a better system for battle commanders to accept players who actually intend to join their battles, there was a set of additions implemented in this update as well.

 

Players can now sign up for a battle no matter how many players are accepted, so it's always possible for battle commanders to choose whoever is more likely to join. To further help them with selecting their warriors, each players now also has a personal attendance stat, showing how many battles they joined and how many times they signed up and didn't come. An icon showing if a player is online has a similar purpose. 

 





 



 

 

Maintaining a fortress


 

The upkeep mechanic has been a little bit confusing for some players, since there is no tutorial for it in place at the moment. We will be completely reworking the system to make it much easier to understand and use, but we've also implemented small tweaks to improve it for now.

 

First, the upkeep rate has been changed slightly, so medium sized clans can pay a smaller amount per member. Larger clans will be paying around the same amount though, so it's mostly a change for moderately sized clans. The second change is a more convenient way to see how much a clan members needs to pay in order to get out of their debt. It's now visible on the clan members list.

 




 



 

 

Easier clans


 

As suggested by the community, there are some changes related to clans and UI of the barracks in order to make it cleaner and easier to use. Clans can now be filtered by region, so you can check only the ones you're interested in, instead of always seeing every clan in the list.

 

The other two changes are a bit smaller, but should help new players understand the system better. A link to the forums where a custom heraldry can be uploaded has been added to the menu, and a notification about a 7 days ban on joining clan is now visible whenever a player leaves a clan.

 





 



 

 

Instant scheduling


 

By request of many players, scheduling of conquest and skirmish battles has been slightly change to allow creating new battles instantly, assuming there are no battles currently happening in the region. Instead of having to wait until the next slot to start playing, there is now an option to start a battle instantly.

 



 



 

 

Militari buttons


 

Some improvements for De Re Militari's UI and the map have been made to create a better experience for every player participating on the strategic map. There are multiple changes that should make viewing the map and joining battles much more straightforward and fix some issues with players not understanding how the system works.

 







 



 

 

Improving UI


 

More general User Interface changes have also been implemented in order to increase readability of the barracks and other menus in the game. Many of them are designed to guide new players after joining the game first time, since we've noticed that some of inexperienced players have hard time finding out what each menu and game section does.

 

Smaller tweaks to UI like showing names of the modes in the lobby when looking at the icons and fading the chat overtime to make screen cleaner have also been introduced. If you have similar suggestions to improve the game, please let us know on the feedback website!

 







 



 

 

Battle tweaks


 

A couple of things within De Re Militari battles have been tweaked. The first one is meant to improve how visual zooming in works when spawning, making it look much better every time you spawn in a battle. The second change does multiple tweaks to the announcement system you see when playing militari battles, such as capturing flags, asking for aid at a certain flag, and so on.

 




 



 



 

Bug fixes


 























 

dev frame - Exploring Lands

dev frame - The Season
Official trailer has been released earlier this week, starting a big sale! We’ll be releasing a new update with many tweaks and improvements in less than two weeks, and will be announcing a fun community event in a few days!

http://ofkingsandmen.net/2017/10/15/dev-frame-the-season/

New Official Trailer
New official trailer has been released to mark the introduction of the De Re Militari mode, which brought strategic map full of castle sieges, village raids, and wars between rival clans!

https://youtu.be/92O1u_ItpXg

We thank everyone who participated in the siege shown in the trailer, especially clans who brought many loyal members!

Make sure to follow the development, as we have many interesting things planned for the game and De Re Militari specifically. Dev frames with a lot of progress updates are being posted every week, and you can read them on our website!

http://ofkingsandmen.net/

dev frame - Advanced Strategies

Balancing Patch - 1.7.0.642.40369
A small balancing patch has been released to address troop and gold gain from loot chests. Instead of grinding on lobby modes, you can now easily get more troops by playing Conquest, Skirmish, and Militari battles.

Gold gain was generally decreased, since even a couple of chests could provide enough to buy any equipment set in the shop. It's still quite easy to get gold, so a single set to be competitive shouldn't be an issue.


  • Decreased troop gain from loot chests.
  • Increased troop gain from First Win of the Day
  • Decreased gold gain from loot chests.

dev frame - Deep Exploration
The new update became available this week, and you can now attack villages, castles, and other clans on the strategic map of De Re Militari mode! Wilderness is one of the features we plan to introduce in the future, and seeing some of you anticipating its release, we’re happy to answer a few of your questions about it! While it might still be a while before it’s implemented, and many things could change in the design, we’d like to let you know about our current plans for the mode.

http://ofkingsandmen.net/2017/10/01/dev-frame-deep-exploration/

Hotfix - 1.7.0.637.52349
We noticed a couple of issues with the new update yesterday and managed to fix them already. If you experienced not working equipment menu, it shouldn't be an issue anymore!

There are also some reward balancing changes, required after discovering a small chest exploit with the arena.


  • Added 20 troops for finishing each tutorial.
  • Reduced rarity increase per player for chests in The Arena.
  • Changed First Win of the Day gain to 20 troops.
  • Fixed tutorial sometimes loading an old map.
  • Fixed equipment buttons not working until restart.
  • Fixed bloodbath mode freezing movement.
  • Fixed melee weapon not hiding when using a bow.
  • Fixed performance issues on lobby.
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