Warlords: Under Siege
1.01 - Minor Patch
- Added Templars to Gamepedia
- Fixed Wrath of the Desert visual glitching out
- Caravans will no longer be stuck in place after being attacked, even if enemies are no longer blocking them
- Extra resources on the UI (such as Catapult no. or Mana) will no longer disappear even if the last relevant building was lost
- Protection modifiers are now taken into consideration when calculating damage from passive sources (such as magic). For example, Magic Pylon now takes into consideration Vampiryc Curse
- Fixed some typos!
Minor patch - Under Siege Map fixes
1.0
Map editor sample map and guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3411462218
1.0 - Breaking Siege
Before diving into anything else, I want to start by expressing our heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for being part of this incredible journey. Whether you reported a bug, playtested a feature or map, provided feedback, wrote a review, told your friends about our game, shared a screenshot, joined our Discord, or simply played the game—you’ve made a difference, and we sincerely thank you.
As many of you know, we are hobbyists at heart. We don’t have an office, we don’t work on our games full-time, and our website is as straightforward as it gets. The most "professional" thing we've done is register a custom domain for our email. Yet, despite these limitations, Warlords Under Siege—as janky as it may be in some places, and as incomplete as it may feel in others—has transformed dramatically over the past two years (and a bit).
When we began working on this game, it started as a side project, an evolution of the battle system from Citizens: Far Lands, our first game on Steam. We never anticipated it growing into what it has become today. To be honest, it has surpassed our initial ambitions—and perhaps even our capabilities. That said, this isn’t a confession of defeat. On the contrary, we believe the game is brimming with content, bolstered by modding capabilities for the community to take the reins if they wish. And with your continued support, we plan to expand it even further.
That said, my friends and I can now confidently say that we’re satisfied enough with the game to call it “done.” While there will always be room for more improvements and additions, Warlords Under Siege has become something we’re incredibly proud of—thanks to you.
I'd like to give special thanks to two streamers, Szczurkowski and TacticalFriedRice, who helped raise interest in our game among their viewers, and provided us with invaluable feedback. I'd also like to give a shout out to some of our community members, namely Dusty, Asha Marie, Thrudgelmir, Jakeyyy1999, tross and lewi030 who provided insanely valuable feedback.
Now...
We didn’t keep a detailed record of all bug fixes (and if we had, this post would be a small book). Most of these fixes were technical and impacted a small number of users, but addressing them was vital. Here’s a summary of what’s new:
- New Map: Under Siege. This map is the most difficult so far, and features unique mechanics, along with new achievements
- Modding API
- Map Editor
- Refined some sounds so they're easier on the ears
Let's take a closer look at Under Siege:
This map features two unique mechanics:
- Some building slots are red: you can only build on them ONCE
- You'll gain a FREE card draw every THREE minutes, allowing you to earn a total of 46 cards on this map
Expect this map to feel like the ultimate boss level. You’ll face all enemy types—goblins, orcs, desert fiends, undead, burrowers, harpies, giants, and more. Extra cards will be essential!
For those of you who like to play around with files and game content, there are a few goodies here and there. This is very much a WIP and I'd love to do more, if the community can tell me what it would like to be able to do :)
There are limits to what we can achieve at this very moment. For example unit modding is limited to stats, but it's not impossible that it will be expanded on in the future. But let's focus on what we CAN do.
New Maps
You can create maps from scratch (editing existing ones isn’t supported). A detailed tutorial will come later, but here’s a summary of the process:
- Create the visuals in Unity Editor
- Optional: Create the navmesh in Unity Editor
- Drag and drop building slots onto your map
- Define enemy spawn points
- Define enemy waves
- Optional: Create a unique script
Special thanks to charttyp for generously sharing Unity asset packs to help kickstart your modding projects. If you’re a game dev, check out their work!
Caravans are not supported at this moment, but you can replicate this functionality quite easily with scripts, which we'll get to in a moment.
Unit modding
On release, you’ll be able to tweak unit stats—health, damage, movement speed, attack range, etc. As a fun test, we created turbo zombies with high health, low damage, and crazy speed. It’s a blast!
Map Scripts
We've written a little API to allow you to do some more unique things. For example, you can choose to give cards to the player, display text, unlock sections of the map, spawn enemies, change weather, play sounds and so on and so forth. These are written in C#, and the script is placed inside a map folder. For those of you who are curious about example code, you can check it out here.
If you did check it out, you'll have noticed that you can also add dialogues to the game. You can play these at any point you like, for example when the player's building is destroyed, after a certain time, when an enemy spawns etc...
You can load images and sounds into the game on startup, which you can then use in your script should you wish. For example nothing will stop you from blasting some awful music at the player, if you consider it to be a necessary part of the experience of playing your map.
We're going live on the 20th of January
That's about it. Now that I typed it all out, it feels smaller and less grand than it really is. A ton of work went into moddability, and a ton more is needed, especially on the documentation side. If you're interested in modding the game, please join our discord and feel free to reach out to me directly (Komisarek) with any questions or suggestions you might have.
0.98 - Blood and Bastion update
If you have any major feedback before this happens, please join our Discord or write in Steam Discussion.
Please consider reviewing the game as well! It helps us immensly!
0.98a:
- Added new Cards: "Fortified Barracks" and "Vampire Magic"
- Added three new spells (available with Vampire Magic)
- Added Fortified Barracks building, allowing to recruit all troop types
- Laid groundwork for the upcoming map editor
- Caravans will get stuck a lot less frequently now
- Pathfinding improvements
- Logic processing improvements resulting in slightly better performance on some systems
- Fixed a bug where units would occasionally leave garrisoned buildings
- Fixed a bug where cards in deckbuilding would appear in English, regardless of the language setting
For details please see the full announcement
0.98 Blood and Bastion
This little content update brings you some additional tools for the late game. One of the things I always found a bit sad, is that to have proper unit variety, you need to use up 1/4 of your deck (3 barracks x 3 cards). Of course this is part of deck building, but once you've been playing on nightmare 5, I think it's fine to allow you to go a bit overboard!
For this reason, we bring you...
FORTIFIED BARRACKS
The Fortified Barracks is a special building unlocked for a drop after acquiring all standard barracks cards—Spearmen Barracks, Archery Range, and Swordsmen Barracks. It has three tiers, each offering unique recruitment options based on its level:
- Tier I: Allows recruitment of basic troops—Swordsmen, Spearmen, and Archers.
- Tier II: Grants access to more advanced units, including Guardians, Templars, Phalanx, Javelinmen, Longshots, and Crossbowmen, but removes access to Tier I troops.
- Tier III: Provides only elite Tier III units, offering the most powerful soldiers in the game.
Each level of the Fortified Barracks unlocks new, more advanced unit types while limiting lower-tier options, giving you a strategic choice on when to upgrade and which troops to field as the game progresses.
The building comes with some both benefits and trade-offs:
High Cost: Building the Fortified Barracks requires triple the resources of standard barracks, making it an investment.
Provides unit capacity: Each level provides an additional unit slot, similar to a farm.
Resilient: It compensates its cost by being far more resilient and is equipped with protective towers that shoot arrows at nearby enemies, making it a solid forward defensive position.
Upgrade Limitations: While the Fortified Barracks allows recruitment of troops from all tiers, it does not enable upgrades for existing units that were already recruited. Soldiers remain locked to the tier they were originally recruited from, unless you also own their respective barracks building (e.g., Archery Range for archers) at an appropriate tier.
This setup means the Fortified Barracks is ideal for creating a strong outpost, but will require quite an investment.
This is of course, not everything! I've been watching way too much What We Do In The Shadows recently, and decided to add...
Vampire Magic
The Vampire Magic card brings a dark, powerful edge to your spellcasting in the Mage Guild. Naturally you only need the one card, as it's an upgrade. These cards will only ever drop once you have the Mage Guild unlocked. It consists of three potent spells.
Blood Pact: Cast this to wound enemy units within the target area, draining 5%, 7%, or 10% of their health based on the spell's level. This siphoned life force then heals your nearby friendly units, giving you a vampiric advantage in sustaining your forces.
Curse: This debilitating spell increases the damage cursed enemy units take by 30%, 70%, or 100%, depending on its level. Once a unit is cursed, the effect is permanent until its death, though it can’t stack with additional curses.
Paralysis: Temporarily immobilize enemies in the target area for 10, 15, or 20 seconds based on spell level, locking them in place and creating an opportunity to strike or reposition your forces.
We plan to roll the update out sometime next week, although no promises as to the exact date.
If you've not reviewed the game yet, please make sure you do so! It will help us improve our ratings before the full release, although we're sitting at decent 81% positive :)
On the other hand, we are also releasing a new game! WARLORDS BATTLE SIMULATOR! (WBS)
Although it's quite a bit different from WuS, I really think that if you enjoyed it, you'll enjoy WBS too! You'll meet a lot of familiar faces there (such as Galahad, Anwen and Merlin), as well as all the races and troops you meet in Warlords Under Siege! Mind you, it's a roguelike autobattler, so it plays quite differently!
We would absolutely LOVE IT if you wishlisted the game, and supported us on release! It's $9.99, and will be discounted further 15% :) If you do get it, please make sure to review!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2594290/Warlords_Battle_Simulator/
Balling Up now available!
If you like skill based platformers, it's one to try out :)
Balling Up is available now, here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2593440/Balling_Up/
Hotfix
Hotfix
0.97b - Master of Command
BUT before we go further, disclaimer:
If something goes wrong, and you want to go back to playing the previous version of the game, you can do so by right clicking on the game, going to properties, betas, and selecting the previous patch option!
0.97b - Master of Command focuses on something we’ve been wanting to improve for a while—unit behavior, responsiveness, and movement. Combat hasn’t always felt as satisfying as it should, and we know that controlling units has often been frustrating. And although there's still some work to be done on the combat itself, movement and control are significantly improved in this update!
Missile decks became popular not just because it’s fun to watch waves of arrows rain down on your enemies, but also because managing melee troops could sometimes feel like an exercise in frustration.
One of the key improvements we’ve made to enhance unit responsiveness, especially in combat, is the introduction of re-sizable colliders.
In previous patches, a major issue with unit movement was that whether there was one goblin or ten, they behaved the same and occupied the same amount of space. This often led to awkward, unresponsive movement - especially in combat. With this update, colliders will now dynamically resize as units grow or shrink, ensuring more accurate and satisfying control during battles.
We’ve also reworked the pathfinding system, now utilizing a modern A* solution powered by Unity’s Data Oriented Technology Stack (shout out to Aron Granberg for the incredible system!). This new approach is faster and more efficient, improving performance across the board. Units now navigate around each other in a smarter and more coherent way, though there are still a few quirks we’re working on ironing out.
As a result we now get much more satisfying hand-to-hand combat, which doesn't feel as dull as it used to. Units will now pile in, try to manoeuvre around and get stuck a lot less while doing so. The annoying "rotation jitter" as units get close to each other is also gone.
Talking about unit behaviour, enemy archers will also finally target the troops you have placed on the walls. It felt a bit silly that they wouldn't do that before. To compensate, units on the wall now receive 20% range bonus (up from 10%), and the Siege Shields upgrade provides 30% damage protection (up from 10%).
As you see in the image above, you can now place your units atop of Archer Towers, just like with walls. I found it a bit sad that archer towers become redundant, so I figured this would be a nice little boost. They're still not as powerful as some other towers, but I think this gives them a nice little utility. Units standing atop archer towers receive 80% protection bonus, and 20% range bonus.
THAT BEING SAID: beware! If your unit is garrisoned in a building (such as a wall or a tower) and that building is destroyed, your unit will now instantly die!
Our heroes also got a slight visual makeover. It might be that we need to de-chunkify Anwen a little bit, because she's not quite the slender Elf we've taken her for originally. That being said it's mostly the fault of animations!
But why did this update take so long?
Simply put, the code behind Warlords Under Siege was a bit of a spaghetti mess. The game was originally built on top of our first major title Citizens: Far Lands and if you compare the two, you’ll notice there’s not much left of the original source code. What did stick around, though, were some bugs and odd ways of doing things.
Although the game still has a lot of quirks, some which will not go away easily, we have managed to streamline the content pipeline a little bit and make things simpler for ourselves so that they can go faster in the future. I'm also doing everything with modding in mind, as I really hope that one day, I will see a mod with Minas Tirith, where you're holding off the forces of the Great Flaming Eye! More on that soon.
So, at last, here is the changelog:
- Units now respond to orders much better
- Implemented a new pathfinding solution, providing better decision making and performance
- Units will now avoid each other correctly
- Pathfinding is now multithreaded, increasing performance and improving unit movement
- Unique modifiers will now only be applied once and expire correctly
- Missile units can now garrison Arrow Tower (Tier 3). They receive 80% protection and a 20% range bonus
- When a garrison building is destroyed (e.g., a wall), any units garrisoned will now instantly die
- Unit collision boxes now adjust based on the number of soldiers in the unit
- Unit icons should no longer flash on screen edges at certain resolutions
- Modifiers granted by abilities and statues are now applied correctly
- Enemy archers will now prioritize attacking units on walls instead of the walls themselves
- Missile units garrisoned on walls will now face the enemy they're firing at
- Health values are now rounded to the nearest integer, so no strange numbers will appear
- Units with large speed bonuses will no longer glide around the map
- Garrisoned units can no longer move after being removed during a pause
- Gate Cauldron cooldowns no longer decrease while the game is paused
- Fixed attack visuals for Orc Shaman and Dark Mage
- New attack sounds for Merlin
- Keyboard shortcuts no longer bypass resource or cooldown requirements when casting magic
- Magic Wall Circle now has a more accurate block radius
- Unit upgrade requirements now correctly consider the highest level building
- New portraits for Melee Infantry
- New textures for Galahad and Anwen
- New model and texture for Merlin
- The card view panel will no longer close when pressing any key
- Wrath of the Desert model will no longer jitter or warp
- Arrow Tower no longer floats above the ground
- Units standing on walls now receive a 20% range bonus (up from 10%)
- Siege Shields upgrade now adds 30% damage protection to units on walls (up from 10%)
- Removed redundant test prints from log files
- Flying units will no longer spawn rewards in the air after being killed
- Adjusted buttons for removing player units from garrisoned structures
- Fixed a bug where gates sometimes threw errors when garrisoned
- The cursor will now always stick to the ground when casting magic
- Orc Shaman now has his own attack sound
For those who don’t know, our team is just 3 and a half people working part-time from home—we all have full-time jobs. We’re working hard on our games, hoping to turn this into something full-time one day, making games you’ll love as much as we love making them. If you’d like to support us and stay in touch, consider joining our Discord community HERE Your support means the world to us!
My last request is that you check out our next upcoming game, which launches on the 25th of September. It would help us immensely if you wishlist it, and consider a purchase! It's going to cost $3.99 on release.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2593440/Balling_Up/