Hey Everyone, We’re back with another large update, bringing new content, a lot of new art, and greatly improved playability. This time, we’ve focused on adding new depth to the gameplay while refining the overall experience based on your feedback. First up, we’ve completely reworked the tech tree. You’ll find that everything is now organized and balanced, with tech costs and progression making more sense. Plus, many techs that weren’t functioning before are now fully scripted and effective, adding new strategic layers to the game. The RTS building interface has seen a complete overhaul as well, with larger buttons and brand-new icons for all actions, units, and buildings. We’ve reworked the visual aspect of the building interface with new icons. Our world map AI has been upgraded too, with improvements to how it builds up cities and hamlets, upgrades walls, and develops overall. We’ve addressed several bugs that impacted the AI’s behavior on the world map, ensuring a smoother and more challenging experience, especially on harder difficulties. RTS battle AI has also received a major upgrade, improving its ability to defend walls and place units more strategically. The AI will now build the correct units and buildings depending on whether it’s defending or attacking, adding more depth to every encounter. A highlight of this update is the addition of new unit art. All of the units now have new battle and portrait art with proper Renaissance clothing, weapons, and style. On top of that, we’ve reworked the king and lord portraits, giving them a more fitting Renaissance look and ensuring they match their respective cultures. Visually, you’ll notice improvements across the board – from the world map to RTS. We’ve also cleaned up a lot of the level design and introduced animated construction sequences to make building upgrades feel more dynamic. There’s more – we’ve redesigned the wall-mounted weapons, making them more functional and visually distinct. You’ll see new cannons on walls and towers, with AI-controlled towns upgrading their defenses during sieges. And for hamlets, we’ve fixed numerous issues and added new walkable walls, improving their defensive structure. In terms of balancing, we’ve made key adjustments to units and mercenaries to close some exploits. Difficulty is significantly higher now – most overpowered strategies, like massing Musketeers, will no longer work. Units on top of walls now gain a significant defense bonus against ranged attacks, and you’ll find that mercenaries are more expensive to hire. As always, we appreciate your support and feedback. This update is packed with fixes, enhancements, and new content, so be sure to check out the full patch notes for all the details. Keep your suggestions coming – we’re committed to making Renaissance Kingdom Wars the best it can be! With that said, let’s take a look at what our [b]11th update[/b] has in store: [b]REWORKED TECH TREE[/b] [list] [*] Finished a major project reorganizing and fixing everything about the tech tree. [*] Tech tree now makes sense with progression and cost. [*] Updated icons and descriptions for many techs. [*] Reorganized all techs correctly. [*] Scripted the Endurance Drill tech that improves auto-resolve odds. [*] Following techs now work and have effect: Marching Drills, Scout Palisade, Reinforced Gates, Masonry, Battlements, Petraries, Carpentry Traditions, Ropes and Pulleys. [/list] [b]NEW BUILDING GUI[/b] [list] [*] Totally reworked building GUI. [*] Building buttons are significantly larger. [*] Brand new icons for closing gates and all other actions with walls, towers, and gatehouses. [*] Positioning building level/repair/demolish buttons. [*] New RTS building icons. [*] RTS and world map now use different sets of building icons (still need to add these). [*] Added hotkeys to all building construction. [*] Added hotkeys to all unit training. [*] Fixed military building category tooltip. [*] Better icons. [*] Do not show name, only level - and long text for level. [*] Hit points divided by 10 to match the rest of units. [/list] [b]WORLD MAP AI UPGRADES[/b] [list] [*] AI on world map levels up hamlets to level 2 and 3 very fast, but then takes its time with level 4 and 5 upgrades. [*] AI upgrades hamlet levels more often - so it only takes 10 years for all hamlets to reach level 10. [*] Fixed bad bug where upgraded hamlets still looked like level 1 hamlets on the world map. [*] Polished speeds of AI building up on the world map. [*] AI garrisons polish - all units on walls in large towns, only ranged in hamlets, almost none for attackers. [*] Improved the speed of AI building up on the world map. [*] On Hard campaign difficulty, AI builds up towns and hamlets much faster. [/list] [b]RTS AI UPGRADES[/b] [list] [*] Major rework of RTS AI - it now has a different unit and building set for each situation. [*] New system for RTS defensive AI placing units to defend walls. [*] Wall defenders can find walls. [*] New system for RTS defensive AI placing units to defend walls as new units are created. [*] AI will now build correct units and buildings in various situations - defending large town, defending hamlet or attacking. [*] WIP making AI construct new buildings slower. [/list] [b]NEW UNIT ART[/b] [list] [*] New art and portrait: hobelar. [*] New art and portrait: peasant. [*] New art and portrait: hunter. [*] New art and portrait: militia. [*] New art and portrait: billman. [*] New art and portrait: crossbowman. [*] New art and portrait: bowman. [*] New art and portrait: monk. [*] Polished cannon portraits. [*] Improved swordsman unit art and portrait. [*] Reworked unit icons for Manor units. [/list] [b]REWORKED KING AND LORD PORTRAITS[/b] [list] [*] Fixed major issue with king and lord portraits appearing super bright and unnatural. [*] All Muslim/Arabic nations now have unique appropriate portraits for all kings and lords. [*] Slavic nations now have Slavic-looking kings and lords. [*] Replaced all kings and lords that were too medieval with more Renaissance-looking portraits. [*] Improved a lot of portraits. [*] Replaced all bad-looking lord and king portraits with new ones. [*] Fixed major issue with king and lord portraits appearing super bright and unnatural-looking. [/list] [b]VISUAL IMPROVEMENTS[/b] [list] [*] Improved the appearance of birds on the world map. [*] A lot more horse carts traverse between cities on the world map. [*] A lot more birds fly around the world map. [*] Removing tents and fireplaces if there’s no army in the second siege camp - looks much cleaner now. [*] World map shoreline FX improved. [*] Fixed a bunch of level town props being too bright. [*] Palisade tower B is now used to decorate small palisade gateway. [*] There are now workers working on the construction scaffoldings. [*] Construction scaffoldings now properly scale up to match the object being built. [*] With wall construction, the object being built will no longer show wrong size during construction. [*] Building construction now also includes a new animated construction sequence with workers, dust, and crane animations. [*] All new army camps for besieging hamlets with a lot more walkable walls but no upgradable towers. [/list] [b]REDESIGNED WALL MOUNTED WEAPONS[/b] [list] [*] Phased out ballista upgrade on bastions. [*] New mounted wall and tower cannons. [*] Walls and towers that have a mounted weapon are no longer selectable while weapon is alive. [*] AI will upgrade its towns with various wall mounted weapons and cannons during sieges now. [*] Walls that have mounted weapon upgrade purchase now unselect. [*] Palisade towers allow building catapult and trebuchet on them. [*] Hamlet's palisade gatehouse can build oil pot. [*] Fixed major issues with wall mounted weapons and oil pots not spawning in the right location. [*] Fixed major issues with wall mounted weapons not being properly remembered on reloading the town or hamlet. [*] Fixed issue which allowed building another set of wall mounted weapons when one was already built on reload. [/list] [b]HAMLET LEVEL UPGRADES[/b] [list] [*] All hamlet designs have been updated. [*] Hamlets now get a lot more walkable walls for the outer palisade walls. [*] Fixed a lot of errors in hamlets having holes or second entrances. [*] New gatehouse design for hamlets. [*] Fixed locations of Wall Control points in all hamlets. [*] Units now properly spawn in hamlets with much better arrangements. [*] Units will no longer spawn outside of the town walls. [/list] [b]LARGE TOWN LEVEL UPGRADES[/b] [list] [*] A lot of fixes to large towns - all towsn have been improved [*] Attacker camps in large towns polished with a lot of design updates. [*] All large towns now show a proper minimap. [/list] [b]OTHER UI IMPROVEMENTS[/b] [list] [*] Further improvement for detecting world map army selection by player. [*] Further improvements for clicking on another army to attack or to transfer units with army selected. [*] Mouse-over unit portrait on top of walls now shows changes in defense. [*] Pop-up window when player is out of personal time or food looks much better now. [*] Walls no longer show hitpoints - damage can still be clearly seen. [*] Greatly improved the look of the attack window that shows army strength and portrait. [*] Fixed major issue where being defeated by lack of food or personal time in RTS mode resulted in the player getting stuck in a cinematic. [/list] [b]WALL IMPROVEMENTS[/b] [list] [*] Walls no longer show hitpoints, but damage is visible. [*] Gatehouse and gate now show thick hitpoints bar that are easy to see. [*] Removed rebuild/repair gate button on all gatehouses. [*] Each wall control point now has an open and close all gates button. [*] All stone and palisade wall towers and bastions now display a name when selected. [/list] [b]CANNON IMPROVEMENTS[/b] [list] [*] Fixed major issue where cannons could not move inside towns. [*] Cannons now have reduced range and grapeshot range. [*] Fixed cannons displaying cannon balls that are suspended in the air when on towers. [*] Cannons no longer stop firing at walls and change target to units. [*] Reduced all cannons range. [*] Cannons' grapeshot is about 30% less effective overall. [*] Grapeshot on cannons will no longer damage walls. [*] Cannons do less damage to infantry units from regular shots. [/list] [b]OTHER FIXES[/b] [list] [*] Fixed rare bug with world map season and time of the year getting stuck on the screen. [*] Fixed issue with some battles resulting in instant win or loss. [*] Fixed issue where snow will not come back to world map if it’s 2nd winter in a row without reload. [*] Further polish to building plots. [*] Cut off several seconds from the loading time of large town levels. [*] Fixed rare issue with loading map starting and showing empty map for a couple of seconds. [*] Fixed large towns not starting battles with 40 pop if player has double army. [*] Fixed large town attacks with double army giving two sets of building markers (2nd camp no building plots). [*] Citizens no longer slow down player units in towns with their large collision. [*] A dozen large cities are now correctly switched to desert environment. [/list] [b]BALANCING[/b] [list] [*] Fixed all the exploits related to using mass mercenaries or musketeers to steamroll AI. [*] Campaign starting army has additional billman and 1 less chicken. [*] When attacking with second army in campaign mode, there are no building plots for the second army camp. [*] Units on top of walls now gain big defense bonus vs ranged attacks from below. [*] Herbalist building now also benefits from medicinal research. [*] Rebalanced cost of cannons. [*] Wall upgrade prices greatly increased. [*] Mercenaries are more expensive. [*] Musketeers no longer AP. [*] Fixed exploits related to using mass mercenaries or musketeers to steamroll AI. [/list]