Medieval Kingdom Wars v1.26

Hey Everyone,

And we are back with one of our biggest updates to MKW in a while! After countless days of work, and long nights testing, we are finally happy to present the completely reworked combat AI. This update also really helps with combat performance issues, especially during these large 3 AI sieges.

This update also greatly improves level design in hamlets and larger cities, as well as includes couple of dozen commonly requests fixes by our players that we collected on our forums and discord.

And as you might have heard we have a busy schedule for 2021, with a number of large updates and content planned for MKW this year. We expect the next major update to be released in 3 weeks from now. Thanks for your continuing support!

And now lets take a look at what changes our 24th update brings

Major Changes & New Features
Total rewrite of the combat AI - much tougher and smarter
Major performance improvement during combat
Major performance improvement especially during large town sieges
All hamlets redesigned for the gates to face middle of the map and potential enemies
Citizens will not get killed during town sieges – does not distract units though
Players can no loner gather wood from house towns inside large towns
Large towns are now at disadvantage in skirmish - due to limited wood
Level design update to all large towns - added decorative trees


Reworked Combat AI
AI attacks in much larger and better prepared waves
AI uses siege weapons a lot better
Defensive AI will now place defenders on walls during battles
AI will now correctly build large armies, and not stop at only max of 15 units
Fixed major issue with AI getting stuck when attacking Hamlets and not progressing
Fixed major issue with AI getting stuck when attacking some of the large towns
Fixed various instances where AI will not do anything after one attack
Defensive AI will eventually build siege weapons
AI will now build walls in campaign hamlet battles
Defensive AI will leave defenders on walls when launching attacks
AI will build a lot more siege weapons
AI will now build units and buildings in army vs army combat
AI army vs army AI will not just blindly attack, but also defend and flank
Fixed issue with AI not having stone for siege weapons
Fixed issues with second AI on the same team usually not doing anything


Changes and Additions
Fixed issue on the Paris type map with attackers camp not building walls correctly
In large towns relocated some of the wall markers, to group them better - makes AI work better
Town Houses no longer give wood
Fixed tax rate string in Spanish overlaping
New flyby cinematics for hamlets
Various fixes with Hamlets level design
Easier to see if player can afford the tech or not on the Stewards window
Foot Knights and Swordsman will no longer have super long bad looking formation


Balancing Changes
First Tutorial level is few minutes shorter now and easier to win
Forth Tutorial level is now much faster and easier to win
Reduced Mounted Plated Cavalry stats by about 20%
Trees now have a lot more resources in them
Even small trees in town now give a lot of wood
Doubled the price of the Fire Cart
It`s now a lot more expensive to rebuild gates
Lowered passive food income rate from cows and chickens
Much faster to capture town flag, especially if defender almost has no units

Hey Everyone,

We have some exciting news, as the work on the major update 23 is finally complete.

Apologies for the delay, but some of the elements of this update were quite complex and required some time. Following this update for the rest of November and December we`ll be switching to smaller, more common updates.

With this update we focused on optimization and performance - greatly decreasing loading times, to boost both the FPS and CPU performance. You can expect quite smoother experience in all game modes, even in very large town combat

We also rebuilt melee combat from the ground up - starting from the way battalions look, to how they fight. You will no longer see units just standing next to each other taking damage or swinging swords in the air

And finally update comes with dozen of other improvements made while working on the Plague, from interface to the way menu operate and more, this really helps to streamline the gameplay experience.

Please keep in mind - that we have a World Map corrections updated on the horizon that fixes various mistakes with town position and names on the world, and a lot more.

Update 23 Patch Notes
Now lets take a look at what changes our 23rd update brings

REWORKED COMBAT

• Completely reworked unit battalion formations, sizing and shape
• Units will no longer swing weapons at each other several meters apart
• Units will no longer stand by each other dealing damage and not actually fighting
• Units now approach each other in battle to form closer battles lines, with other standing back if there`s no space
• Battles between melee units now take on average 30% longer
• Fixed issues in naval combat where units will keep on fighting for a very long time
• Reduced the protection bonus to units that are on walls, speeds up the sieges a little bit
• Range units now do a lot less damage, and are less OP - all ranged armies will no longer work
• Siege weapons can now survive a bit longer vs ranged fire, making sieges less dead locked
• All unit hitpoints reduced by about 30% that rebalances melee battles together with other changes

OPTIMIZATION

• Main menu loading time reducing by up to 80%, by reworking how it`s created. Campaign creation scene changed
• Major improvement to visual performance in large battles, with up to 30% less FPS drop
• Minor reduction in unit quality on all settings - but with big FPS gains
• Normalized and optimization all the lord and king textures - diplomacy menu now opens much faster
• Saved over 500mb in visual memory usage by optimizing textures
• Improved new level loading speed on all levels by up to 15%

FIXES & ADDITIONS

• When starting a new campaign, GUI will point which towns player can control with convenient arrows
• Double click on the world map no longer opens call to arms, only opened with the middle mouse button
• Fixed issue with GUI layout for difficulty for the new campaign creation being broken
• Palisade Gate now looks very different from rest of the palisade wall
• Reworked various common GUI icons like closing windows and others for a cleaner GUI
• Removed huge Notre Dame cathedral showing up in many of the capital cities
• Improved performance in the first tutorial battle level
• Naval combat tutorial is much faster, and easier for the player
• Minimal zoom is a bit higher

Hey Everyone,

Hope everyone is staying safe. We have a lot of news and exciting update for you today!

Introducing Update 22
We are glad to finally present the long-awaited update 22. Please read on for patch notes. This update includes a few new features like a preview of how and where battalion will form when you task it, as well as things like GUI rescaling and minimap improvements, and a lot of other fixes and improvements.

Resuming Updates
We are back to actively updating MKW, and you can expect a solid update every 2-3 weeks this Fall. Today`s is just the first of four updates that will be adding cool new tech and features from the improvements we made to our engine while working on The Plague Kingdom wars.

Upcoming World Map Expansion
As we complete the work on porting rest of Plague tech and improvements to MKW, we will finally release the big DLC that adds the highly expanded World Map. We expect this to be ready towards November.

The Plague Bundle
As you might have heard, we have recently release The Plague: Kingdom Wars. To make it easier for our players to take the plunge and purchase the new installments we have setup the "Complete the set bundles", which gives everyone who purchased MKW additional 15% off The Plague: Kingdom Wars

This might seem like bittersweet news. But rest assured - this only means great things to MKW. We are continuing regular MKW updates for at least the rest of 2020, and our work on The Plague: Kingdom Wars will not impact MKW updates.

Update 22 Patch Notes
With that said, lets take a look at what today`s major update brings us.

Performance

• Major scaling GUI update with various improvements in all menus for all resolutions
• Added battalion formation and location preview when tasking units
• New Campaign menu redesigned to show more lords
• New Campaign menu now highlights the current selected lord
• Minor improvements to unit tasking – a bit faster and more accurate
• Minor improvements to performance – during large scale combat
• Fixed some of the big towns not saving one of the buildings
• Minor reduction to the zoom in level
• Polished the translations, correction a lot of errors especially in Russian and German version
• Repaired the proxy – fixing most issues when trying to play multiplayer games
• Resolve a number of connection issues between players when playing with friends
• Fixed common bug with parts of the screen flashing oddly – especially on shadows
• Fixed various visual issues during campaign cinematics
• Fixed various issues with minimap
• Minimap now updates while the game is paused
• Fixed very rare crash when sending units to climb to a wall

New Features & Major Fixes
Unit Transfer completely redesigned, but can still use old way of transferring
Unit transfer – select multiple units and click on any other army slot to transfer there
Unit transfer – select multiple units and use Transfer button to transfer and auto sort
Major performance improvement on the World Map for Epic camera settings
Minor performance improvement for Performance camera on world map and in combat

Fixes and Additions
Fixed one of the sources of very bad lag in large town sieges
AI will no longer do a suicide charge out of large towns each time now
AI will only sally forth to attack the player if it has 2x stronger force and a very good chance of winning
Small chance AI will sally forth at random to surprise player
AI will no longer build ballista on towers, as it was spamming them too
AI will not cheat in the first two years and use armies with advanced units, only the basic
High level AI towns still use the cheat units for now, but this is to be fixed shortly
Balanced AI armies in the first two years, more difference between easy, mid and hard difficulty
All campaign world map cinematics now have distance fog
Town intro, battle intro and victory cinematics now have distance fog
Fixed level design issues in some of the large towns
Polished main menu scene fog
Mobile Siege Weapons are much better at going to attack the specific target, but will get distracted if fired by ranged units
Various issues due to unreachable AI ballista on towers have been resolved
Removed tree visible in the middle of some hamlet rivers
Hill terrain set improved with dirty terrain under trees

Balancing Changes
Rebalanced early game technologies - they are not more affordable
New campaigns now start with more trade goods, allowing researching more early game

New Features & Gameflow Rebalancing
Ability to control game speed in RTS mode is back
Town build up and combat gameplay completely rebalanced
RTS game speed completely rebalanced
Happiness drain while in a town increased by 30%
Instead of spending 12-14 minutes to build up a hamlet it takes 6-7 now
Resources gathering by mines, livestock and serfs has been increased by 40%-50%
Unit and building production time decreased by 30%-40%
Rebalanced some costs, like cheaper serf
Corrected welcome message and some localization

Major New Features
Visual improvements and completely reworked game camera
Added variety to random map and hamlets
Added Hills, Desert, Dryland, Fir Forest, and Oak terrain sets that replace previous 1 default set
New terrain sets are quite unique and presents various strategic differences – resources, chock points e.t.c
Hamlets across the world map now use unique terrain sets that are geographically accurate
Field battles and other battles now feature new terrain sets depending on location

Fixes and Additions
Major graphical improvements across the board
World Map camera has been completely reworked
Improved visual performance on the worldmap by 15-20 FPS
New close up battle camera that`s much more playable and shows more of the battlefield
Greatly increased battle visual performance with new camera controls, up to 20 FPS more
Ground view camera still available in cinematic mode
Reworked both Performance and Epic camera settings for optimal gameplay and performance
Zoom in and out scroll is much faster
Disabled 8x anti-alliancing greatly increasing performance
Fixed Nantes having sand yellow texture all over the map
Replaced some of the worse looking loading screens
Fixed Bush object constantly disappearing when moving the camera

Balancing Changes
Significantly increased world map AI difficulty progression
AI will especially be harder after couple of years
AI will employ some new tricks on the world map when it comes to attacking player
Small increase in happiness drain while inside the city - unchanged for Chill Mode
Unit upkeep increased by 20% on average for all units
Rebalanced a few campaign settings to increase overall difficulty in the first few years
Minor rebalance to melee units damage to building and other units

Major New Features
All game files opened up for Modding and Total Conversions. Located in the Modding folder
Demand Town feature added - Kings can demand land from their Lords
Extort Silver feature added - Kings can extort silver from their Lords
Total Rebalance of the game - from micro managing expenses to fighting more

Fixes and Balancing
AI Lords now hold a treasury which is displayed in the Chancellor window
Campaign AI difficulty increased in the first couple of years of the campaign on Medium and Hard difficulty
Main Menu redesigned with distance fog and other effects
Reduced upkeep of all units and buildings by about 30-35%
Reduced Happiness drain of industrial buildings by 20-30%
Increased Income from buildings by up to 20%
Peasants now bring small income when in towns
Slower zoom in/out speed with epic camera

-Visual Update - added Anisotropic filtering - on by default
-Visual Update - added Anti Aliasing filters - MSAA 2x,4x, 8x
-Visual Update - various minor improvements and post-processing tweaks
-Updated options menu layout to implement new visual options
-Major pathfinding update when tasking a large number of units
-Fixed pathfinding issue with units ignoring orders to move
-Fixed pathfinding issue with only some battalions moving while others don`t
-Pathfinding improvements to tasking units across the map and in combat
-Pathfinding improvements to tasking a large number of battalions into a tight space
-Units form up on the wall on most levels (other than hamlets) much better
-Fixed units positioned on walls, sometimes standing on the ground
-Fixed Garrison Commander Achievement

VISUAL UPDATE
Major visual update of the game - sharper, realistic graphics
Completely reworked the light scheme for realistic colours
Reworked graphics to remove blurring effect
Reworked graphics to remove red hue effect
Reworked graphics to remove super bright bloom easy
Game starts with high visual quality settings for new players
At nighttime houses, buildings and walls turn on window lights and torches
Reworked sky graphics and sky box
WORLD MAP GUI CHANGES
Completely redesigned world map GUI
World Map armies now have GUI overlay - showing owner, strength, diplomacy status
World Map Town banners now display town strength
New GUI art for World Map chat and minimap
World Map minimap moved to the right bottom corner
World Map chat moved to the left bottom corner
World Map advisers relocated to the middle of the screen
FIXES AND ADDITIONS
Removing decimals points from world map army and town strength
Redesigned main menu News window

FIXES AND ADDITIONS
Major new feature - added ability to hire new lords when King
Select from twenty new lord portraits - only male for now
Diplomacy now shows all options, even if player is not King
Unique dialogue lines for destroying each of 14 nations
Added voice acting for all world map event cinematics and big messages
Major visual update to RTS mode - greatly improved light
Redesigned No Bloom settings - a lot less red light, bloom and brightness
World map has a lot less red colour, especially with bloom off
Redesigned world map light and colours
Fixed common issue with light sometime being too bright and bloomy in RTS mode
Fixed major issue with RTS mode usually being completely grey
Fixed major issue with time of day not changing RTS mode
Changing bloom on the world map now updates the level right away
Fixed a bug with giving towns to AI lords, creating player controlled AI armies
Removed ridiculous diplomatic penalty with all nations when the King attacks his own lords
Diplomatic penalty from alliance/peace only applies to nations you and your ally are at war with
Fixed French campaign cinematics not playing on the world map

BIG CHANGES
King Diplomacy - added Military Alliance
King Diplomacy - added Defensive Alliance
Allied armies can now be invited into battle
Minor Lord and King Diplomacy - added Trade Agreements
Added income from trade on the world map
Redesigned Diplomacy window - now shows all available buttons
GUI improvement - all the greyed out buttons now show tooltips
A lot of fixes in translation - for Russian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French.
FIXES AND ADDITIONS
City Tax and Happiness now change while the town is selected
Fix AutoSave option value not saving, and defaulting to 7mins
Fixed lag when changing unit formations and tasking
Tutorial level 2 no longer showing scripted battle scene with bad sound
Tutorial level 2 completely lag free now
Tutorial level 2 a lot easier now
Tutorial level 3 fixed healing army sometimes not working
Tutorial level 5 fixed constructing buildings sometimes not registering
Tutorial level 5 disabled giving towns with Steward
Improved Smelting Blacksmith tech now also improves Iron Camp
Munich now properly belongs to Austria in new campaigns
Fire pitch lights up a lot faster now, and is a lot more visible
Townhouses now have less smoke and lights
Corrected ballista description
Corrected description for Serf, and changing Iron and Stone Camp into Mines.

-First part of the multiple army project complete
-Attack Screen now supports two armies per side (more to be added)
-Fight button is disabled for more than 2 armies in battle (until the next update)
-Player and AI can invite armies to join the battle in provincial range
-Army standing near the city becomes the city garrison for auto-resolve
-Auto-Resolve now uses battle difficulty instead of campaign difficulty
-Completely reworked Auto-Resolve victory or loss calculation
-Player army that`s weak or has just a few units will get removed on defeat
-Fixed exploit with repeating auto-resolve vs stronger army over 10 times
-Fixed common issue with horse cart ignoring orders
-Only the selected building banner is hidden (was part of the an earlier update)

Hey Everyone,

We are wrapping this week with another big update, and as become the norm in the past few weeks - we are again working on the top player requested features. Over the past few weeks we tried to incorporate as much player feedback as possible into the game, but it`s time to get back to working on the big features - so next week we are returning to more diplomacy features, polishing up Techs, and opening way to work on CoOp features towards early March.

Today`s update finally adds saving of the wall mounted defenses built during battles. In addition auto-resolve will level up units. We also took some time to address the town storage capacity based on player feedback. And last but not least, you`ll notice the first of the several upcoming pathfinding and combat improvements. In addition a brand new Skirmish mode - defending or besieging a Hamlet.

Best wishes for the weekend! And so, presenting Update 47:

New Features
-Combat and Pathfinding update - reworked how units get stuck or slow-downed when moving through tight passages
-All wall mounted defenses and siege weapons now permanently save
-All wall mounted defenses and siege weapons can now be constructed in town view mode
-Constructing a storehouse now adds 3000 to the town storage
-Auto-resolving battles levels up units
-Final round of a updating and cleaning up the engine code
-New Skirmish game mode - Army vs Hamlet

Fixes and Improvements
-Updated town view mode description, no longer any temps there
-Updated Storehouse description
-Fixed common arrow with AI fire and flaming siege not working
-Fixed props (weapons, hats) on a couple of units showing up as white or missing
-Larger font for the next on screen
-Resources bar now shows town storage limit
-Temporary Disabled Wall Hoarding upgrade

Balance Changes
-Town Storage increased to 6000
-Nerfed Swordsman unit, nearly 20% reduction in stats