This update changes two things directly related to troops.
Recruiting no longer produces builder units
Previously recruitment built siege engines first, and the siege pool contained a set of half-finished construction units: Camp Builders, Tower Builders, Stone Platform Builders and eight others, eleven in total. They had only 18-21 attack and about 300 defence, so their combat value was close to zero, yet each one occupied 5,000 troop slots. Worse, builder units stationed inside a city never turn into real structures.
Those eleven units have now been removed from the recruitment pool and are produced by the construction system instead. The siege slots now go to real siege engines: Iron Chariot (98/958), Thunderbolt Catapult (80/812), Catapult (75/721) and City Defense Ballista (59/900).
Siege engine selection and ratio were also adjusted:
- Picked by combat value, instead of the first match in the data table
- Build priority is now Navy, then Land, then Siege. Siege engines used to come before land units, so every city started by building siege engines.
- Siege share tightened from 1/3 to 1/6, and capped at two units once a city has six or more.
Starting troops now have three levels
Settings, Game Parameters now has a new Starting Troops option: None, Standard or Abundant.
- None: cities start empty, so you recruit for a few turns first
- Standard: population x 2%, clamped to 1,000-8,000 per city
- Abundant: Standard x 1.5
This only affects new games; existing saves are untouched. We also fixed a mismatch between the garrison numbers shown on the faction selection screen and the values actually used at game start.
Display fix for low-resolution screens
On low-resolution displays such as 1366x768 laptops, the faction selection buttons at the bottom of the scenario screen could be cut off and unreachable. The interface is designed for 1920x1080, and the UI scaling was not being reapplied correctly after the page loaded. Scaling is now recalculated when the page finishes loading, when the window is resized, and when switching to fullscreen, so the whole interface stays visible on low-resolution screens and in fullscreen.
Feedback is welcome in the community hub.