This is a big one: you now command your sieges yourself, gates can become gatehouses, there is a combat tutorial, and towns, fighting and horses all look and move better.
Sieges: You Command The Assault
- New: SIEGE on the main menu. Practice a siege in one window: pick your army, the town's garrison and its gate, then lead the assault from your lord's command seat. Nothing is saved.
- Command your army in a siege: orders to your troop groups stay until you change them, each group has a role (fight, work or forage), and every engine waits for your word or works on its own. Aim the catapult and trebuchet, and choose which way in to storm.
- Place your siege works yourself: the trebuchet, catapult, ram and towers go where you put them, and the outline tells you why a spot will not do. Choose the road your army comes in by - your camp stands at its end.
- Your men wait out of bowshot until the ram reaches the gate or the tower reaches the wall, then storm. Before you press STORM the siege panel shows the odds: your men against those inside.
- After a ladder assault your men come down from the wall into the town by themselves and finish the fight.
- New: gatehouses. Upgrade a finished gate into a roofed gatehouse with a portcullis - far harder to break, and the portcullis must fall before the doors.
- A gate under siege stays shut to the town's own men while attackers are at it.
- Ladders now land in the gaps of the battlements, and the men climb over onto the wall walk.
- New siege sounds: trebuchet and catapult throws, stones striking walls and earth, and walls coming down.
Combat
- New: a combat TUTORIAL beside PRACTICE in DUELS. Thirteen short lessons, each passed by doing it, with the spear and the bow too.
- Your sword now steps in to reach a soldier just out of reach - no more blows falling short while he hits you.
- Smoother, heavier fighting: no more snapping between poses, blows wind up, hang for a beat and whip through, a hit really bites, and the sword follows through instead of snapping back. Your feet stay planted and only move in a real step.
- Soldiers now animate smoothly: their poses update 60 times a second instead of 20.
- Horses move like animals: the cloth hangs and swings, the neck and rump sway with the stride, they look around when standing, and a slow horse walks or trots instead of cantering in slow motion.
Your Lord
- Your lord has buttons in the bottom right corner: Inventory (I), Troops (T), your horse (M), and the lance (X) and your gate (O) when they apply. Hold Alt to click them.
- He stands up straight at rest, his hands no longer pass through his leg armour, and hands rest naturally instead of clawing - for villagers too.
- His neck no longer stretches or pokes through the collar, most of all when aiming the bow.
- Being revived no longer flings him across the ground.
The Town
- House yards are fenced all the way round, neighbours share one fence, and hens and goats now live in the yards.
- A troop whose last man falls stays on the Army screen and can be recruited back, and the Army screen says exactly what stops new recruits.
- Warnings before the first winter about firewood, and when food runs short workers leave their posts to gather until the larder recovers.
- Speed keys in your town: SPACE pauses, 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 set the speed. MAIN MENU in the Esc menu, with SAVE AND GO. A CONTROLS page lists every key.
- The bakery now bakes: villagers carry the windmill's flour to the granary for the bakers.
Look
- Clouds on LOW graphics. On HIGH, the brown haze and the grain in the woods are gone, and sunbeams read as beams - a room's beam of light now shows from the side too.
- Plate armour no longer glares into a white ball in the sun.
- The duel yard has a new look: its own light, ground that does not repeat, and country outside the walls.
Fixes and Support
- If the game crashes, the next launch offers to send us a short text report. Nothing is sent unless you press SEND.
- On a laptop with two graphics chips the game now uses the dedicated one, and if a graphics card cannot start the game, the message now says what is missing.
Note
- Online play changed with this update: players on an older version cannot play online with this one - update to join your friends.
- The first world you open on a new PC can take a few minutes to load while it prepares its textures.
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