Hearthlands

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Status update
March 27th, 2015

I've spent most of this week on lots testing and fixing, so there'll be another intermediate update soon (after some more testing and fixing).

- Rulers AI apparently didn't work as intended, so I fixed it and rebalanced. Also their requests now depend more on what you actually produce.

- Availability of trade routes now depends more on the opinion. Also vassals will gradually make all their trade routes available for their liege.

- Lots of visual fixes and improvements (more tooltips; more clear tooltips; beehives show their radius; pigs, large pigs and piglets look a bit more different etc.).

- "window_borders" option added to config.txt. Set it to "no" if you don't want borders in windowed mode.

- Battle and request success is a bit more predictable.

Also I legitimately won the game against 12 rivals. It was quite fun and took longer that I expected. Considering there are 3 more cultures and I was playing on Normal, I'm quite happy with the gameplay value Hearthlands has at the moment.

At the end (about 30 in-game years) my city had 4 big housing districts with a storage/production area in the center. I would have had 9600 people, but I messed up with boots supply (was too busy planning war) and about 2000 people had left. I never had an excess of people, so I could built 2-3 more districts I think.

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One of the wine/bread producing areas. I was selling wine to everyone.

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Military district looks messy. Troops are coming back from conquering the last rival.

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All hail the king!

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Also, apparently we never showed this picture:

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Status update
March 20th, 2015

I've been sick all week (flu, gets better, should go away in a couple of days), so not much of a progress has been made this week sadly:(

Started to work on a troll:

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What's new in 0.5.2
March 14th, 2015

Hearthlands 0.5.2 should be available either now or very soon! This is another intermediate update with a bunch of tweaks and new stuff.

Note: Savegames from earlier versions are not compatible with 0.5.2.

- Now you can actually win the game by conquering all the rivals. You can continue playing after you've won.

- City reputation drops when your people die or leave the city. One you've reached zero - you lose.

- Immigration rate has been rebalanced as well and now mainly depends on City Reputation. The higher is your reputation the more frequently immigrants will come to the city.

- Industries have been rebalanced and now are easier to keep track of. Each workshop now produces 24 loads of an appropriate resource per year with the exception of mines and hunter's lodges (which produce 12 loads). Now it is quite clear how many woodcutter's lodges you need to make furniture most efficiently.

- You can now surrender to an attacking rival which will make you into their vassal. As a vassal you will have to pay annual tribute of either money or resources. You can break free by attacking your liege.

- If you conquer your rival, they became your vassal and also have to pay annual tribute.

- It is possible to bribe invaders with coins when they come to the city. The bribe gets bigger the more you use it.

- A bunch of notifications has been added, such as lack of resources, available research, low reputation etc.

- Rabbits now yield wool in addition to meat.

- Graphics optimizations: the game now requires about 60% less video memory.

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Status update
March 6th, 2015

This week I've been mostly working on more diplomacy/war things for the next update (which is most likely coming out in a few days). We want to make at least one way of losing the game and at least one way to win it.

Currently in order to lose you basically need all your people in the city to either die (because of invaders, monsters, revolt or plague) or leave (because of lack of resources). This losing condition is fine for games like Dwarf Fortress, but in Hearthlands most of the time you understand that you're screwed before you see "Game Over" screen, so, maybe we'll get back to that later with more ideas for losing conditions.

In order to win you need to vassalize all your rivals (assuming you have them), which is basically an equivalent of killing the Ender Dragon (something that is fun to work towards, but is not actually necessary to achieve). Most likely this won't be the only victory condition, but at the moment it is nice to have one. This should be quite challenging, though. And time consuming, especially with 12 rivals.

I've added "Surrender" option to the diplomacy screen. Surrender means that you become a vassal of the rival attacking you and will have to pay tribute (much like in Zeus). Tribute won't be predetermined and will be based on your production and needs of your liege. Same works the other way around — conquering someone makes you able to choose tribute they will pay you (in addition to money and resources you get for the victory).

Balancing all that is going to be fun:)

Also, I had to learn some programming for Mac in order to add Mac OS support on Steam. Strangely enough, this is necessary because you can't just put a Java package on Steam without some additional fiddling. Hopefully we'll be able to add this platform with the next update.

Here are some sketches for "Game Over" screen (WIP):

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Status update
February 27th, 2015

This week I mostly focused on diplomacy improvements and various other things. Also, I decided to rebalance industries once again to make it generally easier to understand. Basically, every building produces 24 loads of a certain resource per year. Exceptions are: hunter's lodge and mines, which produce 12 loads per year. So now you know exactly how many grower's lodges you need for each bakery to maintain optimal efficiency.

Rabbits now drop wool as well as meat.

Conquered rivals now become your vassals. Vassals are more likely to fulfill your request and less likely to request goods from you. You can also become someone's vassal if you surrender to an invasion. You liege is more likely to send you requests and less likely to fulfill yours. Vassal can break free by attacking his liege. I will also make tributes for the next update.

I did some code optimizations and Hearthlands now takes up about 60% less video memory. This still needs to be tested on a few different systems, but I think it should work everywhere.

Not much in graphics-wise this week, so here's a screenshot of my second test town (the first one was destroyed rather surprisingly fast):

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