We're coming at you with some hot changes this week. New features, like automatically repeating village projects, and a detailed view on village bonuses. Balance changes for settled and claimed tiles, and barbarian strength. And a big list of (mobile) UI improvements.

Features added

  • The last project in a village's queue will now repeat automatically if there's no other items queued. Later on this will be a premium feature.
  • The objectives pages was reworked with filters (landmark, monument, artifact, all) and sorting (distance, empire, kingdom, time to prestige). The layout is also more consistent on mobile devices.
  • The village queue page was reworked to be more compact. The saved space is now used to display all village bonuses.
  • Not sure if it's a feature or a bugfix: we implemented new tooltips. Tooltips will now display smoothly across the app.

img.png Sorting and filters on the Objectives page

Balance changed

  • Settled villages and claimed tiles now increase their building levels on a weekly counter instead of monthly. For resource fields and the Town Hall this means +1 level every 2 weeks, and for the Warehouse and Food Cellar +0.75 every week, rounded down.
  • Barbarian stats were tuned to lower their attack and smoothen the curve. Defensive stats were lowered slightly and shifted from cavalry to ranged defense. Barbarians are now roughly equal in strength against ranged and cavalry, while being slightly stronger against melee.
    • Axeman: lowered attack from 20 to 18
    • Guardian: lowered attack from 16 to 12, lowered melee/ranged/cavalry defense from 20/16/24 to 18/14/22
    • Shieldmaiden: lowered attack from 24 to 22, lowered melee/ranged/cavalry defense from 56/28/42 to 52/38/24
    • Warden: lowered attack from 22 to 20
    • Outrider: lowered attack from 28 to 26
    • Chieftain: lowered attack from 80 to 76
  • The noble cap has been increased from 5 to 6.

img_1.png The reworked village queue page, with expanded bonuses (all maxed out for testing)

Improvements made

  • The Empire objectives list now looks more consistent on mobile devices.
  • The simulate, send army and send resources buttons were removed from reports where they didn't make sense.
  • The buildings now have links relevant to their category in the header of the building page.
  • Icon link layout was unified throughout the application.
  • The incoming attacks page now defaults to two lines on mobile to prevent layout jumping with the timer.
  • The industry and resource cost of the individual unit is now visible together with the individual unit stats.
  • The Kingdom overview pages were touched up to unify their layout.
  • The Kingdom overview home page was reworked to show the time when a village's queue is completed.
  • The Kingdom Production and Trade Routes pages were swapped. The Trade Routes page is now in the Resources section of the Kingdom pages.
  • The coordinates on the left sidebar now link to that village on the map.
  • The empire overview now shows the new village/town/city numbers, and we added the total prestige earned and last week's medals at the top.
  • The trade route form is now active without needing to deactivate the trade route, and in no longer does a reload with the loading screen on saving changes.

img_2.png Redesigned Kingdom overview page with queue timers on a mobile device

Bugs squashed

  • Swapping objectives using the left sidebar now updates page menu links.
  • The wall level is now in the simulator link after pressing simulate.
  • The wall level is now shown in event scout reports (including objectives), and as a result also added to the simulator.
  • Scouting player-owned objectives no longer requires a minimum army size.
  • Villages now start at 150 loyalty when settled, instead of the old value of 100.
  • Hotfixed: the 1000 aether reward from the repeatable research once again awards 1000 aether.

Hope to see you in game! Play Aether Kingdoms now!