This time we kept you without news for quite a while, as we were developing several fairly large features at the same time. Today we are releasing them to the Beta branch.

• You can switch branches in the game properties in your Steam library or directly from the main menu of the game.

• As usual, all saves are compatible (although you will need to place the new buildings at the start).

The update includes three major parts:

• Climate and Agriculture

• Reworked Character Trait System

• Personal Politics

• Tutorial

In total, the update includes 145 items, so reading it will take some time.

As usual, development plans change along the way, and this time we diverged quite significantly from our autumn-winter roadmap, but I will soon write an update on the roadmap for the next six months.

Now, about this update.

Developing the climate required us to rework agriculture, so we changed how Fields work.

Now you can grow any known crop on any Field (they are now universal), and you can also harvest early (with a penalty for immaturity). This is useful if you suddenly decide to switch crops or if a Harsh Season begins unexpectedly — you won’t lose everything that has grown.

Since Fields are essentially new objects, when loading a save you will need to place them again and choose what to grow. To compensate for lost harvests, you will receive the corresponding resources for free.

We added 3 Harsh Seasons for our 4 climate zones — Winter, Drought, and Rainy Season.

From an agriculture perspective, seasons can be roughly divided into “growing” and “not growing,” so the game now has a 12-day Fertile Season and a 4-day Harsh Season. In the northern biome, the Harsh Season lasts 7 days.

Accordingly, crop growth times have been increased:

Rye and Hops grow for 6 days.

Vegetables grow for 3 days.

This means you can harvest 2 crops of Rye and Hops and 4 crops of vegetables during the Fertile Season and prepare for the harsh days (don’t forget to build a Granary!). Yields have also been increased to compensate for the lack of growth during Harsh Seasons.

Winter:

• Temperate and Cold climates (in Cold climate Winter lasts 7 days)

• Nothing grows in Fields

• Trees do not grow

• Berries and Forest Herbs do not grow

• Movement outside roads and buildings is 30% slower

• -5 thought to all residents due to cold

Drought

• Dry climate

• Grains do not grow, but vegetables and berries do

• Forest Herbs grow quickly

• -5 thought to all residents

• Penalty to productivity of all buildings

• All skills -3 due to heat

Rainy Season

• Wet climate

• Spoilage of food and plants increases

• Rye and Hops do not grow

• Trees grow faster

• Swamp Fever may appear

During all Harsh Seasons, prices increase for resources that cannot grow and their derivatives (which may allow you to make some profit).

We also reworked rain effects and added snow, snowstorms, and dust storms.

Trees will turn yellow in autumn and lose leaves in winter.

Now each lord has a character (there are 8 in total). They are assigned based on culture during initial creation and inherited from parents in the game (with a chance to receive a random one).

Characters determine bonuses and penalties to skill experience gain, as well as what talent a lord will have.

As Aleister Crowley wrote, every man and every woman is a star, so now every character has their own talent.

So far we have implemented about half of the planned 80 talents.

The old talent system is now obsolete.

We have also redesigned the family creation interface for the new system (yes, we remember you asked for the ability to save families at this stage — we will add it soon).

Each lord now also has a Strength and a Weakness, which are used in personal politics (see below).

Strengths allow you to influence lords with certain weaknesses much more effectively and bend them to your will.

Some weaknesses are tied to physical vulnerability and will be expanded later when we introduce Dark Politics.

After public politics, we implemented the next (still not final) stage — personal politics.

We like how this experimental system is shaping up, and we will continue developing it in the coming weeks.

Using strengths and weaknesses, a politician actively recruits lords as allies (their targets are visible in their interface so you can react), and can assign allies with the right strengths to act against targets. This allows them to gain allies without spending money.

Your king can also order his allies to use their strengths against chosen targets.

Strengths and weaknesses can also be used on the world map.

Politicians can now intimidate their targets by making a night visit and holding a knife to their throat. This creates a special positive thought — Fear.

We will continue developing fear and intimidation mechanics to allow you to play as a ruthless tyrant.

This is less important for the beta version, but we have completely reworked the tutorial system. For example, Encyclopedia articles now often include a “show how” button that launches a short guided sequence with highlights and arrows.

At your request, we brought back Soldier Barracks (you will need to place them).

We also added a new resource — Clay. Clay Workshops will produce pottery and tiles, which are now required for higher-level buildings.

They will also produce Clay Tiles for roads (we also added Stone Tiles for more advanced roads, produced in the Stonecutter Workshop).

These goods cannot be purchased from the Caravan.

• Improved overall color grading — the game is now more vibrant and saturated.

• Added “god rays” effect

• Reworked rain effects, added dust storms and snowstorms

• Added small surface decals

• Improved shadow rendering

• Improved visualization of archer ranges and army paths

• Added cloud shadow movement effect

• Ground under forest trees now has a brown tint

• Increased Altar radius based on player feedback. The difference between Altar, Temple, and Stone Temple is now in persuasion skill modifiers during sermons (and prayer effect strength).

• Builder Camps and Lumber Camps are built 5 times faster and can be moved for free.

• The basic Warehouse now provides 300 capacity instead of 200 for stone and wood.

• Political activity now starts at 20 population instead of 40.

• Improved AI attack logic on the world map. It no longer requires negative relations to attack your vassals and allies.

• Strong and dissatisfied vassals now rebel more often.

• You cannot trade with vassals of a hostile kingdom.

• Hill, lake, and mountain generation has been reworked. A central hill suitable for building a fortress now appears more often.

• Added fanatic terror on the scaffold.

That’s about it.

As usual, we’re looking forward to your feedback on the beta, your reviews, and join us on Discord!

Thank you!

• Seasons of the year have been added. The game starts in spring

• Depending on the biome, a “harsh season” is defined. Winter, drought, or rainy season

• Season duration is 12 days for a normal season (summer - spring - autumn), 4 days for a harsh season (7 days in the north)

• For old saves on the old global map, season durations are set to 4 days for the harsh season and 15 for the fertile season

• A display of time until the end of the harsh season and until its start has been added - shown near the in-game clock

• The province selection hint at the start of a new game has been updated - it now shows climate, type of harsh season, and its duration

• During the rainy season, fogs and rains will occur more often

• The rain effect has been changed; heavy snowfall-blizzard now causes the “Frozen Feet” trait in characters who walked on bare ground without roads

• In the menu of a selected tree, berry bush, or herb bush, during the season in which they do not grow, information about this will be displayed

• Price increases have been added for farm-grown goods that cannot grow during the harsh season (rutabaga, carrots, wheat, hops); price decreases have been added for resources that increase their growth during the harsh season (wood, herbs)

• Technologies “Drought Resistance” and “Proper Fertilization” have been removed due to reworking of the game mechanics related to them

• A new resource Clay and a clay extraction building have been added. Roads are now built from clay or stone.

• A construction cost has been added for the stone extraction building

• Instead of separate farms for growing different resources, there is now a single farm building where you can choose the resource to grow

• Vegetables now grow in 3 days, while wheat and hops take 6 days

• You can harvest a farm at any time, but with a 50% yield penalty

• Fertile fields of hops/rye are not highlighted when placing a farm if the player does not have the knowledge to grow these crops

• Firewood production no longer requires the charcoal burner technology

• The woodcutter camp and builder camp are now built 5 times faster

• Relocating the sawmill and builder camp is now free

• A regular warehouse now adds 300 instead of 200 capacity for stone and wood

• Spoilage of food and plant resources in a regular warehouse has been increased from 5% to 10%

• Clay Pottery, Roof Tiles, Clay and Stone Tiles will not be displayed in caravan trade menu - they cannot be bought or sold

• The construction cost of the level 1 brewery has been changed, now it is 20 wood instead of 15 wood + 5 planks

• Political activity will start at 20 population instead of 40

• Politicians will now use the action task system, assigning themselves or allies one task per day - all these tasks are social and aimed at gaining an ally or strengthening relations with existing allies (hunting, gift from a lord, seduction, spending time together, slander, threat)

• A new tool has been added for politicians - intimidation at night. The power of intimidation depends on the politician’s combat skill. This tool is selected like others based on the potential impact on relations

• The mechanic for gaining allies for politicians has been changed. Previously, an ally was automatically considered a lord who had exclusive +25 relations with one of the politicians. Now there is a threshold of +50 relations (can vary based on strengths and weaknesses), if a politician exceeds it, they can perform the action “Make Ally”, which will make the lord an ally. The action cooldown is 3 days. An ally stops being an ally if their relations with the politician drop below a certain threshold

• In the politician and player ruler menu, their target for recruiting allies will be displayed

• In the “Relations to Politician” hint for a lord who is an ally, the threshold for ending the alliance will now be displayed

• When a politician becomes the ruler, their neighboring ruler allies will stop being allies, and the former player ruler will become a politician while keeping their followers

• If a politician has < 1000 gold, they will give higher priority points to alliance targets that have money

• If a character has an action task assigned by a politician, it will be executed with priority

• If an action task cannot be canceled because it was assigned by a politician or a guest, this will be shown in the hint with personalized information

• The politician action “intimidation at night” provokes guards - whoever lands the first 10 hits wins. If the guards win, the politician pays 300 coins to all guards who participated in the fight. Weapons are not used in this fight

• A new type of social thoughts has been added - fear (displayed in purple)

• Fear-based social thoughts are not taken into account when determining whether a lord is a “Friend”, i.e. whether they will grieve after this character’s death, get angry over title removal, etc.

• If a character has the weakness “Hot-tempered”, provoking them into a duel on the global map does not worsen relations with the matriarch

• The “Gift from a Lord” order issued by the player can only be performed by the ruler, their allies, or puppets

• The player cannot conclude trade agreements with vassals and alliance members if their suzerain or leader has relations with the player <= -25

• The chance of a vassal uprising, if they have relations <= -25 with the player and have equal military strength, has been increased from 10% to 50%

• The algorithm for determining possible targets for vassalization by AI has been changed. If the target is a vassal or a regular alliance member, the required relations threshold for attacking them is reduced from -15 to +25

• Fixed a bug where a neighboring ally’s help to a politician during an uprising was canceled at 11 AM if the neighbor was a vassal, suzerain, or in the same alliance as the player; after ignoring a politician’s demands, when they start an uprising, they do not start it instantly but give time to hand over the crown peacefully, also 2 hours before reinforcements from a neighboring ally arrive, the rebels will start gathering in groups