Updates

• The philosophy behind work/combat calculationsMay 22, 2026

  In any enterprise, luck plays a part. Whether starting a business, buying stocks, growing vegetables, building a house, or starting a war, a large part of their fortune lies in unforeseeable events outside their control.

  Weather, accidents, betrayal, technology which under-performed or failed, a shifting economy… there are countless unknowns. It’s difficult to predict the future when it’s impossibly to know every variable. If you’ve watched the show Grand Designs (home builders under-estimate cost and time about 90% of the time in the show) or leaders like Putin and Trump when they invade other countries, this should be obvious.

  To reflect this, I’ve included an element of random chance in the calculations of not only combat, but all actions performed by all units.

  Strength is based on population, tool upgrades and experience. Experience adds 1% per exp point. That means when maxed out, it can add up to 10% to the total strength of the unit.

  Once base strength is calculated, by random chance your effective strength will be anything from 80% of that of that figure to 120%. It could go in either direction, for you and the opponent in a battle. Or when farming for example.

  The intention is that you will need to look at the situation broadly and make a judgement – the odds might be in your favour, but will you take that chance? Have you planned for the worst and hope for the best, will you win even in the worst case scenario?

  This is about pushing the player toward generalisation and leaning into strategy, rather than being able to crunch the numbers and win every battle to come out on top. I want the player to focus on the war (or whatever objective they have in mind) not the individual victories. For a more consistent outcome you will need to overwhelm the odds, and to do that you will almost always need the help of other players.

  However, I accept that the current system isn’t fair. Completely random chance doesn’t make sense. Effective strength should be weighted toward the base strength.

  At the moment, it works like the graph below – here are 300 random results in between 80%-120%:

  

  Wouldn’t it make more sense to have most results closer to the base strength calculation? So it would be largely more predictable, but leaves room for random events.

  Here’s how it will probably work in the future – generate two random numbers, and choose the closest to the base strength:

  

  This creates a sort of flat-sided pyramid of results, which I think is more sensible. We could even make it the best of 3, squeezing everything to the centre even more:

  

  Let me know what you think.

• Fixes and adjustmentsMay 18, 2026

  Some of the fixes over the last few days:

  • “Wait” action created so you can queue any number of turns where the unit remains in place and continues doing their job before taking another action
  • Fisher population can now grow while they’re on water
  • Fisher and navy can switch to each other while on water
  • Fog issue not allowing members of the same kingdom to see the same area fixed
  • Added separate military unit population icons to map so it’s easier to identify where armies are building at a glance
  • Text on map chips/icons automatically chooses high contrast text depending on the colour of the background – this stops, for example, white text on light background becoming impossible to read
  • Fixed issue where players could control resources of a deceased unit even though the player had no local units in the same land
  • Adjusted map elements so they’re not obscuring each other when kingdom filter is on
  • Probably several other small things I forgot about
• Resource management updateMay 15, 2026

  Some updates after issues were identified which resulted in players accidentally starving their populations to death, and quality of life suggestions to manage all resources.

  If you choose, it should hopefully be possible to just stick with defaults and the units will mostly manage themselves.

  Food now works more safely:

  • Units eat before excess redistribution.
  • Same-owner units on the same land share carried food for survival.
  • If food is short, it is split proportionally so population losses are consistent.
  • Any surplus above carry targets (see below) can still redistribute normally.

  Added two unit resource controls:

  Request materials for work
  This controls what materials a unit is allowed to automatically request and spend for work/tools. If wood, copper, tin, or bronze is unchecked, that unit will not ask distribution for it and will not auto-spend it for production or tools.

  Carry targets
  This sets how much food/material a unit should try to keep after eating. Distribution can fill these targets when resources are available, and it will not take resources below the target unless the unit spends/eats them.

• Fog of war implemented, several fixesMay 13, 2026

  Please report any issues after this update, the Discord is probably the best place to do that.

  • Fog of war has been implemented, let me know what you think.
  • Fisher’s population can now grow while they are on water. It didn’t make any sense that a fishing community would suddenly become sterile when they are working…
  • Turn summary emails should be working again.
  • Kingdom names and land names are now separate fields. If no Kingdom name is set, it will default to the land name.
  • Battle casualties fixed – results were swapped by accident and you would get wiped out when attacking with a superior force! Should be working correctly now.
  • “Select all lands in my kingdom” when sending messages was broken, should be working now.
  • Unit type change no longer gives magical extra XP.
  • Inactive users get notified when they are being skipped.
  • Resource transfer dropdown includes unit id/type/name/owner when transferring between units, still need to add this to the land-unit transfer.
  • Game-scoped general/message/resource notifications should now display in the normal turn notification view.
  • Skip My Turns / Resume Turns added. It looks like crap though, will improve it later.