Hi Everyone,

While we're still hard at work on other updates (Rival AIs, VR, twitch integration, and secrets), we've got the Beautification Update ready for you now! If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at contact@lionshieldstudios.com.

Now let's get to what's new:


Added gardens, they provide happiness in a radius and provide bonus happiness if they’re on irrigated soil or near other gardens. The gardens work like roads and they change appearance based on if other gardens are adjacent.


Added a new statue, Lord Nextraztus, a monument to the mighty dragon!


Added small and large fountains. They provide all the benefits of a well, but in a larger radius with extra happiness. However, they must be on irrigated land to function.


Workers will slowly forget skills they aren’t using. The person UI now shows this and better shows what skill they are currently learning. Archer Towers and Ballista Towers also now have some visual decoration when their workers are highly skilled (see the tower on the right who are grandmaster archers vs the left who are apprentices).


You can now build aqueducts through castle walls and castle walls on top of aqueducts. No longer will your irrigation system be a hole in your defenses!

• Added happiness bonus for killing vikings
  
• Adjust tax happiness curve
  
• Some performance improvements
  
• Reorganize building menu, now at the bottom center of the screen and the ‘Town’ category is split into ‘Town’ and ‘Advanced Town’
  
• Archer Tower and Ballista Towers won’t shoot unless the workers are actually there.
  
• People working at Archer and Ballista Towers won’t leave their jobs during combat (unless you manually disable that job) even if a job is placed above it in the priority list.
  
• Granary workers will now pick up wheat dropped by other workers
  
• Fixed issue where w or s could scroll the kingdom log
  
• Fixed issue with bakeries reporting inflated food amounts in the food report
  
• Some performance improvements

We'll have more info on the progress of the Rival AIs update as well as other updates in the next month or so!

As always, email (contact@lionshieldstudios.com) or direct chat on discord is the fastest way to get in touch with us: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

It's been a little over a year since we launched Kingdoms and Castles and the game has grown and improved quite a bit. But we won't rest. Looking into the future, we've got lots more new stuff planned!

On a personal note, it's been a life changing year for us, and we wanted to say thank you all for ideas, bug reports, and for playing!

Here's a quick update on what we're working on next:

This is gonna be a big one with lots of hefty new features, so it’s going to take a while. The AIs will need to build cities on their own and we’ll need to work out the consequences for sending armies across landmasses, attacking with soldiers and towers, and how to handle diplomacy. We’re laying the groundwork and setting stuff up for this now.

Since it’s going to take some time we’ve got some quicker updates coming out soon while you wait. You can look forward to our upcoming...

We’ll be adding some new stuff for your villagers to enjoy, including royal gardens, a new statue, and fountains that tie in with the aqueduct system. Here’s a little preview of the gardens, they use a tile based system like the roads that changes how they look based on how you place them:



Questions, suggestions? You can always reach out to us on discord (http://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles) and contact@lionshieldstudios.com.

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,
After incorporating lots of your feedback, the Grand Buildings Update is now out for everyone! If you've got questions, ideas, bug reports, come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at contact@lionshieldstudios.com (or post on the forums here).

Thanks to all the beta testers, we really appreciate your efforts. And another super special thanks to our translators - a bunch more languages have been added!

Here’s what’s new:


You can now build cathedrals, which are very expensive and provide happiness in a large radius. Cathedrals can also strike awe into invading vikings who get near and convert them to peasants. If this happens you’ll notice a bolt of lightning hitting the viking army.


Great libraries are also available to build. They too are very expensive but provide a lot of happiness in a large radius. They also increase the maximum happiness of small libraries within their radius. And perhaps most importantly you can research upgrades to your kingdom from the great library.


When towns reach a certain size the peasants will start wanting a place to bathe. So once you’ve got a noria and aqueducts set up, pipe some water over to a town center and build a bathhouse! Bathhouses aren’t as expensive as the new cathedral and great library, but provide lots of happiness in a pretty big area.


Now when you click to show/hide the happiness visuals, you’ll see the happiness of each tile displayed from red to green.

We’ve also reworked the happiness radius and overlay system to feel a little more natural. The happiness provided by wells, churches, libraries, etc is now a gradient.This means a house right next to a tavern will get more happiness from that tavern than a house far away from the same tavern. The overlay visuals now show this as well. While placing or clicking on a happiness building you can see the coverage gradient that type of building provides.


Dragons are now more of a threat. They do more damage and escalate their attacks over time. We’ve added some new burning behaviors and you’ll find them much more of a threat to contend with. Since this makes the game a bit harder, please let us know your thoughts on the tuning here.

• 7 new languages (Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian)
  
• Added health bars to ogres, dragons, player and viking armies
  
• Rubble has a button that will rebuild what was once there. (Only works on rubble created after this update)
  
• Added info to show when the next dragon and viking attacks will arrive. This can be turned on and off in the settings.
  
• Taxes collected depend on working tax collectors
  
• Forester is now a prerequisite for charcoal maker
  
• Performance optimizations
  
• Lots of small tweaks and other fixes

It’s coming along! Here’s a work-in-progress snapshot: https://streamable.com/86ler


One request that comes up a lot is AI controlled rivals. This would be a big change with lots of new code, design, and possibly art, so our next focus will be investigating how feasible this is and what we can do. If it does turns out to be feasible, it would end up being one of our larger updates, so there could be smaller updates in the meantime, but we’ll keep you posted.

As always, direct chat on discord is the fastest way to get in touch with us: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

Creative Mode is now live! Issues, questions, ideas, feedback, bug reports? Chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles, or email us at contact@lionshieldstudios.com (or post on the forums here).

Thanks as always to all the people who tried out and provided feedback on the beta. And super special thanks to our translators because we were able to add Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch for this update and more languages to come later!

(City in the cover photo courtesy of @Dizzythepanda of discord)

Here’s what's new:


You can now choose between standard mode and creative mode. In creative mode you can modify your map before you play, and tweak all kinds of settings and spawn all sorts of things while in game. Note that achievements won’t be triggered when playing in creative mode.



If you’ve chosen creative mode, once you pick a seed you can edit your map however you wish. Use the brushes to paint land, water, rocks, and more.


During gameplay you can toggle all kinds of settings that will take you as far from (or as close to) standard play as you want, everything from building for free to whether people eat or not. You can additionally spawn things like dragons (I spawned a whole bunch in the screenshot above), vikings, trees, ogres, and resources of any type.


You can now use your own banners, just add an image file to the banner folder (which you can find when selecting a banner) and chose it. We’ve included a template image file which you can use to make your banners fit correctly.

• Armies can now target ogres
  
• Armies do double damage to ogres
  
• Fix issue where it looked like armies weren't damage ogres at 3x speed
  
• Fixed storage calculation issue with stockpiles/docks
  
• Added option to open or close a dock to foreign merchants
  
• Added new attack tower range indicator
  
• Attack tower ranges stop increasing after 8 blocks high (while you can still build ultra tall towers if you want, this eliminates the degenerate strategy where a super tall central tower covers the entire map)
  
• Re-tune viking invasion progression, will also appear a little earlier
  
• Fix input boxes mysteriously taking keyboard focus
  
• Ability to rename transport ships
  
• Added more new sound effects
  
• Libraries cost more gold to build
  
• Small optimizations
  
• Add Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch localization (thank you translators!)

Going forward we’ll be prioritizing new content for the mid and late game experience. Right now we’re working on some new large buildings for our next update (cathedral, bathhouse, great library).



Until next time,
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,
We’re excited to announce the new Merchants and Ports update is now available! Thanks to all the people who tried out and provided feedback on the beta, we could not have done it without you. Also special thanks to our translators!

As always, if you have any feedback or bugs to report, or any trouble post in the forums or come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Here's what’s new:

You can now play on small, medium, or large maps. Medium maps are slightly larger than the original map size, and large maps have about twice the buildable tiles that medium maps do. You can also choose between island biased or land biased maps. There is also now a concept of deep water vs. shallow water. Deep water cannot be built on or crossed except by boat.

We’ve reworked the simulation code so you can now have multiple settlements completely separated by deep water.

But how do you start a new settlement? Try building a...

You can now build outposts on land that is separated by deep water from your original settlement. You’ll find the Outpost in the new Maritime tab. Placing an Outpost is how you start a new settlement, and it comes with some starting wood, stone, and food - much like when you place your first keep.
Note: Outpost are not available on maps with just a single landmass (i.e. all old maps without deep water).

Now you’ve got a new settlement, how do you transport goods between them? First build a…

Docks can be placed adjacent to or in shallow water. You can set the amount of resources you want the dock to prepare to ship out (and also lock the resources so other workers won’t take stuff you intend to export).

Once at least one dock is built, you can look forward to…

Every so often merchant ships from afar will arrive at one of your docks. You can buy and sell them goods from you dock. Occasionally they will offer special permanent upgrades to your kingdom, so keep a lookout!

Now that we’ve got some docks, let’s get some shipping routes set up between our islands with...

Once you have at least two docks, Transport Ships can be used to move goods from dock to dock. You can program them with your docks as destinations and what to pick up and drop off. Use them to set up shipping routes to transport goods around your kingdom.

But you’ll want to make sure they can reach their docks, so you may need to replace some bridges with…

These automatically open to allow ships to pass through.

But with all these new buildings, you’ll probably want more control over what workers are doing, so check out the new…


Re-prioritize jobs per island by dragging and dropping the the jobs in the order you want them filled. Jobs at the top will be filled first by idle workers, or if you have no idle workers, people will leave jobs at the bottom. You can also mass open and close entire building types per island.

• You can now rename any building, just click on the little edit button next to its title
  
• Reworked UI a bit and how resource tooltips are accessed (now you click on them to view the info).
  
• Tax rate is now set on the UI in the bottom left rather than on the Treasure rooms
  
• Lots of new sound effects
  
• You can now specify specific desired amounts of resources per stockpile. Anything above the amount you have specified will be removed by people seeking resources.
  
• Granaries now employ more people, but those people help bring in the grain and can carry twice as much as farmers (much like market workers).
  
• Library, Church, and Tavern provide bonus happiness in a radius as before, but you just need to build a certain amount of them rather than requiring you to provide total coverage. The happiness ui explains more in-game.
  
• Other small tweaks and tuning to worker counts and bonuses
  
• Fixed bug where villagers would sometimes not collect bread from bakers even if they were hungry
  
• Fix for Gates not visually closing when vikings are near
  
• Lots of other small fixes and tweaks
  
• Optimizations to loading time for save games.
  
• Optimizations to many other game systems, most notably pathfinding (and more on the way)

Now that this update is out we’ll working on the next update right away! We’ll announce more soon, but look forward to a ‘Creative/Sandbox Mode’ coming next!

Thanks!
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,
We’re excited to announce the new Merchants and Ports update is now available! Thanks to all the people who tried out and provided feedback on the beta, we could not have done it without you. Also special thanks to our translators!

As always, if you have any feedback or bugs to report, or any trouble post in the forums or come chat with us on discord: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Here's what’s new:

You can now play on small, medium, or large maps. Medium maps are slightly larger than the original map size, and large maps have about twice the buildable tiles that medium maps do. You can also choose between island biased or land biased maps. There is also now a concept of deep water vs. shallow water. Deep water cannot be built on or crossed except by boat.

We’ve reworked the simulation code so you can now have multiple settlements completely separated by deep water.

But how do you start a new settlement? Try building a...

You can now build outposts on land that is separated by deep water from your original settlement. You’ll find the Outpost in the new Maritime tab. Placing an Outpost is how you start a new settlement, and it comes with some starting wood, stone, and food - much like when you place your first keep.
Note: Outpost are not available on maps with just a single landmass (i.e. all old maps without deep water).

Now you’ve got a new settlement, how do you transport goods between them? First build a…

Docks can be placed adjacent to or in shallow water. You can set the amount of resources you want the dock to prepare to ship out (and also lock the resources so other workers won’t take stuff you intend to export).

Once at least one dock is built, you can look forward to…

Every so often merchant ships from afar will arrive at one of your docks. You can buy and sell them goods from you dock. Occasionally they will offer special permanent upgrades to your kingdom, so keep a lookout!

Now that we’ve got some docks, let’s get some shipping routes set up between our islands with...

Once you have at least two docks, Transport Ships can be used to move goods from dock to dock. You can program them with your docks as destinations and what to pick up and drop off. Use them to set up shipping routes to transport goods around your kingdom.

But you’ll want to make sure they can reach their docks, so you may need to replace some bridges with…

These automatically open to allow ships to pass through.

But with all these new buildings, you’ll probably want more control over what workers are doing, so check out the new…


Re-prioritize jobs per island by dragging and dropping the the jobs in the order you want them filled. Jobs at the top will be filled first by idle workers, or if you have no idle workers, people will leave jobs at the bottom. You can also mass open and close entire building types per island.

• You can now rename any building, just click on the little edit button next to its title
  
• Reworked UI a bit and how resource tooltips are accessed (now you click on them to view the info).
  
• Tax rate is now set on the UI in the bottom left rather than on the Treasure rooms
  
• Lots of new sound effects
  
• You can now specify specific desired amounts of resources per stockpile. Anything above the amount you have specified will be removed by people seeking resources.
  
• Granaries now employ more people, but those people help bring in the grain and can carry twice as much as farmers (much like market workers).
  
• Library, Church, and Tavern provide bonus happiness in a radius as before, but you just need to build a certain amount of them rather than requiring you to provide total coverage. The happiness ui explains more in-game.
  
• Other small tweaks and tuning to worker counts and bonuses
  
• Fixed bug where villagers would sometimes not collect bread from bakers even if they were hungry
  
• Fix for Gates not visually closing when vikings are near
  
• Lots of other small fixes and tweaks
  
• Optimizations to loading time for save games.
  
• Optimizations to many other game systems, most notably pathfinding (and more on the way)

Now that this update is out we’ll working on the next update right away! We’ll announce more soon, but look forward to a ‘Creative/Sandbox Mode’ coming next!

Thanks!
-Pete & Michael

Hi Everyone,

Hope you're all having a good new year so far! The beta version of our latest update is now available for testing in the next-version-preview branch here on steam. The major features to look for are bigger maps, merchant ships, transport ships, independent islands, and a job priority system.

We've been hot-patching the beta a few times a week and fixing bugs as people report them, but remember this update is a beta so there are likely more bugs we have yet to squash. Thanks to everyone who has tested so far!

Here's how to try it:

• Select Kingdoms and Castles in your library, right click it and hit properties.
  
• In the menu that pops up click the "Betas" tab.
  
• Select "next-version-preview-" in the dropdown menu. Your game will update to the latest beta of the new update.
  
• NOTE: No code is necessary

Leave feedback in the forums here or on discord here: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles

Hi Everyone,

Hope you're all having a good new year so far! The beta version of our latest update is now available for testing in the next-version-preview branch here on steam. The major features to look for are bigger maps, merchant ships, transport ships, independent islands, and a job priority system.

We've been hot-patching the beta a few times a week and fixing bugs as people report them, but remember this update is a beta so there are likely more bugs we have yet to squash. Thanks to everyone who has tested so far!

Here's how to try it:

• Select Kingdoms and Castles in your library, right click it and hit properties.
  
• In the menu that pops up click the "Betas" tab.
  
• Select "next-version-preview-" in the dropdown menu. Your game will update to the latest beta of the new update.
  
• NOTE: No code is necessary

Leave feedback in the forums here or on discord here: https://discord.gg/kingdomsandcastles