Norland

14 Ιουλίου

Big Summer Update: Politics, Economy and Architecture

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23

Greetings, everyone. Dmitry here.

The Big Summer Update is being moved from the beta branch to the live build today. It is our most significant upgrade since Early Access began, merging months of systems work, balance tuning, and new content into the main game. Lords now trade in gold, city management gains its first complete set of buildings, and politics shapes local decisions. Warehouses track spoilage, armies choose their loyalties, and modular housing lets you refit entire districts.

Your Feedback Is Important

After you spend time with the new build, we'd appreciate it if you left a Steam review. Even a short comment on what works, what stalls, or what you want next helps us focus our small team’s effort. We read every report and fold that feedback directly into the next patch.

Thank you for playing and for helping us keep the work on target. As usual, old saves are compatible. You can join us in the Norland community to ask questions, chat, or report any issues you might have on Discord, Reddit, and, of course, the Steam forums. We also have the Norland wiki to help answer questions.

Norland Midweek Deal

Norland is also on sale during a Midweek Deal for 35% off. A perfect time to get into (ig)noble festivities.

New Economy

Lords’ Gold

Some of our features looked odd for a reason—they were placeholders for better times. That time has come.

Now, lords have gold, which ties them to the main economy. All tasks and rewards are now valued in gold.

Lords independently buy rings, which they use for gifts, while politicians spend gold to increase their influence (more on that below). Soon, we’ll add other luxury items besides rings.

We’ve reworked thoughts and desires related to rings and removed some (like ring desires).

When loading saves, lords’ rings will be converted to gold.

New Resource Allocation Menu

We’ve combined the production and finance menus into one, task-based interface. Now, you can directly distribute resources like food and alcohol to your subjects without needing to sell them. However, selling is still an option, as is paying wages the old way—though now it requires research.

Characters will buy food and alcohol from caravans if they run short (migrants and warriors still bring gold, so if you don’t want it flowing to caravaneers, you can start internal trade).

City Mechanics

We still need to finish drawing some residential buildings, but for now, we’re rolling out the first batch of city-building mechanics to let you focus more on city design.

Storage

Warehouses now have fixed capacity by resource category (categories include food, crops, weapons, resources, liquids). Overfilled resources will spoil. Food always spoils, and there’s a separate granary for it with reduced spoilage. Weapons are now stored in a secure armory (its sturdy doors will hinder rebellious peasants).

This allows us to display resources in warehouses, with quantities updating as they fill (although you will see this in the next update, the system currently requires optimization).

Don’t worry—the cloud structure remains (resources are automatically distributed across warehouses), so no extra micromanagement is added.

Builders are now hired in a separate new building, by the way.

Distance and Linked Buildings Display

When selecting a production building, you’ll now see where its workers live and the nearest warehouse they access for resources. This helps optimize building placement. By the way, peasants and prisoners now settle more accurately near their workplaces.

Politics

This long-awaited mechanic wraps up our vision for the local map. It’s still in progress and will improve significantly over the next couple of weeks, but you can already try it out.

Now, one or two lords on your local map may become politicians if their loyalty drops. They spend their money to gain influence among other lords, warriors, the bishop, and neighboring kings. If they clash with the king, they’ll demand the crown, threatening a rebellion with their allies.

Hostile lords no longer bribe every lord indiscriminately but target politicians specifically. If politicians rebel, hostile lords will send armies to aid them (by the way, we’ve reworked the bribery algorithm—it now happens in response to your aggressive actions, not constantly).

On the plus side, politicians’ ambitions give them a 30% bonus to experience gain, so they can be very useful as long as relations are good.

This is a large and complex feature, and it’s quite rough around the edges, so we’re particularly interested in your feedback on it first and foremost. Thank you!

Army Loyalty

Who will warriors support during a rebellion? Fanatics back the bishop (and whoever the bishop supports), loyalists back the king. Others may support a politician who proved their valor in battle or bribed them through special sermon-speeches. The mechanic is still in progress (currently, support is a total percentage, but soon it’ll be individualized per warrior).

Overall, politicians bring tactical planning to the local map—it now matters who is friends with whom, which warriors back whom, and who supports whom.

Experience Improvements

Since politicians add complexity, we’ve eased some punishing mechanics for balance.

Among others:

Heirs won’t start rebellions—only politicians will.
Buildings no longer burn to the ground and can always be restored.
Field costs in the tech tree are reduced,
The matriarch is happier with fanatics in your kingdom (Except, as usual, for the hardcore level. Here, we’re thinking about how to make your life tougher in the late game!),
Family relations have a bigger bonus.
We have also added a stronger reconciliation option on the global map, which will allow alliances to develop more quickly.
Ceremonies and sermons in temples now, as in the old days, take place in the morning (so as not to distract characters from their evening activities).
No more than 3 vagabonds can now appear per day. This will prevent the situation in the late game where the number of criminals could start growing at a very high rate. (And yes, we know the current population limit feels artificial. We’ll fix it properly and elegantly later—for this, we need to refine trade and the economy so that it’s more beneficial to grow cities through professional specialization rather than population size.)
And we now also display all your created units at the bottom for easier access.

New Architecture

Save compatibility

First, I want to say that all saves are compatible. However, since we’re changing the level topology, some buildings will be removed from the map and placed into the construction menu, from where you’ll need to place them again — for free, of course.

You will also receive wood and gold as compensation for relocating other buildings and roads.

New residential buildings

We’re removing the peasant family house, the dormitory, and the soldier barracks, and introducing a universal residential building for these types of subjects (In other words, warriors now live in these residential houses, but there is a checkbox that prioritizes assigning suitable housing to warriors.)

This new housing type has three variants, each with five levels. The first three increase capacity from 2 to 6 people, while the last two increase housing comfort, which affects residents' mood. These last two levels are similar to individual peasant houses but serve up to six people (though overall, the new residential buildings house fewer people).

New hall and Lord's townhouses

The hall has been expanded and now includes a throne, kitchen, and a royal bedroom (though we haven't yet taught the king to sleep there).

We have also added new lord residential houses, expanded them by adding a reception room and a larger marital bed. Spouses also don’t live together yet (As this requires reworking a large number of mechanics, such as adultery, lockpicking, etc.) but that’s coming soon.

New market and tavern

In the narrow, walled medieval city, streets were tight, and the social architectural unit was the plaza. We’ve now added plazas with a market and tavern.

New map grid

Since building sizes have increased, we’ve doubled the construction grid size. Buildings placed very close together won’t block residents completely, but moving between them will slow them down, and they’ll seek wider streets.

Building influence on housing comfort

Housing comfort now depends not only on the building’s quality but also on its neighbors — other housing, the hall, and social buildings add comfort, while industrial buildings reduce it.

New map topology

After talking to the community and keeping in mind the reduced population density per square meter, we’ve significantly cleared space in the center of almost all game maps. We also moved some of the mines a bit closer to the center. Build with peace of mind.

Auto-Knowledge Learning

By community request – when assigning a lord to study knowledge, there's now a checkbox for auto-learning. If enabled, the lord will automatically begin studying the next available knowledge once the current one is finished.

Close-up view mode

Now when zooming in, roofs are removed only from central buildings, making the view feel cozier.

Unfortunately, the army menu didn’t make it into this update — we needed to fix a few bugs. We’ll release it to beta soon.

Full Changelog:

New

New mechanic — warehouse capacity and resource spoilage.
New buildings added: "Builders' Camp", "Granary", "Armory".
A technology has been added for constructing the Granary and Armory.
Starting resources have been adjusted when launching a new game or tutorial.
A new advice message warns that resources ripening in the fields might not fit in the warehouses after harvest.
New mechanic — resource distribution.
The production and finance menus have been merged into the new Economy menu.
A technology "Salaries" has been added, allowing gold salaries to be paid to town residents. Requires 30 residents.
A technology has been added for constructing the Market, Tavern, and Den. Requires knowledge level 9 and a population of 30.
If a player had a Market, Tavern, or Den in their save from a previous game version, they will automatically receive the "Internal Trade" and "Salaries" books after loading. The player's king will also receive the same knowledge.
The Market has been removed from the prebuilt structures at the start of a new game.
A positive thought "Visited a public place" has been added for residents who have been to the Market, Tavern, or Den.
Characters who have received food through resource distribution will no longer buy it on the Market.
New mechanic — Politicians.

Building

A grid is now displayed while building roads. Blocked tiles are highlighted during building placement.
Roofs are now visible during building blueprint placement.
Soldiers now settle in peasant houses. A checkbox “Prioritize for warriors” has been added to residential building menus.
Building shape selection for residential buildings is now done via a subcategory in the construction menu.
Free building placement mode is enabled when loading a save.
All starting local maps and the tutorial map have been updated — old buildings replaced with new ones.
All old buildings have been rebuilt so their entrances cannot be blocked by placing another building too close.
Neighboring buildings now affect the mood of the residents.
Players will receive +500 gold and +100 wood when loading a save to help with relocating building.

Balance

Migration thresholds have been lowered, as housing now gives residents an additional positive thought.
Reduced the strength of the positive thought from the Matriarch after destroying a bandit camp.
Gift thoughts are now stronger and last longer.
Bishops now receive a thought if there are no temples.
The “Empty Pockets” thought has been removed.
Caravan sale prices can no longer be negative.
Starting number of rings reduced to 5.
Hall food storage reduced from 300 to 250.
After the 7th bandit appears in a camp, a bandit with Command skill 7–9 may appear.
Bandit camp gear has been rebalanced.
Bishops now arrive with 500 gold.
Amount of wood from a chopped tree increased by 30%.
Road cost is now calculated per tile — each tile costs 4 coins.

Other changes:

AI will attempt to resettle an abandoned town only after 4 days following its destruction.
After a faction has been forced into neutrality, it will not create or join alliances for 2 days.
The placement location for the turnip field in the tutorial is now more noticeable.
Even if some migrants don’t reach the hall by 8:00, players will not receive a notification about them leaving due to closed gates, provided migration is allowed.
Heirs and low-loyalty lords will no longer start rebellions unless they are Politicians.
The building repair system has been reworked: previously, buildings were considered repaired at the start of repair; now they will remain broken until the repair is completed.
A new thought "Wealth" has been added. It appears when a resident has 31 or more coins.
The "Temple" technology now requires knowledge level 9 instead of 3.
The "Mine" technology now requires 20 residents to unlock.
The "Prisoner Maintenance" technology has been removed — the Prisoner Barracks can now be built from the start of the game.
Players will no longer receive a free book on temple construction when a bishop arrives.
Repairing burned buildings now costs wood instead of tools, and the amount is no longer dependent on the building’s level.
The "Burned completely" status has been removed — buildings can now be repaired even if fully burned.
Knights will now have the title Sir or Dame in their names.
The conditions for triggering a Wise Conversation during lord interactions have been adjusted.
If an order is placed to produce a very large quantity of resources, workers will consider their theoretical productivity and not take excess raw materials.
Fixed a bug where the absence of a bishop at the start of a religious rebellion caused all lords to join the rebels.
Fixed a bug where manual combat on the world map with no standing enemies made the battle unstartable.
Fixed a bug where a guest duelist provoking the player's lords into a duel triggered the matriarch’s anger toward the player.
Fixed a bug where any alcohol consumed by residents was incorrectly considered Moonshine.
Fixed a bug where the tooltip about a vassal being exempt from taxes due to troop use was incorrectly shown for the player’s ally instead of the vassal.

At 23:00, the economy report now includes a list of resources bought by residents from the caravan trader.
Warehouse overflow tips will not appear until a hall has been built.
Peasants and soldiers will buy medicine, food, and alcohol from the caravan trader if they can't find them in public distribution or local markets. Expensive goods like meat or ale are only bought if the character is wealthy (>45 coins) or no cheaper alternatives exist.
Traits “Greedy” (7 days without gold) and “Contemptuous” (10 days with 500+ gold) now depend on gold instead of rings.
Fixed a bug where old saves would show sell orders in the economy tab after loading.
Fixed a bug where lords could gain a nickname after a victorious battle even if they didn't participate.
Fixed a bug preventing players from sending certain lords and troops to the world map due to false uprising conditions.
Uprising quest now checks relationship status before the daily tick at 11:00 — resolving relations in time prevents the uprising.
If a bishop rebels, transferring the crown to another lord cancels the rebellion.
Recruited peasants receive their recruitment fee directly. Mercenaries receive one-third of their recruitment fee.
Auto-learning knowledge: checkbox added to lord assignment menu.
Fixed a bug where ropes and scaffolding wouldn’t display when building rotated structures.
Buildings can’t be demolished or moved while a fire is active in the city.
Fire no longer spreads to buildings that are not on adjacent tiles.
In the “A Lord Is Ready to Leave” quest on the world map, gold is now used instead of rings to persuade a foreign lord.
Hint for converting a lesser lord into a free lord now shows gold cost instead of rings.
Lord rewards are now paid from the treasury, not the king's own funds.

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