The top highlights of the update were revealed in a blog post last week but, just in case you missed it, we’ve repeated that information below along with many additional tweaks, fixes and improvements.

Important Notes

“No save games were harmed in the making of this patch!”

Feel free to start a new campaign or pick up one of your saved games, it won’t break with the patch. However, please make sure you don’t have any mods enabled, otherwise compatibility cannot be guaranteed.

(However, if you do wish to continue using the current version of the game for your mods, you can do so by right clicking Thrones of Britannia in your Steam library, selecting Properties and then Betas and choosing the allegiance_patch option in the drop-down menu)

Mac and Linux

The Steel & Statecraft Update has been deployed today for PC. The update is also being developed by Feral Interactive for the Mac and Linux versions of the game. We’ll update you on the deployment date for that as soon as it’s confirmed.

Update 14/1/2019

Today, we deployed a patch to fix a couple of issues that had been identified after release of the Steel & Statecraft Update for Thrones of Britannia.

Here’s a list of the fixes:

Traits that are gained and lost within the same turn (due to dynamic pair groups cancelling one another out) are no longer displayed in the UI event log.

The technology Melee Specialists for Viking Sea Kings now applies its effect as intended.

The political dilemma Oh look! A butterfly! Isn’t that glorious? choices have been balanced (from +1 Loyalty to -1 Loyalty)

In the God’s Will dilemma, appeasing the church now increases the hiring cost of units instead of lowering it.

Fixed an issue which prevented players with legacy save games from recruiting technology-unlocked units after the Steel & Statecraft Update.

Fixed an issue which made the Mycel Haeben Here and Legendary General achievements harder to obtain than intended.

Fixed a UI issue with the preview of the new battle maps.

Fixed a crash related to annexing factions with Gaelic Kingdoms.

Fixed a crash related to armies sallying out of certain settlements.

Estates Overhaul

The purpose of Estates was to add challenges in managing a kingdom where each noble is playing the game of intrigue, looking to grab more power and land for themselves. However, the system didn’t have as much impact as we’d have liked, which is why Estates have received a rework to better represent a king granting land to his more important lords, thus ensuring their devotion to the crown. With the power of land ownership comes a responsibility for the owner to properly tend to his holdings – each Estate will offer a positive effect if given to the proper lord, or a negative one if the noble is not suited to presiding over such lands.

The nobles in turn do not sit idly, hoping for deeds to fall in their lap. The Estate Desire traits, which characters previously gained, have been replaced with requests, directed towards the crown in the form of missions. Every so often a lord in your faction will ask to be granted Estates, offering a reward in return. But if you deem the noble ineligible or sense malicious intent, and you ignore their request, their loyalty will start to waiver.

We’ve added more weight to managing your Estates, and to help with that we’ve reorganized the Estates interface. Each lord will list the effects that they provide from Estates they own. Moving Estates around has been made easier – clicking on an Estate will grant it to the selected character on the left. Beware, however, of dealing with Estates that are not in the king’s possession – nobles are quite attached to their lands and will rarely part with them without repercussions.

Traits

Traits depict the story of each character; their upbringing, their personality and the events that have occurred in their lifetime. Sifting through each character’s history can be cumbersome, which is why we’ve stacked traits into groups. Each trait group is now represented by a banner, with all effects of the traits within listed underneath. Clicking on a banner will list all traits within that group, giving a detailed account of the noble’s qualities.

As mentioned previously, each trait group will list how it affects a character’s Estates. The group with the most traits will be marked with a large yellow icon, showing the lord’s dominant characteristics and what effects they grant to the noble’s land ownership.

Recruitment Revamp

Recruitment in Thrones of Britannia is chance based, similar to the way in which mercenaries worked in previous titles. While it’s an interesting challenge to build armies with imperfect composition and size, it has downsides too, such as elite units appearing scarcely, and losing your painstakingly assembled army can be a devastating blow to your campaign.

We’ve replaced this chance-based system with cooldowns. When a unit type is recruited, there’s now a set number of turns before another becomes available. This retains the sense of choice limitation, but rewards planning and removes the random punishment of not having enough units simply because they didn’t appear in the recruitment pool.

The time it takes to build a full army can be lengthy, so recruitment events have been added, granting a quick supply of units to help with defending territories, or adding a helpful push to your conquering.

Buildings, technologies and faction mechanics have all received new effects to improve the recruitment times of units. We’ve also eased the unlock requirements of military technologies, to make meaningful choices in army management more accessible.

General patch notes

Politics

Political Difficulty Slider

For more challenge or to avoid meddling in politics too much, players now have the option to adjust the political difficulty of the game (separately from Campaign and Battle difficulty).

Secure Loyalty Tweaks

We’ve rebalanced the existing secure loyalty dilemmas and added a few new ones.

The system will now take into account the political power (Influence and Loyalty) of the target character and give the player an appropriate set of choices.

‘Torture’ is no longer the go-to way to express appreciation to highly loyal, long-time battle-brethren!

Buildings

Alternative Building Paths

Players now have the option to specialise their villages in one of two directions.

All village buildings have been updated to branch out right at the beginning (level 2) rather than at their last level. The old building paths have been left unchanged (save for some balance tweaks), to make it easier for existing players.

New building icons have been added to represent buildings with dual sources of income (e.g. CHURCH/COMMERCE).

Balance Changes

The effects of certain buildings have been tweaked to make each building a viable choice.

Church Crafts building now grant a bonus to income from LEAD villages.

Church Crafts now grants income (CHURCH), instead of modifying it.

Round Tower has been buffed to have half the maintenance cost and twice the buff to income (CHURCH).

Bullaun’s public order buff has been doubled.

Book of Traits (Trait Browser)

With the added importance of character traits, we believe there is more purpose to managing your characters, seeking their best development. All traits present in the game are now listed in the Book of Traits along with the condition of their acquisition.

The details of a trait will be locked until the player acquires that trait for the first time. (We still want players to experiment and discover traits on their own, but unlocked trait information will now be readily available)

The Book of Traits is persistent between campaigns, allowing players to hunt for a specific trait in a later playthrough.

Environment

New Major Settlement Maps

Map 1 – based on Bebbanburg Castle (used in-game for Bebbanburg and Eidenburg)

Map 2 – based on Rock of Cashel (used in-game for Caisil and Grianán Aileach)

New Viking and Anglo-Saxon Buildings

All settlement maps (both major ones and villages) have been updated to include new buildings.

Viking Gatehouse

Viking Long Hall

Viking Turf-roof Hall

Viking Drinking Hall

Viking House 1

Viking House 2

Viking House 3

Viking House 4

Anglo-Saxon Chieftains House

Anglo-Saxon Great Hall (under construction)

Texture Updates

Old roman fortifications now have unique textures that properly represents the building materials and techniques used for their construction and repairs.

Battle

General Attributes in Custom Battles

Players can now increase the attributes of their general (Command and Zeal) in custom battles. This costs army funds, not unlike experience upgrades of units.

The general’s ability is now chosen from a drop-down menu.

This addresses the issue of bodyguard units being too small in size and weak (in Thrones of Britannia bodyguard unit-size scales with Command).

Battle AI Improvements

Defending AI in sieges improved to respond better to attackers.

Improved unit selection and prioritization on walls to favour missile units when fortified position is not under threat.

Improved unit allocation to threatened sections of walls and breaches to favour heavy infantry.

Updated siege equipment and wall gap pathfinding.

Performance Optimization

Improved the general performance in battles, especially during sieges

Unit ‘stutter’ decreased significantly.

Visual Enhancements

Added ocean shader foam and edge

Added (optional) vignette and film grain post processing effects

Added (optional) god ray effects

UI Improvements

Governors and Estates

This window has been redesigned to make it easier to use. Simply select a character and then the Estate/province you want them to have.

Notifications

The notification system UI has been redesigned to improve its readability and ease of use.

The notifications are now located at the bottom right corner and can be ‘snoozed’, hiding them completely until they are needed again.

Miscellaneous

There’s now a large faction emblem present on the screen which opens the ‘Faction’ window. (similar to how it works in Rome 2). The old Faction button now simply redirects to the ‘Family Tree’ tab.

All missions now have a ‘Zoom to location’ functionality, giving players a more detailed information about the target.

The art element used for armies on the campaign map has been tweaked slightly to make armies a bit easier to distinguish from settlements.

Players can now choose to minimize the window with an overlay option that appears when the Space key is pressed, so it doesn’t block their view on the battlefield.

During battles, there’s now an alert when the model count of the general’s bodyguard unit falls below 40% (which makes the general himself vulnerable).

Shield Castle now properly articulates that units in this stance tire at reduced rate.

Mod Support

The Recruitment window can now accommodate any number of custom units (with a scroll-bar).

Retail pack files now contain exported binaries for all basic UI components, in addition to the already existing composite templates.

Other Changes

Inactive Achievements

Fixed certain achievements that become unobtainable with the Allegiance Update.

Stone of Destiny Missions

Rewards increased significantly.

Other Fixes