We greet you, Lords and Ladies,

As you may have noticed, we released a content update for Lords & Villeins recently. Thanks to your ongoing support and your feedback, we were able to identify lot number of issues and balancing problems, which we fixed immediately and are sending the hotfix to you right now!

If you manage to find anything else that should get our attention, please share your feedback with us either on our Discord server or start a discussion here on Steam! Thank you very much for keeping your eyes open and communicating with us what should be improved! We hope you enjoy this update!

Note: saves that were started in the previous version (0.17.16) are compatible with this patch and you don't have to start a new game!

Full Changelog:

Functional Bug Fixes

• Missing notification about a domesticated animal dying
  
• Added fix that prevents servants to wear jewelry
  
• Added missing ability of caravans to purchase animals from the player
  
• Crash sometimes caused when an arrow was shot
  
• Crash related to storing ground resources after a save was loaded once
  
• Bug preventing bakers to make pies
  
• Bug with wild animals not being generated in correct amounts throughout time
  
• Bug preventing service fees to be paid and subsequently blocking other purchases
  
• Villager getting stuck when charging at an enemy
  
• Crash related to an inventory capacity being violated
  
• Bugs related to relocating and feeding fainted villagers
  
• Bug causing villagers to teleport when running away from crime
  
• Bug causing all animals of certain herd to leave the map after a save file was loaded
  
• Bug with fighting state machine that could cause vandalism to be stuck in a loop after a save file was loaded
  
• Crash related to removing prisoner from jail, possibly preventing them to be freed properly
  
• Reputation gains and losses by imprisoning and releasing were inverted
  
• Crash related to a villager planning to go on a date with a villager that experienced death during this time
  
• Bug causing villagers to be stuck in a loop of dropping repair kits
  
• Bug incorrectly tracking church zones when they are removed
  
• Bug causing villagers to collect fertilized eggs and preventing chicken to reproduce
  
• Bug causing same-sex couples rolling for adoption chance twice, effectively doubling adoption probability over the intended value
  
• Crash that could randomly occur during fighting
  
• Bug preventing regiments to leave after they have been sent to war
  
• Bug preventing construction on certain clay area as a result of faulty map generator
  
• Visual bug of the execution display when rotated forward while executing teenagers
  
• Missing inventory type allocation for pies
  
• Several crashes related to loading a save file
  
• Crash related to expelling a family
  
• Bug causing animals to get stuck when left on a door tile
  
• Bug causing any type of bench being considered as jail bench if placed inside of the jail
  
• Bug causing clergy not purchasing what they need
  
• Bug causing foragers to harvest trees before they are fully grown
  
• Bug causing some items to load invisible
  
• Bug causing ruling family to not study reading and writing
  

UI Bug Fixes

• Create New button persisting through other pages of the population book
  
• UI crash caused by an attempt to remove an animal from market listing
  
• UI crash caused by a person dying when clergy tab was selected in the warehouse book
  
• Incorrect amounts of consumed resources accumulated in the accounting reports
  
• Bug with scrolling the family tree in the population book
  
• Bug caused in tenure selection when a family of already existing last name was generated (we will be expanding the name list in future versions to avoid duplicates further).
  
• Bug of randomly disappearing portraits in the population book
  
• Bug incorrectly displaying cooking ingredient demand in the warehouse book
  
• Bug causing requested soldiers to not be shown in the king report screen when it is first generated
  
• Beehive displaying honey instead of honey comb
  
• Floors were not displaying deterioration status in their tooltip
  
• Fixed visuals of the variations for the good bed and good double bed assets
  
• Overflowing UI element of the structure tooltip in the zone quick build context menu
  
• Updated the king speech bubble text scaling to prevent text cutoffs in certain chapters
  
• Misplaced yellow button highlight during tutorial in the build menu
  

Optimizations

• Improved texture management and disposal to significantly reduce memory usage.
  
• AI now has capacity to better organize among the family members by dynamically assigning roles. First role implemented was the purchaser who will collect all of the money the family owns and will heavily prioritize purchasing until it is no longer possible to buy things or all things have been bought. This should significantly reduce inefficiencies of the market where families would repeatedly go home to drop money and collect more money again because their plans had to change, or swap with another family member who ended up prioritizing it instead of them.
  
  
  
  • As a downside it is now more difficult to seize money from families because they are keeping them reserved in their pockets for most of the day and during that time they are not visible in the warehouse book. This will be addressed in future major updates.
    
  
  

Balancing Changes

• Reduced chance of pregnancy for most animals and reduced also the frequency of procreation to provide more sustainable growth
  
• Resources taxed by the king are now penalized in prioritization for the purpose of eating and refilling the feeder (they may still be used if there is no better option)
  
• Probability of pregnancy for humans is now reduced only by the amount of living children (previously it would also reduce it by all children, including those already passed away).
  
• Removed limitation for servant laborers to pick fruits only by one person. Regular families remain limited to prevent fruit picking to be too disruptive to their regular duties.
  
• Added cap for thieves to not steal more than 5 gold worth of valuables, prioritizing money when stealing.
  
• Rebalanced happiness and mood to provide smoother experience. Main changes include:
  
  
  • Player Reputation plays less of a significant role in reducing the happiness of people
    
  • Relationship with families also reacts to happiness a lot less aggressively, meaning it is less likely to drop due to people being somewhat unhappy. This also applies to nobles and it should increase the ability to keep them.
    
  • Significantly reduced negative impact on happiness for providing low pay to soldiers and servants (i.e. going lower than the default value).
    
  • Impact of the beauty need has been increased to promote the need for better housing of nobles. However, peasants beauty need is still satisfied relatively easily compared to nobles so this change should not impact peasants.
    
  • Reduced impact of ruler family members not knowing reading or writing
    
  • Increased impact of happiness penalties for nobles when they sleep in a low quality bed or eat normal meal.
    
  • In general, as long as peasants have food, heat, some kind of household with furniture and any kind of bed, their happiness should remain relatively high.
    
  
  
• Updated balancing of carpenters and architects:
  
  
  • Time to produce repair kits have been doubled to reduce resource consumption and the resulting financial liquidity imposed on these families.
    
  • Price for a basic repair kit has been increased by about 150% to reflect the slower time to produce them and make them more profitable in general. Advanced repair kits kept their price since they were already expensive enough.
    
  
  
• Updated balancing for military requests:
  
  
  • Reduced sizes of regiments requested by about 35%
    
  • The first soldier request will now arrive one year later than it currently did
    
  • Reduced the variance in regiment size requested to be more predictable and sustainable
    
  • Regiment requests will not increase in difficulty unless the player completes a certain minimum percentage equal to the threshold to receive additional favor points from the royals.
    
  • Reduced time for regiments to be away for war before the war outcome resolves to 50 - 70 days (roughly a year from previously 1 to 3 years).
    
  
  
• Updated jailors and guards:
  
  
  • Jailors can now feed fainted prisoners so they don't die as a result of hunger.
    
  • Freeing a criminal and bringing them to the execution display can now also be performed by guards
    
  • Jail benches and jail chairs no longer require carpenter to be built
    
  
  
• Increased the size of families generated through the favor point system by an additional generation.
  
• Increased probability of mutual interest and requesting marriage after dating to increase the frequency of marriage requests.
  
• Structures that are built or repaired are set to a random HP between 90-100%. This will space out their deterioration and make it easier to be maintained.
  
• Grapes will no longer be requested by the royal tax since they can not be easily obtained from clergy.
  

Quality of Life Improvements

• Added new Wattle Fence Gate asset that does not require carpenters to be built
  
• Added new Brick and Crude Wood floor assets, costing 1 Brick and 1 Wood respectively
  
• Added new storages
  
  
  • Drawer as a smaller version of the Cabinet
    
  • Small Barrel as a smaller version of the Barrel
    
  • Ground Depository as a smaller version of the Ground Storage
    
  • Small Shelves as a smaller version of the Shelves
    
  • Rusty Bookcase as a smaller version of the Bookcase
    
  
  
• These storages do not require carpenter and have capacity equal to the existing larger equivalents. The current storages had their capacity and construction cost increased, but they now also require carpenter to be built.
  
• Added storage capacity in KG displayed in the storage tooltip.
  
• Added notification when a monk is initiated. This notification also corresponds with a bishop and minister being assigned as that happens immediately with the first two monks initiated.
  
• Added shortcut button in the storefront context menu, which will open the buy tab with a family operating the storefront selected