Hey all! v1.4 is now live on Humble and the main Steam branch. As promised in my previous update there have been some big changes to diplomacy, described in detail in my previous update and summarized below in the patch notes. The new goodies are still a bit rough and no doubt there are some exploits in there but Ill continue refining the mechanics in future updates. The basic idea is to make it possible to engage more proactively on the diplomatic scene and its now very much possible to get other leaders to do your bidding, especially the new minor tribes. On the other hand having your units or borders close to another leader will damage your relations with them so the bonuses you can earn through Emissaries and gifts might be necessary to keep your neighbors happy. Diplomacy is now very focused on war, but this feels appropriate for the dark ages. v1.4 also also includes fixes for several common crash bugs. If you run into any bugs please email me at contact@conifergames.com with a description of the issue and save files which reproduce it and Ill try to get things fixed in the next update. Unfortunately the changes in v1.4 are quite significant under the hood so old save files are no longer compatible. The new additions have also increased the turn times a bit more than I'd like and I'll be taking a look at that soon. In v1.5+ Ill be refining the diplomacy mechanics and focusing more on the AI so stay tuned for that as well. Thanks for your interest in the game and great feedback over the years! Its been a fun project and theres still more to come. - Jon -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------- v1.4 ---------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- MAJOR FEATURES - Diplomacy system has been greatly updated. 'Emissaries' and 'gifts' now allow Relationship Level (RL) and Influence to be improved with other leaders, and it's now fairly easy to get leaders to attack one another. Neutral structures have been replaced with minor tribes. Factions close to one another now have an RL penalty, representing the natural competition over land and influence, and the penalty increases with proximity. Good luck out there! MAJOR BUGS FIXED - Fixed common crash when bandits would capture an AI unit that belonged to an ongoing operation. - Fixed 'Update_ConfigButtons' crash in Professions Screen. - Fixed crash when unit captured from bandits could still hold onto an invalid BanditPillageTarget. MINOR BUGS FIXED - Fixed exploit where wraining a clan in a profession in the same discipline would give it a free level.

[ 2020-06-25 17:05:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey all, Ive decided to post my design plan for the diplomacy changes coming in v1.4 to give you an idea of whats on the horizon. Diplomacy is a tricky feature which requires a lot of playtesting to evaluate and so this is a fairly long-term project. When launching a new project I like to outline my goal in a single sentence and then break that down with some additional details plus a series of design pillars which together serve as instructions for what to pay attention to over the course of that project. This also helps keep scope from spiraling out of control, which is a common problem in game development. The v1.4 design plan also includes a Game Mechanics Summary section which outlines the most important gameplay changes that will be made. This summary will usually be broken down further before coding or art work begins, though sometimes its sufficient to start working on the game directly and from that point simply use playtesting as a guide for what needs further attention. Over time I often go back and tweak the plan but any deviations from it must be carefully considered and documented. Its really easy to lose track of important details if youre not diligent about keeping everything in one place! This is a really big deal with strategy games especially as they usually contain many overlapping systems. In total the design plan is a bit over 4 pages long and will give you a clear idea of what comes before coding and playtesting starts. Ive included a link both here and below to the design plan in Google Docs. Im linking to it rather than copying into this post because it looks a lot better in its native formatting. After v1.4 I have rough plans for a v1.5 which focuses on enhancing diplomacy further, with particular attention to the AI. v1.4 is a pretty big design shift and I want to make sure this foundation is working well before I start refining things too much. An unstable branch v1.3.2 update to fix some crash bugs will be going up in a couple weeks so stay tuned for that as well. Thanks again for playing AtG. Its been a really rewarding project to work on, and theres still more to come! - Jon LINK TO v1.4 DIPLOMACY DESIGN PLAN

[ 2020-04-10 13:12:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

v1.3 is now live on the main Steam branch and Humble dashboard! This update contains major AI upgrades, as well as fixes for several crash bugs which have been reported since v1.2 (in particular a really nasty one that happened after upgrading the caravan). v1.4 will be dedicated to diplomacy and more bugfixing. No exact ETA on this update yet but Ill be posting unstable branch updates every so often before the full version goes up. The best way to get in contact with me these days is by emailing contact@conifergames.com. If you run into a crash or notice a gameplay bug it would be great if you let me know so I can fix it. We have no dedicated QA and given how complex PC strategy games are I need your guys' help on this front in order to track things down. If you can send save files where you can reproduce the error, or exact instructions for how to make it happen again that's especially helpful. Thanks again for playing the game! It's great to still see people enjoying it now so many years after I started work on it. - Jon ------------------------------- ----------- v1.3 ------------ ------------------------------- MAJOR FEATURES - AI factions are now greatly improved when it comes to declaring war, launching invasions, training units, and exploring. - Can now select one of 4 difficulty levels before starting a game which affects how much food each clan eats (0.1 per turn up to 0.4 per turn). MAJOR BUGS FIXED - Fixed very common crash when loading a save file which became corrupted after upgrading the caravan. It is possible to continue old games affected by this bug by not upgrading the caravan. Not a perfect work-around, but it will keep the game going at least. - Can no longer form alliances with Roman factions. This was a bit of a loophole in the Roman diplo system, and doing so would result in crashes and weird states where you could attack your own units later. - Fixed crash during the end turn process when an army pillaged a city on top of another structure. GAMEPLAY TWEAKS - Bandits are now more aggressive. MINOR BUGS FIXED - Fixed bug where the food production upgrade for the Glassmaker, Glassblower, and Cooper weren't working. - Fixed bug where the angry bandits icon would remain on bandit camps and units after they were no longer angry. - Fixed typo in Roman Road description tag. - Fixed bug in diplo screen where diplomatic leverage would be hidden under diplo response buttons if there were too many buttons visible.

[ 2019-12-19 17:33:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

v1.2 is now available on Steam and Humble. This is the game's second big update, following v1.1's major improvements to the game's economy and balance back in May (see this post for more details). v1.2 focuses on improving the midgame, the Romans, and also adds a new 'clan list' screen which makes it much easier to keep track of your people. The Romans This is the main feature in v1.2, and makes the role of the Romans in the game much more prominent. Roman forts are now scattered throughout the map, and this ensures they have a presence pretty much everywhere and making it impossible to ignore them. Furthermore, they now visit you once per year after contact has been established, and behave a bit like an annoying older brother who expects you to bend the knee. You're welcome to ignore them, but fighting off their legions can be difficult in the early going, so don't be too reckless when treating with the emperor! There's still some more work I want to do with the Romans, particularly with making it rewarding to befriend them, as well as adding some mechanics to reduce their strength over time in order to shift the strategic dynamic and making it ever easier to either ignore or conquer them as time passes. This will be my primary task in v1.4, which is planned for later this year (v1.3 will be focused on the AI). Clan List Screen This new screen can be opened by pressing F10 or clicking on a button in the upper-right corner of the world screen. It shows all of your clans in a big Excel-like grid along with a bunch of useful information, and is especially handy for keeping track of clans which aren't in your settlement. Its also really useful for seeing who you can purchase upgrades for, and whos in a bad mood and needs your attention. Down the road I plan to make it possible to reorder the list by clicking on the various title categories, but for now the list order is based on when a clan joined you. I've also made some other small improvements to the UI, which you can read about in the in-game patch notes. Other Changes from v1.1 In case you missed it v1.1 was a pretty big update, and in addition to the two items above I've also tweaked some things since it was posted back in May. That update made the game much tougher, and I've dialed things back in v1.2. I've also made some other balance tweaks, like adding a bunch more stone to the map and making it possible to buy a lot more food from the caravan. I've also been steadily working on the game's bugs, particularly relating to out-of-memory issues and problems launching the Linux version. It's just me on the project at this point though and I'm sure there are still some problems out there. If you do run into any issues please let me know at contact@conifergames.com and I'll see if I can help figure out what's going on and find a solution. Future Plans The plan from here is to focus on improving the AI for a few months, then come back around to finishing up with the Romans. From there I'll be spending some time on diplomacy, and then finally adding some non-gameplay stuff like the ability to customize game setup options. I'll be posting on Steam, Kickstarter, and the AtG website every time a big update goes up, which I expect to be every couple months, although things will be a bit slower over the summer since Ill be taking some time off. I'm happy to answer any questions or help out in any way I can, so don't hesitate to reach out via contact@conifergames.com! Thanks for checking out AtG and I hope the continued support helps make the game better for you! - Jon

[ 2019-06-25 18:11:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

The first big gameplay update for AtG is now up on Steam and Humble. In this article I'll briefly cover what's included and what's coming up next.

What's in v1.1

Food & Difficulty To start with, the game is now much tougher. Coming up with the right numbers in a game filled with them is really tricky, but my approach with v1.1 is to err on the side of making things challenging. From a very early stage in development I prioritized storing food as turns, which meant it was very easy to keep track of how much you had left, but this came at the cost of making the system basically impossible to balance. If you built up a good stockpile of food early on this could carry you all the way to the end of the game, even as your food consumption grew exponentially higher. In the end I decided to finally bite the bullet and switch over to a normal stockpile system for food. This means how long you have left until starvation strikes is harder to predict but in every other way the game is now a lot more fun. v1.0 was too easy in many ways and as a game with strong survival elements that doesnt really work. So be prepared for the game to really challenge you now. The AI and diplomatic side of the game still need work, but in the meantime keeping your people fed will definitely offer a real challenge. The Caravan Improving the balance of the game required spending a lot of time rethinking how the caravan fit into the rest of the game. Being able to exchange one resource for any other can fundamentally make or break the entire game. The idea now is for the caravan to basically be the ancient-era equivalent of a stingy used car salesman, where you can probably find something that works well enough but you're probably going to spend more than you'd like and not get exactly what you want. Occasionally you'll come across a great deal, and it will be important to take advantage of those opportunities. The focus of the game is on your Clans and map resources, and ultimately I don't want the Caravan to overshadow those more interesting elements. In terms of specifics, what's available with each caravan upgrade level is now much more predictable, and the number of specials available during each visit is more manageable. With the previous design there was often all sorts of stuff going on and so it was hard to wrap your head around the system initially, but if you knew the game will enough you would spot the imbalanced elements pretty quickly and exploit them mercilessly. Things are a lot tighter now and its no longer possible to drive your entire economy through the caravan. The numbers are still a bit rough, but I'll be refining things in the months ahead. Pacing & Bugs Ive also spent some time grinding down some of the games rough edges. Clans were developing desires a bit too often, and the consequences for failing to satisfy them were too severe. Ive toned things down in both regards, especially the latter. Clans are now either interested or obsessed in their desire, and when simply interested you can usually (but not always) ignore them. If theyre obsessed though you probably need to start planning out a plan for reassignment. Previously there was a range of possible interest intensities that were hard to understand that usually just ended up with your people being mad at you very quickly. Overall the changes in v1.1 make for quite a noticeable improvement, especially now that other aspects of the game are tougher and require more attention. A number of bugs have also been fixed, though without a full-time QA team undoubtedly some remain in the game. If you spot anything thats not working correctly please send an email to contact@conifergames.com or report it in the Conifer bug reporting forum.

Plans for v1.2

v1.2 is planned to go up in late June, and is when I suggest jumping back into the game if you haven't played recently. This update will focus on making the Romans more interesting and adding a new clan management screen to help keep track of everyone. The Romans Now that the early game survival elements are in-place most of my time will be spent improving the mid-game. The plan is for the Romans to become a pretty regular presence in every game, kind of a big brother who likes to boss you around and either looks out for you or beats you up for defying him. Theyll ask you to do things for them to show your obedience, and while you're free to ignore these requests doing so might result in dire consequences based on their strength and proximity. The Romans will visit once per year in January, and every other visit will oscillate between making a request of some kind and then following up on it. So for example the emperor might ask for a large sum of treasure as tribute, note you have 24-ish turns to scrape it together, and then be on his way. As the year passes you can actually be attempting to muster this gift for him, build an army to defend yourself, or simply ignore him and hope for the best. There will also be rewards for playing along, so the right approach will depend on the game situation. Some of the details will ultimately be worked out during playtesting, but the design is basically ready to go and I'm in the process of programming everything now. I also have further plans for the Romans, including having them grow weaker over time, and incorporating them more fully into the diplomacy system, which will all be tackled later this year as I work on future updates. Screens v1.2 will also see the addition of a basic Clan Management Screen, which should help keep track of clans that aren't in your settlement. This will initially be pretty simple, but Ill be adding functionality over time. (Speaking of screens, the Caravan Screen has also seen received done much-needed improvement with v1.1, although I still have plans to make it easier to buy and sell resources at some point in the future.)

Plans for v1.3+

I'll be providing more details regarding future updates later this year but v1.3 and beyond will be mainly focused on improving the AI and diplomacy. As noted the behavior and mechanics of the Romans will also be fleshed out further, balance will be improved, and of course more bugs will be squashed. Ill be working on AtG full-time through the end of the year at least, so theres still a lot more good stuff to come. If you're curious as to what's going on with the game make sure to check out the unstable branch in Steam, as I typically update it every Friday except when Im on vacation. Thats it for now. If you have any questions about the game, whats being worked on, or whats coming up dont hesitate to ask! - Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

v1.1 Patch Notes

2019 May 31 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ MAJOR FEATURES - NOTE ... Save compatibility has been broken with this update. Old save games will no longer load. You can use the 'unstable_old' beta branch to finish an ongoing game before upgrading to this version. - Food is no longer stored as turns, but is a normal stockpiled resource like all others. Surplus food production no longer spoils. Players now start the game with only 5 turns of food, which will disappear quickly! - Starvation now results in the Mood of all Clans dropping by 1 per turn. All other penalties associated with starvation have been removed. If more than half of a player's Clans are Resentful when the turn ends the player will lose the game. - Increased clan family food cost from 0.2 to 0.3. This makes keeping everyone fed a fair bit tougher. You also now start with 10 food instead of 5. Each subsequent Family now joins a Clan in 10% less time than the previous one. Families now provide a Clan with a Combat Power bonus, but no Resource Production bonus, as this ended up breaking the game's economy and food balance. - Significantly rebalanced the cost and output of most Structures and several resource refinement Professions. - Rewrote logic for clan desires, which makes their start softer, makes 'milder' desires more likely, and adds a chance of desires fading away. - Rebuilt the core logic for the caravan resource availability system. The distribution of resources and the rate at which 'specials' are available should now be much better paced and balanced. - It's no longer possible to level up clans by spending Parchment, as this being possible skewed the economic pacing of the game too much. It is still possible to switch a clan to a different discipline. GAMEPLAY TWEAKS - Caravan now has its own stockpile of Treasure, and will only buy resources from the player up to that price. - Increased cost of upgrading the caravan. - Sell price for resources at the caravan is now fixed at 75% of the buy price. The sell values in XML are now ignored. - Number of caravan specials is now based on a percent of the total resources for sale, rather than a fixed count. - Reduced production of the Trading Depot (from 20 Treasure per turn to 15). - Rebalanced several economic Professions and their upgrades. Added a few new 'synergy' professions, which are all generally less powerful now. - Reduced Morale recovery to 10 per turn (previously 20). - Increased vision range of all units. - Increased Cloth cost of raising the popcap. - Increased Structure cost to 50 Timber or Stone Blocks. - Greatly increased the benefit provided by Warrior Profession Armor upgrades. - Clans no longer automatically level up to their Profession's level. - Clans now show up a bit more often. - Reduced chance of the 'Find a Warm Place' clan desire. - Noble clans no longer produce Fame. - Increased XP required to gain a Level in a Discipline. This means it will generally take longer to train Clans in the midgame. - Increased rate at which new Clans arrive. - Increased Cloth cost of increasing the Popcap. - Skipping the Settlement's turn now produces 1 Treasure and 1 Fame per resident Clan (previously always 5 Treasure). - Stone Structure Apprentices now produce as much as the base version of the Structure. Adding an Apprentice slot now costs 20 Boards and 10 Parchment. - Paths now increase movement speed by 3x. - Caravan price balancing. More to come. - All Plant and Mineral Resource Deposits now last for 24 turns (previously it was a mix between 24 and 18). - 'Resentful' Clan Mood is no longer permanent. - Free food goody hut result now provides 10 Food (previously 5). - Increased cost of Tinkerer to 30 Tools (previously 20). - Watchtower Apprentices now cost 20 Weapons (previously 5) and produce 20 Fame per turn (previously 5). - Cooper now provides 4x food (previously 2.5x) and costs 3 Boards per turn (previously 2). - Armor upgrades for Warrior Professions now provide a larger bonus. - Farmer upgrades now apply to Apiaries as well. - Increased production and cost of Woodcarver and Stonecarver. - Increased cost of founding kingdom to 50 Parchment (was 25) and Fame per turn for doing so to 20 (was 15). MINOR BUGS FIXED - Fixed rare crash in Goal AI. - Fixed crash where AI kill bandit camp operation would have a 'null' camp. - Fix for borders not visually updating after capturing structures. - Fix for crash when loading a save file when a 'new faction unlocked' notification was up. - Digger now immediately exhausts Deposits after degrading, similar to other foragers. - Minor text fixes. MISC - Resource stockpile now shows the current number of turns of food left, now that it's no longer automatically stored AS turns. - Brought back 'STARVATION' label in the resource stockpile panel. - Caravan Screen: re-ordered price and quantity labels, and softened gold-colored buttons for specials.

[ 2019-05-31 19:13:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

v1.0.1 is now live on the main branch in Steam and on Humble. Below is the full changelist relative to v1.0. You can also find the full update plan for AtG over on the forums. I'll be sticking with AtG for a while and will post an announcement here every time a major update is released. MAJOR BUGS FIXED - Fix for most out-of-memory crashes. - Fix for game not launching in Turkish. - Fix for main menu title theme music not playing. - Purchasing Food from the Caravan now provides a turn quantity based on current food consumption. This will make Food a much better value early compared with later in the game. - Fixed bug where capturing a Structure would result in it having no Borders afterwards. - Fixed crash that could randomly occur when starting a new game roughly 1 in 26 times caused by null character in map seed. - Fixed bug where the Huns and Avars were unable to train Horse Archers. - Possible fix for end turn button getting stuck down after alt-tabbing (or possibly clicking) out of the game. This would often show up as a huge increase in the amount of treasure a player had (and a greatly advanced number of turns). - Fix for infinite Treasure exploit when the Caravan would have a Resource on special but none for sale, resulting in the sell price being higher than the buy price. - Fixed bug where using the Fortify command to expand Borders wouldn't actually work if you gave your Settlement another order later in the turn. The effects of Fortifying are now instant. MINOR BUGS FIXED - Clans can no longer enter foreign Settlements or Cities. - Possible and purchased upgrades now disappear after retraining a Clan. - Can no longer train something and skip the Settlement's turn to generate free Treasure. - Fixed bug where victory screen would appear every turn after winning the game. - Added missing description text for Clan Moods. - Must now be in debug mode for the delete key to work. - Fixed minor text bugs. - Fixed Instructor description (claimed it cost 20 Parchment to use, when it's actually 50). - Fixed reference to 'EMPHASISed' in text string. MISC - Can now change display settings from the in-game options screen. - Improved Logging Camp description. - Tweaked link text colors to be more subtle.

[ 2019-02-22 16:04:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

v1.0.0.1 is now available in the new 'unstable' branch on Steam. This isn't the full v1.0.1 outlined in the update plan but it includes a few preliminary important fixes that will be rolled out to the main branch once it's been tested a bit. It took longer than expected to get this first patch out since the two big fixes (the out of memory crash and crashing on launch in Turkish) were both much tougher than expected, and on top of this I had to completely rewrite the game's build and publishing script post-launch (the Mono version of the game needed some critical surgery right before the release and the process for uploading builds had to be mostly redone from scratch as a result). On the plus side we've made a ton of progress on the memory issues, so crashes related to this should be much less common now. The executable location might be off for the Linux version unstable branch - if it doesn't launch just go back to the default branch and I'll have this fixed early next week. Once we've verified v1.0.0.1 is working for folks it'll be pushed to the default branch. With this annoying stuff out of the way now updates should roll out much more smoothly going forward. The new target date for v1.0.1 is February 15 on the unstable branch and February 22 for full release. - Jon

[ 2019-02-08 22:48:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Several updates are planned for At the Gates and each is outlined in brief below. You can also find a copy of the full tasklist for the game in this Steam forums thread. To report bugs or receive technical assistance we recommend visiting the official Conifer forums. v1.01 ... The first major patch, mainly focused on fixing serious bugs and gameplay issues immediately after release. Target date: 1-2 weeks after release. v1.1 ... The second major patch, mainly focused on fixing serious gameplay issues and improving basic UI and UX. Target date: Mid-March. v1.2 ... The third major patch, mainly focused on gameplay balance, the user interface, and AI. Target date: Late May. v1.3 ... The fourth major patch, mainly focused on diplomacy, the late-game, AI, and modding. Target date: Mid-September.

[ 2019-01-27 18:25:11 CET ] [ Original post ]