Hi everyone! 

We are excited to announce that the Winter Content Update is now LIVE!

The Winter Content Update brings many new changes, content and improvements! You can check out the full changelog at the end of this announcement but let’s dive into a few of the highlights.

Villagers will now automatically move home!

If a villager lives too far from their workplace they will become unsatisfied with their housing and will look to fill any empty housing slots closer to their workplace. If none are available they will look to swap with another villager or even evict lower status houses so that they can move and upgrade, if the house is in a desirable enough location.

If a villager cannot find a house that will satisfy them then you will be notified via the warnings panel so that you can rectify the issue.

The Lord Manor has seen some love for this update including all-new monument parts as well as a new assignable function, the Study Room.

The Study Room, once assigned and staffed, will allow a Scholar to study blueprints that you might be rewarded. Without giving too much away, these blueprints won’t be easily acquired, in fact, some villagers may not survive!

The Wooden Keep has also been improved with new parts including a barracks building to house your soldiers, as well as multiple decorative items to set up your military camps.

We have made some major changes to the Military system and quests for the Winter Content Update. You will now need to raise your chances of a successful campaign by both training and equipping your soldiers with weapons.

Once trained you will be able to send your soldiers on an extended campaign where you decide the right time to bring them home. Each mission will vary in difficulty but the higher difficulty missions will bring greater rewards.

To facilitate these changes you will now find a new Military manager panel. Here you can check on your soldier’s stats, equip weapons as well as keep track on available and ongoing missions.

Beer! The Winter Update sees the, much teased, introduction of the beer production chain. Similar to wine, beer is sold in the Tavern as a luxury item and brings with it 2 new production buildings, namely the:

Hop Farm

• Produces Hops
• Added: Hops

And The Brewery, which can be found in the Public Buildings panel.

• Produces Beer from Hops, Wheat & Water
• Added: Beer

With the introduction of the Military Manager panel, we have tidied up a few elements of the UI and also introduced a new Estate Manager panel. You will now find the estate unlockables and the military manager have their own buttons in the top-right menu cluster.

As well as that we have added a new part preview to the build menus. Hovering over public buildings will show you a preview of the building and each monument menu will also give you a useful visual guide to the part you are picking.

The Winter Content Update will now give you more control over the status of your villagers. It will be up to you to decide which villagers are allowed to rise in their societal rank.

This will come at a rising cost dependant on the status upgrade but you will also need a Lord Manor with Great Hall function to be able to hold court and decide on status matters.

Once your lord manor has built you will have the opportunity to upgrade your villagers at the end of each month but only if their needs for the current status have been filled.

Housing already plays a large part in villagers’ happiness, with the new system you will find that commoners will now require a level 2 (stone) house. You will need to improve the housing desirability of an area to ensure that your commoners and citizens get the house they deserve

The above highlights are just a few of the changes and improvements. Check out the full changelog below:

Additions:

• Villager move home
• New status promotion system
• New military system
• New parts in the Keep monument
• New beer production chain
• Visual building and building part preview
• New onboarding quests
• A new weather effect
• New achievements

• Jewels (reward)
• Blueprints (reward)
• Lord Manor weathercock animations
• Woodcutter walking animation
• Hunter animation + bow weapon to hunters
• Envoy idle (reading scroll) animations
• Weaver cloth animation – wind effect
• Allow different tool in separate hands
• Individual job outfits

Improvements

• Shift-Click keep building part and orientation selected on shift-click
• Unique need concept
• Separated housing (levels) and water needs in villager information window
• Help icon on promote window
• Set barracks as dorms for soldiers
• Wooden bridge cost
• Bakery – change bread in oven for an unbaked one
• Lord Manor Balancing and New part costs
• Updated Help menu
• Restore event window on load game
• Female face
• Updated localizations
• Multiple Hurricane Engine improvements & optimizations

Fixes

• Non-valid bridges with no positioning warning
• Material – Multiple materials display as plain grey.
• Update upkeep cost when editing a monument
• Wrong calculation when removing resource of warehouse
• Inn Gateway building zone
• Upkeep total when game speed is high
• Entrance/exits being too close to the sides

Modding:

• Custom Component: Write your own component with custom data and update function, allowing you to control object transform. This will allow way more interaction with the game in the near future.
• Military system: missions, rewards
• Update Modding documentation
• Fix: Custom maps – Remove resources that aren’t over their preferred terrain
• Fix: Prevent incorrect mods from loading