Fantasy Friday XLI - Kingdom Wars Updates

Alex Walz · #1 08-27-2010, 03:39 PM

FANTASY FRIDAY XLI
Kingdom Wars Updates

Hello everyone! In anticipation of the upcoming Closed Beta wave, I'd like to share some recent additions to the unique single-player mode, Kingdom Wars! This mode will be the main focus of the next beta wave which starts in just a couple days, so pay attention! Also, thanks to Lead Scenario Scripter Brian Shingles for taking all these beautiful screenshots this week.

Before reading the recent additions to Kingdom Wars, make sure you understand just what it is by reading the original Kingdom Wars FF.

Without further ado, enjoy the updates! And if you were lucky enough to have secured a beta key, enjoy trying this bad boy out for yourself!

New Objectives - There are now three ways to play Kingdom Wars: the short campaign (Unification War), the long campaign (Realm War), and the epic campaign (Total War). In the short campaign, players start with one major town and their goal is to conquer the other three major towns of their race as well as 50% of their race's minor towns. In the long campaign, players start with one region - one capital town and two minor towns, and their goal is to conquer one of the other two races and to conquer all of their major and minor towns. In the epic campaign, players start with one region and their goal is to conquer every major town on the map for all three races, as well as 50% of all the minor towns.

New Menu Designs - Kingdom Wars has a complete new look and feel with new menu designs, unique to each race and menu type. Compare the ones in these screenshots to the simple designs used for every menu type in the earlier showcase.

Town Management - This new feature allows you to manage several different aspects of your town without having to load up a new map. By choosing to manage your town, you will be taken on a seamless fly-by cinematic of your preloaded town. This means that you can play around with all of your towns with absolutely no load times. From this menu, you'll have the options to manage that town's economy, recruit, and heal and train your units.

Countdown Timers - Prepare yourself for an enemy attack with the new countdown timers which warn you of the next attack, along with the time of the attack and the enemy army.

Visiting Other Towns - Similar to how you can visit your own town through the new management menu, you'll be able to visit other neutral or allied towns. Just like in the MMORTS portion, you'll be able to interact with these towns through their Mercenary and Goods Markets, Medics, and Trainers.

Unit Training in Castle Defend - When defending one of your strongholds, you will be able to train new units to help push off the enemy attackers, however, you will only be able to train units native to the region of your current stronghold.

Varied AI Attack Paths - While not yet implemented, this feature will add more variety to the AI enemy attacks by randomizing which direction they attack from. The player will be warned of their attack and the direction of their attack slightly before the battle.

Castle Defense Saving - After each battle, your stronghold will be saved to enhance the persistent environment. All units and corpses will be deleted while all building damage and wall upgrades will carry over to your next battle.

Castle Defense Postponement - Don't have time to fend off another enemy attack? This new feature allows you to postpone battles until the next time you log-in. This will also go into effect if your computer crashes while being challenged.

Economy Management - Perhaps the most important new feature, this intuitive menu allows you to manage the economy of each of your towns out of the seamless Manage Town menu. You'll be able to easily task your peasants/wardens/labourers to different resources. Once tasked, each peasant or warden battalion will increase your income of that resource by 5, while labourers will increase your income by 4. Marauders will automatically increase your food income by 10. Just like in the MMORTS portion, orcish labourers may not be tasked to gather food.