Finally, the big worldmap update has arrived!
Battle Brothers has made a huge step towards completion and to how the finished game will play. Below you’ll find a list of all the major changes and additions to the game.
And we’re not done yet! Once the dust from the update has settled, we’ll return to smaller and more regular updates again so that you’re likely to find something new in the game every week. There are several more features (yes, including formations!) and loads of more content we’ll be adding until the game leaves Early Access later this year.
As a very small team we depend on your feedback to make this game as good as possible. Please leave us your thoughts and feedback on balancing, progression and gameplay in the forums!
With so many changes, introducing new issues is also pretty much inevitable. If you encounter any bugs, problems or crashes, please let us know in the forum following the instructions there.
Have fun with the update!
New Worldmap
A bigger and all-new procedurally generated worldmap comes with new terrain, oceans and shores, and wild and unexplored parts covered in fog. It’s teeming with life as peasants, caravans, ships, hunters, beasts and many more pursue their goals.
New Settlements
Settlements differ vastly in appearance, size, services they offer, men to hire and goods to buy. Fish is cheapest at fishing villages, more metal-based products can be found at mining settlements and you’ll find men with combat experience at castles.
New Contract Mechanics
Contracts are completely redone. You can now negotiate the terms of payment, and every contract comes with twists to spice things up and keep you on your toes. There’s 9 contracts in the game right now, double the amount of before, and we aim to have several times that for the finished game.
Factions & Relations
Noble houses vie for power and cities are ruled by corrupt councils. Meet the leaders of factions on and off the battlefield, make powerful allies or betray them and feel their wrath. All this in contracts we’ll be adding over the coming months now that the system is in place.
Tracking
All parties travelling the world now leave tracks for you to follow or avoid. Different factions use their own footprints so that you can see at a glance whether it’s humans, orcs or beasts who moved though.
Camping
Make camp to have your men recover from their wounds, repair their equipment and have time pass faster. But be careful, the camp fire will be seen from afar and may attract unwanted attention.
A Proper Introduction
The game now comes with a proper introduction and story to set up the mood and ease you into the open world gameplay with useful advice from other characters.
Additional Music & Sound Effects
Five new music tracks join the already hour-long orchestral soundtrack. Orcs got all of their sounds redone, and the game now has a rich ambient soundscape, from birds, to the wind howling, to people in the streets as you visit one of the many cities of the world.
Loading tweets...
Hakuna Matata!!!!
Hurrah!
Huzzah!
Fantastic!
The new world map and added to it capabilities and overall performance and arts – while all very much. Excellent work. However – the solution to the number of skill points to the level that I realized is determined at the time of the decision level … not very good, I hope it is a temporary measure for the time being until the remake tree skills and tactical part.
Loved the update ! Also very happy to hear about the future changes ! Thank you for your effort !
no changelog? :(
The game seems even more brutal now (playing on challenging, as before). The goblins are still the royal pain in the rear as before. I don’t think I’ve managed to get into a second month without running into dire wolves, 9+ bandit raiders etc.
I love the mission mechanics, even though it can get very hard to find a mission early on and even more so to understand how tough it would be, relative to the company’s strength. Much more realistic this way, though.
Once, starting on challenging, I was given 46000 coins for some reason and the starting settlement was allied to me. I should have kept a save file…
Overall, the new map is much more demanding. Supplies can be annoying to handle some times, there’s some serious variety now and they take up a significant part of the inventory. The camp mechanism is cool, speeds up things nicely: I haven’t lived long enough to attract enemies at night as yet.
I keep getting lousy companions, superstitious, pessimists, asthmatic. It’s a cruel blow in the early stages of the game, having the core of your company lose heart before the raw recruits. Still, that’s randomness and we have to deal with it :)
Back to BB for some more punishment. Hope to make it to month 2 this time.
Great update.
Only been able to play a couple hours so far. Only had one crash that was unexplained, tried to post the log but the webpage timed out and I wanted to get back to playing! No other crashes, which indicates to me that it was a fluke.
The game is really shaping up, can’t wait for all the detailing like additional quests and more faction interactions.
Congratulations to your team!
Α couple more observations:
Sometimes, at the start of a new game, the tutorial does not start immediately; I have enough time to wander close to the nearest town/settlement before the first battle begins.
Also, although I complete various quests for lower-ranking officials (i.e. not from the noble houses), their stance towards me and the name of the respective settlements are not recorded under the relevant tab, only the starting one that participates in the tutorial.
Overall, I’d say that the goblins are still way too good: even their lower-end troops can decimate a more than decent company; a goblin should not score 4/4 hits against a level 3 defender on higher ground, with shield up. It doesn’t happen too often, thankfully. However, in the absence of any estimate as to their strength (which wasn’t working properly in the earlier version, anyway) I tend to avoid the little blighters altogether.
It’s still very easy to lose in the early stages of the game (and by early I mean the first couple of days): roaming dire wolves, random gangs (9 fully armed raiders on the dawn of day 2, in my previous game) can bring the game to an abrupt end. I do appreciate that there’s little (if any) hand-holding in Battle Brothers, but starting in a settlement completely surrounded by forests and losing to dire wolves while trying to leave by the only route possible tends to dampen the fun factor. It might be useful (not sure if it’s feasible programming-wise) to have a starting location that’s not so much of a death trap.
I don’t mind losing, but having to face two consecutive 7+ bandit raiders gangs on day 6 coming from two different directions…
Money seems to be tighter now, at least in the early stages. Better weapons are very expensive, decent warriors, too. I like it, though, it makes the loot found on the battlefield much more important and precious.
In short, I love this game. A bit too unforgiving at times, but the new map and factions really breath life to the setting.
Came across the first serious glitch with a contract: a local leader (i.e. not a nobleman) hired me to investigate a graveyard. The robbers there offered me a map for their lives, which -foolishly, as it turned out- I refused, hoping to earn some goodwill with the townsfolk.
I managed to defeat the robbers, losing a good man in the process, but when I returned to the town, the local leader was furious that I “cheated him” and turned me away, without payment. Relations now are cold, through no fault of mine.
Other than that, I was confronted by a goblin raiding party of 10 on my way to hire the 3 men for the tutorial and only through sheer luck, I managed to lure them to a nearby caravan, which the goblins slaughtered while I slipped away.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, incidents like this so early in the game are very off-putting and could disappoint a new player (imagine, in XCOM 2, having to face 5 Archons and 5 Mutons in the first mission…)
Also, sea seem navigable… on foot, for some reason: the tutorial mission was across a bay which I crossed, instead of taking the (prohibitively long) road around.
The botched contract cost me. Hope I can make it now and repair my relationship, if I manage to survive long enough.
[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b40/Ambrakas/2016-03-01_00005_zpsh9dlxf7c.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b40/Ambrakas/2016-03-01_00002_zpsp73wxp8m.jpg[/IMG]
[URL=http://s16.photobucket.com/user/Ambrakas/media/2016-03-01_00002_zpsp73wxp8m.jpg.html][IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b40/Ambrakas/2016-03-01_00002_zpsp73wxp8m.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Apologies, I’m not sure how I should upload a couple of images.