Great game, I've been enjoying it a lot so far and am very intrigued to see how it develops. If you wouldn't mind me asking, why'd you remove the Beacon and Prison? Did it create too much of an imbalance between the player and the AI, or was it due to some other reason?
Oh, hello! I didn't even know anyone was playing it :D Thank you for taking the time to post this and for the feedback, I'm really glad you're enjoying it!
Neither was about the AI. They came out for different reasons:
--- Prison
The Prison just didn't pull its weight. Catching raiders, waiting for their loyalty to rise, then recruiting or ransoming them was a lot of managing for a small reward. I reworked it twice and it still felt like a side room you looked after rather than something you wanted. Overall, it just didn't feel... fun. So I cut it, ransom and all. Raiders you bring down now die, crawl home wounded, or turn drifter. If your warband loses, the kin they take join the winning hold for good: they live, pair and raise children there, and may even raid you one day. The Valley ledger shows where each of them ended up. If you have any ideas for how a Prison could work, I'm all ears!
--- Becaon
The Beacon is parked, not gone for good. All it did was bring in more random travellers, which overlapped with drifters and raids. In one playtest it even delivered an S-grade traveller by day 18, when breeding one normally takes far longer.
What I'd like it to become is a way to call the person you actually need. Say your line has great Might but no Wit: you'd light the Beacon for someone with 10 Wit and pair the two to get the best of both. Or your hold is short on men and you call for a male instead of a female. But at the same time, it can't hand you a finished bloodline, because building one through the generations is the heart of the game. So it has to be a nudge, not a shortcut: you pick what to call for, it costs you, and you still have to breed the result yourself. Until I find that balance it stays parked. Its code is still in the game, so it will come back.