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Thanks for playing and giving feedback.

You're right that even at this early stage the descriptions need to be a better. I've gotten so used to testing it myself that I don't even read the descriptions, so don't notice that they're wrong or missing. I'll have to look back over them before we do any more testing. For instance it possibly hasn't ever actually been mentioned that a cult allows you to infiltrate around the cult AND the entire nation the cult is in, so you don't have to place cults right next to locations you want to infiltrate (like universities). I also think maybe the game needs to explain better that stopping understanding is useful, but not always critical, if you can win before it becomes a problem then you can just do that.

The map graphical issues are something that I planned on fixing, but wasn't yet a priority. I think the hexes look cool, but they were a Unity asset store thing, and I'd like to have a unique style to it. Having the terrain as this giant shader lets me do some new stuff with it. For instance Deep Ones will gain the ability to raise sea level, to drown entire cities and nations. It'll also allow weird shader effects so we can have stuff like "The Color From Outer Space" or giant fungus growing all over the map. Definitely needs some work, but hopefully the advantages will be useful.

Anyway, thanks again for playing, I'll try to get it at least slightly more playable in the immediate future. Maybe it needs some placeholder messages just to say what's different from Shadows 1, before a real tutorial can be made to explain cults, evidence and understanding. 

I disabled downloading of these versions because I felt the quality had dropped substantially. Too many features were added which didn't work together, so I basically just downgraded the project to the last good state, so the project can remain preserved in its most polished and playable form.

That's definitely something I've considered and am discussing with my advisors about. I feel Shadows 2 reached a logical end to its development cycle, with all the features we wanted to put in being in, but it was a hard decision to stop adding to it.

A lot of stuff needs to be decided financially, regading pricing and discount packages, and I'm having meetings and discussions with actually professional game-devs and marketing people (since I've got no real experience in these things myself).

Thanks, it really means a lot. If it wasn't for people supporting the first versions there wouldn't be a Version 3. It's really been a community focused development, with major design decisions being made based on what we see people enjoying and what people find confusing.

It's been a crazy journey, from downloading the Unity editor for the first time and making the first playable build of Shadows 1 to now actually considering writing to games journalists and talking to actual game devs about legal considerations and financial decisions.

Gotta say, I'm a bit nervous, it feels like the pressure is higher than ever, but I like the direction we're going in. The current build is focused, has a solid roadmap and the codebase is nice and well-structured so future development should go smoothly.

Thanks for being a part of this, hope you're pleased with where the project goes in the next few months

Yes, politics (like real politics) was confusing, and the game will hopefully be a lot more streamlined and focused if the political side of stuff is left to NPCs, letting you focus on spreading plagues and exploding volcanoes on top of cities.

It is just portraits and music. Think of it as DLC. I had promised to keep the game open source, so no gameplay-relevant stuff could be made paid-for, so a cosmetic DLC made the most sense. We're working on adding Events, like in Crusader Kings or Stellaris, and some of that content might be Enhanced Edition only, depending on how things look when we've done more work on it.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it

It's possible that the `requires lightbringer ritual' is the best way to do ultimate abilities for each Dark Name. Like you said, it's got a cool strategy element to it, where you force the enemy to give you the tools you need to destroy them. Maybe I'll change Winter's Scythe, then add a few other abilities to the other Names along the same lines.

Regarding new ways to ruin the world, my favourite part is definitely watching the map change in huge ways.  The obvious next way to introduce would be to have the opposite of Winter's Scythe, a Name which turns the world into a giant desert. I've not come up with any good abilities for a Name or for an Agent based around that, yet, though.

The plague doctor probably needs changing, a bit, so they also have a plague. Weaker than the Red Masque, but it would synergise with their undead armies. Might need to nerf the undead a bit, just to keep them from being the ultimate weapon all by themselves.

Hey,

Sorry, missed this message when it first arrived, only just spotted it. Must have not seen the Itch e-mail about a new comment or something.

I agree with many of these, the UI is constantly being changed to get it to behave a bit better. Slowly it's improving, but there are still issues to be addressed. I'll take a look at them and see what can be done. Some will be harder than others. Due to the use of hotkeys, for example, we're limited to only 9 map modes, so have to decide which are most useful. Maybe we could have buttons which don't have associated keys, for the less-used modes? We'll see what we can fit on screen.

Hey,

So, just pushed a beta-branch update on steam. If it doesn't break anything too horrifically, it'll be in version 18 full.

Buffed a few abilities, made it slower to warm up after freezing. Definitely easier to get stuff done following a successful civil war now.

Gave an ability which allows you to just trade power for cold directly. Once you've reached 12% world cooling you can keep casting it whenever it cools down, to slowly eradicate all human life on the map. Not sure if it's OP or not. Definitely can't be stopped if you disable Lightbringer Ritual. Might rework it slightly such that it REQUIRES the Lightbringer Ritual to function. Maybe it can only be cast while the Ritual is being cast? Would be an amusing way to turn their weapon against them.

Also added in your suggested ability to temporarily block travel between locations. It's called Blizzard, and you can cast it on a location, then another, and any link between them will be out of service while the blizzard lasts. Also not sure how OP this is. It seems somewhat useful, but maybe there's some incredible strategy which can be used that I've not thought of yet. It only works in the snowy areas of the map, making it more useful as you progress along with your grand plan to freeze the world.

Hopefully this makes the Dark Name a bit more playable now, and able to stand alone as its own strategy and thing, not just a way to slightly reduce the number of cities your Unholy Flesh has to eat.

Thanks for the feedback, it really helps

I don't think there's a forum for gameplay, yet, but we did make a few videos to show how we play:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1z3TXRMfvI&ab_channel=BobbyTwoHands

In general, you're not supposed to be 100% undetected. Your agents don't need to survive forever, just long enough to accomplish their objectives. Your enthralled noble might be valuable, but agents can be replaced when they get discovered and killed. You're playing as the evil side here, compassion isn't something you should be worrying about. If a vampire dies, just get another and continue the Great Plan.

I think you're completely right. I really like the concept of the Winter Name, but in practice it is underpowered and needs work. The original plan was that it would work alongside with the various monsters, such as flesh or Deep Ones. It would destroy the north, they would then attack from the south. The monsters are currently overpowered, however, so don't need more help, and the Name would be far more exciting if it could bring about an apocalypse of its own. It also suffers from the fact that it depends on politics, which is currently underpowered. Political stuff is my favourite, as it's the most complicated and unique part of the game, but it's often weaker than just sending a giant pile of flesh to eat a kingdom whole.

Initially the design was that the Name would be purely passive. Every battle would have an effect without player involvement, and the Name would have no abilities at all, but it was thought it was a bit boring, and that the player should be involved. I'll see how the 'ritual' approach looks. Gotta make sure the player doesn't forget to re-cast it when it times out.

With the introduction of an actual defeat condition, where the nobles can try to cast the Lightbringer Ritual to save themselves, it should be possible to have the freezing abilities be a bit less constrained. Previously, since the player couldn't lose, all cold-causing abilities had to have a difficult-to-achieve condition to make them work. If the player could spend power to cool the world they could never lose, they could win by hitting 'freeze world' whenever the power got high enough. This new ritual allows us to increase world panic or awareness as a consequence of the power, and so the player has to deal with the Lightbringers. They're also going to receive some buffs, which might well include some ways to reverse the global cooling, at least around a few cities.

I like the idea of having a few abilities which benefit from the cold. Maybe they can only be cast in frozen locations, and do good stuff. Both your suggestions, disruption and path-changing, sound good. Probably can't make it so a location gets fully cut off, but maybe a location could have a few connections cut temporarily, to make it harder for the enemy to reach your agents. We'll have to test some stuff and see what works. We'll also see how Ruins work. Currently I think there's an issue with the Unholy Flesh not being able to spawn on a ruined city, but that should be fixable.

Regarding population:

The previous game did have a lot more complex population mechanics, which was cool in a way, but also rather complex, and added a bunch of stuff without really integrating it into the main game. Ideally this game would be more streamlined, by cutting features back to just what it relevant to the gameplay. This ideally would allow the mechanics to overlap better. An example is how nobles' fear is used across the board. It is politically relevant, has a Name associated to it (merchant of nightmares) but also plays into the agents, as it is how the NPCs agents' specialities are chosen. If we expand the population side of the game, we'd want to do it in a way which lots of different Names and Agents can take advantage of the new mechanic, to allow synergies.

Hopefully we can get some of that back. Certainly it should be possible to get refugees to spawn when a city is attacked, or its food production drops below its population, but we'll need to spend some time looking at how it behaves mechanically, to avoid bloating the game's features without adding gameplay value. Currently it's rather simplistic. Each human location has a max population set by the temperature (with a bonus for coastal locations), and population will grow/fall to reach that value. Refugees should be able to detect which cities can accept more population, and navigate their way there, but right now that doesn't have any gameplay effects, so hasn't been implemented. In time it could be, though, as it could allow spread of disease, new political crises, or even advantages to the NPCs (if a noble successfully gets the refugees integrated as productive citizens their city would grow and be able to support larger armies).

I think the current plan for the next patch is roughly:

-New Agent

-Buff Winter Name

-Save/Load bugfixing, maybe some UI improvements

-Buff Lightbringers (give them crisis response stuff to vote on)

-Maybe add a new specialisation to the NPC agents (Inquisitor)

Casus Belli mechanics should probably be implemented sometime, along with occupied locations, so the territory only changes hands at the end of war between human forces. Probably doesn't need to be as complex as CKII/CKIII/Stellaris' approaches, but it doesn't seem too historically accurate for an entire empire to consume another in a giant war. And having cities only switch once might help a bit with nobles maintaining their positions despite their cities being invaded.

Not sure it can make it for the next version, as we're already going to try to add so much, but it would definitely make combat a bit better. Certainly there should be a "crusade" mechanic, because current if a nation is afraid of dark nobles they'll invade their country, but then give those very same dark nobles a vote in whether or not to pronounce them guilty. It means that invading a dark nation can suddenly just add a bunch of dark nobles to your population who then doom your nation, despite people being aware of them.

I also like the idea of reputation being 'at stake' from taking actions. We tried for a bit to have every vote be proposed by a person, whose prestige would change if the vote passed/failed, but it just made stuff more complex. Having the leader's prestige be affected by war outcomes could help.

I was also thinking of an agent who would benefit from deliberately losing wars against human nations. Will keep it as a surprise, but I think it could be fun, at least. Perhaps not very balanced, but an amusing way to play, and a game should probably try to be fun, not just hard.

I really like these ideas. The NPCs already try to form alliances towards the end-game, so it makes sense to give one of them the title of "Kingdom of light" or whatever, and then have them begin work on some anti-dark ritual. The idea of it having a set number of locations you need to target to stop the ritual is also good, should let you work against them politically by shuffling a few key broken nobles around, agent-wise by targeting those nobles for enshadowment, or militarily by wiping them out.

The concept of having a "retry in 500" years is also great. It should be possible, with the current setup. Might be a few technical difficulties (saved games need to avoid getting too huge if they record everything), and gameplay ones (NPCs need to die of old age, so you don't get the same people 500 years in the future). Other than those issues, it's already possible to make the game play hundreds of turns to generate a history, so we could just delete all monsters, reduce shadow over time, then play forwards the game. Maybe you'd even have a tiny dark kingdom which managed to survive this age of light. If we can get this to work, we should also put it into the victory screen. Might be possible to get this in the next version, let's see how things work out.

Specific defeat conditions are also cool, but that'll have to wait a version at least, to keep this version from growing too huge, and leaving too long a gap between v16 and v17's releases.

Thanks for the suggestions, hopefully we can get something together which looks like what you were imagining.

Hey,

Just pushed a version which might have fixed it. Still a bit unsure as to what's really happening, but it seems to work for now, for people who were reporting the issue.

Hey,

Just pushed a new version. We hope this fixes it. We're not actually sure WHY it fixes it, but over on Steam people are saying it works. We'll try to figure out what was going on based on what the bits of code we removed were doing.