24 october 2019, at 19:43 Author: BartoldGV

Freebuilding for Guild Castles! (Update v.0.9.0 – Steam Patch 199)

Hello warriors – and builders!

It is time to grab an axe, hammer and trowel to raise the walls of your own settlement! The Freebuilding for Guild Castles – one of the most extensive Gloria Victis updates of all time, in terms of how much it change the world and gameplay, and how much work it required – is finally live!

Moreover, this update introduced the improved balance of Guild Castles’ placement and many balance tweaks to the nation-controlled locations.

Hammers in hands – build your castles!

Changelog v.0.9.0

Freebuilding & Guild Castles Update:

The Freebuilding system has been added to the Guild Castles and the latter have been updated. We have also added 2 new Guild Castles, so now there are 3 castles of each type, providing equal access to Guild Castles for all nations. For this reason, for the next few days tokening the guild provinces will work only on grey flags (2 new guild provinces and any abandoned ones). Costs of the State of Wars triggered on any Guild Provinces for tomorrow (Friday) have already been compensated.

Since the Freebuilding is a completely new system which fundamentally differs from the way the Guild Castles have been created before, all fortifications in the Guild Castles had to be wiped. However, thanks to this system, you have a lot of freedom when designing your castle's layout – we can't wait to see your creativeness in action! Moreover, you have a few days to build your castles before they can be attacked – read below for details.

– Added two additional guild provinces to provide equal access to each of the 3 tiers of Guild Castles to all nations
– Moved Lublin, Audunstede and Leaktown to balance the placement of provinces and gain space in the central area of the map for the endgame content which we’re going to add in the near future
– Redesigned and flattered terrains of guild controlled provinces
– Guild controlled locations are divided into three types: Forts (Lublin, Norfolk, Greatfall) are smaller, but have the largest arable fields with the best land quality. Strongholds (Order of Original Faith, Twinfall, Leaktown) are medium-sized locations in places that facilitate defense, and they have the largest pool of fortification points. Castles (Audunstede, Skergard, Aquitania) have medium fortification points available and largest pool of economic points
– Maximum upgrade level of workshops in all guild controlled provinces is 4. Since maximum level of economic buildings is limited by province economy points it is up to players what workshop on what level they prefer to have.
– Castles have predefined palisades around suburban areas that can be upgraded
– Reduced bottleneck on the keep staircases to allow more players to take part in the fight inside the building and improve importance of external fortifications

Nation controlled locations:

– Reworked Lord Wraths Abbey - adjusted buildings and defensive fortifications to be same as in other temples. The highest fortifications ring is is static, same as in Hordun and Lordly Heaven
– Moved Mudmine with quest areas around them. It balances and unifies placement of small flags on the world map

WiP and known issues:

– Catacombs entrances near Lublin and Greatfall forts will be moved to new locations
– Terrains and grids will be polished and adjusted
– Some locations have a wooden main building. Respawn point of wooden main building is located near it. To prevent balance problems in the near future it will be possible to set the main building on fire, which will increase the difference between a wooden and stone building in favor of a stone building. In turn, smaller groups will find it easier to defend the wooden main building.
– Shorter versions of the straight walls will be added asap to improve the workflow of designing the fortifications layouts

Introduction to the Freebuilding system

From now on, every guild owning a guild province is able to set up fortifications and buildings on its own!

The area where fortifications and buildings can be placed is limited and defined by a grid. The grids resemble a chessboard. The grids are adapted to the terrain, and each province has a unique grid shape based on the terrain.

The maximum number and level of fortifications are limited by fortification points - different provinces have a different number of available points. Each part of the wall, tower or gate costs the appropriate amount. Higher levels of fortification have a higher cost, so it is worth paying attention to the number of available points and adjusting the number of fortifications to the preferred level.

It is up to the players whether they prefer more wall lines of a lower level or one line on maximum upgrade. Buildings such as towers, gates, and the main building can be equipped with defensive systems such as boiling oil or ballista - these systems also consume fortification points.

Players can create their fortifications using 13 predefined models - the main building, a straight wall short, a straight wall regular, a diagonal wall (short and regular), two straight corners: internal and external, four diagonal corners: internal, external and their mirror images, gate, regular tower, and corner tower.

As a part of the Guild Castles balance update, the Guild Castles have been divided into three types, each offering its own benefits:

– Forts (Lublin, Norfolk, Greatfall) are smaller but have the largest arable fields with the best land quality.
– Strongholds (Order of Original Faith, Twinfall, Leaktown) are medium-sized locations in places that facilitate defense, and they have the largest pool of fortification points.
– Castles (Audunstede, Skergard, Aquitania) are locations with the largest pool of economic points that will allow to place more economic buildings, for large guilds that can handle defense with slightly fewer fortification points.

Due to technical limitations of other systems, in the first iteration, some objects in the suburban areas of the Guild Castles will have to remain in the predefined places. It applies namely to the resource buildings, such as farms and lumbermills, to storehouses generating supplies and key environmental objects, such as bridges. In exchange for that, castles (Audunstede, Skergard, Aquitania) have predefined palisades around suburban areas that can be upgraded.

Different types of Guild castles may have different pool of available economic buildings in the future. You are now able to place among others: workshops, crafting stations, stalls with merchants and the Market station.

Maximum upgrade of all workshops placed in guild controlled provinces is level 4. Since the maximum level of economic buildings is limited by province economy points it is up to players what workshop on what level they prefer to have.

How to start?

The leader and vice leader of the guild that holds the province have full access to the Freebuilding system, they are the ones who will choose and place scaffoldings in desired places. Other members of the guild can help by bringing materials. There is no experience or gold reward for contributing materials and finishing structures.

The first step is to build the Main Building – the centre of the castle. It can be integrated into the walls, there is no requirement to encircle it with walls on all sides. However, despite its great durability, it can be destroyed by siege engines!

After capturing the flag, the Main Building will be the only building available for construction. To enter the upgrades overview, use the table next to the flag or select the Building window from the "Provinces" tab in the guild window.

After selecting the main building from the list of fortifications, the builder will see the "ghost" of the building and will be able to place it by moving his character and aiming with the mouse to position the building on the grid – the building can be rotated in increments of 90 degrees by using the mouse wheel.

After selecting your preferred place, confirm your choice by clicking the left mouse button. If you want to interrupt the selection of a place, right-click. The flag will be moved so that it will stay in the centre of the target main building.

After setting the building ghost, return to the province construction menu and click the gear icon of the main building to confirm the build. After confirming an upgrade with “start construction” button, a scaffolding will appear near the flag, in which it will be possible to place materials and complete the construction.

Construction can be cancelled from the scaffolding window by clicking the appropriate button. Materials already in scaffolding will not be returned if construction is cancelled.
If the building is already built, you can mark it for demolition in the province construction window by clicking the corresponding gear icon and then the demolition button. After that, the building can then be destroyed by hand and siege machines.

In order to prevent a situation where the entire castle is destroyed quickly by a single person, demolition takes as much time as in the case of attacking the enemy structures. However, you can use the siege engines which can be found in the suburban area of each castle to destroy the buildings in your Guild Castle which you want to remove.

Walls, gates, and towers

Once the main building is ready, the rest of the buildings will appear in the list of available fortifications. At this point, you can proceed to the construction of the palisade surrounding your province using the appropriate parts. Similarly to the main building, open the construction window using the table in the main building or the "provinces" tab in the guild window.

Select a fortification module you want to built and move your character while aiming with the mouse to set it in the preferred place. A scaffolding will appear nearby the desired tile location on the grid, to which materials should be delivered. After all required materials are delivered the structure can be completed.

To avoid excessive building deconstruction due to mistakes or changing your mind, it is best to build structures one at a time by adding "ghosts" of subsequent parts of the walls to existing, already built fragments – it will save time and materials if the structure is misaligned.

It is worth considering the construction of the gate and towers - towers can be equipped with ballistas, and the gate is the only building that will allow you to take defensive positions on the walls! It is not possible to put gates and towers directly next to each other and in a distance of one tile from them.

Upgrade to higher levels

To upgrade an existing fortification to a higher level, use the province construction menu. Choose the fortifications whose level you want to raise and click the gear icon assigned to them. Then click the "upgrade" button in the window of the fragment. A scaffolding will appear near the selected model to which materials should be delivered.

The maximum upgrade level of the fortifications is limited by the number of available fortification points and the level of the main building. The maximum level of the main building is determined by the level of the guild. The higher the guild level – the higher the maximum fortification level.

Work in progress and further iterations

Because the system required many changes and new features, it is not fully complete. It will be developed and polished in the near future, considering players suggestions and opinions.

At this point, you can set up temporary buildings as workshops, in which you will soon be able to choose which workshop shall they represent. We decided on such a solution so that guilds could already integrate economic buildings inside the wall layout.

The terrain and grids will be polished, and additional short diagonal wall model will appear. In the next iterations, there will likely be a preview of the grid when constructing buildings and ghosts of structures not yet built to facilitate the design and matching of models.

Thank you in advance for your constructive feedback and suggestions for improvements!

Hotfix 2019-10-25

It's the first hotfix to the Freebuilding system – thank you all for your precious feedback! You can expect more fixes to come in the following days – for details, please read the main changelog.

See you in battle!

Changelog v.0.9.0f1

– Fixed a bug preventing players from leaving the spawnpoint in the Last Stand forts (Dunfen, Mereley and Serai) and in the guild-controlled forts (Lublin, Norfolk and Greatfall)
– From now on, the player-built objects inside Guild Castles tagged for destruction are receiving 10x more damage from melee and siege engines attacks
– From now on, it is possible to destroy the Main Building in Guild Castles with melee attacks if it’s tagged for destruction
– Fixed a bug causing that the Battering Rams didn’t always spawn in the suburban areas of Guild Castles
– The preview versions (“ghosts”) of player-built objects are now showing their level 2 upgrades to show the maximum size of a structure to be placed
– Added a short version of the diagonal wall module to make it easier to close the Guild Castles layouts
– Adjusted the bridge placement at Twinfall so the gates can now be placed with the doors right in the front of it
– Updated the way the resources are spawned in the mines of Guild Castles – each node used to spawn a random resource from its pool and, after gathering it enough times, replaced with another type of the resource; in most cases, it was misinterpreted as static resources, giving an impression of Guild Castles being unbalanced – from now on, the mine resources at Guild Castles are not randomized so that issue will not happen anymore
– Adjusted the maximum durability of different Main Buildings
– Improved the order of listing the available fortifications in the Building window
– Fixed a bug causing that the Nuker placement at Mudmine could spawn on the ground when the location was controlled by Midland

Latest comments:

evinhakanyilmaz 15 january 2020, at 23:05

Why Turkish support cannot get at least Turkish subtitle support should be disgusting, still Adolf Hitler policy

BartoldGV 25 october 2019, at 16:34

Hotfix 2019-10-25

It's the first hotfix to the Freebuilding system – thank you all for your precious feedback! You can expect more fixes to come in the following days – for details, please read the main changelog.

See you in battle!

Changelog v.0.9.0f1

– Fixed a bug preventing players from leaving the spawnpoint in the Last Stand forts (Dunfen, Mereley and Serai) and in the guild-controlled forts (Lublin, Norfolk and Greatfall)
– From now on, the player-built objects inside Guild Castles tagged for destruction are receiving 10x more damage from melee and siege engines attacks
– From now on, it is possible to destroy the Main Building in Guild Castles with melee attacks if it’s tagged for destruction
– Fixed a bug causing that the Battering Rams didn’t always spawn in the suburban areas of Guild Castles
– The preview versions (“ghosts”) of player-built objects are now showing their level 2 upgrades to show the maximum size of a structure to be placed
– Added a short version of the diagonal wall module to make it easier to close the Guild Castles layouts
– Adjusted the bridge placement at Twinfall so the gates can now be placed with the doors right in the front of it
– Updated the way the resources are spawned in the mines of Guild Castles – each node used to spawn a random resource from its pool and, after gathering it enough times, replaced with another type of the resource; in most cases, it was misinterpreted as static resources, giving an impression of Guild Castles being unbalanced – from now on, the mine resources at Guild Castles are not randomized so that issue will not happen anymore
– Adjusted the maximum durability of different Main Buildings
– Improved the order of listing the available fortifications in the Building window
– Fixed a bug causing that the Nuker placement at Mudmine could spawn on the ground when the location was controlled by Midland

EnForceR 25 october 2019, at 07:11

AwesomeHero 25 october 2019, at 01:35

Looks ok to me so far.

Leland 25 october 2019, at 01:29

This patch wasn't very thought out imo. Loads of bugs (which have been reported) and over seen mistakes that could have easily been prevented if they were tested beforehand by the tester team.

I don't think it was ready for live servers.