Hi all, [b]You can now access a new experimental branch of Manor Lords (0.7.965).[/b] To avoid any potential issues, it’s recommended to make a backup of your save files before switching to a beta version. [h3]To find your saves on Steam for Manor Lords.[/h3] [list] [*] Press Win + E [*] Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\SaveGames into the search bar. [/list] If you'd like to try it, please follow these steps: [list] [*] Open Steam [*] Right-click on Manor Lords in your library [*] Select Properties [*] Go to BETAS tab [*] Enter the password: veryNiceBasket [*] Choose "pre_release" from the "Beta participation" drop-down list [*] Wait for the game to update the files (if nothing happens, restart the Steam client) [*] Launch the game [/list] The new strings are not localized yet and stability hasn't yet been thoroughly tested. Some balancing changes are still experimental. [b]To discuss please join the official Discord server[/b] https://discord.gg/manorlords. You'll find a channel specifically for discussing the ongoing pre_release branch. [b]What's inside[/b] This time I focused mostly on balancing and bugfixes. Most notably: -You can hire 6 militia squads even if you already have retinue and mercenaries employed. The plan is to make the cap relative to the Lord's rank in the future builds. -Sheepbreeding development branch was capped and no longer spawns sheep exponentially. -A lot of work was done around fields, harvests and fertility - overlays and crop prediction should now be far more accurate and ox and worker behavior should be more optimized. -Barter and trading got a lot of fixes, with on foot traders now being able to carry 5 items per trip -Toned down the King's tax and exponential trade route costs introduced in 960. -Fixed the "Loserville" mercenary bug -Improved the marketplace distribution I added one experimental feature - "Allow market stall setup" toggle to prevent the workers/inhabitants of certain buildings from setting up market stalls. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38221882/fb8ba4ac98e512a1ee3e4605fe98bb755f230b92.jpg[/img] You can now also set a construction reserve for buildings using planks for crafting, like the Joiner's shop: [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//38221882/e4a57188483d8842908fc85fdf8bf5255241cefd.jpg[/img] [b]Full changelog:[/b] 0.7.960 -> 0.7.965 Gameplay & balance: -Capped sheepbreeding to 1 new lamb every 10 days max -[Experimental] Villagers are now only allowed to fetch water from the well that is nearest to their home, except in case of a fire. -[Experimental] Yield will now never increase past 100% growth, because it was unintuitive to players that yield can still increase over 100% (which was initially designed for winter crops) -[Experimental] Even when fertility reaches 0%, there should still be a tiny little bit of yield possible now -[Experimental] Amped up max yield per plant from 2 to 4 (Hunting Grounds policy still reduces it by half) -[Experimental] Plant yield rate reduced by half. This is a continued attempt to "force early harvest" only an emergency mode. -The militia squad limit is now 6 regardless of whether the player already has a retinue, mercenaries or not. In the future it will be connected to a rank system. -[Experimental] Doubled the fertility regeneration rate effect on fallow fields and from fertilization -[Experimental] Slowed all plant growth down by around 30%. The reason for slower field crops is to make winter crop make sense. The reason for slower veggie crops is cause it was too powerful compared to farming. -[Experimental] Slowed down the tree growth rate by around 30%. The players requested it to make the forest management even more impactful. -[Experimental] Increased the archer range by 1.5x and increased their damage from 12 to 15 -[Experimental] Cost of opening new trade routes was brought back to linear scaling -[Experimental] Bumped up the carrying capacity of on-foot trading post workers from 1 to 5 -[Experimental] Royal tax is now calculated as follows: No tax for the first 5 years, 1 Treasury per citizen after 5 years, 2 Treasury per citizen after 10 years, 3 Treasury / citizen after 15 years. -[Experimental] Granary and Storehouse worker slots adjusted - unified it to be 3 families for lv1 and 6 families for lv2 Minor changes: -Removed the optimization where only every nth plant affected the fertility values, because it lead to too many errors in displaying fertility values -Made fertility overlay colors & colorblind symbols more accurate with the percentages displayed in the field's building panel -Made crop yield prediction more accurate -Added missing tooltips to minor/major trades -You can now set "trade rule" for advanced trades even without an established trade route (since you can use trading post to trade between your own regions). To indicate that you won't be able to trade something without a trade route, lowest import price might show as NA ("not available") -Reworked the construction reserve system to also allow for other good types to be reserved, for instance reserving planks at the joiner's workshop. This should also now save properly. -Optimized inventory array functions -Added the ability to disallow setting up stalls on the marketplace for certain families or workplaces -Tuned how "current region" is calculated for the UI to make it more comfortable to build on edge between 2 player owned regions -Iron deposits and clay deposits will now avoid generating on steep locations -"MODDED" may now display after the version number when a mod is installed (to make bug reports easier to decipher) Crashfixes: -Fixed a crash when deleting a building if there are pathfinding obstacles being verified (for instance soon after loading a game) Bugfixes: -Fixed the employed traders going to tradepoints even though trade route for the traded good is not opened yet -Fixed the farm workers moving to transport tasks early even though there is still plenty of crops to harvest -Fixed predicted yield not showing correctly in the field building panel -Fixed people not resetting rotation after dismounting -Fixed farming oxen not respecting work area limits -Fixed the gilded aventail houndskull helmet appearing blurry in the retinue editor -Fixed the forest mask not drawing -Fixed bandit camps respawning on loading because "lastBanditCampSpawnedDay" didn't save properly -Fixed villagers not setting up market stalls to sell their home produce like vegetables if they are unassigned -Fixed the wrong apple basket carry animation -Fixed wealth getting transfered when doing barter -Fixed bartering traders always returning 1 item regardless of the barter value and carrying capacity -Fixed bartering traders packing too much stuff in their origin region when barter value is more than 1x -Fixed trading post exports not proceeding with transactions once the trader reaches the destination -Fixed multiple markets sometimes distributing multiple instances of the same good type to a plot, for instance a single plot would "eat" 2 leather, leaving houses on the outskirts forever undersupplied -Fixed crop rotation to fallow causing farmers to harvest itemID_0, which was invisible in the UI and stopped supply dumps from being cleared because they were never considered as fully empty -Fixed villagers getting stuck at homes forever if a bandit camp is spawned anywhere in the region, cause they thought the region is under attack and they should stay at home -Fixed mercenary company arrival region not saving properly, leading to broken saved mercenary companies for hire -Fixed granary workers stealing ale from the tavern -Fixed livestock exports getting interrupted by sheep herd behavior -Fixed livestock trader job not triggering an import task when buying livestock from another region -Fixed the missing "hunger" popup artwork -Fixed a typo in the credits list Cosmetics: -Tuned field dirt UV wiggle to make those huge vegetable gardens players were making less wavy -Improved the precision for snapping terraforming meshes (like mines or sawpits) to ground -Made leaf clumps smaller and disabled the parallax mapping since it caused distortions and wasn't very visible anyway -[WIP] If you pick the green lady portrait, the visit mode character should now be female, though it's still work in progress and will look a bit funky. -Combat animation cleanup Thank you for playing! Greg Styczeń, Lead developer, Slavic Magic