May 3rd, 2019 – Patch EA 0.8.0

Hi all!
Today we released again an extremely big update and we are really looking forward to your feedback. We changed both the court system and the politics system significantly. From now on getting offices and using the powers and actions those offices grant will be very important. You will be able to distribute guards, change prison sentences, evict opponent families from their businesses, change what’s legal and what isn’t, and a lot more. In order to have fewer court scenes you are now also able to decide on verdicts before a court session takes place. We hope you enjoy the new version as much as we do!

New features

The biggest feature we implemented, fixed and improved is the whole political system, which covers all the different political powers, political actions and the overall voting system.

  • The office tree will now show the feather icon only if application is open. Inspecting an office will now also show when you can apply for an office. We also changed the applicant list so it clearly shows why a character cannot apply yet for an office.
  • Upcoming elections and votes on political actions in which you have a character that can vote are now shown in your calendar. You can see what or who you are going to vote on, who are the other attendees and of course when the voting will take place. You can also hand in your vote already upfront. As soon as a vote starts the voting scene will be shown, you will have a specific amount of time to make a decision. If you don’t make a decision the vote will count as a “NO” unless you are the proposer.
  • Generally every council member of an office group can propose changes (within the power of that office) and vote on proposals. If 2 of 3 of the members are accepting a proposal, the effects are executed. You will now receive several notifications regarding upcoming votes and the results of votes.
  • We originally wanted to fix some of the political powers. Instead we reworked them entirely. Here we want to give you an insight into all the political powers added. Please also note that of course the way you vote, what you propose, etc. will have an impact on the relationship to other dynasties.
    • Banish someone: You can propose to banish someone from the city. This is of course a very severe proposal. Any adult family member can be selected. If the council chamber votes to support the proposal the respective character will leave the city forever.
    • Change what’s legal and what isn’t: With EA 0.8.0 you are now able to define what’s legal and what isn’t. If the council chamber agrees to a proposal, the change is instantly applied. City guards will react accordingly, so if you think that assassination is a fair sport, just propose to make it legal.
    • Distribute city guards: You can now propose to change the amount of city guards per district. So if you want to harm your thieving competitor, increase the amount of guards in the district he/she is operating in. If you yourself want to have fewer “disruptions” of your outside-of-the-law activities, then propose the reduction of guards.
    • Change prison sentence: From now on you can increase or decrease the prison sentence of an already imprisoned character. If the council chamber agrees to your proposal the prison sentence is instantly updated.
    • Evict opponent from a building: With this new power, you will be able to propose to throw a family out of a building they own. If the proposal is accepted the owning family loses ownership of the building. Again this can be a really rough move but it can also severely damage your competitors.
    • Praise and denounce: You can propose to praise or denounce another family in front of the city. You can determine how strong the praising or denunciation should be. The selected family will, if the council chamber agrees, gain or lose reputation with the entire city.
  • If a proposal is no longer valid (eg. the to-be banished character is already dead), the office meeting is cancelled.
  • The AI will determine what to vote for based on their own objectives and based on the relationship to the target or the effect the proposal would have on themselves.

The other big feature we implemented, fixed and improved is the court system. Please check out all the specific changes below.

  • Before a trial can start there needs to be evidence of a crime. We changed how this evidence is created. If a guard is catching you, a trial will instantly be scheduled. If a non-dynasty lansquenet is interrupting a crime, the evidence will go to the neighborhood and can later still be “found” by the find evidence action. Dynasty victims will get the evidence based on a dice roll.
  • If characters are caught several times for the same type of crime and the AI or you are using these evidences to lodge complaints, the evidences get added to an already existing trial. The more evidences are handed in for a trial the more severe the expected punishment will be.
  • In order to make the whole trial scene more understandable we changed some user interfaces. When a trial starts you will receive an information UI which covers all the essential information of the case. If you have a character that can vote in a trial the verdict button will have a golden bevel. You just need to drag and drop it on the verdict you want. At the end of trial you will receive a nice summary of the trial.
  • There are now 5 different verdicts: Not guilty (character is freed), fine (money costs), public shaming (reputation loss), imprisonment (character goes to jail) and execution (character is publicly hanged). Execution penalty is not available for all the crimes as it would be too powerful. In every trial every judge will decide on a verdict. The final verdict is determined by the average of all 3. This way it is obviously more interesting to have all office seats of a chamber taken by family members.
  • From now on AI dynasties will also use evidence and initiate trials. So you definitely need to be more careful now as they won’t hesitate to drag you or other dynasties to court.
  • We also changed how judges are voting and also implemented a system that rewards or punishes judges based on their votes. Basically the citizens always expect a specific verdict. The more a judge deviates from that expectation the more the public will be unhappy with the result and the reputation between the city and the judge will drop.
  • If there is not a single judge in an office group, a trial will be cancelled when the trial should have taken place. So “silencing” all the judges will make definitely sense 😉 Another feature we added is that as soon as a character is imprisoned the character loses the office seat, so it may be beneficial for you to render a very hard verdict (eg. imprisonment), so a competitor loses his or her office seat.
  • You are now able to hand in your verdict before a trial starts. You can select the case you want to judge in the calendar and click the verdict button. If you hand in a judgment now, you won’t be dragged in the court scene as soon as the trial starts but you will receive a notification about the results. This way you should be able to still manually judge the way you want without being interrupted by the court scene. Additionally we only show the trial scene if it affects one of your family members or if you didn’t put in a verdict yet.
  • We also implemented that you are now properly informed when trials are scheduled and also about the final verdict of a trial. In both cases you will receive a notification that contains all the necessary information.
  • One thing to add regarding the new court system is that you won’t be able to avoid a trial by just going on a long distance journey anymore. The trial will be rescheduled until you are back 😉

We also implemented a few other smaller things.

  • Automatic assigned actions that require the character to find a target outside of their business are now considering the distance to the target. As a result characters that execute an action (eg. ambush) will look for targets closer to their home building.
  • You can now remove notifications in the HUD by right clicking on them.
  • We changed the way mouse wheel input is handled, so it should now be way more smooth scrolling bars up and down.

Please note: The game does not display/load save games from outdated patch versions as they have become incompatible due to the rework of core systems.

New features under hood

    • The game wasn’t fully unicode compliant, so in order to be able to support non-latin languages properly we changed that the game is fully compiled as unicode.
    • We are now able to setup a map as a tutorial map, so the tutorial will only be triggered if a defined map will be started.
    • Tutorial windows can now be setup. Layout can be purely be defined by designers. This way we are able to quickly iterate on tutorial windows.
    • A tutorial quest chain can be defined for a tutorial level. By being able to do that we can define a set of quests that need to be completed in order to progress through the tutorial in the future.
    • Several triggers were implemented so we can trigger tutorial windows. Also if you have over 100 messages, older messages will be deleted.

    Balancing

          • Fleas are not spreading that strongly anymore and they also don’t do any damage.
          • Changed the dynasty trade margin competitor dynasties are willing to accept. Also if you are constantly pushing the other dynasty to make bad deals, the reputation between you will drop.
          • We increased the chasing speed slightly, so it’s easier to catch somebody on a horse.
          • Killing or assassinating someone will not reward you with influence anymore.
          • Trying to kill a character while he/she is unconscious is now not a guaranteed success anymore – the action can fail. This way killing somebody off shouldn’t be that easy anymore.

     

    Balancing

          • From now on you can insult a character. If you do so successfully, that character will attack you (and therefore execute an illegal action). This way you can push characters towards doing something against the law.
          • The pot grenade has been removed as it wasn’t properly working on moving targets.
          • We now properly implemented the actions ‘Praise someone in front of the revellers’ and ‘Agitate the revellers’. You can select the dynasty you want to talk bad or good about. But you still need to go inside a tavern for both actions.
          • The buy indulgence option was removed from the church as it wasn’t properly working.
          • Squire is now the last citizen title and Lord the first noble title.
          • NPCs won’t get into random fights anymore. We removed that as it looked like the whole city is constantly a war zone and also it blocked the player from executing actions on fighting citizens.
          • The spy on someone actions has been removed as it didn’t do anything useful.
          • New Action: “Plant fake evidence” is unlocked when you acquire an office in the “Council informers” office group. With this action you can create fake evidence of a crime and drag another dynasty to court with it.
          • Changed action: “Audit books” you can now select a business of another dynasty to audit their books if you have an office in the “Council informers” office group. This way you will be able to legally extract some money and influence from the owner and you might find evidence of crimes.
          • New actions: “Public shaming” and “Public praising”. Unlocked for members of the office group of “council assistants”. With these actions you can select a character and speak public good or bad about them. This will lead to people spreading positive or negative rumors about that character and they will gain/lose small amounts of reputation with characters they pass by.
          • New action: “Promote a business”, you can promote other dynasty’s businesses, this will lead to a reputation gain with that dynasty and the business will get a buff on their customer satisfaction.
          • New action: “Mark someone as outlaw”, if you hold an office in the “city constables” office group you can mark a person as an outlaw. This will mean that for a certain amount of time city guards will not interfere in crimes committed against that person.
          • New action: “Award key to the city”, when you hold an office in the “city council” office group, you get the privilege to award ornamental keys to the city. This will give you a reputation gain with that person’s dynasty and money and influence for that person.

     

    Bug fixes

          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash upon a relationship change.
          • Fixed several crash bugs that happened in EA 0.7.5.1.
          • Fixed a bug that caused npc workers to have incredibly high derivative attribute buffs gained by clothing.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the frame rate to drop down every 4-5 seconds under certain circumstances.
          • Fixed a bug that caused characters to not flee correctly when they are able to flee from combat.
          • Fixed a bug that caused lansquenets to collect protection money while still being in their home building.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to create 2 evidences of the same crime.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the summoning actions to always fail.
          • Fixed a bug that caused actions that would remove the unconscious effect to actually not remove the unconscious effect.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the dog companion to not appear when the item is equipped.
          • Fixed a bug that caused particles to not get hidden when a character gets hidden.
          • Fixed the description of the escort someone action so it’s more clear what the action is doing.
          • Fixed a bug that caused family members of a conquered building to change sides.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the ai master to hire transporters and employees above the actual limit of the building.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the backpack of a character inside a destroyed building to remain in front of the entry point of that building.
          • Fixed a bug that caused a building to get the wrong building level, when the building is finished during a round change.
          • Fixed a bug that caused a building to be finished after a round change.
          • Fixed a bug that caused animals to not disappear after you placed a building directly on them.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the castle of the sovereign to collapse after a certain amount of time.
          • Fixed a bug that caused some NPCs to not wear body items.
          • Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to not have the level-equivalent attribute points.
          • Fixed a bug that caused children to fight.
          • Fixed a bug that caused characters to sit on the wrong seat during a trial.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to not remove a trial calendar appointment even if the accused had already died.
          • Fixed a bug that caused calendar appointments to not being shown anymore after saving and loading a game.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to only show 10 evidences in the verdict window.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to still schedule trials even if a dynasty already died out.
          • Fixed a bug that caused evidences to be created with the wrong date.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to still show expired trial appointments in the calendar after taking over a new office seat.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the wrong dynasty crest when inspecting an evidence.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the up/down arrows for increasing/decreasing money in the dynastic trade UI to not work.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the dynastic trade to block player input so you weren’t able to change anything related to trades anymore.
          • Fixed a bug that caused AI families to offer empty trades.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the AI to hire too many henchmen.
          • Fixed a bug that caused characters to be imprisoned forever.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the character selection panel to be shown in trial scenes.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the “leave office” action to not be available from the very beginning.
          • Fixed a bug that caused a wrong message to show up when trying to move a character who is currently on a long distance travel.
          • Fixed a bug that caused city gates to be shown on the area map and the building list.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the same title for both adopting children and for the child born message.
          • Fixed several bugs related to the “Send to the court of the monarch” action.
          • Fixed a bug that allowed AI characters to target characters on a long distance journey.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the quick access bar filter to not work correctly.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the narrator to still announce filtered out notification messages.
          • Fixed a bug that caused dynasty trade options to disappear after collapsing a category in the dynasty trade window.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the introduction sequence of a map again after loading it.
          • Fixed a bug that caused fires to not get fully extinguished even if the the extinguish fire actions has been executed successfully several times.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the camera to move to the wrong location when double clicking on the terrain.
          • Fixed a bug that caused animals to not be animated anymore.

     

    Multiplayer progress

          • Saving a multiplayer game now works correctly and a saved MP game can also be started again.
          • Trials are now correctly shown for both host and clients. Also the casted votes are updated live.
          • Dynasty trades should now also work in multiplayer games.
          • Relationships in multiplayer are now also correctly synced between the different players.
          • Scenes, like the trial scene, church etc. should now be correctly shown for host and clients.
          • Random events are now also correctly synced between host and clients.
          • Display effects (eg. status effects) are now correctly synced between host and clients.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash upon returning to the main menu from a multiplayer game.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash upon selecting the dynasty trade action on the client.
          • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash upon losing connection to the client.
          • Fixed a bug that caused a character to be pregnant twice on the client.

     

    Known Issues

          • It is currently not possible to become Sovereign of a map
          • Some of the office groups need some more balancing when it comes to frequency of trials and powers.
          • Sometimes combat shows floating text only for your character, not the opponent.

     

    Important information

    If you are experiencing difficulties with loading and saving the game, you may attempt to delete all files from the folder “Games” in the installation directory of The Guild 3.
    It is quite possible that some problems that you have in your game are caused by missing or corrupted files. In this case, the following can help:

          • STEAM -> right-click on “The Guild 3” in your Steam library, then Properties – LOCAL FILES – VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME FILES…
          • GOG -> right-click on “The Guild 3” in your library, then Properties – “More” – Manage Installation – VERIFY/REPAIR

    Join our official Discord server https://discord.gg/CGnN2Vb) where you can meet us (that is, when we take a break from developing games) and other players to chat about the game.

    What we are planning for the next patch

    For the next patch we are planning to introduce a first iteration of the tutorial and also fix and change lots of the family campaigns.

    A short outlook

    We are currently preparing the UI changes for trade routes and the storage keeper. Soon we will work on the manual setup of trade routes. Of course we will also continue working on the multiplayer of the game.

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    We value your feedback!

    If you have the time, we would appreciate it if you could fill out a short survey regarding the changes we made in patch EA 0.8.0: https://forms.gle/TVaZ1Pf38fUmkcGz9
    Please note: we do not collect any personal information other than your feedback – you will remain completely anonymous. This survey will end the day we release the next patch.