Heartland Frontier Content Update - v0.1.3

Heartland Frontier is a challenging tile-based 4x strategy game where you fight feudal lords and tribal chieftains in the hope of unifying your homeland and resisting foreign invasion. The heartland is the last true untamed frontier on the continent, a sparse realm trapped between 4 great powers.  

In this video I talk about resource management and economy.

I try to do content updates every Friday, I do not include balance / bug fixes in these devlogs. You can check the game manual here for more detail. The main content added to the game over the past week is the following:

You can now create your own Faction. This allows you to bind other characters to your will, like a dark lord perhaps - or band together as the liberators of the heartland. This is only the beginning of Faction development, expect more depth to come in the weeks ahead.

Monarchy allows you to centralise power under your own rule quickly, elections happen upon the death of the leader in Duchies or Kingdoms.

Democracy allows your to unleash the potential of your people, allowing you to recruit extra followers and integrate new lands quickly. However to hold the position of Faction Leader you will have to win elections every 6 months.

Oligarchy is somewhere in between Monarchy and Democracy, giving you a mix of military order while still retaining some economic advantages. Holding the position of Faction Leader means you will have to win elections every 12 months.

Recruit Followers

Sometimes diplomacy is more pragmatic than war. Invite characters to join your Faction and they will bring with them their armies, holdings and settlements. Things that affect whether a character will join you are culture and religion at the moment. 

Set your War Goals

Decide which enemy characters and settlements to attack. Choosing a war goal allows you to concentrate your factions forces on one target, making it easier to achieve victory.

Win Elections

Depending on your government type you may have to win elections. As I run on a weekly development cycle, elections will change in the future. At the moment they have been simplified into an event where you must choose to pay off the rural folk, the urban folk or rig the election, each of these options costs a quantity of gold, food and influence respectively. If you fail to bribe your way to election victory you will lose the election.

Misc / Minor Content

• You can increment game time by 1 day at a time by pressing the 'Q' button. In contrast with 'Spacebar' which pauses / unpauses game time!
• Ivory trade good added - increases your Faction Member capacity by 1.
• Graphical aid added when casting class abilities. It will show as purple when casting and green when there is a valid target.
• Character Profiles added. When on the 'Characters' screen (Press 'C') you can click on an individual character to open their profile, this will give an expanded overview of information about them. The Character Profile screen also allows you to interact with the character individually, for example inviting them to your faction.
• Farmsteads gain +1 Food for every adjacent Farmstead.

Looking forward to v0.1.4

I will inevitably return to Factions in the future as they are where I see much of the core depth and fun being for the game. However for now I will focus on base-level mechanics, for the next update these will be neutral buildings. Like I discussed in 0.1.1, there will be a neutral Mercenary Camp that will allow you to recruit cohorts into your army from the Foreign Powers. In addition to this there will also be the Tavern which will allow you to recruit characters into your Faction, as well as the Black Market which will allow you to trade various resources.