Heartland Frontier Content Update - v0.1.6

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.  

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:

The Combat Rework

Over the past several weeks, this has been the most significant update to the game. Much of the combat in Heartland Frontier has been torn up and redesigned from the bottom-up. A new system of lines tells you what units in your army are going to suffer casualties as well as which enemy cohorts you will damage. You will also find sieges much more satisfying, its no longer biggest-army-wins with the new siege cohort.

Armies can fight two types of battles, field battles against other characters or siege assaults against settlements. The type of cohort determines how it will react in battle, there are 4 types of units: Spearmen, Knights, Bowmen and Siege. Once one side runs out of spearmen, the cohorts will move onto focusing the knights, then bowmen and finally siege.

Line 1: Spearmen

Cannon fodder that can soak up damage on the front line while your other cohorts deal damage. Bonus defence when occupying built-up terrain like farmsteads, workshops and settlements.

Line 2: Knights

The most feared unit on the battlefield with strong damage and stalwart defence. They can destroy enemy cohorts when fighting in open terrain without farmsteads, workshops or settlements.

Line 3: Bowmen

Ranged units that can inflict damage from 2 tiles away. Their hit-and-run tactics can destroy an army without meeting it on the field but bowmen cannot assault enemy settlements.

Line 4: Siege

Ranged units that bombard enemy settlements from 2 tiles away. Their global damage will destroy garrisons through attrition but siege units cannot fight battles with enemy armies.

Misc / Minor Content

UI: Textures added to the HUD. Things like resources, settlements and armies have background images instead of gray boxes.

MISC: You no longer have to have your character selected to issue a movement command. Simply right-click on any time to move to that location.

I try to make a video every few devlogs. In this video I talk about resource management and economy, it will give you a feel for how the game plays.

Looking forward to next week and content update 0.1.7 I will eventually get around to adding the Black Market to trade resources and the Tavern to recruit characters to your faction. As well as that there are also the global events I have talked about previously, where the status of the Great Powers in terms of economy and politics will determine what units they send to the Heartland.