Kingdom events and strategy

With Book 2's storyline now officially done (you can play from beginning to end on Development Branch), it's time to refocus on some of the various issues I've been pushing ahead of me. 

The first one is the 'strategy combat' system. It was a cute idea, but at some point in the lifetime of a game's development you get to the point where you either "juice it" or "lose it", or in other words either I make it work properly and look polished, or I cut it. It's a hard choice, since I did put a lot of effort into it, but in the end I decided to cut it. Goodbye, strategy game, I barely knew you.

I also needed to update all the various side quests, finish the Kingdom events, and ideally add a lot more. Which got me to thinking about how to write interesting Kingdom Events, and what reward something like that should give to the player. I decided to add a new variable, Military Power, which tracks the progress of Camelot and the Army of Life's power over lifetime. Sometimes they increase automatically from the story (forming the Army of Life providing a massive boost, for example). Sometimes they increase from side-quests or kingdom events.

The plan is then to use that to gate smaller events, giving one result if your military power is higher than X, another if it is not. I'll likely not do TOO much of that in Book 2, but if it's a system that people like I might return to it in Book 3.

The memories system wasn't updated, so I went through and fixed that. All characters should now have the correct memories, though it might take a little time to sort out bugs of mistagging. Anyway, best to get it done now, so it's up in the Development Branch build.

I had dreams of more Crowley content (for Neutral Ground); the King's Dragon took up most of those plans in the end, but at the very least I want the Orcs to have one ripping drinking session at the Crowley after the end of BFG. I also need to finish writing Natural Born Killer, and the last charge of the ultra-light brigade.

Finally, I haven't forgotten about my Elsewhere dreams, so... new gems, new enemies and the travelling saleman is all on my list.

Finally I have the metagame stuff; collectibles (new cardbacks, and perhaps unlockable wallpapers) and achievements. And at that point... Book 2 is done, and I can start working on Book 3. As before, Book 3's development build will show up on Book 2's steam build, so you can all follow it as I play forward. If you're a Patreon, and want a Steam key for Book 1 or Book 2, just PM me.  

I hope you all enjoyed Book 2: The War, and that you'll enjoy the ride along to Book 3: The Return, starting with Act XII: The Lack of a Nail.