The Guild - Europa 1410: Demo Update #1

Hear ye, hear ye!

We bring an update to the demo of The Guild - Europa 1410, with additions and fixes alike.

The most notable addition is a new map named Herle, part of the duchy of Brabant. In 1410, Herle was a fortified church; today it is part of the Dutch city of Heerlen. Herle is a small and cozy settlement, and it serves as a tutorial map to help onboard new players, together with tutorial goals to guide newcomers to The Guild.

A birds-eye view of Herle

In addition to this new map, the most important additions of this update are:

Tutorial tasks

If you play the game on our new tutorial map of Herle, you will get small tasks that make it easier for you to find your bearings and get a good understanding of the game. Herle is a small map, designed to keep you focused on the essentials of the game.

A new filtering system for highlighting buildings

You can now select what is highlighted by the building overlay and choose to filter by your buildings, all profession buildings, all city-owned or private structures, residences or resource sites such as mines or woodland areas.

New and tweaked animations to reflect the activities of workers

Workers are now visibly working on their tasks, and every task has been assigned a set of animations.

This is a first iteration; we will continue to improve and add more animations for tasks and activities in future updates.

We wanted to address the most-mentioned feedback from the community so far with this update, so we focused on adding an improved onboarding experience with Herle, building outlines and highlight tweaks to be less meddlesome, as well as a new system for animations to reflect worker activities.

We're excited for you to jump into our demo update! Give it a try here: https://thqn.net/tge-demo-steam

In case you experience any issues or encounter any bugs, we would appreciate it if you could report them using the following link: https://bugreporting.thqnordic.com/#/projects/197/the-guild-europa-1410/add-issue

Of course, the update includes many more improvements, tweaks and fixes. You can find the detailed changelog below:

Gameplay

Added: New tutorial Map “Herle” Added: Tutorial missions (only available on Herle) Added: Worker state machine states for work-life cycle, unemployed, and go-to-house Added: You can now batch assign idle workers and unassign workers to tasks and crafting goods Added: You can now assign workers to repeat certain tasks Added: "Sign Up for Public Service” now influences Unrest Tweaked: You can now unassign workers while they are working on an ongoing task (such as gathering ingredients), but doing so while they are in the middle of the task will cause you to lose progress on that task Tweaked: Accident Chance is now measured per 120 minutes Tweaked: Storage slots in sheds increased from 2/3/4 to 4/6/8 Tweaked: Effect of “Accident Protection” improvement from +10/+20/+30 to +5/+10/+15 Tweaked: Burglary protection decreases based on crime level (-4/-8/-12) Tweaked: Chance for catching the queen bee reduced Tweaked: Starting crime rate in quarters increased Tweaked: Increased AP cost of skill training Tweaked: Lowered starting taxes Tweaked: Lowered cost of waylaying carts Tweaked: AI and its actions based on economics:

AI is now less likely to place items in their storefront, and is more likely to sell by using carts AI is slightly more likely to attack carts AI will be a bit more patient when sending carts to buy ingredients AI is less likely to leave office positions

Tweaked: Duels now start immediately after the challenge is accepted Fixed: “Socialize at inn” now improves opinion with people Fixed: Beehives generated too much revenue Fixed: Constructed buildings were not shown after loading a savegame Fixed: Duels were not loaded properly when loading a save that was made after the duel has begun Fixed: Victory conditions and challenges were not passed on to the heir Fixed: Training Bonus 2 did not require having Training Bonus 1 Fixed: Business improvements relating to gathering ingredients now work properly

Visuals and animations

Added: Worker animations now reflect their current task Added: Additional work stations for workers in buildings Added: Building interior entrance point for character animations depicting arrival Added: Logic for character animations relating to walking in/out Added: Smoke effect for chimneys Added: Light beams and dust visuals to various interiors to improve ambience Added: More character portraits Added: Color variants for characters Added: Flowerbed visuals in the Alchemist’s business Tweaked: Grass colors depending on the season Tweaked: Slightly improved snow visuals Tweaked: Character visuals optimization Tweaked: Occlusion settings for some ambience and foley sounds Tweaked: St. Barbara’s Church for visual improvement Tweaked: Interior glowing glass material to be more atmospheric Tweaked: Decreased visual effects when quarter values change Fixed: A-posing characters Fixed: Building highlights, crests, and building icons in the city are visible in dioramas Fixed: Missing textures in the backdrop of building interiors Fixed: Snow on items located indoors in interiors

Audio

Added: Fisherman splash sounds Added: Stillwater sounds Added: New songbirds audio Added: Voiceovers for various events and circumstances:

Ranking up in profession Worker promotion Worker low in energy Selecting workers for hiring Unassigning a worker from a task Clicking on a worker for the purpose of dragging and dropping them Start voting in an election Start of spying End of spying Evidence gained from spying A building upgrade is ready

Tweaked: Insect sounds Tweaked: Hammering sounds in the Innkeeper’s business Tweaked: UI sounds rebalanced Tweaked: Rain sounds are now quieter Tweaked: Area around the city walls is now quieter Fixed: Background music stops after creating and loading a save inside an interior

UI

Added: New button to set filter for building highlight overlay Added: UI for setting tasks to be automatically repeated by workers in the business management window Added: Borders for family crests based on rank Added: Dynasty rank now visible in the Family Tree Added: Dynasty wealth now visible in the Family Tree Added: Dynasty renown now visible in the Family Tree Added: Number of dynasty members now visible in the Family Tree Added: Background color behind the words illegal/legal in law tooltips based on the act’s legality Added: “Unguarded Cart” tooltip and warning sign on “Send” button for a cart that does not have an escort Added: Names for carts instead of numbers Added: Visual effect when minimizing windows in certain situations to explain how to re-open the window

Ongoing event button for elections and trials when minimized Event button when event is minimized City Archives button when tutorial prompts are closed Planned event list button when a new event of important priority is added

Added: Warning that items cannot be moved from the character’s inventory to other places, such as selling in the Marketplace, or moving from the character’s inventory to carts Tweaked: Cart windows' positioning to prevent obstruction of other elements Tweaked: Size of the tooltip area for District and Quarter in the City Overview menu to be larger Tweaked: Carts in the city do not need to be clicked anymore to view information; hovering over the cart will show details of the cart’s owner, items inside, and destination Tweaked: Background colors for icons relating to various status effects Tweaked: Progress bars in events made more visible Tweaked: Background appearance for planned events to reflect whether an event happened in the past, is in progress, or will happen in the future Tweaked: Tooltips for top HUD buttons adjusted so that the cursor does not cover them upon hovering Tweaked: Position of element showing the remaining turns to not overlap with the reset camera button Tweaked: Adjusted the position of the cart’s integrity so that cart names fit better Tweaked: UI layout for “Improve Skill” menu Tweaked: Law names now break into a new line instead of scaling down in size to maintain readability Fixed: Upcoming Events window causes keyboard input not being registered

Quality of Life

Added: Double-click to enter interiors Added: Right-click to exit interiors Tweaked: “Camera Parallax” effect disabled by default

Texts

Added: Tutorial texts to the City Archives under the “Tutorial” section for posterity Tweaked: Text for Crime status effects Tweaked: Sturdiness text from integrity to maximum integrity Tweaked: Description of Sacred Scent to reflect that it gives +1 Action Point Tweaked: Renamed the chevron icon under a building’s name from “Upgrade” to “Upgrades” to denote that it will show a list of upgrades implemented in the building Tweaked: “Cheaper Repairs” building improvement description now indicates that it lowers repair costs by 10% instead of 5% Tweaked: Bed and Portal improvement descriptions so they specify the exact type of energy regeneration based on the energy tooltip, whether it is per turn or per hour Tweaked: Quarter status effect names changed from Poorly Maintained, In Disrepair, and Declared Ruinous to Unkempt Streets, Filthy Streets, and Crumbling Streets Tweaked: Adornments improvement text to say it increases opinion with citizens only, instead of citizens and workers Fixed: Descriptions for Pillory, Fountain, and Well for the city upgrades were not updating after completing the upgrade Fixed: Jan Žižka tooltip text

Known issues:

There may be delays in notifications for completing goals When unassigning workers while they work on an ongoing task (such as gathering ingredients), you may lose progress on that task Previous saves are not compatible with the demo update - please start a new game Double-clicking to enter a building might not work reliably on rare occasions