The expedition:

What the sea sends back:

Out now. More here as it goes.

Windows: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NKSL14W67S0?cid=itch_devlogs

macOS: https://primarysystem.itch.io/5019

Played my own game on an office PC and noticed the enemy villages were scarecrows: a knot of soldiers standing in the square all game, doing nothing until you walked into them.

Now they stay indoors. Come close and they pour out of the houses; leave and they go back in.

Left a bot playing the whole campaign overnight to test it.

One transport couldn't get its last soldier onto the beach, so it wandered the sea for an hour with him on board.

Nine landing craft sat in the harbour next to 110 soldiers, still holding on to old orders.

Four flagships spent a whole act parked at home because the game thought they were still attacking.

All real bugs. The fixes made landings less clumsy for actual players too.

Poseidon isn't placed on the map. He turns up maybe twice a season, in a storm, near your ships.

First the rain, then the water goes dark where he's about to come up.

The Leviathan, next to two galleons.

It stays under for most of a fight. You get the shadow, then about a second and a half of the thing itself when it strikes.

Next: mechs and saucers

A walking machine three men tall, built before the world ended and kept running. It holds a short hilt in its right fist. The blade is light, and as long as the machine.

The saucers come with it. They don't shoot. They take one soldier at a time and fly him home, and if you bring one down on the way he falls back to you alive.

Both arrive in the next update. What you can play today:

Microsoft Store: 5019 (free, Windows)
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NKSL14W67S0?cid=itch_devlogs_mecha

Redrew every chapter's map for the next update.

They used to be windows cut out of one big open world. Now each one is laid out for the fight on it: more than one way in, an island in the middle worth holding, and rock no army can walk through.

This is the first one, in calm and in a storm. The rock walls at the end are the last chapter's.

Microsoft Store: 5019 — https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NKSL14W67S0?cid=itch_devlogs_maps

Some chapters were over after one fight: my test bot landed once, won, and the other side had nothing left to send.

So the enemy counts now. It remembers what it has seen of your army. If its next wave would be smaller than that, the wave stays home and a few scouts come to look instead. Land in force and everyone near comes.

Chapter 2 with the same bot now takes eight or nine fights. Two games in three had no winner after 45 minutes.

In the next update. Microsoft Store: 5019 — https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NKSL14W67S0?cid=itch_devlogs_enemy

1.2 is out on the Microsoft Store. The trailer starts on the day the old world ended.

The campaign is ten chapters now, each a match on its own map. There is a second resource, iron, pulled out of wrecks. Seven things to research. A horse scout and a balloon to go and look with.

The enemy looks too. It trains one of three kinds of army, sends an albatross over your camp, and changes what it trains when it sees what you built.

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NKSL14W67S0?cid=itch_devlogs_v12

Ships are built on land now, beside the yard. Send a crew aboard and they drag her down to the water before they get in.

The enemy plays each of its units. Eagles go round your muskets for the hands in your fields, and whoever is being shot steps behind the line and comes back.

Next update, in a few days.

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NKSL14W67S0?cid=itch_devlogs_haul