Steam Community :: Notoris 2: Warlords

Notoris 2: Warlords

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Notoris 2: Warlords

0 in Group Chat

A dark meets high fantasy strategy RPG inspired by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Play as ruler, administrator, or officer, wielding Influence to sway allies and rivals alike. Command vast armies in tense tactical turn-based battles.

Visit the Store Page

Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

Notoris 2: Warlords | Dev Update

Sep 2

August Development Update

August was another big month for Notoris 2. A major focus this month was finally fleshing out the Generic Officer system, while also continuing to expand officer progression, combat, and the campaign systems around them.

I'm also spending more time actually playing full campaigns now, which has started exposing a lot of problems that aren't obvious when testing individual systems.

Here's what I worked on this month.

Generic Officer System

One of the biggest pieces of work this month was fully fleshing out the Generic Officer system. The goal is for generic officers to have enough variation that encountering a new officer doesn't feel like you're just looking at the same character with slightly different stats. There are now 5 Officer Template types, each with:

5 unique portraits
5 different skill tree variants
100 possible names
Each of those combinations available across every race

So if you encounter a Light Elf STR-type officer, for example, they can roll one of 5 different portraits, one of 5 different skill trees, and a random name from a pool of 100 names.

This gives each Officer Template × Race combination a large number of possible variations while still keeping their overall archetype recognizable.

The system now supports the different race, subtype, portrait, name, and skill tree combinations automatically, which gives me a much better foundation for generating generic officers across the campaign.

With this addition, the world feels much more immersive and alive. Each generic officer feels unique and specialized, though not as powerful as scripted officers.

Officer Skill Trees

Alongside the generic officer work, I continued expanding the skill tree system itself. Scripted/Historical officers are starting to receive their own unique progression paths. Some of the work this month included:

10 new Civil skill tree nodes
9 new Aptitude skill tree nodes
8+ additional skill tree nodes
20+ unique officer skill trees
Randomized starting skill tree nodes for generic officers
Improved tactic unlock tooltips

This is becoming a much bigger part of how officers are differentiated, especially now that generic officers can have different progression paths instead of all following the same template.

Fire System

One of the bigger combat additions this month was the new Fire system. Fire can now spread across the battlefield, creating areas that are dangerous for units to move through or remain in. This gives Fire more strategic value since setting something on fire isn't just about dealing immediate damage. The fire can continue to spread and affect how units move and position themselves. The three new tactics that cause fire are:

Fire Arrows
Fire Attack
Inferno (Zhou Yu)

I also added the supporting VFX and audio for the system, including directional logic for Fire Attack and Inferno VFX, ignition sounds, and burning tile ambience. There were also a number of interaction rules to make sure Fire behaves correctly with things like units being knocked into burning tiles. I found a VFX artist who created several new combat assets, which has helped improve the visual quality of these abilities considerably.

Combat

Two new general-purpose tactics were also added this month:

Power Break: Reduces an enemy's Attack by 50% for 3 turns.
Hex: Reduces an enemy's Defense by 50% for 3 turns.
Slice: Applies Bleed (damage over time taken at the start of an entity's turn).

These give officers a couple of new ways to weaken enemy units before committing to an attack, and also give the AI more status effects to consider when evaluating its tactical options.
Damage calculations were cleaned up, Knockback kills now properly trigger the normal kill/capture logic, and Archer attack timing between projectile VFX and SFX was improved.

Audio

Audio got a lot of attention this month.

We were able to add 2 new background music tracks and continued working on the dynamic music intensity system. The system now supports four intensity levels and changes the music based on what is happening on screen.

We also added a lot of new sound hooks throughout the game, including buildings, menus, turn transitions, campaign ambience, fire, tactics, dialogue, and combat.

AI Improvements

A lot of August was spent tuning the AI now that the campaign is becoming much more playable. Some of the bigger changes include:

Improved tactical decision making and pathfinding
Better archer positioning and targeting
Improved Quick Defend behavior
Added a new Skirmish Opportunity faction strategy objective
Improved war score calculations and ceasefire decisions
Factions are now more likely to declare war on hated neighboring factions
Added a snowball factor that makes winning factions less passive
Improved town assault scoring using faction hatred and strategic conditions
AI administrators can now properly evaluate transfer and transport proposals
Neighboring towns can send relief armies for defensive deployments
Improved AI use of status-effect tactics

I've also been adding more logging/debug tooling around faction diplomacy and strategy objectives so I can figure out why the AI is making certain decisions when it becomes too passive later in a campaign.

Hire Assignments

Hire attempts now contribute some progress toward the assignment, so talking to or swaying an officer isn't completely wasted if the actual hire doesn't succeed.

I also made Hire attempts more likely to trigger Debates and fixed several issues with Hire proposals not appearing correctly during the voting phase.

On the AI side, I fixed cases where administrators weren't properly evaluating Hire proposals and where the system was attempting to hire officers that were already deployed.

Town Specialties & Development

Towns received another layer of specialization this month.

Towns can now have specialties that improve specific aspects of their economy or military infrastructure, including:

Gold production
Food production
Weapon production
Recruitment / Starting Morale
Gate HP

These specialties are now displayed directly on the campaign map as well as in the town details panel.

I also added Residence development. Each level provides +1 AP when resting and increases population growth. I added the empty Academy building to the empty 8th building slot, though the functionality for the research/tech tree is not implemented yet.

CDIR Events

More historical and character-driven events were added this month.
The biggest addition was the Yuan Shu False Emperor event, along with follow-up dilemmas for the major factions to declare war.

I also added events for Zhao Yun joining Liu Bei and Liu Bei taking in Lu Bu if defeated in Xu.

These are part of the larger effort to build out more historical events that tell the Three Kingdoms storyline and make the game slightly less of a sandbox.

Campaign Systems & Playtesting

A lot of the work this month came directly from actually playing the campaign and finding things that weren't behaving correctly.
Various campaign fixes:

Capturing towns from rebels now gives additional security to help stabilize them
Another round of work on town control and rebel territory so faction borders behave more naturally after towns change hands
Dead factions properly lose their remaining map control
Rebel armies properly disband or enter captured towns
Officers stationed elsewhere are properly reassigned when their town changes hands
Capture Town assignments no longer incorrectly fail when the capturing army automatically enters the town
Caravan troop transport and display issues were fixed
AI and player deployment edge cases were cleaned up
Improved Seize Town assignment contribution tracking
Reduced requirements for some officer/faction promotion tiers
Earlier access to military proposal types

A particularly nasty bug was also fixed where destroying the Fallen Empire could completely lock the campaign during the faction turn sequence.

UI & Quality of Life

There were a lot of smaller UI improvements this month, many of them coming directly from playtesting.

Highlights include:

Movement previews when hovering over entities
Mastery XP and skill point notifications
Improved officer breakdown tooltips showing their current action and parameters
Better information when an officer is stationed in another town or deployed
Improved deployment menu
Reworked Drill menu information to make troop numbers easier to understand
Better tactic tooltips, including nested effects
Flashy tactic name / burst VFX when tactics are used
Officer speech bubbles when relationship-based Assist/Aid effects trigger
Improved town and faction detail panels
Better gate interaction and labeling
Improved Hire assignment UI
Assignment completion percentages shown for other officers
Double-clicking entities now opens their main details panel
Improved different-resolution UI handling
New radial wheel UI assets
Improved camera behavior between turns
Status effects from buffs/debuffs are now localized
Attribute XP and other important notifications are recorded in the log window

I also added a feedback survey directly to the main menu so I can start collecting more structured feedback from playtesters.

Map Progress

The campaign map received a few changes.
This month included some tweaks to the northern terrain and new forest regions in the south.

The maps shown on the game setup and minimap were updated as well.

The western map is still very much a work in progress, but the east is mostly done now.

Steam & 3K Build

I also spent some time getting the 3K DLC version of the game set up on Steam, including the initial DLC/depot setup and a new August-enabled build.

I also updated the Steam and Itch screenshots as the game continues to move toward the next stage of playtesting.

Performance & Stability

A lot of work went into reducing the cost of AI tactic evaluation, war target calculations, civil turn processing, and other expensive campaign systems.

The biggest improvement was reducing the performance cost of tactic pathfinding by roughly 5x.

Overall faction turn times are still about 2x as long as I'd like, so more effort is needed. The problem stems from the entire game being built from this ground-up philosophy of officers evaluating actions on an individual basis, instead of the faction doing one sweeping pass. Still, more progress can and will be made.

Looking Ahead

August was largely about taking the systems I've spent the last several months building and refining them against each other.

The Generic Officer system is now in a much better place, with different races, officer templates, portraits, names, and skill trees all feeding into the same generation system. Combat now has Fire and a larger selection of tactics, the AI is getting more capable across the board, and towns are starting to have more distinct identities.

At this point I'm spending less time asking, "Does this system work?" and more time asking, "Is this balanced, and does it push the game in the direction I want it?"

The next few months will be less about adding new content (bummer, all I want to do is add more features) and more about polish, onboarding, and player UX.

I've also found a really great UI developer to help revamp and improve the look of our menus.

Thanks again to everyone testing the game and sending feedback. It has been extremely helpful as the campaign gets closer to being something that can be played for much longer stretches.

Notoris 2: Warlords

Notoris 2: Warlords | Dev Update

Aug 1

July was a super productive month, with a heavy focus on Diplomacy, officer relationships, progression systems, and AI improvements. A key milestone was reached as core gameplay systems began interacting in previously unattainable ways, resulting in the game reaching a fully playable state. It was wild to suddenly have this collection of systems you’ve been working on for 4+ years turn into a playable game in a single month.. Anyway, here's what I worked on.

Diplomacy System Expansion

Diplomacy was by far the biggest focus this month. I took a base empty system into one where every faction has long-term strategic goals and tries to act intelligibly. I knew this was going to be a lot of work (and theres still more to do) but I was surprised just how much needed to go into this. Especially to support the individual officers going out as diplomats/ envoys to the factions capitols.

The diplomatic deal types I added are:

Goodwill (send gold to improve relations)
Alliance
Annul Alliance
Ceasefire
Declare War
Solicit Surrender (essentially confederation)

I started work on but still need to add more logic for:

Prisoner Exchange
Request Join War
Request Reinforcements

Other Highlights include:

Greater Faction Strategy Objectives for AI diplomacy.
Player driven diplomatic audience conversations.
Allow promising food, weapons etc during diplomacy agreements then having follow up foreign Resource Collection missions as part of accepting the request.
- Officers must go to the other capitol and pick up the caravan of resources and transport back to their capitol
  - Penalties for not fulfilling such as ceasefire terminates, and diplomatic opinion shifts
Many new relationship and game state modifiers, including factors like mutual allies and faction leader opinions.

The goal is for diplomacy to feel like a living system that evolves naturally throughout a campaign instead of a bare bones system.

Officer Relationship Events

Relationships continue to become one of Notoris 2's defining mechanics.

AI officers can now trigger a new type of Social Encounter when talking to one another or the player. I've added a large number of dynamic conversation events that trigger based on friendships, rivalries, faction membership, and current circumstances. Depending on the situation, officers might influence a faction leader's opinion of someone, challenge each other to friendly duels or debates, bond over meals, hunting trips, or drinking. Sworn allies can reward each other with Mastery XP and other secret benefits.

Many existing systems were also expanded so relationships now influence combat, diplomacy, item ownership, and other campaign events. As well as 6 new skill tree nodes focused on friendships, sworn allies, enemies, and nemeses.

Promotion & Progression

I iterated on and improved progression for officers and factions alike.

Highlights include:

New faction rank progression system (10 levels).
- XP calculated based on # of towns owned, tiles controlled, and officers employed
- Probably still need a gait based on current towns owned.
Streamlined promotion flow without requiring a dedicated menu.
AI officers can now promote themselves when qualified.
Faction leaders and town administrators will attempt to promote eligible officers.
- Town Admins promote based on top performer for each month assignments (has dialogue)
- Faction leaders attempt to promote based on loyalty issues
Mastery progression expanded with new XP sources from tactics, defeating enemies, assignments, and events.
Requirements such as # of assignments needed, and mastery per level have been significantly reduced for officer progression.

Combat Improvements

Combat continued receiving new tactical options and progression.

Highlights include:

New tactics including Impale, Entrench, Feint Attack, Entangle, Crippling Strike, Provoke, Blunder and Hamstring Strike.
Damage over Time support added to the buff and debuff system.
New Taunt effect that increases the chance of duels.
Panic now correctly prevents both player and AI units from acting.
Smarter tactical decision making and targeting for AI armies.
Unit deployment now previews stats, aptitudes, and available tactics before on the config menu.
Seizing a town now puts the army (if melee) inside to help prevent oscillation.

Audio Integration

After spending most of development with zero audio, I added the Sonity audio framework and began working with 2 new audio devs from Sweden.

In preparation I ported over existing audio assets and the dynamic campaign music intensity system based on game state from NOTR1.

AI Improvements

As always, a significant amount of development time went into improving AI behavior behind the scenes.

Some of the larger improvements include:

Smarter faction strategy planning.
Better military target selection.
Improved logistics and army supply planning.
Better officer assignment priorities.
Smarter free officer recruitment behavior.
Improved transport, transfer, and search assignment logic.
Better pathfinding through congested areas.
Numerous balancing tweaks and bug fixes.

UI & Quality of Life

Several major interface improvements were added this month.

Highlights include:

New Faction Details panel showing diplomacy information and strategic resources.
New Town Details panel showing critical details like population, troop and resource breakdowns.
Faster navigation between factions and officers.
Improved player notifications for many things that occur.
Better localization support, including Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese fonts.
New day wind visual effect

Performance

Now that the core gameplay loop is essentially fully playable, I've been focusing on eliminating performance hitches and reducing long end-turn times discovered during playtesting. Campaigns are becoming noticeably smoother as more optimization work is completed. AI turn times are still about twice as long as I’d like.

Balancing

Since the game is playable over many turns, certain balance issues were exposed and tweaked during internal playtesting:

Population calculations (still needs more work late game)
Control spread
SEC affects on efficiency and Patrol action
Rebalancing AP recovery rate and AP max.

New Content

Content creation continued alongside programming.

This month included:

17 new officers.
1 new faction.
2 new towns.
Rebel Goblin factions system for low SEC towns.
Additional items and equipment.
New CDIR events.
- Liu Bei + Tao Qian confederation type event
- Free officers socializing at the tavern may trigger a convo with the town admin and offer to join.
More western map progress.
Finished foliage/mountains on eastern part of map.
Continued localization work.

Overall, July was about making the campaign world feel more alive. Diplomacy has grown into a much deeper strategic system, officer relationships now influence even more aspects of gameplay, progression continues to evolve, and AI factions make more believable decisions than ever before. Most importantly the game finally feels like a game!

Next month I'll be continuing work on the generic officer system, adding more variations of officers and fleshing out skill trees while continuing to support Audio implementation.

Notoris 2: Warlords

Notoris 2 : Warlords | Dev Update

Jun 30

June ended up being one of the biggest months for the project so far. Everything continues to feel like its connecting together more and more with each addition.

Here's what I worked on this month.

Officer Assist System

The biggest focus was finishing the new Assist assignment.

AI officers now understand how to assign, prioritize, and complete Assist tasks correctly, while players get a dedicated results screen that breaks down exactly what their officer accomplished. I also added relationship scaling so officers with high rapport work together more effectively.

To support this, I expanded the underlying cdir event system with new Assist events across buildings like Farms, Markets, Forges, Barracks, Taverns, Gates, and more. This opens the door for much more flavor and bonus outcomes for officer assignments moving forward.

New Combat System Upgrades

Wyatt spent much of the month with heavy upgrades to the tactics system (again) to support what will likely be the final major combat feature. This update reinforces one of Notoris 2's core design pillars: relationships between officers should matter both on and off the battlefield.

Three new cooperative tactics were added:

Joint Attack allows you and an adjacent melee ally to strike the same enemy together.
Aid lets a ranged officer coordinate with an adjacent melee ally, allowing both to attack the same target.
Relationship Trigger Assist is a new dynamic combat trigger where nearby allies may automatically follow up an attack against a shared enemy. The chance of triggering depends on the relationship between the two officers, making friendships and rivalries influence battles in a meaningful way.

This system makes combat feel more strategic while giving long term relationship building another tangible gameplay payoff.

https://youtu.be/IVwoAs5RBZ8

Hire Assignments

I implemented an entirely new Hire Officer assignment that allows both the player and AI to recruit officers from across the map into their faction.

This is one of the most important additions to the campaign layer. One of the biggest appeals of ROTK games has always been building your dream roster, and I wanted to capture that same "gotta recruit them all" feeling.

Recruitment is also a major strategic decision. Every officer you convince to join your faction directly increases your economic, political, and military capabilities, making diplomacy and recruitment just as valuable as winning battles.

Proposal System Improvements

I continued expanding the proposal system with a lot of QoL improvements.

Proposal result panels now display much more detailed information for military actions, transfers, transport and hire missions, troop recruitment, and weapon production.

There was also a lot of AI work behind the scenes so officers vote more intelligently and carry out long-distance proposals correctly.

AI Improvements

A huge amount of time went into making the AI behave more naturally.

Some of the larger improvements include:

Better military decision making and tactical targeting usage
Smarter Quick Defend behavior
Improved movement logic for officers and caravans
Better assignment generation for idle officers
More reliable retreat behavior
Numerous combat, targeting, and pathfinding fixes

Most of these changes aren't flashy, but they make the AI behave more intelligently.

New Game Setup

The new campaign setup screen received another large iteration.

It now displays much more information about each starting officer, including additional stats, traits, nicknames, biographies, recommended characters, estimated difficulty, and starting locations on the campaign map. This is still a work in progress as the actual world map is not finished yet, so I can’t put any time into polishing the map display here yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz_AkJevuqw

Item System

One of the biggest additions this month was laying the foundation for the new equipment system.

Highlights include:

Added equippable weapons, armor, mounts, manuals, and trinkets.
AI officers now automatically equip better gear when available.
Captured officers now lose their equipped items to their captor.
Items can grant new tactics or modify character stats through the data-driven DEM system.
Added dozens of new equipment pieces to the game.
Implemented Wandering Merchant events where players can purchase rare items.
Added Search events that allow officers to discover equipment while performing search actions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agG_XksMvaE&lc=UgyX578L250UcHH8c194AaABAg

New Content

Content creation continued alongside programming.

This month included:

9 new officer portraits
9 new officers and spawn events
1 faction dilemma events
Western map expansion planning + start
Early victory condition logic
Added Drill Action to raise troop Morale in town
Added Ability to unlock tactics through DEM system
Added Troop and Race Aptitudes to DEM System
New header font
Units can now move through allies
Units now only face cardinal directions post move/attacking
- Added Rotate option on Radial Wheel
Armies no longer can attack officer grid entities in preparation for diplomacy envoys
Relationship values now drift toward 0 and have caps
Show current assignment for all characters in char panel UI
Show full town info on MultiPurpose panel for all enemy/neutral towns (until meaningful spy gameplay is added)

Polish

As usual, there were plenty of smaller improvements throughout the month.

Some highlights include weapon outlines on armies, improved troop visuals, morale and Drill mechanics, assignment UI improvements, AP recovery animations, relationship balancing, performance improvements, localization work, and a long list of bug fixes.

Overall, June was about connecting more and more systems together and building on the importance of officer relationships. The Assist system is now feature complete, the proposal system is becoming much more powerful, equipment has officially entered the game, and the campaign setup continues to improve.

Next month I'll be focusing on Diplomacy as well as enlisting some help with Audio.

Notoris 2: Warlords

See More Content

No more content. So sad.

You can help: share a screenshot, make a video, or start a new discussion!

Returning to where you were last on this page...

Cancel