Hey everyone, it's been a busy month at the Tavern. We're closing in on the final Steam build, which means we’re finally shifting from "what's still missing" to "what makes the game feel right." We’ve been reworking units, building garrison battles, improving UI/UX, working on localization, and fixing a number of bugs (most of them found by you).

Let’s get into it!

Up until now, most unit types would have the same number of units despite their faction or cost. This was tidy on the backend, but it meant a unit of common goblins felt the same as a unit of elite dwarves. Instead we generally want to go for Quality over Quantity when you acquire higher tier units, so unit counts are now diversified across the roster:

• Cheap infantry (goblins, skeletons, etc.) → 84 models, lower individual stats

• Elite infantry (dwarves, Kriegesguard, etc.) → 36 models, much stronger stats

• Some cavalry → 16 models with stronger charge bonuses

• Some monsters → adjusted to 4 or 12 depending on the unit

This allows us to be more flexible with things like melee defense and health without having to keep all units similar across races and rarities.

We’ve also made the following changes to units:

• Armor has been added to all units

• Stalwart removed from Kaiju and Leviathans (redundant with Terror)

• Artillery is no longer classified as a large unit

• Unit icons corrected to actually match weapons: Duskspears (spears), Glyphstone Phalanx (shield+spear), Bloodsworn (halberd), Abyssal Delveknights (axe), and the new Elarion Sentinels (glaives).

• Stat rebalances on Ashigaru Spearmen, Ronin Wanderers, and the two uncommon elf units (now in line with Aerindel Guard)

• Blood Frenzy on Fleshshredder Fanatics actually triggers now, plus a small health buff.

• NEW unit merging allows you to combine selected unit's health if they are the same unit type and prestige

You asked and we delivered! Garrison battles now feel like exactly that, battles inside garrisons.

• Three garrison models depending on town size: villages, castles, and cities all look distinct

• Gates shoot projectiles at your troops while you assault

• Enemies take army losses & morale penalties when a gate falls

• Artillery and melee are best for breaking gates, while small projectiles will struggle, so build accordingly.

The camera now behaves much closer to what you’d expect if you’re an experienced Total War player:

• Edge movement: top of screen pans forward, bottom pans backward

• Edge rotation on left and right edges

• Edge panning in battle: lower 25% of the screen pans the camera (toggleable in Settings, off by default)

• Mouse scroll only works when the cursor is over the game window.

• Raise/lower camera speed slowed down to match directional movement.

• Map text now fully rotate to match position of camera Added parallax effect to shop scene

Auto resolve now factors in much more of what makes each battle unique:

• Squad attributes like flaming ammo, armor sundering, and terror are accounted for

• Unit leadership matters, units can randomly rout based on it.

• When you lose an auto-resolve, troop health sets to zero to avoid confusion around why you lost.

Treasure nodes now give you a choice between three gear items instead of a single drop. Lets you start thinking about your build immediately instead of waiting on RNG. New treasure node added on node one. Shop chests are still RNG.

• Tavern Themes: unlocked by completing Godking difficulty on each race. Models, flags, and tablecloths for now, more decorations coming

• Unit Position Previews: toggle with spacebar

• Third reserves slot that unlocks via upgrades

• Weather and biomes now visible on the campaign map before picking a battle, so you can plan ahead.

• Unit count override in custom battles

• All units unlocked in custom battles

• Second crossing point added to river battles

• Hero Difficulty buttons show Roman numerals for max difficulty completed

• New tooltip on the map showing the active faction effect

• All in-game tips translated, plus a major localization pass on Chinese & Korean! We are currently working on having Japanese, German, French, Russian, and Spanish improved.

A meaningful overhaul of how battles sound and feel:

• SFX overhaul: new charging shouts, marching sounds, better range and volume on everything. Whole system rebuilt as object-pooled which helps improve performance and memory

• Total rework of unit rotation: directional facing in combat looks dramatically better

• Idle animations: back-line units now play idles when not in melee; large units skip idles when in melee

• Dust clouds now appear at randomized positions across a squad instead of one rectangle in the middle

• Flags fade out when the camera gets close

• Volumetric fireplace light disabled during battle

• Rain particles reduced ~60% with no visual loss

• Charging SFX properly fades out; marching SFX pauses when battle is paused

• Hover SFX improved across unit cards, map nodes, and the legend (and toned down a few that were way too loud)

• Major rewrite of unit grouping: group UIs darken when not selected, you can rearrange units inside a group, groups display in proper order (1 → 2 → 3)

• Army losses morale penalty increased so battles end a bit faster

• Duplicate keybind notification explaining why it won’t work

• Ironhide description corrected: Melee Infantry gain +4 Melee Defense and +10 Armor

• “The Rogue Company” event reduced from 5 → 4 options to fit on screen

• Difficulty of the first battle on board 2 increased

• Changes to generation of map tiles, increased randomization of treasure and shop map nodes adding player decision making autonomy

• Ctrl+A selects all units

• Camera shake now stops when battles end

• Polished end game panel, upgrades panel, and credits page

• Parallax effect added to the event screen with improved overhead die view

• Meta progression upgrades reworked for the full game

• Second hero per faction unlocks after a victory on the first hero

• Polish to map camera positioning Map Flags now match position of camera on y axis

• New Click out of squad cards deselects them all

• Added the ability to multi select units on the map

• Polished hover highlight feedback

• Prestige button now only shows if prestige is available

Huge thanks to everyone in Discord[discord.gg] who keeps reporting bugs, suggesting changes, and keeping TJ motivated to bring Tabletop Tavern to the finish line. Half the changes in this update exist because someone took the time to submit a bug report or provide feedback, so please keep it up!

See you in the tavern. 🍻

• Fixed game-breaking bug when moving units around

• Fixed crash from Bloodsworn debuffing an enemy that charged them but wasn’t yet in combat

• Fixed crash from multiple units being destroyed on the exact same frame

• Fixed crash from enemy archer reprioritization infinite loop

• Fixed crash from enemy archers reprioritizing while in melee

• Fixed crash when prestiging units (multiple culprits)

• Fixed crash from a listener not unsubscribing properly

• Fixed possible crash on localization

• Fixed crash on pause

• Fixed Sakura Dynasty campaign battles being unplayable

• Fixed first node always being treasure

• Fixed first node always rolling the same random number

• Fixed Bogmaw Trolls, Necrotic Chimeras, and Treants not playing animations

• Fixed literally all monstrous units (Giants, Trolls, Corpse Claws, etc.) rarely playing attack animations

• Fixed monstrous units not attacking each other

• Fixed units jittering during in-combat rotation

• Fixed direwolves flanking and then standing still

• Fixed enemy archers not re-engaging when their target moves out of range

• Fixed flanking units not attacking (for real this time)

• Fixed cavalry flanking not being intercepted by player units

• Fixed cavalry not playing animations

• Fixed Banryu Bombardiers firing all their ammo at once

• Fixed horses doing flying animations on Nightriders, Blood Knights, Dragon Tachi, and Starstriders

• Fixed Dragon Tachi and Borderland Riders not holding their weapons properly

• Fixed Sylvan Archers using Sunspire Bladelord models

• Fixed Banryu Bombardier recruit card clipping

• Fixed Tokugawa description (now correctly references Emperor’s Arquebusiers); old reroll bonus disabled, will return on a future hero

• Fixed floating sword above the battlefield

• Fixed triangles under units rendering through flags

• Fixed selected/hovered triangles fading correctly on pause

• Fixed attack arrows appearing correctly on pause

• Fixed missing background image on final battle gear rewards

• Fixed dragging a unit to a full reserves bench (first reserve now goes to deployed)

• Fixed buttons on the rewards panel staying highlighted after click

• Fixed battlefield camera not rotating when switching to enemy spawn in custom battles

• Fixed group UI not updating on squad destruction

• Fixed Gear name in loot battlefields being overwritten with “Collect Loot”

• Fixed unit renaming not working

• Fixed camera moving while renaming units

• Fixed unit card position bug from rapidly dragging units between deployed/reserves

• Fixed Supply Lines appearing to apply to all stats instead of just ammo

• Fixed Omen of Famine not accounting for gear slots locked by meta progression

• Fixed starting gold not being reduced by units bought before campaign start

• Fixed unshielded units being placeable in defensive stance

• Fixed town sack options running off the card

• Fixed hotkeys triggering when game wasn’t focused (i.e. while typing in Discord)

• Fixed stat coloring inconsistencies

• Fixed UI strings using “arrows” instead of “projectiles”

• Fixed missing armor sundering translations

• Fixed misspelling of “Forest” in city tooltips

• Fixed text scaling on the Starting Gear button

• Fixed UI scaling on the new reserves slot at ultrawide resolutions

• Fixed faction music not loading on resumed campaigns

• Fixed alert for available upgrades appearing when none existed

• Fixed Godking difficulty not triggering on 4 completions

• Fixed health bar numbers appearing inside reordered units

• Fixed map node outlines only showing on flags

• Fixed double-reserve healing upgrade setting healing to zero

• Fixed prestige credit infinite exploit

• Fixed prestige crash when army was full

• Fixed inability to add troops to starting army

• Fixed enemy strength scaling 2x as fast on manual battles

• Fixed enemy scaling on garrison battles

• Fixed Treasure chests panel showing during gear claim

• Fixed outriders’ saved spawns appearing behind castle walls

• Fixed tower shields not applying against heavily shielded enemies

• Fixed Gates appearing under “Special” in custom battles

• Fixed custom battles breaking when entered multiple times

• Fixed attack SFX playing when a unit was commanded to attack

• Fixed SFX spam when reordering units

• Fixed tablecloth textures

• Fixed bushes/trees missing read/write access for scaling

• Fixed units getting stuck in trees in forests and swamps (navmeshes removed)

• Fixed saved formations spawning new units in a pile to the left (now spawn back row)

• Fixed bug where holding alt, repositioning, right-clicking to cancel, then left-clicking would move units outside the allowed zone (genuinely don’t know how this was found)

• Fixed bug going from move command → attack command

• Sanitized usernames from log files

• Fixed exploit of returning to menu before selecting units to recruit/conscript

• Fix for reordering units while enemies are spawning in

• Fix Ronin wanderers recruit too rotated

• Fix bug with prestiging units causing errors

• Fixed archer attack arrow not hiding when units run out of ammo

• Added clearer notification to archer cards when out of ammo

• Buffed sanguine court starting armies

• Fixed archer range not toggling the same way unit position triangles and attack arrows were

• Fixed some backend dev tools

• Fix for recruiting from cities not filtering out signature units

• Slightly reduced difficulty of later boards

• Changes to generation of map tiles, increased randomization of treasure and shop map nodes adding player decision making autonomy

• Fixed a bunch of map textures that were rendering in low res

• Fix bug with unit not being available in collections

• Fix prestige text for artillery

Hey everyone,

This update is a big one. A lot of the work over the past weeks has been under the hood, but it should have a very noticeable impact on performance and how battles play out!

We’ve started rolling out the new lore we shared during Next Fest.

• Added faction and hero lore to the Collections Panel

• Each faction now includes both a faction overview & hero-specific lore

This is just the start. More lore will continue to be added and expanded. Some of the lore is a tad outdated due to us switching out units as you'll see below. We'll update it again soon!

The most common negative feedback we got during Next Fest was performance. We heard you loud and clear and have been focusing heavily on reducing memory usage and improving performance across the entire project.

Build Size

• 8.5 GB → 5.6 GB

RAM Usage

• Main Menu: 7.58 GB → 1.97 GB

• Empty Battle Scene: 8.19 GB → 2.07 GB

• Full Battle (15v15 Iron Legion vs Green Tide): 8.34 GB → 2.72 GB

• Map Scene: 9.57 GB → 2.58 GB

FPS (RTX 3080)

• Battle Scene: 67 FPS → 102 FPS

This was primarily aimed at improving performance on lower end hardware, so seeing gains on high end systems as well is a nice bonus.

We’ve been deep in a full project-wide optimization pass. This means going through every texture, model, and asset in the game. While doing this we identified several assets that were extremely unoptimized and either updated or replaced them.

• Example: Jomsvikings alone were 3x the size of the entire Drakosaur Brood faction

New models completed:

• Jomsvikings

• Fleshshredders

• Ironguts

Still in progress:

• Oni

• Bloodsworn

• Several Dwarf units

Events now provide much larger rewards to make them more interesting and inline with missing out on the rewards from a battle. Cleaned up the UI to clarify the success/failure outcome of each choice

Aggressive

• Default behavior

• Always active at river crossings

Passive

• Triggered when the army has artillery

• Breaks when:

  • Player gets close

  • Player deals damage

Delayed Passive

• 25% chance to trigger regardless of composition

• Holds passive stance for 10 seconds before switching

• Starts in back row

• Flanks wide left or right

• Direction randomized if only one cav unit

• Will not perform wide flanks at river crossings

• Defensive Stance

  • Shielded units losing combat will switch to defensive mode

• Fire at Will (Archers)

  • Triggers when army drops below 25% health

Artillery

• Targets first unit in range

• Will reprioritize to ranged units if they enter later

Archers

• Targets first unit in range

• Will switch to unshielded targets if current target has shields

Large Unit Targeting

• Non-cavalry prioritizes enemies without anti-large

• Enemy archers now charge into melee when out of ammo

• Improved guard mode logic to prevent idle units in combat

• Fixed archers:

  • Charging wrong targets

  • Breaking out of melee incorrectly

• Fixed unit stats overflow issue for Bulwark unit

• Fixed missing textures on campaign map

• Fixed withdrawing hotkey triggering when opening bug report panel

• Fixed tutorial icons (guard mode / cancel swapped)

• Fixed campaign loss bug when:

  • Completing battle

  • Exiting to main menu

  • Crashing at end of battle

This update was more of a foundational one. Less flashy on the surface, but it sets up Tabletop Tavern for long term success. As always, keep the feedback coming!

See you in the tavern. 🍻