1. Sheild-based warfare

This is the era of the shield wall. It’s the tactic with which Alfred beat the Great Viking Army at the battle of Edington, and remained predominant across battlefields of the era. To reflect this style of warfare, we’ve reduced the distance between soldiers in many units, with dense blocks of tightly-packed soldiers. We’ve also reduced infantry charge distances, as the short, sharp clashing of swords and shields makes combat feel faithful to this intimately intense combat style.

To complement this, all units with shields now have the Charge Reflect attribute, which means that if they’re stationary and braced when charged by cavalry, the horses will refuse the charge. You’ll see them rear up before slowly advancing into close-quarters combat, negating any bonuses from impact. Of course, this means you’ll have to be very choosy about where to point your cavalry – either at unshielded targets, or maneuvering them into positions where they can play hammer to your shield-wall’s anvil.

 

2. Cavalry combat

Cavalry versus cavalry is a different ball-game. We’ve actually increased cavalry spacing in Thrones of Brittania, which promotes more realistic cavalry combat, as horses pass through gaps in the opposing unit and cycle round to clash again.

 

3. Critical hits

Thrones will introduce a new critical hit chance for Battle that reproduces the ‘arrow in the eye’ effect. Now, impacts from both melee and missile attacks have a chance of dealing a critical blow, delivering 10 times their usual damage. This means you’ll now see the occasional solder buckle to the ground when charged or under a hail of arrows, as he’s dispatched by a particularly vicious blow.

 

4. Unit modes

Guard mode makes a welcome return for Thrones, and maintains the functionality that makes it ideal for holding ground and not pursuing routers. As a small quality of life improvement, we’re also adding optional default settings for various unit states. So, you can now define Guard Mode, Skirmish Mode, Always-Run and  Group-Locking as on or off by default.

 

5. New Settlement maps/Improved AI

A whole host of new maps have been made for Thrones of Britannia, including a lot less 'hard collisions' and a lot more 'soft collisions', meaning armies will be able to move through towns much more fluidly and fighting in the streets will be less confined to narrow corridors.