Hi everyone,

Today we're releasing a pretty big (and long overdue) update for 'Caribbean!'. You can check out our new video devblog where we show what's been added and changed.



Update notes:

Strategic part:

- Added new interactive city screen.
- Introduced new system for building construction.
- Added new entities 'Cargo hold' and 'Storage' to the game's functional.
- Changed goods trading interface.

Sea battles:

- Increased size of the sea locations.
- Improved AI's behavior during battles.
- Increased shooting distance for ships' artillery.
- Added ship ramming ability.
- Added 'captain's bridge' camera option.
- Added 'spyglass' camera option.

Boarding:

- All boarding locations are completely redone.
- Added 'rope jumps / climbing up' for the attacking side.
- Added crow's nests for masts on all ships.
- AI is now divided into 'defending' and 'attacking' entities. Attacking AI will try to get to enemy's deck as soon as possible, while the defending one will hold the line.

Land battles:

- Changed cavalry behavior. It will now always attempt to perform charge attacks.
- Added starting formations for the entire player's army. All troops are now divided by their types automatically.
- Partly reworked order system.

General fixes:

- Changed shooting visual effects for most weapons.
- Fixed a bug in artillery's smoke particles that caused FPS drop.
- Changed horse troops line-ups of all factions, except for the Brotherhood of the Coast.

New commands for controlling your troops:

1, 2, 3, 4 buttons will order the troops to come up to the player. Same buttons in combination with Ctrl will give an order to attack.

1 - order melee units to come up to you.
2 - order riflemen to come up to you.
3 - order close-range cavalry to come up to you.
4 - order long-range cavalry to come up to you.

Ctrl+1 - order melee units to attack.
Ctrl+2 - order riflemen to attack.
Ctrl+3 - order close-range cavalry to attack.
Ctrl+4 - order long-range cavalry to attack.

Note: The 'Come up' command doesn't replicate the old 'Follow me' command. The troops will only come closer to the player and will make a formation relatively close to his position.

Known issues:

As the game is going through an active overhaul stage, many of its elements are completely turned off or don't work correctly. We'd like to ask the players to be understanding of this. The development process doesn't let us release a fully working current version of the game. But at the same time we don't want to keep you waiting for an update any longer.

So here's what you'll need to keep in mind when playing the version 0.900:

- You can't hire garrison in a city captured by you. This is because the city menu concept is being changed. In the future we're planning to add a brand new screen for troops hiring and city upgrades. Advice: after successful city assault you can leave there freed prisoners - they'll go the garrison automatically.

- Industrial buildings will produce the goods, but won't sell them. You'll need to collect the goods from storage and sell it yourself for now.

- The old system for controlling the troops was turned off, but the new system is only in the beginning of the development. Most likely, you won't be able to control the troops with comfort in the nearest month.

- Price system and its balance. We have an especially rare pistol that costs 180 000 piasters and a frigate that costs 150 000. Sometimes two almost identical sables can differ in price dramatically. A good cuirass can cost like a regiment of royal musketeers and so on. We're aware of these problems and ask to be patient. We can't start working on the economy balance until overall work on the gameplay is finished.

- Same goes for weapon balance. Grenades and cannons, above all. We'll certainly fix this, but closer to the release.

- FPS drops and slow locations loading. We've reached the limits of M&B's engine possibilities. It can be fixed with optimization and cleaning old content. But the thing is that the engine often relies on the resources which are dangerous to delete from the game. We'll optimize the game, slow but steady. We already started working on that, but owners of lower-end PCs will experience some problems in the current version.