Fair play to Norland's developer Long Jaunt, it doesn't do patches by halves. Back in March, the medieval colony sim's "damn big update" overhauled several of its most fundamental systems, stripping out character needs, reworking crime and punishment, and radically changing how your colony's horny lords give orders to peasants. Now, Long Jaunt is rolling out an even bigger patch that leaves virtually no part of the game untouched.
Appropriately named the 'big summer update', Long Jaunt's latest rework is so extensive that the developer issued it in two halves. Part one arrived back in June, headlined by a new economy system that enables all in-game characters to trade using gold.
This helps address some of Norland's more frustrating elements, such as managing your Lords' desires for holy rings. These rings acted as both a separate currency and status symbol for the heads of your colony. Yet because they coveted them so fiercely, you ended up spending a lot of time juggling rings between lords at the expense of other important jobs, something I struggled with when I took the game for a spin around this time last year.
Now though, the new system gives lords their own gold, thereby tying them into the economy system directly and letting them buy their own rings. According to Norland's designer Dmitry Glaznev, the update also "rework[s] thoughts and desires related to rings", so lords should be a bit less ring-oriented more generally.
Alongside these economic changes, part one of the update also introduces politics to Norland. If any given lords' loyalty to your colony drops below a certain level, there's a chance they will turn into "politicians". Instead of spending their pocket money on trinkets, they'll instead use it to buy "influence" among other characters like other lords and kings from rival nations.
This can culminate in politicians launching active rebellions against your king, supported by armies of other lords who are hostile to you. The aim here is to bring more of that Crusader Kings-ish geopolitics to Norland, as the world map was a little anaemic compared to the game's colony simulation in its initial launch. Glaznev notes this is a "large and complex feature" which is "quite rough around the edges", and therefore still being worked on. But it sounds neat nonetheless.
Part one also adds some other features like an overhaul to storage, while making some of the more basic mechanics slightly easier, to account for the higher-level friction added by politicians. But there's a whole other part of the update to cover yet, so let's move onto that.
Part two of the update, which landed this week, chiefly overhauls Norland's building system to make your settlements look and feel more convincingly medieval. It replaces several role-specific housing structures with a universal residential building, expands your lord's hall to include a throne, an integrated kitchen, and a royal bedroom, and adds a new "plaza" building that includes a market and tavern. "In the narrow, walled medieval city, streets were tight, and the social architectural unit was the plaza," Glaznev notes.
To accommodate for the increased size of buildings, the update also increases the game's construction grid size, and also adjusts the "comfort" system used by houses so that it is affected by surrounding structures: "Other housing, the hall, and social buildings add comfort, while industrial buildings reduce it."
These changes were initially added to the beta branch of Norland, but Long Jaunt should have rolled them out into the main game by the time you read this. Coupled with the major patch in March, the big summer update sounds like it'll serve as a new foundation for Norland. From here, Glaznev plans to attack the game's roadmap, with planned new features including "map generation, economy expansion, knowledge mechanics expansion and deeper character personalities".
