Dev Diary 74 - Release Date Announced!

Steam Next Fest is over, and it was a success! Colossal Citadels got a good amount of wishlists, and the gane got a lot of useful feedback and bug reports. Thank you everyone who played the demo!

And now, FINALLY, I can announce the release date. It’s quite soon: Colossal Citadels is coming to Early Access on January 7, 2027!

Beta and Multiplayer

Soon there will be a bigger beta version of the game! If you want to participate, join our Discord and message me to opt in. After that, there will also be multiplayer tests.

But first, I want to fix all the bugs identified in the demo within 40 turns. So please keep sending bug reports! I’ve improved the diagnostics, and reports now include previous turns too, which should help me track bugs down..

Gameplay and Balance Improvements

There was a ton of small things meant to streamline progress and learning. Check the full list in the beginning of this article, but one of the most important ones would be:

Elemental enchantment costs orders. Towers are not as insanely strong now, and they only can be upgraded with matching elemental gems. Fortifications build faster, have faction-specific styles and change color based on their material. You can also make a gate by putting three level 2 fortifications in a row.

Food is more interesting now: having multiple food types at the same time gives HP and MP regeneration bonuses, and there’s a cooking technology to increase them. Sheep, cattle and pigs can now be sources of meat. And goblins got a new “betrayer” perk - they might switch sides when attacked!

Invader waves have been rebalanced to be more varied and interesting. The last three waves of the demo are harder now, and there’s a mini-boss! I also completely rebalanced all creeps in the generated level (but generated maps in the demo will stay like that for now).

Performance

The game should run much better now: I’ve made some big (and quite stupid) optimizations, and things no longer update when they are off screen or zoomed out - this boosted FPS several times! Now in theory we can have MUCH bigger world. Also, I finally fixed how things that are hidden in the fog are rendered. Now it’s somehow even more smooth!

I also added dynamic shadows to lights when zoomed in, I love this:

Streams

I sometimes stream some playthroughs or playtests on twitch. Click here:

Changelog

• no more stutter on opening production subcategory when there are a lot of workers and productions
• increased visibility range a bit and made it smoother
• very far buildings and mountains are not visible in the fog. Far tall structures are visible, and terrain gets smoothed so that it looks good
• fixed icons on timeline
• fixed several issues with dragging creatures to structures to make production
• rebalanced all invader waves! Now it should be much more interesting and varied (and also harder at last 3 waves of the demo, with mini-boss)
• fortifications now build faster
• enchanted towers deal much less damage now
• elemental gem enchantments now require orders too
• Selecting citadel project requires an order too
• fixed issue when production window wouldn’t display some tabs when there are many productions
• Invader lich now has an icon in tooltip that indicates that he resurrects fallen enemies. Other special invaders have that as well
• undead have poison defense now
• improved tooltips for passive abilities
• improved wooden fortification visuals
• new bug report diagnostics, please report more bugs
• localization settings are now remembered
• buildings now spread tiles
• changed internal subturn streaming implementation (can affect everything)
• now again you always have 1 tree at the border at start
• fortification styles are now per-faction, and they recolor based on material
• some things added multiple charges of learnable understanding. Now it’s just one
• more structures are now colored based on player
• discovering spell school structures now adds spells to learnable pool only if you have school in action range available, not just visible
• fortification gates (put 3 level2 fortifications in a row)
• procedural ores now have max 3 categories (instead of like 10)
• elves and dark elves can’t be fat/with a bad posture
• added dynamic shadows to lights on close zoom. Let me know if this drops FPS on some weaker CPUs - works fine on my machines
• big optimizations, should be much more FPS now
• things don’t update off screen & zoomed out anymore, can do bigger maps now
• all settings now change correctly
• improved graphics settings
• improved creature portraits
• improved tooltip behavior (please report any weird behaviors with tooltips)
• fixed localization issues
• fixed workers starting with hp below maximum (again)
• bug reports now include previous turns too, new bug reports encouraged
• rebalanced all monsters that are placed in the world (demo might have old numbers - I won’t update them)
• rebalanced how structures are placed in the world
• item blueprints that are unique to factions can now be found in the world too (e.g. at Great Blacksmith)
• boosted medicine production
• destroyed towers and walls leave ruins too
• nerfed towers initial damage. Also now they can be upgraded only via matching elemental gem
• having multiple food types at the same time now gives hp and mp regen bonuses
• cooking technology that increases that bonus
• sheep, cattle, and pig structures (and creatures) as sources of meat production
• all goblins now have “betrayer” perk - they might switch side on getting attacked
• all kinds of axes including halberd now have “shieldbreaker” effect that destroys shield on critical hit
• dropped weapons on death now lose durability by around 5. If dropped weapon has less than 5 durability, it breaks
• morning star deals 2x durability damage
• flail disarms on critical hit, but has lower blunt damage
• bugfixes
• new bugs

See you soon!