Some Gameplay Changes

The second week of beta testing revealed a dominant strategy that allowed easy runaway victories to anyone who discovered it. So a third beta test has been released today, featuring some tweaks to make the game more challenging.

1. The cost of recruitment of knights and footmen has been tweaked. Previously knights required only gold, while to create footmen required only peasants. Now both of these require both gold and peasants.
2. Maintenance costs of units have been increased. Previously the amount it cost to maintain forces were so small that this game element could easily be ignored.

In alpha testing these tweaks have been largely successful in rebalancing the game, so they have been implemented in a third beta test version. As time is pressing for the DOS Games Spring Jam, this will almost certainly be the last beta test version, unless some other game-breaking bug or flaw is discovered.