Total blade news & patch notes

This update was originally planned to be merged with upcoming patches. However, due to dramatic improvements in optimization and combat AI, it has been released immediately.

⚙️ Optimization

⚔️ Combat Performance

• Recommended battle size: 1400 (Ryzen 9800X3D)

• GPU load reduced by ~60%

• CPU load reduced by ~40%

• The optimization freed significantly more GPU headroom than expected:

  • Default resolution increased

  • Dynamic Resolution option added

• Remaining optimization margin:

  • CPU: ~8%

  • GPU: ~12%

• RAM usage optimization has not started yet

🗺️ World Map Performance

• World map performance doubled

• This improvement is a direct result of reduced GPU usage

⚔️ Combat System Changes

🚶 Movement System

• Complete rewrite of character and mount movement code

• Both humans and horses now react to terrain:

  • Uphill: reduced max speed and acceleration

  • Downhill: increased max speed

• Horses are now:

  • Fully controllable

  • Slower to accelerate

• Soldier movement speed calculations are now more precise

• Even slow soldiers can climb slopes using consistent acceleration

• When blocked by small obstacles:

  • Soldiers accumulate force

  • Then overcome them with a stronger push

• ⚠️ Backstep speed reduction is temporarily disabled

🤖 Combat Logic & AI

• Soldier attack prediction error reduced:

  • 0.23s → 0s

  • Attacks are now queued the moment an enemy is predicted to enter range

• Shock infantry damage calculation redesigned

• AI formations now advance toward:

  • The center of the enemy’s front line

• When calculating torso rotation to face enemies:

  • The Zeno’s paradox issue is resolved in the 120cm–10cm distance aim

🛠️ Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where all soldiers believed their weapon length was exactly 80cm

  • Not sure this bug may have existed in previous versions

⚠️ Known Issues

• These issues occurred because the update was released during ongoing character base revisions

• As a result:

  • Some bones may appear bent

  • Certain outfits may not properly match the character body

• In some cases:

  • Attacks may be executed in a different direction than the prepared animation

🔜 What’s Next

• Implementation of a centralized sound system

• This update may be deployed without a separate announcement

🏘️ Town Mechanic Rework

• Merchants and recruitable troops now appear outside towns when you approach.

• Town boundaries will be clearly defined on the world map in a future update.

• If outlaws or hostile forces enter a town’s area, the garrison will sortie and intercept them in a future update.

• Old save files made inside towns may cause NPCs to be displaced to unreachable locations.

• The old town entry system will be used only for future dungeon content.

⏳ About the Next Update

• The next update will take a long time and is planned as a major overhaul.

• Planned changes include:

  • 4× world density

  • Neutral factions

  • Character appearance changes

  • Attack animation overhaul

  • Perk system rework

  • Starting race selection

  • New and reworked items

• Shader changes and optimization attempts for ~2,000-unit battles are planned, but success is not guaranteed.

• Save files will not be compatible after this update.

• While quests and the main story will not be expanded, neutral factions require a minimum narrative framework, which contributes to the longer development time.

⚔️ Combat

• Infantry now predict the future position of enemy cavalry and enter attack-ready states.

• Mounted players can still dominate with superior weapon reach, but taking damage inside infantry attack range now happens because enemy AI no longer misses clear attack opportunities.

• Horse size has been reduced.

• IK-based hit reactions added:

  • Applied to humanoid-type monsters only.

• Cavalry AI:

  • Always enters attack-ready state when enemies are nearby.

  • Attacks are executed using predicted speed and future positions.

  • In theory, attacks do not miss, but because movement AI and attack AI are separate, attacks can miss if direction or speed changes mid-attack.

• Lancer AI is now much stronger against cavalry.

  • Effective against monsters and shock infantry.

  • Ineffective against shield infantry unless given a charge order.

• Shields:

  • Blocking does not consume stamina.

  • Can block continuously until destroyed.

• Tactical AI:

  • Spearmen prioritize shock cavalry.

  • Other infantry prioritize enemy archers or infantry groups.

  • Formations that are heavily outnumbered are treated as decoys and deprioritized.

  • In auto tactics:

    • Formations do not rotate toward very close enemies.

    • Non-spearmen do not rotate to face cavalry.

• Siege battles:

  • Monsters target the main gate.

  • Smaller units use ladders.

• Equipment weight:

  • Only armor and helmet weight are applied.

  • Heavier gear reduces movement speed but improves impact resistance and reduces knockback.

• Current battle maps suffer from poor visibility. → Flat, combat-friendly areas will be added to all biomes in the next update.

⚖️ Balance

• World map starting location moved to a valley region.

• Reduced cavalry movement penalties in forests.

• Players can no longer dodge while airborne.

• Battles initiated by the player on the world map now pull in nearby legions.

• Weapons and armor now have six quality tiers:

  • Higher quality slightly increases core stats.

  • Prices increase significantly.

• Only faction leaders can declare war.

• Soldier stats have been reworked.

  • When using old save files, only newly recruited soldiers use the new balance values.

🐞 Known Issues

• Humanoid monsters have slimmer hit collisions than their visuals.

  • Rakseth: collision closely matches visuals.

  • Anabolic Cat and Vynekin types: large mismatch remains.

🎨 Art

• Accumulating blood stains and hit splash effects added (can be disabled in options).

• IK-based hit and parry animations added.

• Battle map art and layouts updated.

  • Central areas generally provide good fighting terrain.

  • Maps do not yet scale based on total army size.

• Increased variety in knockback and recovery animations.

• Musket smoke visuals replaced.

  • Performance with large musket formations has not yet been measured.

• Reduced cases where shields clip through heads during hit reactions.

🛠️ Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where declaring war inside a town, then saving and loading, could block progression.

• Town residents can be hunted again.

• Camera now works correctly even if the player’s corpse clips into the ground.

• Fixed Cat Tower’s probabilistic animation bug and projectile scale issues.

• Fixed an issue where merchants could only generate items immediately after game start.

• Fixed excessive waist shaking during infantry charges.

⚠️ Notice

• This build has not been validated for long-term play.

• Shields must be equipped in the fourth weapon slot. Otherwise, a crash may occur

• A verified and stable build will be released in about one week.

• Using old save files may cause civil wars in all kingdoms

🏰 Kingdoms, Diplomacy & Civil War Systems

■ Diplomacy

• Peace treaties are enforced for 30 days.

• Due to large code additions, diplomacy may not function properly for a while.

■ Civil War

• If the player’s or any AI clan’s influence exceeds the king’s, the kingdom may split.

• Stored influence decreases daily.

• Kings receive a fixed amount of daily influence.

■ Kingdom Destruction & Restoration

• When a kingdom is destroyed and a new kingdom of the same culture is created, the previous destroyed kingdom will be restored first.

■ Exile System

• Landless lords lose loyalty and may join civil wars or defect to other kingdoms.

• Features related to kingdom destruction and lord exile are not fully tested.

■ De Jure Ownership

• Clans may randomly lose de jure rights to fiefs they do not control.

• Newly captured towns gain de jure ownership on day 100.

■ Influence Gain Issue

• Influence gained from battles does not properly reflect enemy size (known issue).

■ Kingdom Art Settings

• System modularized: You can now change kingdom name and colors without founding a new kingdom.

■ Strategic Settings

• The king can assign overall strategies.

• Clicking the box under a town name allows town-specific strategies.

⚔️ Combat System Changes

■ Infantry Combat (Finalized)

• Pelvis rotates according to the attack direction.

• Movement animations adjust accordingly based on the rotated pelvis.

• Animations may be improved later using UE5 bones, but the core combat framework will not change.

■ Cavalry

• Cavalry AI performs more deliberate and careful melee attacks.

■ Dodging

• Press Spacebar in combat to perform a dodge action.

🖥️ Performance & Technical Updates

■ FSR4 Upgrade

• Updated to FSR4.

• AMD GPU users will experience sharper image quality compared to previous versions.

■ Battle Size Benchmark (High-end CPU)

• Testing with battle size 1200 shows noticeable lag.

• After full optimization, a Ryzen 9800X3D is expected to handle around 1400 infantry units simultaneously.

🐞 Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where one-handed spears could not attack.

• Fixed an issue where cavalry remained abnormally fast after finishing a charge.

• Character models in the equipment screen now update immediately after changing armor.

• Due to a bug, attacking civilians inside towns is temporarily disabled.

🧪 Known Issues / Bugs

• Troops preparing for a siege are not counted in faction strength, affecting peace treaty conditions.

• Towercat’s "Cat Tower" bone system has issues → transform bug occurs randomly.

• Ongoing sieges cannot be canceled through diplomacy.

⚖️ Balance Adjustments

• Armor value cannot drop below 10.

• Monster-type units' HP reduced by 50%.

• Cavalry charge weapon damage can only pierce one target.

• Anti-cavalry formation with two-handed spears can attack up to 3 times.

📅 Updated Development Schedule

■ Prioritized ( takes about a week)

• Long-term playtesting

• Rewriting animations for UE5

• Overhauling battle map art

• Increasing siege map variety

• Overall balancing

Save file compatibility is not yet determined.

🚧 Future Updates (Break save compatibility)

• Character appearance overhaul

• Optimization for girl-type units

• Additional factions

• Basic dungeon system

• Redesign of stats & perk system

• Special projectile system

Final version will additionally include:

• Quests

• Dungeons

• Dialogue system

• The world map gameplay is now active. (Long-term playtesting is not yet complete.)

• Basic diplomacy features have been added:

  • You can join or leave a faction.

  • If you own a fief, only armed independence is currently possible.

  • A future update will introduce a method to peacefully relinquish a fief and become independent.

• All cities now feature culture-appropriate exterior and interior designs. Biomes are not yet applied.

• Global Illumination (GI) is now active on the world map.

• City and village interiors now include a small amount of procedural variation.

🏙 Cities & Sieges

• Elite units can be hired in cities. → In a future update, this will be restricted to cities belonging to your own faction only.

• Cities can now be conquered:

  • Siege preparation time: 75 seconds (at 1× speed).

  • If AI reinforcements arrive as defenders, they cannot retreat until the siege begins.

  • The siege battle map is not yet implemented.

• AI factions currently conduct highly aggressive expansion and conquest.

⚔️ Units & Combat

• General unit balance has been completed.

• Shield durability has been added:

  • Shield infantry can now block 1–2 hits from monster units.

  • Destroyed shields, and shields from fallen soldiers, remain permanently on the battlefield.

🕊 Peace Negotiations

• The cost of entering peace negotiations is now based on the total troop count of each nation.

⚠️ Known Issues

• No hiring restrictions on elite units → early game is too easy.

• No racial armor restrictions yet.

• The player can declare war on a third faction right before battle even when not a king.

• Joining and leaving kingdoms currently has no limitations.

• Player-owned and AI-owned cities/garrisons do not yet affect finances properly.

🔧 Next Update (Save Compatible)

The following features are planned for the next update package. This entire set of features is expected to be completed as a single combined update, and existing save files will remain compatible.

• More detailed diplomacy system

• Clan scout functionality for player kingdoms

• Fief distribution and a clan-influence political system

• Siege battles added to the battle map

• Replacement of infantry attack animations with new full-body animation sets (If the experiment does not improve gameplay, the current animations will remain.)

📌 Estimated development time for the entire update package: Within ~2 weeks (This estimate accounts for all features above, not only siege maps.)

🛠 Post-Update Features (Save-Breaking)

The following major update will not be compatible with existing save files:

• New character face and body proportion adjustments

• Fix for the Bruton weapon scaling bug

• Basic dungeon implementation

• Addition of six remaining factions

• New unit types for factions that currently lack variety

• New faction-specific weapons

• Item rarity/grade system for weapons and armor

📌 Target: All features planned for release within this year

🎯 Final System Update Before Story Content

Before story quests are introduced, one final system update is planned:

• Complete rework of stats and perk systems

• Biome and elevation variety in village interior design

• Expanded siege battle map variations

📘 About Story Quests

• Story content will focus on dungeon expeditions and neutral hero hunts, structured as linear chapter-based quests.

• There are many chapters, so it will take time, but:

  • Goal: Implement story content by February

  • March target: Voice recording + 12-language localization

The battle system has now reached the level originally aimed for in the official version. The uploaded video showcases a full-scale battle conducted entirely under AI command.

⚔️ Battle System Rewritten

• The bow and throwing mechanics have been completely rebuilt and are now flawless as a game system.

• Aiming time directly affects accuracy and projectile speed.

  • Bows and javelins fired without full draw will wobble weakly and lose power.

  • Crossbows and firearms retain damage and projectile speed even when fired from the hip, but their aim will deviate sharply.

🏃‍♂️ Movement and Projectile Dynamics

• The shooter’s movement speed now directly adds to the projectile’s velocity. → This means if your projectile is too slow or your character moves too fast, you can’t rely solely on the crosshair — you must account for speed and distance.

• Examples:

  • Sprinting forward and throwing a javelin backward will make it drop straight to the ground.

  • AI units experience the same physics with perfectly calculated aim.

• Projectile damage now depends on the relative speed between the projectile and the target.

  • Running head-first into a slow-moving javelin can cause instant death-level damage.

  • However, for fast bullets, your running speed has almost no effect on incoming damage.

🎯 AI and Projectile Behavior

• At excessive range, AI units will automatically stop ranged attacks.

• However, monster-type units use artillery logic, meaning they have no range limit.

• All non-explosive projectiles embed themselves into the ground and remain there until the battle ends.

  • Up to 50,000 arrows can remain on the battlefield without major performance issues (although this extreme case has not yet been stress-tested).

  • Projectiles appear visibly larger while in flight — this is intentional for readability. They revert to normal size upon impact.

• Up to 10,000 corpses can accumulate on the battlefield without issue, though each corpse requires its own mesh variation — a future update will address this.

• Arrows also visibly stick into horses.

🔊 Additional Combat Changes

• Doppler effects and sound reworks have not yet been implemented.

• Ranged units that run out of ammo will now charge at the enemy.

• When a side has overwhelming power, AI units skip marching formations and charge immediately.

• Monster units attack relentlessly whenever possible — if enemies are nearby, they will ignore player orders until the target is dead.

🌍 Upcoming Schedule

• The goal is to release a playable world map within 10 days.

• However, if the system feels unnatural during testing, the update may be delayed for polish.

• Regardless of timing, all core game content (excluding story mode) will be completed within this year.

• Until then, save files will not be compatible between updates.

4k resolution Combat / Animation

• All attack animations now strike precisely forward.

• Stab and swing attacks always follow the player's viewing angle.

• When the player is running as infantry, the melee weapon aim point no longer jitters.

Infantry

• Infantry moving backward now experience reduced movement speed and push force. → Infinite kiting with long weapons is now more difficult.

• Applies to both player-controlled and AI infantry.

Pikemen / Polearm Infantry — Brace System

• Brace feature added.

  • Automatically activates when enemies are within weapon reach + 22 meters.

  • Adjusts the spear to the formation height (visual and functional effect).

  • If enemy speed exceeds 3.5 m/s, attack power increases +100% per additional 1 m/s.

  • After a successful or canceled barricade attack, brace cooldown is approximately 23 seconds.

  • Effectiveness is greatly reduced on steep terrain (e.g., enemies coming up from below a hill).

  • Brace automatically cancels if enemies move much closer than weapon reach

• Damage from the pole portion reduced from 50% → 20% (to prevent OP polearm hits).

• Pikemen remain the strongest infantry, but their slow movement and vulnerability to ranged attacks limit strategic control.

• In future updates, pikemen will be unable to receive charge orders, further emphasizing ranged vulnerability.

Shock Cavalry

• Cavalry charges now apply attack hit detection via the weapon.

• Charge weapons can hit up to 3 targets directly; additional targets take mount impact damage only.

• Lance length is comparable to pikes, so collisions with pike formations cause significant mutual damage.

Infantry Charge Logic

• During a charge, infantry hold weapons forward and share barricade-related damage bonuses.

• Shock accumulation resets to 0 when a charge order is given.

• Shock taken during a charge is reduced to 1/10, but extreme impacts can cancel the charge.

• Successful charge attacks trigger automatic follow-up hits (two extra hits for two-handed weapons).

• Infantry are considered in defense mode while charging.

Formations / Tactics

• Wedge formation added.

• All formations now have a 4-row thickness.

• Square formations, especially pike squares, are structurally weak at corners.

• Squad command system will be redesigned in a future update. (e.g., always-on tactic mode, hotkey-based formation switching while keeping squad selection).

AI Combat

• AI units attempt to maintain optimal attack distances and do not miss clear opportunities.

  • (In some cases, AI may unintentionally use lunge actions.)

• Movement speed and positioning are more precise, though multithreading constraints limit absolute precision.

• AI prioritizes attacking the weakest player units, but may target nearby stronger units if weak units are too few or far away. This prevents the player from baiting enemy cavalry charges using a single archer.

• Cavalry is less affected by distance calculations for targeting.

Round System Changes

• Round 1: Squads now spawn reliably at designated positions without teleportation.

• Round 2 and beyond: Reinforcements spawn in scattered formations.

Development Schedule

• Tactical command system update expected within 3 days.

• Remaining combat work:

  • Rewriting ranged attack code

  • Optimization of female units

• Goal for this month: Add all world map content (excluding quests) to reach playable state.

Known Issue

• Reinforcements were intended to enter from behind their own team, but currently spawn at random formation angles for unknown reasons.

New Content New races have been added. Only battles are available; there is no world map gameplay yet. Test soldiers are provided.

Optimization If you have a good CPU, you can raise the battle size to 1,000 soldiers. The default option is 420 soldiers, which is calibrated for minimum spec CPUs to maintain 60 FPS. The Girl race is less optimized and requires 60% more processing. The Mushroom race also consumes about 20% more resources.

FSR Frame Generation When you enable FSR, frame generation will also be automatically enabled. Five resolution upscaling options have been added as well. However, using only resolution upscaling without frame generation is not supported.

Formations & Unit Commands Press Q to issue movement or charge commands to your units. The charge command can only be used once per unit.

Round System The reinforcement system has been replaced by a round system. When one side is reduced to 20% of its troops, all remaining soldiers retreat to their base, and the reserve soldiers that couldn’t join earlier due to the battle size will enter the battlefield. The charge command is also recharged at this time.

Unified Impact System Knockback from giant attacks, soldiers thrown by cavalry charges, staggering when hit, explosion reactions, and shield impact defense are all calculated with the same system. This is designed so that if you maximize Strength and wield a two-handed hammer, you can launch lighter enemies 10 meters away or even stagger giants.

Formation Physics Dense masses of heavy soldiers can push through lighter ones. If friendly cavalry collide at high speed into friendly infantry, the impact can carry through and push back even the enemy formation behind them. Wedge formations have not yet been implemented, but once they are, heavy cavalry charging into dense infantry should split them apart.

Unit Size Division Units are categorized into Normal, Large, and Extra Large. Extra Large units can blow away entire formations, but their bulk makes them vulnerable to ranged attacks.

Formation types Pike square, circular shield wall, and line shield wall are special formations. They have unique pre-combat animations, but no dedicated melee AI has been implemented yet. Once in close combat, they revert to standard AI, losing their advantages.

Upcoming Before World Map Update Before the world map update, the integrated sound manager, Girl race optimization, and appearance customization will be implemented first. This will take around 15 days. No separate update logs will be posted. The goal is to release a playable world update by November.

Issues to Be Fixed Soon

• Most soldiers do not yet have proper stats.

• Only one battle map (plains) is supported.

• With larger troop counts, the map feels too small.

• Soldier skeletons have been upgraded for UE5, but motion alignment hasn’t been fine-tuned, making attack hitboxes imprecise.

• No integrated sound manager, so audio cuts out.

• Some attack animations using both upper and lower body are desynced with movement.

• Unit commands are drag-based, causing misclicks. This will be changed to right-click movement.

• Monster-type units’ bodies overlap each other. This will be fixed soon.

Issues With No Clear Fix Timeline

• The game forces fullscreen and does not allow switching to other windows. After upgrading to UE 5.5, the windowed expansion build had broken mouse lock at screen borders, so fullscreen became mandatory.

• GPU load spikes drastically at 4K resolution.

With CPU specs from 8 years ago, now can handle 450 infantry at the same framerate as shown in the video. With current CPUs, that number increases to 1,000 infantry. For cavalry, the figure is 800.

In the future, by moving the soldier angle adjustment logic to C++ and projectile collision checks to multithreading, we can expect an additional 12% performance gain. That is the limit of the optimizations I can achieve; beyond that lies the limitation of Unreal Engine 5.

Unreal Engine 6, which is expected to be released in three years, will feature improved multithreading. However, it will not be applied to this title. If it were, handling 5,000 units would be fully achievable. You’ll be able to experience this firsthand as soon as the next test build for the new race is updated. We’re aiming to release the update by the last day of September, but if it slips past that window, it will likely be around October 10.

Fungor – Six times the health compared to other factions of the same tier. They have low attack power and armor, but excel at forcing prolonged wars of attrition using poison.

• White Caps: Pure spore fundamentalists.

• Ascendants: Girls who willingly implant spores into themselves to achieve fusion. Notable for their rapid regeneration.

• Pestbrain: Operates spore-mutated versions of medium-sized beasts.

Stellar Knights – A faction composed of weak serfs and powerful knights. Despite their name, they betrayed the Star Masters, extracting mutagenic energy from serfs to empower their knights.

• Astromant: Fields comet knights with powerful charges.

• Cerevian: Knights specialized in hunting down large monsters.

• Nospira: A clan of sorcerers that harnesses the mutagenic powers of serfs.

System Updates

While adding factions is relatively quick, we’ve also made major changes to the core systems:

• Character Skeleton has been switched to UE5. Previously, animations had to be implemented using only two spine bones.

• Town System has been fundamentally redesigned, now functioning more like movement on a separate world map.

• Battle Reinforcements now use a round-based system. The losing side’s reinforcements spawn farther behind. This lays the foundation for the upcoming formation system.

• Inventory System has been simplified. There are now 4 weapon slots, and the dedicated shield slot has been removed.

• Clan System has been added. Clans exist under each kingdom, forming the groundwork for the upcoming diplomacy system.

Development Roadmap

4K video. I previously announced a switch to turn-based gameplay, but I didn’t notice the users’ objections at the time. In fact, for about a month I’d already been considering how to handle the action version of Total Blade, since a complete set of solutions had suddenly come to me.

Originally, I planned to make the turn-based version the definitive edition of Total Blade, while reworking the original action game to serve as a replacement for the open-world mode of Girls’ Civilization 3.

However, after belatedly reviewing user feedback, I realized that no one actually wanted the game to become turn-based.

Therefore, I’ve decided to immediately apply the solutions I found to the action version instead.

It turned out to be a great decision—because the solutions I discovered a month ago felt almost like a revelation. They addressed every long-standing problem in the genre: the lack of short-term gameplay goals, the disjointed transition between world and towns, player percentipn of AI diplomacy, the lack of unit diversity, balancing tactical freedom against player burden, and even the late-game stagnation typical of grand strategy titles.

All of these issues were solved one by one in my head—not with some massive, overcomplicated system, but with simple, elegant changes. That’s why I can only describe it as a revelation. For years I’ve obsessed over this genre, constantly testing every idea I could, but I never expected the real solution would arrive all at once, out of nowhere.

For now, I’ll explain only the part about unit diversity. The rest I’ll reveal in detail when the update comes—it won’t take long to implement. (Even the demo footage I linked was produced in just three days.)

Previously, giant units were basically just regular small units with different AI and altered stats, still equipping the same items. But there was never any need for that. Medium-sized units (troll-sized) and large units (building-sized) should be able to fight by simply swinging around their own massive weapons and using their own body structures. They don’t need shared equipment—they can have their own weapons, their own motions, and even unique skeletons.

That means they don’t have to be humanoid anymore. A golem can body-slam, a scorpion can sting with its tail, a dragon can perform sweeping tail strikes. They could even carry turrets or mortars as part of their body—it’s easy now.

This also makes it simple to design unique factions. For example, a colossal quadrupedal mushroom can trample enemy units while unleashing area spore attacks from its back. That alone makes a faction far more interesting. It also allows for fun quests where the player fights a colossus one-on-one, learning its patterns through repeated attempts. These encounters can even unfold in real time during massive battles.

It only takes about an hour and a half to create one of these units. That means I can design an entire faction’s worth of troops—each with their own skeletons and animations—in a single day.

I’ve also expanded unit sizes into three categories:

• Small units: Same as before (including the player). They have the best HP-to-population ratio and resist non-AoE ranged attacks the best.

• Medium units (~3m tall): Their attacks ignore friendly collisions, making them very strong in mixed formations. Even when their attack momentum runs out, they can still stagger nearby small units. They don’t get knocked away by large-unit attacks, but if only mediums are grouped together, they’re easy to wipe out. They need small units to soak up hits.

• Large units (~7m tall): Regardless of momentum, their attacks send masses of small units flying and can smash through shield walls to penetrate deep lines. However, their size makes them vulnerable to ranged fire.

As shown in the demo video, I’ve also added special commands like charges. These tie into the formation and reinforcement systems, which I’ll explain further during the update.

Every unit now has a Shock Gauge. If they take heavy damage in a short time, even a colossus will fill its gauge and be staggered. During a charge, however, the shock gauge build less, so they won’t be stopped by most attacks. Conversely, some weapons—like hammers—may deal low damage but cause huge shock impact, staggering enemies. Polearms like pikes can apply shock force proportional to the enemy’s speed. The optimization issue was essentially solved by a free lunch. With FSR applied, we were able to raise the default visual quality settings. You can also confirm this in the linked video.

In the footage, the combined number of units and horses is 250. It was recorded in 4K on an 8-year-old CPU—so considering today’s CPUs with 3D cache, performance is no longer a concern.

As Tim Sweeney once said, if fully multi-threaded main-world physics becomes a reality, battles with 4,000 units might be possible. But I’m not aiming that high. While it’s often assumed that “the bigger the battle size, the more fun it is,” in practice the player’s impact per kill decreases as the scale grows, which leads to boredom.

I expect the sweet spot to be around 450 soldiers plus 200 horses, where the gameplay experience will be at its most engaging.

The turn-based version I had planned to update is actually well-made. It’s already complete.

This one was born from the pursuit of fun, even if it meant abandoning its genre at one point This will be another title.