Stonehold 1.1.0: a map that is thrown, and camps that look before they march

Stonehold's first update rebuilds the whole balance around one rule: a level is worth what it costs, and another building of the same kind is not. Every building type now carries a repeat charge, so the fourth house is not priced like the first, while an upgrade is charged for the level alone. Everything a level buys grew to match — tower damage, workshop output, the integrity and the damage of your soldiers all multiply per level now instead of creeping up by a flat step. Twenty level 1 houses no longer beat one level 5 house on every number that matters. The wall is the single exception and has no repeat charge at all, because a wall is meant to be built by the length. A house is now the only thing on the map that makes people. The keep is a storehouse and nobody lives in it, so the hold opens with an empty store, a keep and one free roof to put down beside it: somebody moves in the moment it is up, walks out for the first timber of the game, and everything after that is worked for. A house holds one person, then three, then six, then ten as it grows, and the best roof in the hold sets how soon the next person arrives — so going deep pays twice, in room and in speed. The camps open exactly the same way, with one free hut and nothing in the store. The map is thrown now rather than laid out. Every patch of forest, stone and iron is a material picked at random and dropped anywhere in the world, kept if it lands clear of a camp and clear of everything already down. Nothing is reserved for anybody, nothing evens the corners out, and ground that grows back does not favour whoever wore it out. A map can open on iron piled in the north and none in the south, and that is the map you were dealt — which is what makes reading the ground before you settle the first real decision of the game instead of a formality. The four camps are holds now, in the literal sense: their roof is your house, their barracks is your barracks, their keep is priced like your keep, and their men are your men at your level, all read off the same tables you play by. There is no second set of numbers left to keep in step with the first. The one thing that is theirs is the speed everything they do runs at, and it is now exactly yours — the advantages stay on your side of the map instead, in the towers, the walls, the workshop and the choice of where to stand. And nobody marches on a hold nobody has looked at. A camp first sends one unarmed scout, who cannot be shot, because nothing in a hold fires at somebody who is not attacking it. He walks over, goes round the hold, counts the towers he can see and carries the number home, and only then does the camp decide anything. A tower is worth its level in men, so a camp that counts itself short stays at home, arms more and sends somebody to look again. What he counted goes stale on purpose: a tower you finish after he turns for home is a tower nobody counted, and the party that arrives was sized for the hold as it was. There is no attack timer left anywhere in the game, and the corners no longer share a clock — each one waits longer than the one before it, so the map opens as a series of raids rather than four at the same instant. Towers also spend more of the magazine per volley as they grow, so a hold never outgrows the people carrying ammunition across it however tall its towers get. Your people now price a crowded patch instead of refusing it, which means sharing near ground beats walking to empty ground until the crowd is real — before, the second person walked across the map while the first stood on wood fifty paces from the keep. Loads carried in, rounds delivered and damage dealt or taken are all written on the map where they happen, so a store climbing by five says who did it. On a phone the building strip scrolls under a finger and fits all five buttons on one line. Holds saved before this update carry over. Old camps are given their free hut, everything they have standing is re-measured off the shared tables, their scout clock starts from now rather than mid-raid, and a map too bare to be worked gets more of the same throw.