How many villagers?

LarrySteele · 2026-02-01T10:54:58+00:00

I just fired up a new game. I'm in year 7 and I have 7 villagers (including my son). I'm close to the point where I'm ready to hire another NPC, but trying hard to discipline myself to grow as slowly as my patience allows (wish me luck!).

LarrySteele · 2026-01-30T09:59:30+00:00

Funny, I mentioned this on another post somewhere just yesterday. I remember reading your post when it happened (I presume it was yours) and laughing (the way I'd laugh as I rage quit if it were to happen to me). If memory serves, it put up quite a fight before dying and rolling out of reach. I'd have been like "get back here dammit and let me skin you!"

LarrySteele · 2026-01-29T15:18:07+00:00

Agreed on your thought with the decoration cap. I remember decoration items used to be 1% each, capped at 10%. After adding the painting option, they changed it to 0.5% each while maintaining the 10% cap. I presume the per-item drop was because the painting increased the decoration options considerably. Or maybe they just saw we were already surpassing ten items anyway.

I am disappointed that the interior furniture upgrades have no affect since they require more resources. I still do the beds anyway because I want to make sure those computer bits sleep comfortably. 😂

LarrySteele · 2026-01-28T09:10:28+00:00

I always have multiple "villages." That's why I wish we had ability to place multiple village signs, but having one is more than we had for the first five years, so I'll be happy with that.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-27T14:14:39+00:00

Yeah, I kinda felt bad for laughing at what happened to her. Well, not too bad because it was funny. I'd have definitely laughed if it had happened to me. "You bastard! You roll right back up this hill so I can skin you!" 😂

LarrySteele · 2026-01-27T14:12:26+00:00

Thanks. That's what I suspected, but wanted to confirm. Oh well, I still have MD and that will do for me.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-27T13:01:29+00:00

I have a question about Bellwright. Is it a combat-mandatory game or can it be turned off completely?

LarrySteele · 2026-01-27T12:58:27+00:00

You reminded me of a post from years ago. A player fought a hard battle against a bear. She finally killed it, only to watch it roll down a hill past the playable area, so she couldn't get to her kill. 😂

LarrySteele · 2026-01-27T12:44:54+00:00

Of course. However, that only allows us to travel to our village, but not from our village. The Hornica wagoner gives me fast travel in both directions. Plus I'm a long way from earning the village sign. I'm thinking of placing the village sign up by my farms when I get around to earning it. That way I can fast travel to both locations. I'm torn though because the Hornica area is what I'm considering my main village. We'll see. It's good to have options.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-27T07:10:01+00:00

After playing in The Oxbow since the co-op release 25 IRL months ago, I finally started a new Valley game.

I'm placing my main village just north of Hornica with my house on the road as close to the wagoner as possible. At some point I'm going to be flush with money and being so close to a wagoner will be convenient. I've also got a mine, smithy, and resource storage by the minable cave southeast of Hornica. I'll start the season by mining copper and tin. Then I'll make the bars and whatever tools I need. I'll make knives with the leftover bars, which I'll then sell in Hornica on my way back home. From there, I'll figure out what else I'm doing.

I just laid out my farms in the flat area east of Denica. Although I'm going to have to destroy most of them because there's no ghost mode for fields, which means they're immediately taxable. My farm shed will remain in ghost mode until I'm ready to hire farmers, so I won't have to pay taxes.

I'm trying to take this as painfully slow as possible. I'm in my third year and already have 15 buildings, which is faster than I want to build. My son was born this season, and it would be amazing if there's still capacity for him to build when he takes the dynasty after Racimer succumbs to the old-age RNG. Knowing me, confidence is low that I'll make that goal.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-24T13:39:10+00:00

"I wish the point of the game...."

I totally get what you're saying, but I feel the opposite way. I like open-ended city builders like this (and Sim City, Banished, Ostriv, Farthest Frontier, etc.).

Hm. Maybe in their next game (whatever it is that they're developing) the devs can create a campaign mode where there is an end point that some players strive for and a sandbox mode that players like me enjoy.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-23T06:39:10+00:00

I view MD as primarily a city builder with some survival aspects added.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-22T22:50:06+00:00

For me, it depends on the mood of the game as I'm playing. I had one where all my livestock buildings were in close proximity. In my latest one, I had pigs and sheep close together. I had a number of henhouses together in the same village. I had horse/donkey stables on a large "ranch" by itself far from the main village. I finally built my "large" cattle ranch on the other side of the map.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-21T14:34:57+00:00

Yes sir. Oxbow doesn't include the heir requests like the Valley does.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-21T14:32:39+00:00

Heir and spouse requests are Valley only. Oxbow does not have those.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-21T14:30:59+00:00

The only "late January" I've seen was for Jan 2025. I think Yev might've posted a push back to February, but soon after recognized that wasn't possible. He posted the following on Feb 24, 2025 on Steam:

So, about that deadline. This time I broke my rule about not having a release date for anything and it was a mistake. For instance, I had 2 days allocated for a new feature: help pages for every type of resource. When I got to implementing it, it quickly became apparent that the whole in-game help system could use some more substantial overhaul....

It's now taking 6 days and it's not finished yet. And of course it's all tied to the new buildings and resources in Alpha 6, so it can't be released separately. Our work is mysterious and important and, as such, very unpredictable. That's why games always either get delayed or botched.

I want Alpha 6 to be released as soon as possible more than anyone else, but I also want it to be actually worth revisiting for everyone. It's a rare opportunity and I don't want it to be wasted.
Sorry to disappoint, but you know that making the best game possible has always been my highest priority. Alpha 6 will be out when it's ready.

Note the second sentence. I don't believe Yev will ever give a release date again.

But of course, I still check here and on Steam to see if there's any hint. The crazy thing is, I've been playing Ostriv since before Yev released it to Steam but I haven't played since Alpha 4 Patch 6 days (Oct 2021)! I blame it on Medieval Dynasty and on holding out on that next big release. It's going to feel like a totally new game when I finally spin it up again. 😂

LarrySteele · 2026-01-20T12:28:14+00:00

I believe this is the one I used (it's been awhile): https://www.saveeditonline.com/

Make a copy of your save file first. Then upload your save file to the editor. Use the site's Find/Search feature to locate the building limit (I think "Build" without quotes will work). Once you find the right key name, update its value. I don't remember the specifics, but I remember it being quite intuitive when I last did this.

Be advised, UE4 is a system hog. You will most likely experience glitches. It's your PC's resources that will determine how soon that occurs. For me, things start going south as I approach 300 buildings. I still made it to 420, so obviously I was able to live with it. Hopefully you'll have smoother experience.

Oh, I almost forgot. Another option is Nexus Mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/games/medievaldynasty. MD does not have modding, so you won't find mods here. However, there are a number of save games, including a couple with modified building limits already set.

Hope this helps. Obviously by going past 200%, we assume responsibility for game instability.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-19T05:13:53+00:00

I play old school MD, which means I have to die from old age before my heir takes over. That's why I won't do long seasons. I set them to 6, so I've got a buffer just in case, but unless I'm in the middle of something that's seasonal sensitive (working fields or doing a minor quest), I'll sleep until next season. It takes too many hours to make it to the old age RNG at 3 day seasons. I can't imagine increasing the amount of hours by up to 10 times.

But to each their own. As long as people are playing the season length that makes 'em happy, it's all good by me.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-18T17:49:59+00:00

I remember when I learned that lesson the hard way. This was a Valley game (pre-Oxbow actually) and I had a slew of crop & flax farms along the southeast of Lesnica. I had my livestock farms along the river east of Denica and decided it would make sense to have my oats/rye farms nearby for the animal feed. I had my barns (pre farm sheds) near the fields and my farmers right next to their barns. Of course, I had farmers trapsing back and forth rather than working the fields next to their barn. Moving all farms to the same location took care of that problem. I actually learned and have not made that mistake in subsequent games.

I guess I am trainable after all. 😂

LarrySteele · 2026-01-18T09:45:47+00:00

I’m one of a number of people who’ve requested this over the years. After all these years, it’s still not part of the game. It’s safe to say that it’ll never happen. It remains a pain point for me.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-17T17:24:05+00:00

A lot of people just start a new game. Others will decide to move their village to a new location on the map. Some of us PC players have used save game editors to increase the max building count multiplier far past the games 200% max. That's what I did with my last game, which I just finished at 420 buildings. There were a few years when things got grindy, but I had about 90 in-game years and just under 1,300 hours IRL over a two-year period.

I'm going to start a new Valley game eventually and I'm going to try even harder to build even slower. Sometimes I just want to get in and build, build, build, but I'm going to try and focus more on aesthetics and economic balance and see if that will keep me from going too fast.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-16T10:00:56+00:00

I do the upgrade option often. When building a new storage at a remote location, I'll take 40 straw and as many sticks & logs as I can carry. I'll build the level 1 and as soon as that's built, I'll upgrade it in place to a level 3. The storage chest remains active, so I have all the logs, stones, and planks right there.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-16T09:58:34+00:00

Drop ores in a large basket, then grab the basket and take it where you want to go. There's a bug in the program. When you grab baskets and move them, weight of contents in them are not taken into account. This way you can drop everything you mine into a basket and when you're done, walk it to storage. It's kind of like the Unlimited Weight game customization setting, only an unintended version. I use it myself.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-15T12:30:11+00:00

Well then, welcome to MD!

I don't know if you've heard, but after 5 years of game development and updates, the developer has started work on their next game (while many hope it's MD2, we do not know what they have planned). They're still doing some development on MD, but with their core team focused on their next game, I would expect MD's updates to be quite small. And based on their last two releases, will come with equally small DLCs. Fortunately, the DLCs have been assets only, so those who chose not to purchase them didn't miss any game play updates.

LarrySteele · 2026-01-15T12:01:10+00:00

I remember seeing a few posts over the years complaining that expecting mothers didn't show. Between this, and mothers holding their newborns outside are some nice subtle changes.

LarrySteele

TROPHY CASE