s&box

S&World

Changes

Land, Sea and Alliances

1.0.2

16 August 2026

Land is claimed on foot: a village sends a party of five settlers, and the zone becomes its own only when they are standing in it
Seekers set out once every two years to look for new land, so borders no longer spread on their own
Water is claimed by ships: build docks, build a fleet, and the sea along your coast becomes yours
Territorial waters are drawn as full zone squares, so the border runs across the surf instead of ending at the beach
Building is real work: the village marks out a plot, a builder walks over with a spade and digs, and only then does the house go up
Settling parties: an empty zone is no longer dropped in silence, up to ten civilians move in and start building there
Troop ships carry a company: eight tiles long, two masts, gun decks, up to forty warriors landed on an enemy shore
Warships patrol home waters in wartime and hunt enemy sail, so a troop ship can be intercepted at sea
Naval combat: ships of warring kingdoms fight on contact and sink
Ships plan a route around the landmass instead of nosing into every cape
Armies march by flow field: one shared path for the whole force, around lakes and ridges, with water as the last resort
A third of the army stays home as a garrison instead of leaving the village bare
Armies rout as a body once a village loses more than 70% of the force it sent out, then walk home, heal for a year and muster again
Wounds heal: a fed man who is not fighting recovers in two months
Alliances mean something: attack an ally and you are at war with the defender
Sign and break alliances yourself from the VILLAGES bar
Allied kingdoms trade every month, surplus moves to whoever is short and gold moves back
A rebellion starts a war on the spot, with the old kingdom attacking
Wiki panel in place of the old INSPECT button: 26 articles in 7 sections on how the world actually works
Lone people forage, so a pair placed on an empty world can feed itself instead of starving out
Living children limit per species, five for humans, so an island no longer ends up with ten thousand people
Old age is a curve instead of a cliff: deaths spread over ages 60 to 72 rather than a whole generation dying in one year
The spawn brush alternates sex, and the first six of a species are placed as grown adults
Felled trees grow back on their own spot after 18 months, and berry bushes with them
Swimming sprite: head and shoulders above water, one arm stroking, foam around, no legs
Villages spread houses and farms across their whole land instead of packing into one corner
Plague deaths now count in the yearly death total

Frame time with 3300 creatures on screen: 55 ms down to 5 ms
Full tile detail on every map size, so people, plants and houses on Huge look exactly as they do on Small
Texture uploads merged into runs: 279 graphics calls per frame down to 81
Capture takes twice as long, and civilians now count as defenders, three of them per soldier
Founding land grant cut from 3x3 zones to 2x2, land beyond that has to be earned by population
Land is given up only after four years of failed settlement, so a loss always has a visible cause on the map
The pause menu hides while a side panel is open instead of lying on top of it

Zones no longer vanish for no reason: ownership now runs through a single door with a monthly reconcile, and worlds already damaged by this repair themselves
Land of a fallen village no longer turns into a permanent hole in the map
A village that lost all of its land can take its home zone back
A village at war no longer gives up the land it is fighting for
Villages no longer give up land silently while the border law is switched off
Kingdom borders no longer creep over mountains and snow caps
Huge maps drew every creature at half detail, so people fell apart into loose blocks up close
The border square is painted over water as well, instead of being cut along the surf
Armies march on enemy land, not only on enemy villages
Small villages send their garrison to war
A marching army is no longer dragged home by the peacetime leash
Armies no longer freeze at the shoreline
After taking a zone the army moves on at once instead of camping for a month
Populated land no longer falls to a single passing raider
Swimmers are no longer dragged back to shore, and no longer starve at sea
Crowds spill along the shore instead of walking into the water and drowning in circles
Nobody sets out for a destination behind water they cannot swim
Everyday walks treat anything wider than a three tile ford as a wall
A crowd that is walking but not moving now separates instead of stacking into one column
Farms get built again, so a growing village stops starving with empty fields all around it
Seaside villages actually get docks
A kingdom with no villages left is no longer counted as at war
Ships are anchored by the hull, so they are no longer drawn standing on the beach
Creatures spawned inside a village's land join it instead of wandering off as loners
The top bar no longer breaks while the wiki panel is open

Automatic coastal claiming: the sea is taken by ships now
Automatic filling of gaps between owned zones: it handed out mountains and cliffs nobody could ever reach
The INSPECT button, replaced by the wiki
The chronicle in the pause menu, it is a card in the VILLAGES bar