Children in Norland can now learn pig farming from their elders, the little idiots

One of the neat things about Norland's fantasy medievalism is that specialist knowledge is tied to characters. So if there's only one person in your village who knows how to brew tastier beer, and they die after being freakishly savaged by a passing wolf (it happens), suddenly your village will have no artisanal lager master. The results may be devastating. Luckily, you can share knowledge in a number of ways - by copying books, or having "wise conversations". The exception to this is child characters, whose pea-sized brains can't learn specialist knowledge, only soaking up basic attributes like "manners" from the teachers you assign to them. Well, until now. The developers for the Rimworld-meets-Crusader Kings catastrophe simulator have made kids a little smarter. They'll now learn more important things from their adult teachers.

"[Teachers] will now pass on their knowledge to the children they teach," say the developers in a brief post about the patch on Steam. But they also note that "at the same time, wise conversations with children will no longer be possible... On the one hand, this will reduce micromanagement for those familiar with the Wise Conversation tool. Conversely, it will ease the knowledge transfer between generations for new players."

In other words, you won't have to keep spamming the command for people to talk to one another in the vain hope that they might share some insightful nugget on pig farming. That'll probably make catastrophic loss of knowledge less likely for newer players who don't yet know that the passing on of knowledge is a major factor in a settlement's success.

There's another small fix too: "Ambitious kings should no longer uncontrollably and sharply increase the number of their troops in the late game." That's probably useful. But I've not made it to that "late game" yet. My first playthrough ended in disaster thanks to a lusty bishop who kept having sex with my lords and then insisting those lords seek absolution for that "sinful act" for the low-low price of six silver rings. The absolute shyster.

Norland developers Long Jaunt have been steadily and reliably patching the management game since its release into early access in July. This is the 14th patch so far. Previous patches include adding "lesser" lords, fixing a somewhat broken definition of "monogamy", and tweaking an overzealous fleshwolf attack so that it would no longer wipe out half your village. It's the kind of steady and frequent updating that hopefully keeps long-term players happy. I still haven't gone back to the ruins of my village quite yet (everyone got depressed and eaten by wolves, thanks bishop Ingo). But it's good to know that, if I ever do, the lordly children will be slightly more capable.