0.5.58: the enemy stops hiding its numbers

Written while the game was still called Warlords. It is Cardboard Conquest now, and the same game: that post explains the change.

This covers 0.5.57 and 0.5.58. The theme is honesty: the enemy used to get numbers you were never shown, and most of this update is about taking those away and putting the difficulty somewhere you can read it.

The enemy stops hiding its numbers

• Every lord takes the same three energy a round that you do. There was a per-encounter multiplier on how much an enemy could field, tuned separately from anything printed anywhere, and it went as low as one energy a round on some lords. That is below what you get, which is why a few commanders stood there summoning almost nothing. Now every lord in the game opens on three, and what makes one dangerous is which cards it holds.
• A spawned enemy carries exactly the stats the compendium prints for it. Enemy unit stats used to be scaled by a hidden number, so two identically named creatures could hit differently in two fights with nothing on screen to explain it.
• The difficulty dial is gone. It was buried in settings, it asked you to pick a difficulty before you had played a fight, and it only ever multiplied one thing.
• An Ascension rung does the twist it advertises and nothing else. Climbing the ladder used to also make every enemy quietly tougher on top of the named modifier.
• The acts march in a fixed order again: Verdant Reach, then Ember Wastes, then Frostspire. The per-run shuffle needed a stat re-base to work, and that re-base was the source of enemy numbers drifting for no reason you could see.

Fifteen lords raise their own armies

• No lord fields your cards any more. Fifteen commanders were drawing from a shared pool that included the player's own units, so you would meet your Spearman across the field wearing enemy colours. Every lord now musters its own bodies, and fifteen new creatures were drawn, named and translated to fill the gaps.
• The Slime pack gets a proper top: Slime Boss is now The Engulfer. The Sultan of Slime stops fielding your units. The Warsmith stops firing your guns.
• Seven enemy champions lean out of their own cards, and every one of the 47 commander cards now stands on painted ground of its own instead of a flat plate.

The whole campaign runs in a browser

The itch browser build was an Act 1 demo that stopped you at the boss. It is the full game now, all three acts, and it asks about a wishlist after Act 1 with a prompt you can dismiss rather than a wall you cannot pass. Every region's lord anthems fit in the browser build too, so acts two and three stop falling back to the general jukebox.

Real sound

The placeholder beeps are gone. Combat, spells and interface all run on produced audio now, material aware, so a hit on armour does not sound like a hit on flesh.

The bestiary tells you what you are fighting

• A lord's entry prints the health it actually fights with, and where its phases break.
• Health bars across the bestiary are drawn to one scale, so a 20 and an 80 look like a 20 and an 80.
• Cards read at their full lifted size, and captions clear the gem instead of sitting under it.

Events end on a verdict

• The result page opens by telling you how it went, then shows the arithmetic. It used to lead with the numbers and leave you to work out whether that was good.
• Fourteen outcomes get their own painted picture, and the aftermath art reacts to what happened rather than sitting still.
• Exit Fee asks before it takes your gold. A levy you cannot refuse is not a choice.
• The event bench rolls its own dice. Veteran's Trial is retired, because an event that is just another fight is not an event.

Balance

• The Commander's Heart is the only death save in the game, and it beats once an act. It stands the King back up at just over a third of his health. Second Wind is folded into it rather than being a second, quieter safety net. The other four warlords have none by design.
• A boss that refuses to die comes back at half health, not just over half.
• Cleansing Tears now leaves Regen 2 behind after the wash.
• The Flatterer's base Charm goes from 1 to 2.
• The Lone Bulwark stops outstatting the bosses it fights beside, and a shield wall holds its lane without also winning the trade.
• Smouldering Cinders sear for 1 true damage every 3 seconds, down from every second.
• The Magma Magnate asks for less at both of his breaks, and his brutes stop hitting like a boss.
• Your reserves march in when the line thins, not only when it breaks.

Reading and playing

• Plurals are words now. Spearmans, Dire Wolfs and Deputys have become Spearmen, Dire Wolves and Deputies.
• The last 75 untranslated strings are done, so all ten languages are complete.
• End Turn either leaves your hand where it is or takes it all the way down, with nothing in between.
• A queued play reads at the same size as a card in your hand.
• The speed you pick stays picked, whatever else you touch on the way.
• The battle camera can pull further back on an ultrawide, and the interface scale reads height and aspect instead of guessing from width.
• The title screen was rebuilt: a forged plaque, a menu that holds still, and a giant you can actually read behind it.

Controller and co-op

• You can type on a pad, back out of the title screen with B, and reach the speed controls from the number row.
• Sixteen screens the reach audit had never visited are now walkable, including the feedback form, which used to raise the on screen keyboard and trap you before Send.
• A joiner sees the fight instead of guessing at it, and afflictions and Powers announce themselves on a joiner too.
• The War Council is one page that hosts by default.

Also

• The first campaign win opens the roster and says so.
• Chest glow is light now rather than a printed circle, banners hang from a real rod, and enemy ambient particles match the creature making them.
• Your commander's blood reads differently from anyone else's on the field.

What's next

The hidden multipliers are gone, which means a lord's roster is now the only place its difficulty lives, and the rosters have not been retuned for that yet. That is the next job, and it gets decided from what actually happens in your runs rather than from a simulator. If a fight feels wrong in either direction, the in game feedback button is the fastest way to tell me. Most of the list above started as a report.

This post went out to players on Steam and itch.io on 5 August 2026, and is kept here. Comments and questions are read on either of those, or through the quill in game.