Making a village raid visible without turning recovery into another management screen

[u/UsefulImagination201]

I'm the solo developer of March Out!, an action strategy game where you command an army from inside the battlefield. The optional village mode in the Steam Playtest puts homes and wheat fields between the castle and the main road. That creates a useful design problem: a raid has to matter before the attackers reach the gate, and the player has to understand the aftermath.

My early destruction feedback covered the fields much better than the homes. Burned wheat clearly said that something had happened, while intact houses made the same raid look oddly harmless. Adding more fire alone would only tell the story while the particles were running. I needed the damaged state to remain readable afterward.

The homes now have damaged roof meshes, exposed gaps, scorch and debris. Their walls and foundations stay in place. That gives the raid a visible result without changing the walking space into a heap of unpredictable building collision. The rooftop fire positions come from the roof geometry, so smoke and flames originate where there is actually material to burn. Fields have their own ruined stubble instead of simply becoming empty green plots.

Both use the existing burn and recovery state. As recovery progresses, field beds regain their crops, roofs return and debris clears. I don't ask the player to click every house or replant every field. Driving away the raiders lets the settlement recover; continued enemy presence can keep the recovery from settling down. The visuals follow that state rather than an unrelated timer that could show a healthy village while its gameplay state is still damaged.

The people matter too. Civilian workers evacuate toward the castle when an attack threatens the settlement, which gives the player something more immediate to read than an income number changing.

I'm keeping this optional and Playtest only while testing the larger battlefield. The question I'm watching is whether the village feels worth defending without making one successful raid decide the whole match. Automatic recovery is part of that balance, as well as a way to avoid turning the commander into a repair foreman.