It has only been two and a half months since Imperiums went live, but to us it feels like much longer. We have published exactly 11 updates in the past 11 weeks, we managed to take two weeks off to recharge our batteries and now we are back developing at full throttle. We are making great strides towards the release of our first DLC, called Troy.
The DLC will be available for free, this is a thank you for the great reception that Imperiums had. It is also a promise of what‘s to come in the future, but we will talk more about that next time.
Today, we want to show you how Imperiums has grown and matured in the past 11 weeks, the major improvements that have been added and how the game now looks.
We know that there are many players among you who have waited to see the first reviews before purchasing the game and maybe others who have waited a while for any teething problems to be solved.
We believe that the game has been greatly improved over the past 11 weeks, we have removed all of the teething problems that we are aware of and the game is now ready for even the most hardcore gamers.
In the first few weeks after release we had to deal with some technical issues related to the specific PC configurations that players had and there were also a few bugs that needed extra attention. Surprisingly though, there were very few technical bugs so we were able to move onto the player‘s wishes and recommendations pretty quickly, many suggestions on how to improve and smoothen the gameplay have now been completed.
So, here is the summary of the most important changes that have been implemented in the last 11 weeks:
Generic improvements:
- Overall performance was considerably increased.
- Steam Trading Cards were released.
- Support for new fonts and languages was added.
- Time threshold for unlocking new factions in the campaign map was decreased as per player wishes.
Rules/mechanics improvements:
- Calculation for generating new Heroes/Generals was improved.
- Civil war rules and the rules for Generals that desert have been expanded.
- Pillage functionality was enhanced. The impact of the plundering units is based on historical realities and can now lead to riots, especially in cities that are considered "culturally close" by the general populace.
- Tweaks controlling the Celtic raids were implemented. The raids are less frequent but a bit more dangerous now.
Major improvements:
- Dragging the map with the mouse is considerably smoother now.
- New feature in mouse game settings, adjusting mouse delay of edge scrolling was added.
- The size of city labels is now fully configurable in game settings.
- Default saturation value was changed. The map is now more colourful.
- The automatic unit selection setting has been enhanced. A player can now retain the selection of the current unit, even after it has completed its task and used all its action points, if they hold the ALT key.
- Default actions were improved. More appropriate tooltips explaining why particular actions are currently disabled, e.g. for Attack and Heal Inside, were added.
AI (computer player):
- Tweaks related to diplomacy offers sent by AI were implemented.
- "Back to safety" behavior (when AI unit is in danger of being destroyed) was tweaked.
- AI behavior related to influencing foreign tiles was polished.
- Calculation of future supplies improved.
- Disembarking behavior is now more sofisticated.
- Handling of State Decisions by AI is now much smarter.
- Behaviour of neutral players (independent nations) has been improved. They can now build cities within the borders of your country as well as outside your borders.
UI (User interface):
- Unit selection out of a stack was improved. A simple click on a banner will immediately show the unit selector if there are more units on a tile.
- Special highlight for insufficient resources when player wants to build an improvement was added.
- Unit selector opens even when a player cannot currently build any units in the city (e.g. due to lack of resources). He therefore knows what unit types are available in that city and what resources is he lacking.
- When a Strategic Overview window is displayed without any unit selected, a city tab is selected by default.
- Small confirmation windows were re-styled.
- Information about the Citizens/Slaves ratio has been added to the tooltip of the Slaves resource in the Resource Panel.
- Information about the construction of a building/city has been added to the Map Item Details Window.
- The cost of State Decisions is now displayed in the Resource Panel when you hover over the State Decision button.
- An option to disable Advisor pop up window directly in the window was added.
Major bug fixes:
- Several quite rare, yet annoying issues causing crashes were fixed.
- An issue with shovel holes staying on the map forever was solved.
- An issue in Custom worlds when player selected a particular faction but a different one was selected instead, was fixed.
- Graph of casualties was changed to show correctly the casualties for resurrected nations.
- An issue in Multiplayer (UI showing a faction that is actually not currently playing) was fixed.
Other changes:
- Changes in Russian, French, German, and Czech localizaton texts.
- Several new illustrations were added to the game.
- First Japanese, Chinese and Italian translations added (experimental for now).
As you can see, we are serious about bringing the game to the best level possible, so .. grab your copy and give it a try!:)
Yours,
Kube Games team.