Hey Everyone,
Today we have a major update for The Plague. As work still continues on the Undead armies and Dead Rising DLC, we have made a lot of progress in other areas.
Today`s update greatly advances the world map presentation - with a lot of new details and visual improvements. Performance was also improved in this update. Starting from quicker loading times to much better FPS both on the world map and battles.
And finally we have started the big push towards rebalancing the gameplay. Once this project is complete in the next update, we`ll have a much faster and evolving game, where it`s easy to quickly build up and expand, but same time, mistakes can cost dearly through the survival aspects of the game.
Our next update can be expected by October 25th
And so, lets take a look at Update # 5 (v0.20)
World Map Redesigned
- Reworked appearance of clouds on the world map - a lot thicker and higher altitude
- Added various birds including eagles, seagulls etc flying at different altitudes
- Trade-ships will now sale between different port cities
- Hamlets on world map now show various tiny towns instead of just farmland
- Decreased world map loading time by 25%-30%
- Removed thousands of objects from the world map for a much cleaner look
- Improved FPS on the World map on average by 40%
Major Gameplay Changes
- Campaign gameplay difficulty overall increased by up to 25%
- New approach to personal time, it`s greatly limited now, especially on harder settings, getting player to prioritize when to use it
- Military and town buildings are a lot more expensive now, up to 3 times more
- AI attacks player faster during the start of the campaign, with hard difficulty even right away
- Plague doesn`t start spreading uncontrollably unto 1349
- Reworked how the plague spreads in the first two years - it`s historical now
- Plague starts by spreading along naval trade routes and according to the quest notifications
Performance and Presentation
- Player color is now green, and AI players changed from green to shades of white and grey
- Fixed various issues with flags not being well visible
- Fixed issues with part of the edge of the battle map being cut off
- New combat epic and performance cameras - bring much better performance
- Lower quality of unit models for combat units - much better performance on all settings
- Increase game speed up during town build up mode from x1.5 to max x3
- All URDs for armies now play, before only 3 played out of 6
- URDs are good deal quitter for armies and units
- Faster zoom in and scrolling on the world map
- Better GUI scaling and various GUI improvements
Fixes and Additions
- Fixed Personal time being added more on hard settings then on easy or medium settings
- Temporary removing Slav campaign army lines, they weren`t working well
- Fixed presentation of campaign quest windows - no lag, and audio que
- Call to Arms now only activated with middle mouse button and no longer double click
- Palisade gate is now clearly visible and different from the wall
- Speed of ships on the world map increased by additional 30%
- Fixed town on Nablus not showing on the world map
- Fixed town of La Aquila not showing on the world map
- Fixed ships being unable to pass off the cost of Italy on the world map
- Adjusted monthly healing on the world map, both player and AI heal a bit less per month
- Less self damage to cavalry when running over units
- Changed “Time Limit” into sentence, telling player he`s out of personal time
- Larger citizen icon on the army window
- Paris and Desert Paris map removed Notre-dame and add houses
- Fixed some layout issues on new campaign screen