Following our players request in October poll it was time to take a break from adding new content, and polish everything about the game. From fixing all the performance issues, to reworking pathfinding, and getting rid of the last CTDs, as well as fixing dozens of bugs across the boards... And I think the team done pretty well with this challenge.
After two long and productive weeks we are happy to introduce one of our personal favorite updates so - 1.18 Say No to Lag and CDTS. This updates will hopefully let all our players enjoy the game, without bad performance, crashes and bugs. KW2B might still be lacking in content, but it should be stable and smooth.
With the patch of this magnitude we expect a few new bugs to appear, however, we plan on working over time this week, to make sure the game is in perfect shape for this weekend.
Few known issues, to be fixed by Friday latest.
If you have questions or comments, let us know and we`ll be happy to discuss the coming changes.
========Major Fixes and Additions=======
-Major performance improvements during singleplayer and CoOp
-Major performance improvements during sieges
-Major performance improvements when using a lot of workers
-Fixed crash during first minute of gameplay
-Fixed all random crashes during battles in all game modes
-Greatly improved worker building construction - smarter, more efficient
-Greatly improved worker resources gathering - smarter, more efficient
-Fixed units bundling up and getting stuck during combat
-Fixed units chasing after enemies for too long
-New approach to unit to unit collision, works much better
-Units in Stand Ground will not longer run to attack enemies
-Fixed bug with Archers not firing
-Fixed CoOp diplomacy where players could attack each other
-Siege towers and ladders can now attach to palisade towers
========Minor Fixes and Additions=======
-Units stop fighting and regoup when changing formation
-Siege weapons fire faster, and show reload progress with reload bar
-Redesign of Elven Strongholds, removed part of the lower wall
-Redesign of the Orcish Stronghold, moved the outer gatehouses
-Fixed bugs with Elven palisade and Stone walls
-Palisade gatehouse now removed as soon as Stone gatehouse near it is built
-Human peasants now have Fight Fires button
-Snow Showdown and Ruin Rumble levels updated - improved the ruins playability
-Snow Showdown and Ruin Rumble levels updated - new water crossing
-Snow Showdown and Ruin Rumble - fixed issues with tasking units across the level
-Fixed minor issue with units getting stuck after ladder dies
-AI improvements - Easy AI is much easier now, and trains units slower
-AI improvements - fixed attack patterns of AI
-AI improvements - fixed bug preventing AI from attacking
-AI improvements - AI now brings more siege weapons, and use them better
-CoOp mode now always uses Medium strength AIs
-Fixed Bandit Garrison NPC location - now properly converted to the right player
-Minor updates to Profanity Filter, some less offensive words now allowed
-Fixed all broken research for Orcish War Pen building
-Fixed Zombies with bad texture, missing parts of the body
=======Balance Changes======
-Removed Ranged unit Volley ability - needs additional work
-Major Balancing Change - all ranged units do 50% more damage
-Major Balancing Change - combat is 30% faster, higher damage
-Heroes are mostly invulnerable to Zombies
-Zombies deal very little damage against Workers
-Dwarven Cannon accuracy greatly increased
-Dwarven Rifleman both melee and ranged attack greatly increased
-Heroes up to 50% cheaper, and train 40% faster
-All hero abilities greatly increased - from 40% to 150%
-Zombies are less likely to spawn inside players base, requires a lot of corpses
-Forest Spirit can no longer be used for scouting
-Low Zombies settings in Singleplayer spawns a lot less Zombies
-Dwarven Miner battalion now has 20 members