Featuring new maps, a proper main menu/lobby, a full audio pass, and oodles of gameplay changes.
Maps
There are now 3 playable maps, each with different tile coloring.
Origins
The original map, in all its original glory. Now with roads!
Moved the King to the starting village
Mountain Pass
A smaller map with dense resources and lots of choke points.
Oakcrest
A big boy map featuring expansive forests and a wide open central area. The player starts with an Amber Mine, and there are TWO Amber Forges!
Menu/Lobby
The main menu now has a proper background which displays game previews (prerecorded replays).
There is also a proper lobby now!
The host can pick and preview maps
Players can pick from 8 playable colors
Player slots display Steam profile pictures
Audio
Made a big audio pass.
Added menu and in-game music playlists. Using a variety of music for now to see what fits!
Full voice line coverage for all units
Nerfed voice line frequency -- you'll hear voice lines less often now
Added a slew of sound effects for various in-game effects (attacking, giving commands, selecting buildings, etc)
Gameplay Changes
New tile: Road. +25% movement speed for all units.
Changed resource pickups to have HP and require being destroyed in order to earn their resources
30 HP each
Added control groups
Ctrl/Cmd/Shift + [num] to assign the selected unit to a control group
[num] to select the unit assigned to a control group
Double tap [num] to select the unit assigned to a control group and snap the camera to that unit
Added UI for Amber Forge upgrades
Economy/Balance
There are a lot of stat changes here. To summarize, the goals of these changes are:
Increase overall time-to-kill
Make it easier to retreat units from combat
Incentivize building a production structure before your first village so that early games are more action-packed. Ideally both types of openers are viable (depending on the map).
Make stables openers less dominant, but still viable
Economy/General Changes
Reducing starting food from 100 to 75
Reducing attack cooldown from 4s to 3s
All units' HP is increased to compensate, see below
Upgrade Changes
Amber Forge upgrade research cooldown increased from 60s to 90s
Swift Step: Cost reduced from 100 amber to 50 amber. Archer move speed penalty after attacking improved from -0.4s to -1s.
Inspiring Presence: Cost reduced from 100 amber to 75 amber
Unit/Structure Changes
Cavalry units can no longer move into forests
Unit | Cost change | Build time change | HP change | Attack damage change | Move cooldown change | Added movement time from attacking change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
King | 80 to 120 | 1.2s to 1.8s | ||||
Peasant | 16 to 26 | 5s to 2.75s | 1.2s to 1.8s | |||
Swordsman | 28 to 48 | 4s to 3.5s | 1.2s to 1.8s | |||
Pikeman | 32 to 30 | 28 to 48 | 4 (+9 vs cavalry) to 5 (+8 vs cavalry) | 4s to 3.5s | 1.2s to 1.8s | |
Archer | 24 to 40 | 3.5s to 3s | 1.5s to 2s | |||
Horseman | 30 to 32 | 44 to 56 | 2.133s to 2s | 1.2s to 1.8s | ||
Knight | 65 to 80 | 3.333s to 3.25s | 1.2s to 1.8s | |||
Village | 75 food to 100 food | 30s to 40s | 80 to 100 | |||
Amber Mine | 75 food to 50 food | 30s to 40s | 80 to 100 | |||
Barracks | 100 food to 75 food | 60 to 80 | ||||
Stable | 100 food to 75 food | 60 to 80 |
Misc Stuff
Updated the game engine
Changed hold-position to not be interrupted by target-attacks. I.e. a unit that is holding position can be given a target-attack command, and it will stay at its current position and prioritize attacking the target if/when it gets in range.
This may help prevent the issue we've occasionally seen with units (especially the King) chasing a retreating unit farther than the controlling player intended.
Peasants in the middle of building a structure need to have that build canceled before they are allowed to move. This is to prevent accidental build cancellation.
When a village's rally point is set to an enemy unit, spawned peasants will be given a target-attack command instead of a move command
Peasants now have the same attack priority as other units. (They still need to manually be given an attack command in order to attack though)
Changed the gold resource to food. Need to build units? That costs food, you gotta feed them. Need to build structures? That costs... food. Don't think about it too hard.
Updated the King sprite to have more prominent team colors
Updated the forest tile sprite
Added team colors to structure sprites and structure UI
Changed attack-move and target-attack icons to be more distinct, and to use swords for melee units and targets for ranged units
Added setting to lock the cursor to the game window
Added UI scaling settings
Pathfinding improvements
Made a bunch of improvements to descriptions and tooltips
Made a bunch of minor visual improvements to UI
Bug fix: Disconnection when a cavalry unit gets killed while the owner is selecting its charge ability
Bug fix: Better handling for lobby search issues
Bug fix: Game actions were executing and the game timer was running during the game countdown timer
Bug fix: Units would sometimes move unexpectedly after spawning and moving toward their rally points
Bug fix: The descriptions for attack-move and target-attack were mistakenly swapped
GL HF!