Here is the promised, and much delayed update and "state of the game". I dislike making excuses, and would rather let actual updates speak for my sincerity, but I think with this delay, I owe those of you who have been so very supportive a proper explanation.
First off, I am truly sorry that I haven't been able to deliver updates and design diaries at the promised rate. This also goes double for the increased reponse time to posts and mails.
These issues are not due to abandonment, technical problems, or lack of interest on my part. Rather, I've been increasingly struggling to keep the development funded out of the budget I had when early access launched, so I've been forced to divert time to secure my day-to-day costs, as well as various development expenses. I've also spent time on initiatives to secure more stable and significant infusions of resources. I am sorry that these diversion have been affecting my ability to keep up development progress and attention to community feedback and bug reports. Rest assured, I have still poured many hours into development and bugfixing, and a lot more has been done than can immediately be seen in these somewhat meagre patch notes. The goal is still the same awesome and deep game.
Regardless of which of these initiatives bear fruit, I will still finish the game. I will still do my utmost to deliver as much content as swiftly and regularly as I can, and I will also try to return to the previous standard of responsiveness. I ask for your understanding that despite my intentions, at times I will fail at living up this. Hopefully the initiatives will result in this being moot, but I must consider all eventualities.
As for the actual game update, it's focused on the Undead. I've wanted to give Necromancers and Undead some unique ways to recruit heroes and units. This includes searching the world for ancient tombs and raising the heroes of the past Eras. I didn't manage to finalize all aspects of this, so the next update will also feature the Undead. Implementing a few missing corners of Tribal/Clan mechanics also didn't manage to get done in time, but they're very close.
In general, I am going to stick with the Undead until the Necromancy and Death masteries, as well as the related general game mechanics can be considered fully playable. There may be other unimplemented odds and ends fixed as well, but I really want to avoid spreading myself too thin, the current development challenges taken into account.
Patch Notes:
- Basic World History is generated with various eras and notables. The various game settings (world age, civilization level, magic, etc.) are taken into account when doing this.
- Undead units can now be raised from historic Battle Sites with the Raise Battlefield spell. The number and size of units depends on Necromancy mastery level, Necromancy wards at the site (which may result in the spell failing if very high compared to mastery*10) and available fallen warriors.
- The notables are placed in burial sites around the world.
- Note that Battle Sites and Burial Sites do not require Search tasks to be revealed. This is temporary to make testing a bit easier, and will be changed in the next update.
- Risen Champions: New elite undead unit unlocked at high Necromancy mastery.
- Raise Hero: New Necromancy spell which can raise Undead heroes from burial sites. The class will be randomly chosen but heavily influenced by the type of historical character.
- Improved the logic handling age and death to handle tracking the life and unlife of Undead characters.
- Improved the logic handling cultures and races to handle undead and various other special cases better.
- Mercenary Units can no longer be hired by Wizard with special Race traits (Undead, Demon, Celestial, Faerie).
- Added more variety to savage/tribal generator.
- Added more title variety to the the culture generator.
- Fixed some bugs related to clan diplomacy.
- Fixed display issues on the economy window for tribal chiefs.
- Fixed a display bug for the Gift of Undeath spell.