Greetings Wielders! It’s approaching winter here in Sweden and while we are getting chilled by the northern winds, we want to present something that truly warms our hearts: The Random Map Generator. We hope it will bring you endless hours of joy and increase the replayability of the game by a lot.
Interestingly none of the team members at Lavapotion foresaw that the Random Map Generator would be a highly requested feature. We thought that there would be a bigger interest in handcrafted maps. Boy, were we wrong!
The Random Map Generator - Currently the second most requested feature on our Feature Upvote site.
We are happy to present our first iteration of this highly anticipated feature. It will be improved upon further and we want to take your feedback into consideration. So, go on, give it a try and let us know what you think!
The RMG currently supports 2, 4, 6, and 8-player maps, single player vs. AI or multiplayer.
But that’s not all. Oh no, we have lots more content, improvements, and features for you in this update.
Carl has for a long time been working on a big rebalancing of all factions.This means that troop costs have changed, stats have been modified and you will have to reconsider a few tried and tested tactics. The full list of changes is a bit too long to comfortably share in this blog post, but they are included in the patch notes below and we hope to either create a video about it or post a separate blog post later on. I’m sure Carl is excited to get right back to this balance work as soon as we update the game with more unit traits and abilities!
Text, numbers, and all that jazz. These are the tools of the trade for our Game Designer Carl. The actual work of making games fun can look a lot less fun than you would think.
We are also happy to announce that we have extended our AI development team with Niklas, who most recently worked as AI Lead for Paradox Interactive. He and Marcus are now hard at work continuing to improve the AI, so watch out Cyberdyne systems! (It’s a Terminator reference for all you Zoomer strategy gamers out there). If you check out the full patch notes, you’ll see that they have been quite busy and a few highlights include further optimization and adventure and battle behavior improvements.
This, dear reader, is what is referred to as “coder art” and it has a special place in the heart of all game developers. This particular piece of art explains how the AI pathfinding has improved. I’ll expect to see bootlegged NFTs of this masterpiece sooner rather than later.
Our “Look and feel” team which pretty much focuses on the UI and UX of the game have been optimizing and changing how a player (and Wielder) interacts with the town. The whole Defence system and UI have been given a visual overhaul that hopefully makes the user journey much more explanatory and pleasant when you want to stash a Wielder inside a town and defend it.
By changing the placements of buttons and adding visual effects the defend mode has become easier to grasp for new players (and some of the developers).
Another highly requested feature is the multiplayer turn timer. Robin has been working on it to hopefully make it exhaustive and flexible for all your needs. But as with all new features we expect to iterate further upon it if needed. So let us know if it has what you are looking for in a modern turn timer of this day and age.
That’s a lot of settings, you say? Time and experience tell us that most of you players want more settings rather than fewer, that’s why!
We are also adding two more skirmish maps with this update. Eye for an Eye is a tight little map 1v1 PVP style. Get into the action quickly or get wiped out! Lion’s Den is quite the opposite, an extra large map for 8 players. It should give you plenty of time to enjoy the atmosphere and zone out until you get wiped out, at least if you play as I do!
The Battlegrounds have also gotten a few new base armies and Wielders. Expect some of your previous army creations to be void due to the big rebalancing.
And to all of our players from Japan we are happy to say ようこそ! The game is now available in Japanese as well.
We will be back with another update before the year is over. See you all then and have fun trying out the Random Map Generator!
/Lord Querkius and Team Lavapotion
Full Changelog / Patch notes for v0.79:
Additions
- Random map generator – choose the layout you want to use when selecting map in lobby
- Added configurable turn timers as a new map settings option for multiplayer games
- Added a multiplayer settings menu available to the host in multiplayer games
- Added ability to purchase troops from all owned towns and settlements at once when using a Rally Point
- Added Japanese translation
- Added a few more random events for Loth
- Two new skirmish maps added
- Eye for an Eye, small 1v1 map
- Lion’s Den, XL map with 8 players
Game has had a balance overhaul, there will be more ongoing changes and then another bigger one after all traits and abilities are in place.
Balancing
- Adjusted research prices for a more standardized price setting across all factions
- Added +5 initiative to Steampipers song “The Coin in my Hand”
- Units changes
- Reworked initiative across all units
- Increased HP across all units
- Max researched stack size lowered for Militia, Rats, and Hunters
- Faey rager now gives Chaos, Chaos, Creation
- Fist of Order now gives Order, Order, Chaos
- Fist of Orders max damage increased by 1 to 25
- Faey Noble and Queen's damage increased to 14-18 and 25-30
- Toxicologist now costs 250 gold, Bane costs 500
- Banes damage lowered to 4-8
- Necromancers now cost 750 gold and 1 Celestial Ore
- Necromancers max dmg increased to 12
- Scavenged bones now cost 850, Blessed bones cost 1200
- Bones stack size increased to 10, with research 15
- Scavenged Bones damage lowered to 14-16 and Blessed Bones 18-20
- Legions and High Legions damage increased to 30-35 and 40-50
- Dreaths max damage increased from 4 to 5 and Dire Dreaths damage increased to 5-7
- Dire Dreath now gives an additional Chaos
- Dire Dreath price increased to 300
- Tinkerers stack size decreased to 15, with research 30
- Tinkerer now cost 400 and artificers 650
- Artificers damage lowered to 9-12
- Scarred Brute now costs 1200
- Scarred Brutes damage increased to 20-24
- Shadow now costs 1000 and 1 Glimmerweave
- Sassanid researched stack size lowered from 25 to 20
- Sassanid damage increased to 15-20
- Shadows minimum damage lowered by 1 to 25
- Hellbreath and Hellroars damage increased to 25-35 and 40-50
- Hellbreath price increased to 1600 and 1 Celestial Ore
- Hellroar price increased to 2200 and 2 Celestial Ore
- Guard stack size increased to 30, 50 with research
- Guard and Protectors max damage increased by 1
- Guard cost increased to 250
- Crawlers damage increased to 8-10
- Crawlers cost increased to 450
- Adult Crawlers damage increased to 12-16
- Adult Crawlers cost increased to 700
- Chelun damage lowered to 12-14
- Chelun Elders damage lowered to 16-20
- Dragons damage increased to 40-50
- Elder Dragons damage lowered to 50-70
- Dragons cost lowered to 2500 + 2 Ancient amber
- Elder Dragons cost lowered to 3000 + 4 Ancient Amber
- Note: Many units still do not have the trait or ability they’re supposed to have, so more changes might come when those arrive in the game.
- Spell changes
- Protection cost lowered to 4 Order
- Aggression cost lowered to 4 Destruction
- Increased the cost of the following spells: Quicken, Invigorate, Onslaught, Justice, Rapid Fire, Rejuvenation
- Fireball damage increased to 35/70/100
- Invigorate now gives +5/10/15 Initiative, +1/2/3 move. Was +10/15/20 Initiative, +1/2/3 move
- Building prices and prereqs reworked across the board to be a bit more synergistic and adjusted to troop income worth
- Wielder changes
- Starting troops adjusted and changed according to new prices
- Starting skills changed and adjusted in some cases
- Specialties changed and adjusted here and there
- Skill changes
- Positioning now gives 15 ranged resistance, then 30 and the final tier gives +1 move first round
- Prepared now gives +10 initiative and +1 move first round at tier 3
- Impressive now gives 10/15/20% more chance of hostiles either fleeing or joining
- Raider tier 3 now gives 400 bonus gold and +1 movement and +1 view radius
- Skirmish and campaign maps updated with some different army values and pickups based on the balance changes
Battlegrounds
- Fixed wrong team color on defender in post battle menu
- Disabled turn timers when playing Battlegrounds by friend invite
- Twelve more wielders added for use in Battlegrounds
- Old battlegrounds armies may now be invalid because of price changes
UI
- Rework wielder/building interaction menus into 3 separate menus (town interaction, rally point and troop building menus)
- Updated New Round/Your turn popup
- Minor additions to purchase wielder menu (Better Barya portrait positioning, more info on owned wielders, always show command skill, hide purchase button on owned wielders)
- Show town name instead of "city" in pre battle menu if no wielder is present
- Added specific beacon icon to notification HUD
- Removed positions that are under fog of war from a wielder’s movement outline
AI Adventure
- Performance optimisation
- Fixed bug that stopped the AI from claiming certain neutral faction buildings
- Fixed an issue where AI could not sell buildings
- Made long distance pathing be more precise
- Fixed issue with valuable items not being cleared from cache after interaction, creating what appeared to be pathing issues
- Fixed issue with distance-to-item penalty calculation
- Fixed issue with balancing troops when taking from map entities
- Improved situation where AI previously would stop building on its towns
AI Battle
- Fixed abandoning its current position for an inferior one due to not treating it as a valid candidate
- Fixed ranged units using the movement logic for melee units
- Fixed ranged units not evaluating damage done to enemy units correctly if an attack was preceded by a move
- No longer makes sub-optimal moves after a good one due to still having movement left
- Better at adapting to current situation compared to blindly going for its long term target
- Ranged units locked in a zone of control now consider a melee attack
- Ranged units less interested in moving to within deadly range as part of an attack to encourage attacking without moving and without penalty
- Removed threat from positions an ranged enemy unit could target only by moving
- Increased value of high ground when evaluating potential positions
Audio
- Added sound when Sim turn is locked
- Rework and update turn timer sound effect
Bug fixes
- Fixed “You can go back and level up later” mini tutorial showing up at wrong times
- Fixed auto-equipping “Any Hand” artifacts replacing main hand weapon even if the Wielder has no artifact equipped in off hand
- Fixed bug where camera panned to wielders teleporting in fog
- Fixed many instances of sounds and VFX playing for entities that where covered by fog-of-war
- Fixed artistic color tints showing up as interactable in-game
- Solved at least some cases of players getting stuck on loading screen when other players disconnect during loading
- Fixed issue with Bandit Hideout battle map causing exceptions and soft locks when humans or AI attacked them on maps where they had their default defenders changed
Optimizations
- Adventure AI optimizations with focus on larger maps
Known Issues
- Threat level indicator sometimes gives wrong threat assessment - be wary!
- Sim-turns is at version 0.1
- Co-Op (Teams) is at version 0.1
- All traits and abilities for troops are not yet implemented