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Changelog v0.90 – NOV 24, 2023
Notable additions
Added support for playing the game with Gamepad
New UI scaling option: Large HUD & large text
Skill pools revised and updated starting troops and skills for several Wielders
Troops balance and spell changes
AI Wielder roles updated and more defined
AI uses a threat map to guide its movement
Notable bug fixes
Building could complete at the same turn as started building
Treasure chests that you had opened appearing as closed
Gaining resources from income two times on the same turn during sim-turns
AI not building resource buildings for wood and stone
AI gets stuck while considering building options
AI does not revive its main wielder if more wielders than city/settlements
Neutral hostile as well as quick battle AI not advancing in siege battle without walls, even in situations where it should
Buggy portal in Rana mission 3 due to misplaced settlement
Fixed bug that wouldn’t let you start Robin Hood campaign
RMG (Random Map Generation) paths that are impassable
RMG maps with no path to opponent
RMG mines that can’t be claimed
RMG hostiles that can’t be attacked not happening as often
RMG mines that can be claimed without fighting guard
Adventure
Hide map entity names when opening a menu in adventure
Adjusted rewards for Old urns, abandoned cart and wooden idol
Added exotic rewards to blue chest and increased exotic reward to red chest
Doubled the amount of extra gold gained when pillaging with the skill Raider.
Changed secluded monastery to give a choice of skill or 2000 xp
Added notification when unlocking or locking a Magic Barrier Keystone
Added a particle effect when unlocking a Magic Barrier Keystone
If a town with walls switches ownership after a battle, all hostile wielders that would otherwise be trapped inside the walls now move out first
Updated the order of research shown so it's consistent across research buildings and factions
Updated Arleon Grand Armory research, making the first troop research stronger in general
Updated Loth Unseen Society research, making the first troop research stronger in general
Updated Rana Dragon Pyramid research, making the first troop research stronger in general
Added animated banners to defence and battle menus
Essence burst changed from skill to power, now gives +3 in first tier and +6 in second tier
Skill pools revised, every wielder class now has a primary essence, secondary adn third, these will be unlocked in the skill pool at first, fifth and tenth level..
Updated starting troops and skills for several wielders
Cheekham now has Raider
P’cha now has Positioning
Itchamo now starts with 2 Ravagers and 2 Crawlers
R’lac now starts with 10 Hunters and 1 Eth’dra
Sanax now has Prepared
Everthink now starts with 1 Steampiper, 1 Brute, 3 Tinkerer
Merkoth now starts with 2 Scavenged Bones, 2 Oathbound
Coral now starts with 1 Necromancer, 5 Oathbound
Ambertina now has Essence leech
Roderick of Loth now has Positioning
Vilja now starts with 6 Footmen, 6 Minstrel
Vilja now has Order
Ravenfayre now starts with 10 ranger
Peradine now starts with 15 Militia, 2 Troubadour
Peradine now starts with Creation
Fixed Doctor Marjattas stats to correct number
Tweaked the sizing of the neutral dwelling menu to work better regardless of how many troops are available
Fixed troops sometimes not getting bonuses from their new wielder right away after transferring them
Battle
Power Essence Shield changed to give 35% resistance to ranged, melee and spell damage (was 50% ranged), Essence shield lv 2 changed to 70% resistance to ranged, melee and spell damage (was 50% ranged, would last 2 attacks)
Troops balance pass
Ranger essence switched to creation, Archer has order, creation
Risen buffed to 15 hp, dmg 1-3
Scavanged bones now has 2 destruction (was 1), hp lowered to 65 from 75
Blessed bones now has 2 destruction (was 1), hp lowered to 90 from 100
Spectre hp buffed to 40 from 35
Seneschal now has Destruction, Arcana, Arcana. Switched order to Arcana
High legion buffed with one more Destruction essence
Piper essence changed to Destruction, Order, Was 2 Order
Steampiper essence changed to 2 Destruction, 1 Order, Was Destruction 2 Order
Dreath hp lowered from 12 to 10
Dire dreath essence lowered from 2 chaos to 1 chaos
Dire dreath hp lowered from 20 to 18, max damage from 7 to 6, cost lowered from 280 to 250
Hellbreath initiative raised from 25 to 26
Hellbreath initiative lowered from 30 to 28
Sage Hp lowered by one, dmg lowered by 1 and cost lowered by 50
Ravager essence doubled to 2 destruction, damage increased to 7-10 and cost increased to 500 form 450
Rider of the Swamp essence is now 2 destruction, 1 creation, Dmg raised to 10-15 and cost raised to 750
Tremor essence changed to Creation, Destruction, Arcana and max dmg raised to 16 from 15
Neutral hostile gold costs adjusted to give more correct threat
Spell changes
Onslaught now has duration instead of additional targets, lowered cost by 1+1
Chaos step increased cost by 1
Burst of Strength has increased cost 1+1
Clouded vision now has 50% reduction on all tiers instead of 60/80
Ethereal Scales damage reduction changed from 75 to 50
Aegis damage reduction changed changed from 75 to 50
Repel lowered cost by and changed distance to 2/4/6
Destroy essence now has increased duration instead of additional targets
Strengthen essence now has increased duration instead of additional targets
Swap has increased cost by 1+1
Earth block tier 3 now has 1 block, increased hp for tier 2 and 3 for the blocks
Phoenix lowered cost by 1+1 and slightly lowered damage on tier 1 and 2
Rupture does more damage on tier 2 and 3
Arcane Storm now costs 14 and changed damage to 30/60/90
Apocalypse t3 dmg increased to 120
Apocalypse now also damages map entities
Fixed being able to trigger illegal moves (such as walking into the water) by clicking the battle transition animation
Common
Added support for playing the game with Gamepad
Main menus
Updated transition to campaign mission select
Updated mission select with completion info and animations
Only show discord button in main menu
Locked campaign buttons if player hasn’t finished first Arleon campaign map
Added input icons to player stats scene
Added gamepad navigation to changelog
Added “Played” filter and sorting buttons to map select menu
Updated random map layout buttons with sub layouts and game modes
UI
New UI scaling option: Large HUD & large text. UI scaling currently has three options: 1) Normal 2) Large HUD 3) Large HUD & large text.
Added information in normal tooltips to side panels for troops
Removed duplicate information in tooltips for troops
Artwork
Waterfalls got increased resolution, frame rate and variation
Fixed black supporter color
More main menu background maps were added for different factions
The bridge texture was tweaked to make stretching less apparent when drawing extremely tall bridges
Tweaked the offset of small wielder portraits so that their faces are more visible in e.g the starting wielder selector.
Tweaked fog effect coverage to produce less blockiness
Replaced Loth primary light artwork from lantern to torch
Map editor
You can now specify the Upgrade Type in any random troop in faction reward (e.g camps)
Magic barrier keys now have optional restrictions
Barya’s build sites no longer spread sand everywhere
The weather system has gotten a complete overhaul and should now blend properly between nodes
Added a new interaction restriction type called “Never” so that you can disable interaction completely for a single object/component
The Kill Wielder trigger now kills ALL wielders it can find given the criteria. Previously it only killed the first and threw an exception if it found more than one.
Fixed issue where the Pad/Crop windows would not go out of focus mode when closed
Fixed issue where a converted wielder would inherit the faction instead of applying its own
Converted wielders now get their own specializations instead of inheriting them from the original
Added option for allowing any faction to recruit from a neutral dwelling
Auto Triggers now tries to execute for the last used wielder instead of the starting wielder
Fixed bug that made Global Criteria to throw exceptions at runtime
Magic Gate barriers are now in their very own editor category
Fixed sorting issues between water and UI elements
Disabled tags such as <hl> to render in map editor input fields
Added a new map entity called Fighting Pits where you can recruit neutral troops
Modding
Allow modded wielders to be neutral
Fixed issue with modded languages sometimes not being matched properly with a built in one
Fixed issue where community campaigns would have missing titles on some languages
Added a spinner and descriptive text when downloading a featured community campaign
Multiplayer
Fixed getting to “build twice” on first round if starting construction and then fighting a battle
Fixed players sometimes receiving double income and sometimes missing out on income when they play on two different turns on the same round (can happen during when getting kicked out of first turn when playing with simultaneous turns on)
Prevent some cases of menus closing while other player’s are battling during sim turns
AI - Adventure
Added more names for AI-players
AI Wielder roles updated and more defined
Updated algorithm that selects main warrior/mule
Mules more dedicated to carrying troops
AI Wielders skill selection revamp
Entirely updated AI level up
Selects skill based on role
AI Troop recruitment tweaked to fit roles a bit better
Improved magic gates reasoning
AI uses a threat map to guide its movement
AI pathfinds through pickups and artifacts
Audio
Fixed issue that caused the audio system not to recognize water at all
Random Map Generator
Added support for portals and portals will now sometimes show up in most of our sublayouts
Added support to override the layout size value from a sublayout
Fixed gold mine positioning to prevent it from being non interactable
Fixed bug causing withdraw button to be disabled when using competitive grouped regions
Added support to override fight or flight settings from the layout
Updated all layouts to have slightly weaker hostiles
Updated our entity blueprint to have slightly higher chance of spawning hostiles
Optimization
Made several optimizations to how we handle wielders and commanders in and out of the fog of war. Most noticeable when moving wielders on large maps where you have many wielders and map entities granting vision.
Optimized the system that triggers events in campaign maps when wielders walk.
Created a power saving system that throttles the frame rate in intelligent ways accessible through a new video options setting called “Energy Saving”. No more burning laptops!
Made improvements to the terrain statistics system that's responsible deciding what ambience audio to play
Removed runtime allocations from the developer console
Increased the chunk size from 8 to 16. This may have a negative impact on the performance of the map editor. Please notify me if you run into problems!
Removed the concept of having two lightmaps (default and ground) in favor of a single one
Removed unused render pipeline features
Consolidated faction-related adventure materials. We went from having 6 materials for each faction down to 2.
Moved roads out of the decal system so that we later can remove decals all together on lower settings
Turned the specks of dust into a world wide particle system instead of one for each chunk
Misc
Excluded Risen from being chosen as a troop in random hostiles or random troop rewards.
Changed the appearance and cleanliness of troop tooltips in adventure and battle
Fixed “Proof That Luck Can Be Consistent” achievement not counting hotseat games