Black & White 2: Redux Version 1.8 news

Hello everyone,

finally I would like to present the new 1.8 version of the Redux version to you. Yet again the 1.8 update will be the biggest so far and features 1 new land, new and changed landscapes to the campaign lands, overhauled AI, new music and many other awesome features!

New Landscapes

This update features many, many landscape updates. On most lands something was added, other lands were scrapped completely and replaced by new ones created by members of the Community. In this article I would like to present the new last Norse land landscape (Created by VandalBlueX) and the landscape for a completely new land in the campaign (Created by Bill).

Overhauled AI

One of the first tasks was to overhaul the AI. The goal was to make the opponent less predictable, more fun to play against and to make the AI system more efficient so that crashes and other annoyances are reduced. The AI will now get gradually harder with the Norse being the easiest and the enemy god the most difficult. The AI will now merge and split its platoons in different occasions in order to fill up almost empty platoons are start are more "chaotic" attack on the player. The AI will now attack and build buildings depending on the player alignment and generally will react much better to the actions of the player.

Vortex

Something different are the new vortex scripts which allow you to take ressources and people from one land to another - as it was in Black & White 1. The vortex scripts was developed by Black & White Community Member Bill and continued/implemented into Redux by Boxhead.
In order to keep the game balanced the amount what you can take over to each land has been limited, the current limits are as the following:

• Armies: 5
• Army men: 75
• Siege Weapons: 2
• Ore Rocks: 7
• Trees: 12
• Ore/Food/Wood: 20000
• Villagers: 100

I also want to give a shout out to Vociferous Music for her amazing music compositions in this mod!

We always listened and read the bug reports. We were able to squash many bugs which the 1.7.1 scripts of Redux had. Below you can find the changelog but not all changes were documented this time resulting into a much smaller changelog than it deserved to be. You can also find the changelog in the forum:

Additions

• Added a new norse land (Thanks to Bill for the landscape)
• Added spooky sounds to undead armies
• Several additions to AI
• Reworked all campaign lands. All scripts and some landscapes (Thanks to VandalBlueX for the new last Norse land landscape)
• Added the monks to the first japanese land
• Added Bills vortex script. It is now possible to carry over villagers, resources and many different to the next campaign land
• Added a scroll with which you can skip the tutorials in the 3rd land
• Added new music
• New dynamic music system
• Added an option to turn off alignment skies
• Added a new, very cheaty difficulty in skirmish
• Added turtle creature and zombie ape creature (Thanks to Egerion)

AI

• Attacks are now randomized
• Changed the AI platoon and catapult production, improving the difficulty scaling
• The AI might now go for specific targets and try to ignore player platoons and creature
• Many actions of the AI are now based on the alignment of the player
• Added a new town builder to the AI which makes sure to rebuild a minimum set of buildings
• Fixed several issues where the AI would recruit too many platoons for defending purposes (Up to 4-6 platoons at once)
• The AI will now merge and split its platoons
• Minor improvements to the enemy creature AI
• The enemy AI will now build up its town depending on the alignment of the player
• The AI will now move its platoons outside of influence but ignores influence if specific conditions are met

Balance

• Lowered tribute the player gets for migrations
• Adjusted many tribute values for objectives. They were mostly increased
• Increased value of the impressive buildings. Example bath houses will now give more impressiveness but also cost more wood and ore
• Weakened Hurricanes
• Increased cost of creature heal miracle

Fixes

• Custom spells are now enabled by default
• Town conversion scripts have been reworked. Fixing a bug where the player sometimes couldn't capture the enemy's capital peacefully
• Fixed deadly barrels in land2 not being deadly
• Fixed a bug in a land12 quest where the lightning strikes of the player wouldn't effect the skeletons sometimes
• Fixed multiple dialogues at once sometimes in the last japanese land
• Fixed multiple crashes
• Disabled automatic disciples

Maps

• New norse last land landscape
• Edited the starting position of the player in the 9th land
• Changed the second japanese land landscape

Music

• Changed music in the siege weapon intro cutscene of the last norse land
• Added music to the intro of the chicken wolf grain quest
• Added new dynamic music (Thanks to Vociferous for the amazing composition)
• Added new greek alignment music (Thanks to Voiferous)

Other

• Alignment sky transitions now take longer to load completely
• Fixed an error in spanish translation in the skirmish lands
• The volcano in the second aztec land will now give more warnings before eruption
• Difficulty scaling has been improved
• Moved multiple tutorials to the new norse land
• Set default difficulty from easy to normal
• Renamed the extended mode to hard mode
• Changed minor stuff in the land2 cutscene
• Increased maximum amount of villagers
• Improved Installer
• Countless other Fixes and Changes which weren't properly documented