Hello everyone,
version 1.3 is coming closer and currently being heavily tested. It'll feature many new features, lots of AI improvements for skirmish, a 4 gods skirmish map and many bug fixes.
Most likely it will be released within the next 2 weeks, maybe this weekend.
New Spells
First the new spells, I felt like the potential of mana wasn't fully fleshed out and the gameplay is a bit too straight-forward. So I added 4 new spells: Verdant Spell (10.000 mana), Firerain Spell (20.000 mana), Thunderstorm Spell (30.000 mana) and the Comet Spell (42.500 mana). Each spell gets unlocked with a epic you buy in the tribute menu. For example if you buy the siren wonder, you'll automatically get the Verdant Spell. The new spells can be used outside your influence, actually they can be used inside of enemy influence but show a warning which lasts approximately 20 seconds before striking.
4 Gods Skirmish Map
Also new in this update there is a skirmish map with 3 AI opponents. The map features towns of each tribe, but for the first time, I've added neutral Greek towns which you can impress or take over. Also I made some improvements to the skirmish in general. In conclusion save/loading should work correctly for everyone and it received lots of fixes which fixed some crashes and improved AI-behaivor.
But most importantly here is the new changelog which is also accessible in the new forum:
Additions
- Added 4 "Mini-Epics" (You need to activate this feature on gods playground if using a save from version 1.2)
- Verdant Spell (Needs siren wonder to unlock)
- Firerain Spell (Needs Volcano wonder to unlock)
- Thunderstorm Spell (Needs Hurricane wonder to unlock)
- Meteor-Strike Spell (Needs Earthquake wonder to unlock)
- Enemy gods will make use of them
- Aggressive mini-epics can be used inside of enemy influence, but it shows a warning before striking
- Added a 4 gods skirmish map
AI
- Enemy gods can now repair buildings in skirmish
- Enemy gods will no longer throw wonders at catapults if they're burning
- Enemy gods will now throw wonders at enemy creatures
- Enemy gods will use the storm wonder now only against platoons
- Improved how the AI builds buildings in skirmish: It's now less likely that a building gets placed near an edge and floats half in the air
- Increased delay in which the AI will recruit new forces in the campaign on normal difficulty and easier
- In skirmish easier AIs will now build their towns more slowly
- Improved how skirmish AIs fire epics: Increased performance
- Removed toys for AIs in skirmish
- Rewritten how the god engine (enemy gods in skirmish) works to make it less performance heavy and maybe fix some bugs with loading / saving skirmish games
Balance
- Changed impressiveness system a bit more into another direction (All in all lowered building impressiveness and increased impressiveness from villagers, securtiy etc.)
- Impressiveness of towns is now a bit more based on security
- Impressiveness increases now more through population
- Increased impressiveness malus from homelessness
- Changed some impressiveness values of buildings
- Sleep and Free-Time desire a bit turned down
- Changed needed impressiveness in lands 3 to 11
- Increased creche wood cost to 2.500
- Increased temple wood coost to 4.000 and ore cost to 2.000
- Increased granary ore cost to 800
- Creatures now respawn with 25% health instead of 50% after death
- The first attack won't be that early in land 7 on easier difficulties
- Difficulty now effects when enemy will gets more aggressive in land 7
- You start now with more ressources on easier difficulties
Fixes
- Improved scripts for loading lands, crashes might be less
- Fixed crash in skirmish when player is near an altar when intro music fades out
- Fixed camera in land 9 side-quest
- Changed the difficulty-selector to be a silver scroll
- Fixed a bug with some scripts if difficulties have been ignored by the player
- Adjusted some norse general dialogues commenting about impressiveness
- Fixed AI catapults in land 4 sometimes attacking the furthest away gatehouse
- Fixed issue where the game resets progress to land 4 after repeatedly open and closing the game
- Fixed some random crashes which appeared since patch 1.2
- Fixed a bug where the AI would only use 1 epic it built in skirmish if it built 2 or more
- Fixed some missing german translations
- Fixed AI epics within the player influence in the campaign
- Fixed hurricane epic in last japanese land and aztec volcano epic firing even though it's damaged
- Fixed AI catapult getting stuck in the first japanese land on easy difficulty
- Fixed some typos in placementdata.xml resulting into some false balance values for game objects
- Fixed custom scrolls showing "[x] Default / Default"
- Fixed a rare crash in loading screen to land 1
- Fixed a bug where some subtitles won't disappear
- Changed: You can now drop animals near the missionaries in land 4 when you have no influence there
- Changed: First wave of catapults in the last aztec land will now always target the walls
Other
- Added some additional sounds to enemy gods
- Added Descriptions for custom quests
- Changed camera paths in land 4 intro
- Changed camera paths in land 10 intro
- Changed some textures in land 4
- Increased creature maximum size by roughly 20%
- Readded the lonely guy. He hides in multiple places in the campaign
- Reenabled creature heal miracle, although a bit rebalanced (A new game is required for this one, I'm not sure though)
- Reduced atmo sounds volume
- All creatures now start with 20% size (Some were 0% before other 40%)
I think Firerain Spell should come from volcano wonder and Meteor-Strike Spell should have earthquake wonder seeing as how meteors can cause earthquakes while volcanoes can literally spew firerain. Sorry if this is nitpicky, my brain logic picked up on that part, can't wait to try this mod out though! Thank you for improving this game. :)
You're right, I was struggling with these. I'm still considering if I change it like you said or keep it, because it was intended like this: While the siren wonder should unlocks the 'weakest' spell, the volcano unlocks give the strongest.
But in the end I think I change it like you said.
Happy to hear that! I'm also curious about what else you want to add to this unique game, any inspiration from other strategy games? More spells are always welcome, I know Majesty 2 comes close to this in terms of spells. Are there any other play elements you'll be adding in as well (military units...like a champion given special abilities by the player, more creature variety...like Lions, Tiger and Bears...oh my, tower defences...wall types, traps, exploding cannonball, etc.)? Sorry, I got carried away... XD
New units would be really awesome. Sadly I don't know how to implement completely new units. I think for most part it's hardcoded but certainly I could add something like special troops which have some perks but else behind that I wouldn't be sure how to do it.
I already tried adding creatures with Egerion who is also a bw2-modder. Unfortunately models seem to be hardcoded. Our plan was to replace the unused jackal and minotaur creature (which are using the wolf model) with the turtle and zombie-ape of BOTG. But here we weren't able to tell the game which models to use so it was only a try.
Ah, I see, here's hoping for BW3 LoL. At least you're able to add special troops, what did you have in mind to balance out the continued use of regular troops vs special-ty troops? That's sad about the unused model unable to be used, would've loved the additional models to add more to the game.
I don't know at the moment, my priorities are currently to expand the campaign + improving skirmish mode (fix issues it still has like some crashes). But new units is also something to put on my to-do list :)
Sweet, can't wait, I mean I can... I'll just watch you do your thing, thank you again for modding/improving this game! :D