--------------------------------------------------- ----------- Elemental v1.08b Change Log ----------- ---------------------------------------------------
We are on the process of putting up v1.08 of Elemental: War of Magic.
Here’s a change log over v1.07:
+ LOD optimizations across improvements and tile designs + Continued memory optimization + AI handles its sovereign more intelligently + AI more effective at going after targets of opportunity + AI sovereign is more careful about going into enemy territory + AI has new APIs for determining whether there are targets of opportunity in the area + Balance pass on resource distribution + Base tech cost changed from 4 to 5 + Merchants/Money Changers now require 1 food to construct + Study/Archivist now require 1 gildar per turn to maintain + Gildar deposit now seeded near starting location + Tracker talent cost changed from 15 to 10 + Organized talent cost changed from 10 to 20 + Combat Rating calculation altered in an attempt to be a more accurate gauge of lethalness + Fewer resources spawned per 1000 tiles. + Fewer minor factions spawned. + Added scalars to attack and defence for units who are in home territory or foreign territory, modifiable in ElementalDefs.xml + Territory scalars now work as Empire v Fallen (e.g. Kingdom guy on Fallen territory gets penalty, etc). + Updated formula for gildar given when killing a given unit + Child essence is no longer modified by spawn rating, but is instead a value between 50% and 100% of the more powerful parent's essence. + Updated TerrainTypes.xml to make Forests and Swamps take 2 moves + Changing the “IncreaseMorale” modifier attribute to “AdjustMorale. It’s more clear for the modders. -Revamp of the way offensive spells hit/miss and deal their damage +HIT/MISS is deteremined by an attacker roll (minDamage – maxDamage) and by the defender roll (0-DEF) +Values can now be specified as a MinValue and a MaxValue rather than just a Value (support for constant value spells is still supported) +If a MinValue and a MaxValue is specified, the Value is defined by a rand roll between the two numbers based on the modifiers internal rand roll. +Updated descriptions for all core spellbook spells to show bonus damage from INT and bonus damage from shards in the spell description. +The SpellbookWnd has been updated to properly display the damage range if there is one, and the constant damage if there isn’t one. +All core spells that were using stats to calculate the value but didn’t have a ValueOwner specified have been fixed. +The elemental shards unit stats now default to 0 instead of 1. The calculations in the existing spells have been redone to reflect this. + Fixed BURNING BLADE spell to appropriately increase attack. + Fixed SHIELD OF FIRE spell to appropriately increase defense. + Fixed CRUSH SPIRIT spell to appropriately decrease morale. + Fixed BRAVERY spell to appropriately increase morale. + Fixed DRAIN LIFE spell to appropriately transfer HP from target to caster. + Changed the display code for the main UI bar to round attack and defense rather than truncate. + Hooked up the CTRL+ARROW and SHIFT-ARROW camera rotation and movement hotkeys to tactical. + Added save game descriptions + Fixed bug where dialogs from triggers in the campaign (like moving beyond where you should build a city) would pop up many times when a unit moved into that tile. + Fixed AI bug where it was doing deficit spending and creating units still + Removed the max spell points entry from the affected stats in the level up wnd, since it isn't affected by any unit stats anymore + Fixed bug where non-aggression pact wasn't being checked for when left-clicking on a unit in attack mode + Fixed modifier in Refined_Economics_Amarian_MP to modify A_Gold player ability instead of A_Wealth (which doesn't exist) + Fixed golem animation pack (commented out an animation that was missing and causing t-poses) + Fixed crash when making a mountain in map editor + Fixed trading your spouse (if she was a recruited NPC) in the regular unit trade + Perceived value stuff gets hidden when arranging marriages, instead of showing whatever was selected last + Entries for kids when arranging marriages now use a male and female icon to denote boy and girl, instead of the words in parentheses after the name + Fixed "..." from string overflowing for the divider title when trading or arranging a marriage + Fixed the divider title not ever changing from "And" once the arrange marriage screen was shown + Fixed display of tooltip text and color text on Customize Faction window + Tweaked SetToolTip to calculate the necessary size of the window more accurately, to fix bug where tooltips were sometimes being truncated + Fixed bug where clicking a new destination while the unit was moving would cause the unit to get a free move + You can no longer set a units destination while it is moving + Fixed Refined Housing and Refined Economics techs (and their fallen equivalents) so that they correctly provide the bonus they say they do + When a unit inside a city or an army is selected and asked to cast a spell, that is the unit that is used for spellcasting now, instead of having it just fail (in a city) or try to cast the spell from the leader of the army + Fixed bug where summoning a unit while in a city would cause that unit to be summoned in an army with you within that city (causing weird behavior), now just stations the unit in the city with you + Fixed bug where raise land spell would not work on all land category terrain types, like swamp or rugged terrain. Now, if a land tile is not hills, it raises that land to hills, instead of checking for only some terrain types + Fixed a bug where, in the faction editor, you could select ability bonus options for free by selecting and deselecting them, and then spinning the race spinner, caused by deselection not updating the faction config correctly + Fixed units that finished training on the same turn as an autosave not being there when the autosave was loaded + Fixed players not being able to select their city level up bonuses or tech breakthroughs on loading an autosave if they were earned that turn, by having the local player mark themselves as needing to get user input for these things instead of unhiding the windows to allow the choice right away during CWorld::EndTurn, and not letting the user choose until after the next turn starts and the autosave has been made. If one of thses autosaves is loaded, the local player will be allowed to choose their tech breakthroughs and city bonuses once the map is unhidden. This keeps us from having to delay an autosave and the start of the next turn by waiting for the user to choose their bonuses, instead making that choice part of the start turn logic after the autosave has been made and saving the mark saying the player will get to choose at the start of the next turn. + Fixed treaty turn counts not matching if an autosave was loaded + Based on confusion in the forums, removed ability to automatically unlock a spell in the learning queue if it makes it to the front of the queue when the player has enough research to buy it, so that users rearranging their spell learning queue don't have their spell points silently taken away while shuffling spells around, if they didn't intend to learn that spell next + Now it always takes at least one turn to learn any spell + Fixed bug where tile highlights in tactical battle would disappear after an ALT+TAB + Fixed bug where trees would not look correct in all cases after loading a gamesave. + Fixed an issue that was allowing counter attacks against units with abilities of type DoesNotProvokeCounterattacks. +Fixed an issue that was causing modifiers applied in tactical battles to persist after the battle. - This fixes the bug that causes XP and Gildar rewards after battles to be negatively skewed if the enemy unit combat rating was lowered due to debuffs. +Fixed an issue with skipping turns in tactical battles that would cause a stuck turn if done when the unit being skipped was in motion. - Pressing spacebar now sets a tactical units moves to zero AND cancels their destination.
For those who want to play v1.08 in multiplayer mode, you will need to set Impulse to show Pre-release versions:
We designated multiplayer as “beta” because we disabled playing against AI until next week. I had written a lot of AI code this week that is in the single player version but had not been adequately tested for MP. We didn’t want to give players the impression that was considered the feature set in multiplayer as being all that’s coming.
Next week we anticipate releasing v1.09 which will continue to address issues that were not found in the initial release, improve computer AI further and provide it and other new MP features. After that, we will begin focusing on v1.1 which will be the first post-release update that is designed specifically to extending game play.
Anyone who has performance or technical (stability) problems with this build please make sure you you let us know. At this stage, the technical issues that were present at launch should be fully addressed. If this isn’t the case for you, let us know as much as you can about your system as we will personalize our efforts as much as possible.
We are anxious to move forward to begin our traditional policy of extending the game to suit the desires of the gaming community.
Other notes:
Version 1.08 is now available
Known issues:
Friday update:
****** * Gameplay / Balance * + New Sovereign Ability: Wealthy +1 gildar per turn + New Sovereign Ability: Green Thumb +2 food per turn + Organized Sovereign Ability removed + Shop Costs moved to be a formula (unless specified in the XML) + Research costs increased + More balancing of initial resource seeding + Fertile land availability increased + Long Bows now cost 40 gildar to construct + Default shop values on weapons and armor removed from XML (you can overrride the formula still) + Teleport/Blink mana cost increased from 5 to 15. + Eliminated criminal adventurers (caused confusion amongst players) + Pioneer Kit Gold cost reduced from 10 to 5, Materials cost increased from 1 to 10. + Organized ability added to general special abilities + Late game monster respawning reduced. + Increased movement speed of units in tactical battles+ Lots of spell damage tweaks.
****** * Bug Fixes * + Added logic to stop spells from dealing max damage every time. + Restored old terrain/tile movement costs until that can be better addressed. + Adjusted the combat speed from 2 to 3 for the base male/female sov units. + Fixed bug where Karavox, Magnar, and Verga sovs only had 1.0 for combat speed. + Fixed bug that made it not load any maps except mp maps + Fixed bug resetting default map size to tiny + Fixed bug where rapidly clicking the fortify action for a unit twice or more would cause the game to hang + Fixed bug where, after unhiding the game lobby wnd once, human players would get assigned team 1 when joining a custom game, instead of an unused team ID + Fixed crash when restarting new campaign after you load a saved campaign game + Fixed bug where Cancel button would not show up on mutliplayer Join Game with Password screen + Fixed an error where old saves with old data had logic conflicts with new code that made spells miss.
How about the rampant misspellings and poor english? Elemental feels like a Russian game with bad localization right now.
Also, is anyone else annoyed by the cursor not changing from whatever it was last when the battle screen or diplomacy window is opened up?
Custom maps can't be loaded into the map maker anymore
vote also for option 2, but keeping in mind that as others have pointed out, researching tech (reputation) to hire someone seems a little nonsensical - i can understand something like 'researching myths and legends to discern identities'.... except these people are already out in the open. It would make a bit more sense if this was an ability to relate and flatter, and thus reduce recruitment costs... AND cause them to gravitate towards your area of influence.
After playing around for a bit, i have to say i do NOT like the new changes. early game is... painfully slow, as predicted. It is now much more difficult to obtain gildar and exp - thus pretty much removing the rpg and adventuring aspects.
Hey, let's not default to TINY map =p
I notice this because as starting resources have become harder to come by, and starting itself more difficult, I have resorted to starting a new game, looking at my starting position, MAYBE playing a round or three, and exiting to start a new game. That's hardly the way to go...
I'm noticing that the AI still has a few advantages and rushes towards certain goals - it has kids far earlier than it should be able to. I know that if, at the outset, you attempt to marry an npc, they will refuse until your reputation rating is higher than theirs. So it seems that rival factions begin the game married... Perhaps that is to offset janusk? But at the same time, rival factions are pushing out pioneers, soldiers, and even TRADE wagons out far, far across the map (without dying, I might add) much earlier than I would have reasonably expected - particularly given the increased impact of maintenance and wage costs.
Organized and adventuring is still the dominant tactic, and even more so given: 1) resources are hard to come by, 2) movement is still slow, 3) you need to get out and find heroes you can actually recruit, and 4) there's almost no reason to fight any monster now (which are stronger), so better by far to avoid them (especially early game).
This is not surprising. I would take organized even if it cost me the entire starting allotment of points... or more (keeping in mind that there does not seem to be anyway to obtain the first 4 basic spell books). Because increasing the cost of the trait does nothing to rectify the perceived development problem 'Organized as a trait is too prevalent/dominant'. You have to get at the underlying issue that is causing Organized to be dominant.
Specifically:
1) the other traits don't really do that much for you in either the short run or the long run
2) every damn unit moves too goddamn slow. 2.0 for EVERYTHING (if not 1.0) is ridiculous.
What would have been the proper method to adjust player tendency away from organized would have been to:
1) adjust the speed at which units move - by first doubling the current rate, and then adjusting for variety (such as dragons and umberdroths vs. golems and catapults).
2) adjust the speed at which groups move at
3) adjust the point cost of the other positive (and negative!) traits to provide incentives towards variety - and not simply penalize players.
I know you're listening stardock - I mentioned how obsurdly powerful Adventurer + Organized is, and you gimped it. I mentioned how an empire-side Vigilant Minion can solo a combat 400+ army in one turn with Arcane Doom, and you removed the ability (that was, btw, a nasty surprise to have since it wasn't int he changelog).
I'm just wondering how keenly you are listening, because these steps don't make the game fun. Whereas 1.07 may have had it's flaws in the changelog of 1.08, it was at least fun. It was sandbox. 1.08, by contrast, is a grind: not fun anymore.
Meanwhile, many of the more frustrating problems remain - perceived value is at absurd ratios, battle AI still shows little tactical ability, Auto resolve AI is laughable (does not understand retreat if necessary, does not understand prioritize ranged attacks, does not understand conserve spellpoints, does not seem to understand utilize minion/summoned abilities). Diplomatic AI is still one-sided (hey, i want you to declare war, and no I'm not offering you anything to do it) and hypocritical ("It would be great for both nations to set up some treaties!" ok "My treaties are worth 10 times yours so, I guess we can't make a treaty" fine, don't waste my time. "Hey, I think we should talk about treaties....")
As for upkeep stopping "city spam" - that was predominantly an AI flaw. The ai has a tendency to build cities randomly, in greater numbers, and both quickly and early. The upkeep changes haven't stopped that at all. In a 1.08 game, I watched tarth come half way across the map to build a tiny settlement near mine... and not capture ANY resources in doing so. This settlement got destroyed (presumably by a wandering wolf). It was, 3 turns later, rebuilt.
and as another forum goer has pointed out... I'm not sure there is any reason to bother with 1.09 (nor even 1.08). I'd say just go for 1.1 For example, 1.1 is, purportedly, going to switch to a global mana system (not sure how that will work, so I will reserve judgment on it... not personally in favor of it, but curious to see how it will be implemented, and how imbue will be affected). As such, there was no need to work on essence-ring exploit (or even essence inheritance by children). It just strikes me that the resources spent on 1.0x patches would be better spent on 1.1x... since at least some, if not all, these patched changes are going to be overwritten. And I'd rather have 1.1x sooner than later, than "proof we are fixing things" (which i and most others would simply take you at your word for).
I found horses and wargs in my latest game (managed to grab the horses too, for the first time ever! ) So they do exist, but they've never been common in my experience.
And I'll vote for 'notify the player that his heroing level isn't high enough' on the issue of recruiting champions.
No one has yet told me what it actually is that has to be high to recruit those NPCs.
My Sov is level 7 and still can't recruit the NPCs that have been meandering around my territory the whole game. I have every "Heroes" tech in the Adventuring tree researched and am up to level 3 on goodie hut/quest notables.
No! You Lie! The Horse Is A Lie!
*crawls back under his desk*
Happily, I can report substantial performance improvements with this latest version. The game is actually playable from the 3D view now and no longer dives into single digit frame rates whenever I'm looking at a city. I still prefer the cloth map because I think it's a much clearer presentation of what's happening in the game world (for instance, you can tell at glance whether or not a building is currently under construction), but at least now I can enable 3D for close up views so I can enjoy some of the eye-candy.
Mouse stuck in taskbar problem still exists in v1.08
After launching the game mouse cursor is stuck in an area occupied by Windows taskbar, clicking mouse would take back to windows. So I have to alt-tab or click the game icon in the taskbar to get back into the game.
This happens in fullscreen and only if the taskbar is positioned either at the left or top. No problems with taskbar positioned at the right or bottom. And with taskbar set to auto-hide it could be positioned at any side without causing any problems.
In window mode there is no such problem.
Parent's essence on conception or adulthood?
Sammual
Too many changes might create a lot of undesired side effects... good luck with these.
Thanks for the hard work anyway, still following all that, but for now I'll wait for 1.1 too...
I also side with those asking for more options for the graphics (like disabling some animations). My graphics card is really to hot while playing this game, and since it's a turn based game it should not use that much power !
Keep up the good work then !
But if you start one more game, you will find hor-ses. You want hor-ses, don't you? Then we will sit down together, and build horse ar-chers. And it will be good.
(That didn't come out nearly as well as I would have liked, but I couldn't not try.)
[quote who="Istari" reply="94" id="2774978"]Quoting Chibiabos, reply 90No, I can't. As I posted in its own thread, it was not until I encountered the 6th champion that one was recruitable at all. The first 5 had no "Recruit" nor even "talk to" icon under "Actions" if I had the NPC champion selected. They are completely unrecruitable. 1.08 CHANGELOG ADDENDUM:+ Most -- well over half -- of the heroes in the game world are no longer recruitable by anyone. Not at any gildar price.QA has investigated this further and the cause was a change to how NPCs are recruited. Higher spawn rating NPCs cannot be recruited. However, there is no UI indication of this. I've requested that this be treated as a high level bug since it is not intuitive why the NPC can't be recruited. Since there will likely be a slipstream update on this, there are two routes this can go. 1. The previous behavior can be used such that higher quality NPCs cost more or 2. The UI informs the player they need a higher level adventuring tech to recruit them. Do you have any preferences?[/quote]
I would prefer option 1. It makes sense that they would ask for less if you were powerful and well known. Also it would be good if they had past allegiances (Paridien, Altarian, etc.) that would give bonuses or penalties to recruiting. Whether you are kingdom or empire and how you get along with their past allegiances could and should be modifiers to recruitment IMO. Even if some were kingdom or empire only champions would be good.
This game has been so fun to play, but also so very frustrating with all the bugs. Since 1.08 none of my spells have hit during combat, what's up? We need the ability to control animations to speed up combat and performance.
You must start a new game and you must delete your mods.
Then start a new game. You will not miss with your spells. The missing is due to the changes that make spells use shards, and spell out damage. Old saved games will have old xml data and cannot function.
I am actually going to have to stop playing halo reach for a day or so to play this tonight.
thanks guys you rule. lots of fixes
Still a lot of work before Stardock. And its very very frustrating. I created a map ( 4 days of work ) and now the game does not see it in cartographers guild option ( i cant load it ). BUT its in the game, i can play it, but not modify it. And once again please improve mod tools, there are a lot of bugs in there. The most frustrating are : you cant delete maps inside the game with the delete option. After having fun with map editor, when you start the new game the Elemental crashes and ges to desktop. Few tools does nor work. And why i cant choose the size of the maps directly in the game ??? I need to open the file of new created map and chenge it "manually" ? ....
Please Stardock in future dont relase so bugged games. Its the most unfinished and frustrating game with extreme potential i did play in my entre life .....
Excellent work
^^ I was also confused as to the purpose of the 4 or 5 champions I saw that I couldn't interact with. It wasn't that I couldn't recruit them, I couldn't talk to them or attack them either, and the ui didn't give any clues as to why, it simply said 'no actions available' or something to that effect. All I would do is get a few recruiting techs, then try and chase some of them down, but still I wasn't able to recruit any of them. And what happened to their names? They are just 'champions', even though they have names in the bio.
btw, when you start a new game, the text that tells you about the 'four ways to win' only describes three. The forge is left out, is that by design?
I had problems with this last game...... Altar decide that since I would not declare war on the small empire faction that was on the other side of me, they would declear war on me instead... Well long story short... I was happly murdering there entire kingdom when I had knoked them down to one small town... I thought I would be nice..... and offer them a peace treaty--- Well Long story short... I got the
Why should I talk to you when my blade is at your throat!
Peace treaty value on his side 31,100..... my side was 7 .... Was lol Yea ... Well lets see if you still talk big with out any cities ... Then He suicided by attacking my sovereigns Doom squad ... by him self.... Was happy to see he had equiped him self with heavy armor and a lords hammer .... But then he just russhed to attack.. no spell just run up to smack my sovereign.. who promplty incinerated him with spell .. ..
Some quest do not give rewards ... Had the Dragon egg quest got the egg and was told she was going to joing me... never got her.. I want my dragon of doom...
On Trade I traded some one for a Female champion --- Since I had no luck finding one....... who I could recruit ... Made the trade but she never showed up any where ...... not in one of there cities or in any of mine... Was slightly annoying....
Crap I hope to goodness this is moddable because I have an empire with Grasslands Terrain and I'm going to be more than a little annoyed if my arm is being twisted to use the boring monotonous default terrains for every freakin' faction.
How about having terrain handled on a case by case basis? Why do you want to force empires to use that stupid Fallen terrain when it even contradicts the description of one of the default empires? Seriously it makes absolutely no sense that all kingdoms would live in sogging grasslands and meadows even when they're in the north, and it makes no sense that empires would all live in blasted dead lands even when they're in a place with grasslands and swamps.
Terrain that means something is good, but binding Empires to Fallen Terrain and Kingdoms to Grassland Terrain is bad, It's Lazy, It's Boring, and honestly I think you should just get rid of faction terrains and work in Terrain altering spells like in Age of Wonders instead. That way at least it's not just two flavors of bland without any snow or sand.
The Default Terrains Suck
PS: These forums are in serious need of a preview feature.
Both as a mix of both would make sense and help at least mitigate a complete lock out heroes due to chance. In the recruit screen something like "Your adventure tech is lower than [NAME] would like. As a result, the cost to recruit [NAME] is increased."
To encourage higher level tech, perhaps higher level tech mitigates some of the cost but also bestows better recruitment equipment. This might also help in the later game when you recruit a hero but they've only got a club.
While I think you are confusing terrain with territory you did write one thing that made sense. It would be fun if there were spells, a whole series of them that were geared toward restoring this broken world. Rather than it being patched up just because we are on it; how about it being part of our job to put it back together. IE a tech line, spells, improvements, to slowly turn barren lands into something useful. Of course this would be driven by in game benefits to the player. Say for example for every 20 tiles you restore or improve you get a random resource that appears, movement improves, your influence grows faster, your diplomatic capital grows, fewer baddies spawn, etc.
The way the terrain is tied to influence right now is grand and all but what if it were the other way 'round: you only gain influence where you have had an inpact on the land. It would allow us, to a limited extent, to shape where our influence spreads.
Just because I happen to be evil doesn't mean I can make food grow in the wasteland any better than the next guy. To give the baddies a baddie feel how about changing the climate rather than the land...ambient lighting that is darker, redder, more foreboding.
You could have maintained spells that slowly transition the land over many turns, or one shot spells that turn one tile.
I think the new weapon damage values are a step in the right direction, but currently the difference between the weapons is too small. Early weapons start with a damage of around 4 and late weapons have only a damage of around 12, but the armors still have the same defense and this makes weapons currently too weak.
The late weapons should have damage values of around 16 and special abilities like ignoring the enemies armor or reducing the enemies Combat Speed and the gildar cost of late weapons is too high (1440 gildar for a lord hammer).
From playing earlier I would say adulthood. Had a son turning adult that got over 100 in essence. That in it self seems to be a bug though since my sovereign only had around 50, i.e. more like 200%.
I bet that is NOT a bug, you most likely had a lot of +Essence and + % Essence buildings (Shards & Whatever that very happy building you can build in each city is) as well as tech advances that give + % Essence.
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