The following changes were made in Elemental: War of Magic patch 1.2. The focus of this patch was to improve the UI, memory use in large games and stomp out any remaining bugs.
New Features/UI changes:
Raze city no longer requires a tech and is available right off the bat for all of your cities.
Prestige penalty for multiple cities has been broken out in the Other category on the city screen (instead of being a part of the base prestige number).
In the city breakdown the amount of buildings is listed (so it will say Study x3 if you have 3 studies in that city).
Added a new game option to adjust Movie volume.
Removed the city idle dialog, replaced with a report item notification in the event list.
Pioneers/sovereigns cannot build/found cities in other people's territory
Since spells are capped at level 5, you are no longer given the choice to keep going up in spell level once you reach that max.
Custom sovereign starting appearance is randomized (so you don't start with the same model every time).
You are now able to select a tile under a unit without moving the unit.
Balanced resource placement (more variety, better distribution).
Added a blue highlight representing the range of a spell when in spellcasting mode on both the strategic and tactical map, so the user can see how far they are allowed to cast the spell
Added tooltips that hover underneath the spellcasting cursor that explain why a spell can't be cast on that tile (with no tooltip shown if it is a valid target)
The strategic map spellcasting mode now uses the same wand cursors (with support for an invalid cursor) that the tactical map mode uses
Removed the Refined Diplomacy techs.
Added gold as a tradeable resource for fallen and changed horses to wargs for them.
Added the champion ablity "Diplomatic" which gives +1 diplomatic capital per turn.
Hooked up a list at the top of the city HUD to show the enchantments that are currently on that city.
Added an info button where spellbooks are displayed (such as on the custom sovereign screen) that will show all the spells that spellbook gives.
When improvements are auto-upgraded they no longer make the upgrade noise (which can be deafening when a bunch do it at once).
Auto-upgrades won't spam the event list with the "new building" messages.
When casting a targeted spell on an army (such as imbue champion on a stack with more than one valid target) a dialog is presented to allow the player to pick the unit he wants.
Players can now earn achievements in single player mode if auto-login is enabled.
Min defense on armor has been removed. Previously armor never absorbed less than half the units defense value, now it has the possibility to absorb the full range (though weighted to the high end). So every attack can do damage.
Increased the casting cost for Return and Teleport.
When a pioneer founds a city, any remaining units in its army are now automatically stationed in the new city.
When a sovereign founds a kingdom/empire, the popup explaining what they are doing now includes a checkbox asking if the user wants to station their sovereign in the new city, where if they choose to not have it selected, the sovereign moves to an adjacent tile like before.
The events for "improvement built" and "unit finished training" start out temporarily expanded, for a short period of time.
Faction Power Wnd entries now have a tooltip telling you how each player feels towards you. (ex. At War, Neutral, etc..). Also, if you are at war with them, an AtWar icon will be displayed.
Unit info cards reworked to show more meaningful data, have the data fit better, etc.
Added an event list entry when there are enemy units in your lands. Clicking on the event will cycle through the enemy units in your lands.
Added a new tactical Air 1 spell, Wind Shield. Gives all allied units +5 dodge vs ranged attacks.
Removed the Blink spell.
You can now recruit Janusk directly from his opening dialog (instead of him talking to you and then sometimes running away).
Empire can now claim refugee camps.
In the default formula for calculating the hit point bonus from level and constitution (10 + level * .4 * constitution), made 10 data-driven, can be set with the <GlobalHitPointsBonus> tag in ElementalDefs.xml.
Changed the code that takes the A_Influence player ability into account for the max radius and influence power of improvements to not divide the ability value by 100 when adding a radius and power bonus, so that an ability of 1 now means a 1 tile increase in radius, instead of none (since it would be rounded down from .01 to 0).
Added 4 new maps.
When you select an army on the main map, it now only shows the spellcasting action if the leader can cast spells, and if selected, only the leader casts the chosen spell.
Improved ZOC performance – large map save game used to take 30s to update the ZOC at the end of a turn, now takes 4s. ZOC is no longer cleared every turn and re-calculated; now the objects update the ZOC nodes as necessary, but the graphics and environment do not update until the end of the turn. The ZOC Calculator now tracks which tiles have changed ownership so it only does the end of turn updates if something has actually changed.
The global resource pool in the main UI now reuses entries wherever possible, instead of recreating them for each refresh (performance improvement).
AI:
AI is more careful with their sovereign.
Fixed an issue that kept AI champions from being able to cast spells in tactical combat.
Fixed some bugs in tactical AI code that were causing it to think enemy units were friendly units.
Added code so that AI units will try to cast a heal spell on themself before resorting to trying to escape.
Added code so that the AI can determine the best spell to use based on AI xml weights in the spells themselves.
Added AIData and AIPriority tags to all spells, so we can tweak how much the AI cares about them.
Fixed an issue with the sovereign not going out to pickup goodie huts.
Bug fixes:
Fixed memory leaks.
Reduced memory consumption (especially in the late game) by releasing unneeded textures instead of retaining them indefinitely.
Fixed bug where conquered cities that had caravans that called that city home would end up with messed up caravan counts.
Fixed a bug where player ability penalties on resource production weren't actually being taken into account.
Fixed the effect of the "Call of the Titans" spell, which gathers all your unstationed units and transports them to a specified tile. It will now skip units without an attack (ie. pioneers, caravans, boats).
Fixed bug where particle glow effect would remain on the map after getting a goodie hut until you hit the turn button.
Fixed delay in tactical battles with mounted archer units.
Fixed bug where sometimes particles would remain on the map from a destroyed factions cities.
Disabling Janusk advice does not disable his creation in the game.
Limited improvements (like the faction specific Beacon of Hope) won't be counted as being built until they are completed.
Fixed Titan's Breath (thanks to Heavenfall and Kenata).
Fixed an issue that was keeping the AI from casting spells in tactical battles.
Fixed a bug in spellcasting where non offensive, defensive, or terraforming spells were now checking that the spell target was valid when deciding if the spell could be cast.
Fixed the Fallen Ambassador (so it now correctly gives diplomatic capital).
Fixed a bug in the main city context wnd where it would use the AI's cached version of the battle rank for display, causing it to often not match the city HUD and other screens.
Fixed a bug where dispelling Guardian Ward (and any other spells that involved a city-target summon modifier) would not kill the summoned unit.
Fixed a bug where killing a unit summoned on a city would not cancel the enchantment that summoned that unit, keeping the spell from being cast on that city again.
Fixed lighting on shields in unit design screens (so they won't appear black anymore).
Fixed an issue that caused units to lose their custom portrait after a few turns.
Units now fade out when they get killed on the main map.
Units now fade out when they get killed in tactical battles.
Fixed a bug where improvements in FOW still played their particle effects.
Fixed a bug with lifesteal that caused the caster to lose hit points.
Fixed a bug with units getting stationed over end turn not showing up in a cities context, and ensuring the new city founding behavior shows the most updated city context when all the shuffling of units is done.
Fixed bug where, when founding a city, you could see the pioneer either die on top of the city while it was being built, or the pioneer's graphic would stick around for a turn if in cloth map mode when the city was built
Fixed Grip of Winter and Greater Grip of Winter to correctly apply a chance of taking effect (previously they always caused the victims to lose their next turn).
Fixed the Arrogant weakness so it correctly makes recruiting more expensive instead of less expensive.
Fixed the custom faction tech granting abilities so they work correctly regardless of the factions allegience.
Fixed an issue that can cause massive recruit costs when the player has to many recruit cost reductions.
Min radius now takes into account the player's influence ability so that their influence zone won't shrink when going up to the next level.
We will allocate more memory before saving (so that you don't OOM while saving and corrupt the save).
Fixed bug where action entries used for a combat ability would always trigger that combat ability when clicked, even if reassigned a different action when being reused, caused by some entry info not getting cleared out.
Fixed bug where dragon breath effect (and any other attached spell effect that isn't a projectile) would play throughout the entire battle once triggered, floating on the tile where it was triggered.
Fixed bug where casting a spell from an army with a spellcaster leader on the main map, with the army selected instead of a particular subunit, would cause every unit in that army to cast the spell.
Fixed bug where, if you finished researching all spells and reached the max spell level, it would start automatically researching non-existent spell levels beyond the max spell level.
Fixed bug where the dragon's breath sfx would occasionally not play until the target unit took damage, causing the attack itself to be silent and the attack sfx to linger long after the attack.
Fixed bug where killing a unit in a tactical battle that had tactical modifier effects from spells on it would cause it's stats to get recalculated using a function with auto-killing logic in it, so that the parent unit would immediately be set to be destroyed, causing bugs like the sovereign dying and immediately ending the game, because no retreat or battle-finishing logic was reached.
Fixed a series of population and prestige-related bugs that conspired to cause cities to have negative population and huge power ratings.
Fixed crash on closing a game that had a tactical battle in it.
Fixed bug where some unit clean-up stuff in the player was not getting called when a unit died, so that the player-wide abilities of dead champions would remain until something reforced an ability value calculation, players would hold onto a pointer to the dead sovereign spouse, and military might and power rating wouldn't be recalculated.
Fixed a crash when exiting a game with any shards owned by the local player.
Fixed a potential deadlock when a unit is removed from a player, caused by some UI refreshes taking place while the unit critical section was being held onto.
Fixed crash when killing an enemy sovereign.
It looks good. Performance is indeed faster. I didn't play more than 30 turns, so I can't comment on the OOM problem. But then again, I don't think I've ever played more than 30 turns, so maybe the game just works well with my system.
Nice job, hopefully the next update will make me want to play more than 30 turns.
Nice Job!?
Please Fanboys, plase stay home
this game is a crap
i'm so sorry
but there is nothing to do
I am at home. So... there!
Hahahaha, "is a crap".
I am going to try out 1.2 later tonight. Although, I probably won't say it is a crap, hehe, I bet he's right in saying there is still nothing to really do in the game. Still got hope for 1.3...
Hmmmm, I may very well come back and try this game out again. Looks like you all are moving it in the right direction.
I had 1.09 running until i got your email to update to 1.2. all was perfect.
Now ... guess what ... all the BETA bugs are back. "Not enough mana to cast spells" being one of them. Why do you bother releasing patches if you don't test them properly first?
For the love of god, let this game die. You guys are great, you make some of the best games I have ever played. I cant tell you how much I would love to see more sins, demigod, galciv or your next genius creation. I bought elemental, it was a huge dissappointment but I feel like i never stop paying for it because i know its eating time that could be used to develop the next fun thing. Elemental will simply never be fun. I would rather elemental just took my money and let me move on with life.
I respect what you are trying to do but it hurts more than it helps.......
1.2 feels a bit more stable and polished (I've never had stability problems really).
The biggest issues right now are:
Having something to do is slated for the next patch. When you will have fun has yet to be determined.
And that is why sovreigns need to be ready for serious adventuring from turn one on, and we need monster lairs.
I found that my game crashing on launch issue was being caused by graphics tray tools. Once I closed out Catalyst (ATI Radeon's standard set of tray tools), the game launched fine, and I saw no graphical menu errors.
So, Radeon users note: Graphical snaffus may be caused by conflicts with the game engine and Catalyst. Try closing Catalyst.
-mra
For the forseeable future, all their games will use the same engine (or so we have been given to understand). So the better shape it is in, the better off future releases will be.
Or maybe it is a setting in Catalyst... I know of at least one game that does not work with the "Catalyst AI" setting turned up to full.
I don't disagree.
Completely agree. While I appreciate all the work that SD is doing (especially because I'm getting free expansions/sequels), I'd be lying if I said that I was having fun with the game at this point.
undocumented change...Removed organized trait so now you move more slowly around the boring world.....why did i bother to download the patch?
Why in the world would you guys do this? The only thing that even kept me playing this broken game was the one ruler that could carry an army to explore the map. And for no reason you take it out of the game as a trait and then take it out of that one ruler. Is there anybody working on this game that has actually played a game? Why would you remove anything at all? The absolute level of frustration with this game is unbearable. I have already had to tell EVERYONE I know not to play this game and in a community of over 12 million wow players, that is quite large. And now I will continue to spread the word of obscure russian fantasy games that are more enjoyable. Please guys stop removing parts of the game that give any playability and listen to your players. The stardock franchise is circling the drain on this game and you guys keep shooting holes in the bottom of the boat.
1. Put organized back in.
2. Blink - really? Put it back
3. GIVE US SOMETHING TO DO AT LEVEL ONE- a sparkly spell, a simple quest, a goodie hut with something in it besides 8 metal which we cant use for 50 turns.
4. Somebody please quit coding and putting in the latest XML sparklies and go play any fantasy game that came before this one and try to bring back a concept of fun.
5. ANYTHING except what you are doing now, Because it is not working. Simple
Please understand this is absolute frustration speaking and I am so very sorry that i have been driven to the point of begging for an improvement in a game that has had so much promise. hound out and and i am going to try to figure out how to play this game without this patch....maybe all the way back to vanilla.
That was remove long ago.
I was reiterating for the developers' benefit.
Organized trait was removed several patches ago...
haters gonna hate... is all I will stay to the above post
Seriously? A Hater? I have continued to play this game until today, letting patches and developers beat me like a red headed step kid. I want to like this game so bad it isn't even funny anymore. Yes that trait was removed several patches ago. Why? And with this patch the last ruler with it had it removed. Is that clear now? Can any of you apologists give me any reason why? Just to make a broken game even more painful? Why is it that this game is so painfully bad? Right now on this PC i have Medieval 2, Civ 4---yes fall from heaven, Galciv 2, Civ 5, Sins and WOW loaded.
All of these are Hugely replayable and just outright fun. Why cant we get the same out of this game? Thats all i want...a good game.
Is this too much to ask in this current world of game developing or should i go back and spend one more year playing Fall from Heaven?
You played the game until to today and didn´t realize that "organized" was gone long ago? Anyway....
This changelog is much longer then i expected. Thank you SD.
(But I will wait for 1.3. )
Because it was broken. It did not have to be removed and could have been nerfed instead, but as it was it could not stay. Kind of suprised it was left on a sovereign this long.
Faster morement speads are (greatly) needed, but an ability like organized simply will not do. Try asking some modders about or edit the XML for the base units in the mean time. Of couse that would asssume it is possible to separate movement from combat speed, which I have no idea if that is possible.
You're British aren't you.
I want to be able to kill him directly from the opening dialog as well.
Anyway, now bring the 1.3 betas. I'm ready.
All you people hating on the game; if you don't think it's funny at this point, you probably never will. The game isn't going to massively change between this patch and the next.
If you bought this game early, you have free access to FE when that starts happening. I suggest you try that out instead.
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