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.
i think its time to let go of elemental and focus on FE
another amen...
And i played around hundred turns and the peformance was a lot better/faster. (never had ooms from the beginning)
They have one of the best game AI programmers around. The problem is that AI is not his job at Stardock. No matter how good you are, coding something complex takes time, coding something on a brand spanking new, evolving engine takes more time, and coding intelligent strategies when the underlying mechanics are changing just piles it on. You won't have good AI in that situation if your primary (only?) AI guru is writing the AI as a hobby when he can find time away from running the company.
Don't get me wrong, Brad seems to do a very solid job running the company, and his dedication to making things right is almost superhuman at this point (I know I'd have told all us histrionic whiners to piss off after the first few months if I were in his shoes), but he needs to let go and find a strong AI coder other than himself.
A few AI programmers. Yes. I've felt this for a while. I completely understand Brad's love for AI programming, but failing to appoint competent people in his stead is simply hurting the game.
Yeah, to armchair quarterback for a minute I think he needs a mini-me. With that said, I doubt it's a full-time job thus the facts that 1. he loves doing it and 2. the need doesn't justify a FTE... he shoulders the burden. Regardless, the optimal place in my mind would be to let someone else do the grunt work and he could focus that time on playing the games, interpreting feedback from the community, and steering the overall AI efforts. But I'm not CEO of a successful software company. I wish I knew how to code AI cuz I'd intern in my free time!
Oh ok. Well, I'll just relax for the rest of May instead of monkeying with v1.3.
I've seen enough posts such as yours to make the case that it's not worth my while to make v1.3 a priority when the alternative is taking some time off the game stuff.
I agree here. Unfortunately, good AI programmers are hard to find. Most strategy games in 2011 rely on multiplayer now or horrendous cheating or simplistic game rules.
We *are* hiring incidentally.
But as others have pointed out, v1.2 was not designed to be a feature update. It was a re-architecting of the memory management system in order to make future updates possible (i.e. reduce OOM challenges).
My plan for v1.3 has been to:
a) Alter the game mechanics to make the game more interesting and more equitable to the AI
Take over and begin rewriting the tactical battle AI (Which I wasn't involved in)
c) Add a different set of quests, random events and other "content" to give the world some more flavor.
The main team, however, if on Fallen Enchantress. So v1.3 is mainly up to me and my associates to do and I have to do it in my spare time as SDE is only a third of our company's business and WOM is a fraction of that. And to be honest, the whining and bitching I constantly read makes me prefer to work on other things since as a practical matter, there's no business rationale to do v1.3 at all other than to support my online friends.
wow... suddenly realize this forum is full of whiney bitchy spoiled brats/ Makes me wonder exactly how old some of the people posting negative posts are and if they've actually worked a day in their life or know what a good day of hard work tastes like.
At least this is how i see this.
Only problem I see with the amount of bitching people do is that they never give good suggestions. They only complain and never actually say anything constructive besides what they spout which is pretty much as basic whim of caveman babble of grunts and groans and arghs.
The complaining does no good you know, yes the developers know about the flaws of the game and yet people insist on kicking and poking at the limp tortured body complaining that this and that sucks and doesn't work and how much they hate it. I'd LOVE to see them come up with some constructive and well thought out way for them to actually fix or help out. Instead of posting negative crap on the forums which dilutes the minds of those reading it.
The negative posts and comments DON'T help the process they hinder it because if the developers are reading them, it's making them take precious time away from actually doing work or actually reading good well thought out posts that could help improve the game.
Ive made a thousand post putting up suggestions to make the game better.
Uh, no. Been with this since launch. We (I mean SD) need to see this through. Come too far to let go now. It is a quest--a mission.
As Lord Xia might ingloriously say:
When you join this community you take on a debit--a debit that you owe me---
personally.
Each and every member of this community owes me 100 Darkling scalps.
And I want my scalps--taken from the heads of 100 dead darklings, and all of y'all will get me my Darkling scalps
or you will die trying.
Ever onward SD---We want EWoM.
I'd argue that there are actually too many good suggestions for the game. That is, given limited time and budget, there have been more good suggestions on the board than could realistically be implemented. There are tons of posts with constructive non-bitching criticism, but I agree that they can be overshadowed by excessively hyperbolic complaints.
And there would probably be even more if these kinds of things received any feedback. Honestly, I can't think of one example of an idea that had a visible influence on the game's development. Except maybe the distribution of attack and defense rolls.
I think the key thing to keep in mind here is: look at your target demographic. I'd venture that a significant part of your consumer base for this sort of game is, say, males 13-24? Raging horomones, prefronal cortex still in development, etc. In way, they can't completely help it. On the other hand, what many of your fans who try to contribute constructively hear from this quote is "If you don't stop complaining, you won't get any more updates." I can understand that it gets old, but I don't feel like I should have to feel bad for saying that I don't find the game to be super entertaining at this point. In the end, we all want the same thing, don't we?
LOL nice Inglorious Bastards quote that was warped to meet the needs of Elemental and Lord Xia
I wonder what sort of "content" Brad has in mind to give the world some flavor?
Perhaps,
- A sage that tells you about the background of the different races of Elemental in the course of his converation with you.
- A nobleman that asks you to return his daughter; gives you a tome that tells you about the wraith race as a reward and tells you why they took his daughter.
- An option to talk to your heros?
You hire a scholar and that scholar can offers a random scripted reply every 10 turns if spoken to by their sovereign.
You hire a spymaster and the spy reports on the relative strength of your kingdom if spoken to by their soveriegn.
- A quest to close a portal?
01. An earthquake has shaken the land, and destroyed buildings in all the cities of the Elemental. Demons, immune to most weapons have emerged from the their burroughs deep below ground to attack all, Empire and Fallen that travel the lands of Elemental. Only by finding a sage can you unlock the secret to slaying the demons, and finding the location of the portal that must be closed. Completing this task raises the presitige of your kingdom.
- Fraction specific quests?
02. Wraith - "Sages of old say that if you marry a human princess of the kingdoms your magic will grow in power for as long as she lives." Wraith that finds a human wife gains mana +200, she dies and the wriath loses mana.
- Hero's with morals.
I kinda wanted something to hold me in the meantime between 1.2 and FE, which I probably won't see until late this year.
Even if it's just Brad's personal playground, new toys are always interesting until you break them... There may be no business rational to make 1.3, so I understand if it doesn't happen, but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't get value out of it.
BTW whining and bitching- the more a games company grows, the more you'll see people whining and bitching. It's when they stop whining and bitching that you should be worried- because that means they've given up on you. I tend to complain the most on games that are great, as I always get the feeling that just a little more would make it a lot better. Example: if a regular company had made EWOM, it just would have been poorly reviewed, dismissed as shovelware, and no one would care. Because Stardock made EWOM, elefail was high drama, Why? Because people expect more out of you guys.
I was always told this by my psycho man-hating High school lit teacher "the opposite of love is not hate but indifference".
Also, never assume that people complaining don't know what it's like, or that they don't work hard- you don't know how hard it is for some people.
Maybe it would be better business to make WoM even more mod friendly. Make it possible for us to poke around with everything. Then after 1.3, the community will do the work for you.
That must be a better solution than having you work weekends for years until we are happy with WoM.
First time I actually managed to finish campaign now, so in that sense it was a good patch (Always got that stuck on that part after the footsteps because was really unclear where to go after that).
Is there really only book I on the campaign, or did it bug out for me killing the dragon army too early or something? (Was kinda silly needing to run the 2 boat armies almost half around world).
i didnt say that
its just better that 2-4ppl who are making 1.3 start working on FE
I don't agree. I like the fact that Brad & the small crew are still working on it. A few more vanilla tweaks, bug fixes, and mod support will go a long way imho. I'm excited to see FE too but EOWM's come too far to give up on it.
It doesn't work that way. The full SDE Unit 1 studio is already on FE. Me and my mini group go into specific projects to solve problems not as full time dedicated supplements. I'm trying to think of a real world analogy.
The closest thing I can think of is the 20% time Google has.
I do like to see WOM still being worked on. FE isn't coming for a good while, and new ideas/patches keep a game fresh, and you never know if it will hit the jackpot.
Is the any ETA on when a 1.3 beta would start, PSN outage is making me a little nuts these days?
SC2 Analogy - SDE Unit 1 are the tanks, they hold the line and work steadily towards a solution. Brad & Minigroup are the stalkers, they can be included as part of the main group, but do much more for you when you give them free reign to run around the field and do rapid-response / firefighting.
I think that's the nerdiest thing I've come up with all day.
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