The last of the Beta 3 series is now available to download. Below is the change log that goes over what's new versus the build from 2 weeks ago.
Foreword from the frog
Beta 3 has been the faction differentiation beta and we will continue to refine the different factions between now and release. At this stage, each faction has some truly distinctive features that should make the game play experience different for each one.
To recap:
What's new in 0.915.
Features:
+ Traits can now limited to certain units types (iron golem only traits, slave only traits, etc)
+ Added splash damage feature (a percent of the melee damage done is done to surrounding units, enemies and allies alike)
+ Added damage reflection feature (a percent of damage done to the target is done back to the attacker)
+ Added the Juggernaut designable unit (trog only)
+ Added the Juggernaut trait (can't be knocked prone, +100% Attack, +25% splash damage)
+ Added the Brutal Nature juggernaut trait (+100% attack)
+ Added the Frenzy juggernaut trait (+4 initiative)
+ Added the Heart of Stone juggernaut trait (+20 defense vs cutting)
+ Added the Ignore Pain juggernaut trait (+40 hit points)
+ Added the Maul juggernaut trait (grants the unit Maul)
+ Added the Uncontrolled Rage juggernaut trait (+50% splash damage)
+ Added the Tempered Steel trait (iron golem only, raises the defense)
+ Added Henchmen designable unit (altar only, use equipment and gain levels like champions, 50 influence to recruit)
+ Heroic faction trait gives +50 influence and +1 faction prestige whenever they complete a quest (assigned to Altar)
+ Added the Air Adept I-III henchmen traits (give access to minor air spells)
+ Added the Earth Adept I-III henchmen traits (give access to minor earth spells)
+ Added the Fire Adept I-III henchmen traits (give access to minor fire spells)
+ Added the Life Adept I-III henchmen traits (give access to minor life spells)
+ Added the Water Adept I-III henchmen traits (give access to minor water spells)
+ Added the Cook henchman trait (+1 healing for units in the army)
+ Added Shieldwall as a henchman trait (+5 defense for the army)
+ Added the Bard henchman trait (+10% xp for the army)
+ Added the Shieldman henchmen unit
+ Added the Bard henchman unit
+ Added the Torch Bearer henchman unit
+ Henchmen don't count as champions for xp division (ie: Army xp is divided by the amount of champions in it, henchmen don't affect this number)
+ Added hot key tool tips to Govern, Spellbook, and Turn buttons
+ Hooked up hot keys for the above
+ Hooked up hot keys to take players between cities [ and ]
+ Added the Cloak of Thorns spell (reflects 25% of the damage taken back at the attacker)
+ Added the Hurl Boulder spell (adept earth 1 spell for a minor ranged attack)
+ Added the No Armor faction weakness (assigned to resoln, this faction can't learn the armor, hevay armor or arcane armor techs)
+ Added the Binding faction ability (assigned to resoln, their shard shrines summon special elementals like camps)
+ Added the Crow Demon unit (binding summon, can cast thunderstirke and titans breath)
+ Added the Burning Wraith unit (binding summon, has the Feed the Fire ability, tactical stackable ability that increases their attack)
+ Added the Mirror Elemental unit (binding summon, 100% of the damage done to a mirror elemental is also done to the attacker)
+ Added the Grave Elemental unit (binding summon, regenerates and has the harbinger traits)
+ Added the Aid spell (minor heal spell for henchmen)
+ Added the Broken Loyalties spell (switch a city to your control for a huge amount of influence)
+ Added the Betrayers faction ability (assigned to Kraxis, allows them to recruit empire and kingdom champions and use the Broken Loyalties spell)
+ Krax blood gives the unit the ability to Fortify a tile in tactical combat, units in fortified tiles get +10 to Accuracy and +30 to Dodge
+ Added the Undying Curse trait (when this unit kills a victim this unit gains an additional member to its group, to a max of 9 members)
+ Added the Cyndrum Demon (binding summon, has the Undying Curse trait)
+ Master Scouts faction ability keeps monster player units from attacking the player, though they can attack monsters (Tarth ability)
Bugs:
+ Fixed an issue with Curse and Curse city using the wrong icons
+ Alchemists labs req 100 crystal instead of taking 1 crystal per turn (they were causing players to drop into negative crystals when they didn’t have mines or overbuilt them)
+ Burning Blade, Stoneskin, Summon Fire Elemental, Summon Earth Elemental, Summon Shadow Warg, and Summon Ice Elemental can no longer be cast twice (once with the strategic version and once with the tactical version)
+ Fixed the desc on the Finesse ability
+ Fixed an issue with the Path of the Assassin trait giving +150% crit damage instead of +50%
+ Fixed an issue causing loot to not be given when defending
+ Fixed annoying camera bug where the camera would center on units that had been attacked but actually had off-screen units selected
+ Fixed an issue that was making Grip of Winter permanent
+ Syphon Soul now correctly reduces the victims attack by 25% and gives that amount to the caster
+ Fixed an issue keeping Titan's Breath from working if it was used as an ability (ie: from an Air Elemental)
+ Fixed an issue allowing a player to spend an additional point in create sovereign if he picks his sovereign last (you cheaters!)
+ Fixed an issue causing the Path of the Assassin's +50% critical damage to be applied per level instead of a flat bonus
+ Fixed an issue causing troll camps to be unbuilable
+ Fixed an issue causing captured sovereigns to not show their mount/equipment correctly
Balance:
+ Hardy sovereign talent makes the unit immune to poison
+ Natural Leader sovereign talent makes recruiting champions free
+ Scholar sovereign background increases research by 10%
+ Wealthy sovereign talent gives 1000 gildar instead of 200
+ Rebalanced lair distribution (high level lairs are less common, but more low level lairs upgrade now)
+ Added late game versions of the bandit, butcherman and cave bear lairs
+ Reduced the damage on the Ignys Bow slightly
+ Adventurers Boon trait now gives 15 hit points instead of 10
+ Graceful trait gives +2 init along with making the unit immune to being knocked prone, it requires the fast trait
+ Potential trait gives +15/+20/+25% xp instead of +10/15/20%
+ Trainer abilities give +10%/15%/20% xp instead of +5%/10%/15%
+ River Slags and Slags gain Bash
+ Experience gained from battle is now scaled based on world size
+ You only get free city defenders if you founded the city
+ Objects that are hidden by FOW are no longer able to be interacted with (cities, etc.)
+ Some big monsters gain splash damage
+ Amarian’s get -1 hp per level
+ Tarth blood ability increased to +3 attack and init when in groups of 3 or less
+ Trog blood gives +1 attack
+ Increased the crit damage on the vital strike abilities
+ Reduced the pop required for city level 1 from 60 to 50
+ Increase Darkling Rider init from 20 to 24
+ Most quest battles can now be delayed (you can choose to come back later)
+ Increased the reward on the Trolls quest from the Ring of storms to a Scinan Broadsword
+ Slightly increased minimum XP gained from killing things
+ Marginal tile yield tiles have been removed
+ Combat rating to XP ration increased from 5% to 7.5%
+ Bashing Maul does 50% splash damage
+ Titanic Maul does 75% splash damage
+ Mirror Shield now reflects 25% of the damage back at the attacker
+ Removed the squads tech
+ Logistics and Company's moved into the civ tree
+ Increased Balance from +5 Dodge and -2 hit points to +10 Dodge and -1 hit points
+ Removed the Tough unit design trait
+ Changed Fury form +1 attack and -3 hit points to +1 attack and -1 hit point
+ Lithe increased from +3 dodge to +10 dodge
+ Precision gives +10 accuracy instead of +5
+ Shieldwall is a defender ability instead of a unit design trait and it gives +5 defense to the army instead of +1
+ Spell Resistance gives +20 spell resistance instead of +10
+ Several monsters given the Uncontrolled Rage trait (splash damage)
+ Butcherman gain the Undying Curse trait
+ Fireballs casting time reduced from 2 to 1, but it will also damage friendly units in range
+ Units don't get additional movement from roads in enemy territory
Cosmetic:
+ Faction power wnd now appears over the terrain wnd
+ Added the one handed spear animations
+ If a player is casting the spell of making it is now displayed in the faction power wnd
+ New Verga background
+ New Ceresa background
+ Tile Yields display is now ON by default
+ New fallen environment terrain
+ New fallen environment trees
AI:
+ Monsters less aggressive about going after cities
+ AI a little bit more effective at shopping for equipment
+ Fixed major AI bug in which AI treated monster lairs as "goodie huts". It didn't "see" the monsters on them and thus would get killed over and over.
+ AI relations change more gradually
+ AI manages its strategic spells and mana more effectively
+ AI interacts with player somewhat more often in general
+ AI more generous about valuating spells
+ Monster aggressiveness is now more varied between difficulty levels
+ Fixed a weird issue where a monster would just get stuck never moving.
+ Fixed monster bug where it would want to attack a city but its patrol radius kept it from attacking
+ Doubled/tripple checked to make sure monsters like eating AI as much as humans (they do, players just notice when the bugs above helped AI).
+ AI will offer to trade tech with players
+ AI takes faction prestige into account when determining relations
+ Updated the tool tips for difficulty level. Note: The default difficulty for AI is normal. If you win, turn up the difficulty level before asking us to make normal harder for everyone else. If you can beat Hard, then come talk to us.
+ New difficulty levels (Expert and Insane).
That is correct. Higher xp on smaller maps, lower xp on larger maps.
The end result is that we gain some control on the pacing (as it was it was hard/impossible to get to level 15 on a tiny/small map but you could be level 15 on a large map halfway through). It made it really hard for us to balance equipment, spell power, traits etc. Especially since research rates are modified by map size. So a person playing on a small map may think champions are worthless, they get a bunch of items they can never use. They are better to just tech military where their military outshines anything a champion can do. While someone on a large map gets to high level champions well before he can get a comparable military together and feels like a champion only victory is way easier than other methods.
Nice addtions. The new spells such as cloak of thorns and hurl boulder are appreciated, along with the new summoning spells. I wonder what new spells are coming (web?, wall of stone?, summon wolf pack?, turn summoned creature? etc.) and if the AI will use these new spells?
Are you going to fix the Pyre of Man boss fight where the boss doesn't appear because his army is too big (and you still get credit for killing him by killing 9 minion units)?
I'm a bit worried about the No Free Defenders penalty for conquered cities being permanent. As pointed out, it strongly encourages razing over keeping a (relatively) dead weight city on your hands. Couldn't this restriction be placed on cities depending on unrest levels or something that eventually will go away?
I feel the same way regarding militia... the number you get should be tied to the unrest level in the city rather than just a straight forward who found it. So if you are taxing your citizens to death, they might not want to fight for you, and the occupation penalties make cities you just take generate less militias.
I agree.
Bugs that could be fixed in next version:
If you are training a unit that would not normally take three turns, but you have high production and number of turns is bumped up to the three turns minimum, rushing it actually GIVES you gold once you have produced the real labour cost (in other words, it costs negative gold).
Same when you've already built an improvement on an external resource and then that resource square gets absorbed into the city - sometimes it costs negative gold to rush that building when it is "built" into the city.
(In this case it may be better to correct the code so that if you've already finished building a resource externally it is added to the city without cost or turns when another city building is next to it.)
Great change log!
Go big or go home, indeed.
Regarding the negative gildar rush thing (mostly done with pioneers >.>), the formula should be something like:
(remain turn x 10) + N(remaining cost)
So basically, remaining cost could be at zero (if you had really high production), but every remaining turn rushed would still cost you 10 gildar per turn.
Looking really promising again. Can't wait to try out Altar's new ability or see the Juggernaut in action.
Hope magic is revised next as it's really lacklustre for me (barring effects, those look great). Having limits to schools such as one element per 10 levels or no opposites (eg you can't have fire and water magic skill levels) would go somewhere to helping that. OP spells also need a look.
Anyways-
Woo-hoo some Kraxis love. Haven't even played as them yet! Interesting the fortify ability as there are no real incentives to attack in FE tactical. Hopefully a charge bonus or basic flanking element might be brought in.
If they put in that formula, that would also successfully make it very expensive to rush in towns just captured from the enemy. (And infinitely expensive if unrest is so high there is no production. ) And it would also encourage you to temporarily reduce taxes to zero before rushing, to minimize the turns left.
Balefire elemental. Hmmm...I see we have some Wheel of Time fans at Stardock
Good. Maybe I can finish my .914 game. The AI is getting better so it's taking longer to slug my way through a game on hard.
Roger that!
I would like to see an option for Champions/Sovereigns to change weapons in battle.
Missed this on the first readthrough:
What's the point of being a summoner if I can't have an army of summoned creatures?
Derek or any other developers!
Please flesh out the available hair styles for the various characters in the game. Most look quite bad and 6 - 10 more styles could be easily added without redundancy.
Wow!
+ Added the Binding faction ability (assigned to resoln, their shard shrines summon special elementals like camps)gota try this out+ Experience gained from battle is now scaled based on world sizemy prayers have been answered+ You only get free city defenders if you founded the cityWhoa, a big change, makes creating milita type units more neccessary+ Most quest battles can now be delayed (you can choose to come back later)Much appreciated, loved this on the few previous quests that allowed this
PLEASE also make shop prices (or the discount against unit value) a moddable parameter! It is really annoying to get the ubersword of xxx and to be able to sell it for 10% of its real value !!!
+1000!!!!
Also please add a high-level "teleport champion / army" spell - in the late game it becomes a chore to move champions around, especially in the very big maps (I know cloud walk exists, but this is only for the caster, which makes it very limited...)
How about changing that LOUD WHONK sound that occurs when you trespass or something....It makes my subwoofer grunt, and scares our Doggy...Is there an alternate sound?
I suppose I could just find the sound file, and replace it with something else, but I hate to fool with the game at that level just yet...
Thanks for what appears to be a terrific game!
Can't wait for a new patch, especially for:
No. You'll find out they are Wheel of Time fans when the unending number of sequels come out and all the female characters are annoyingly tugging their braids
Dittos.
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