Greetings, Warriors!

Development continues apace, and we've worked in quite a few features from our waiting list in the past month. Heading the list is a MAJOR upgrade to tactical AI, enabling it to calculate ability and spell usage and relative value - this is naturally still a work in progress but we're seeing some amazing initial results. We're also heading faction heroes, including some sexy troll and goblin heroes with unique bonuses. Can't wait to see which of them you will like playing with the most! As always, please share as much feedback as you can with us either through in-game bug reports, suggestions on our Steam forums or by chatting with us over at Discord.

Faction Heroes

In our continued effort to make factions interesting and relevant for different playstyles, we've finally added some non-human heroes, namely Troll and Goblin faction heroes. Each faction will also have a unique faction-wide ability present in all units and heroes.

• Added goblin and troll heroes.
• Each faction now has a unique passive ability present in all units and heroes.
• Heroes from different factions have different health.
• Faction heroes can be recruited in the town of that faction and only there.
• Your starting heroes will change to reflect your chosen faction.
• Tutorial can currently only be played when picking the Human faction.

Tactical AI & Abilities

A major step forward, our tactical AI can now evaluate ability effects when considering what to do. This allows it to "understand" a wider range of abilities, and use them better than before. To name a few examples, the enemy will no longer slow already slowed units. Your foes will use AoE spells much better and maximize their effect, while avoiding hitting their allies with these effects and other explosions. We can give a ton more examples, but it would be best if you just hopped in and see if you notice the change yourself - let us know!

AI & Behavior

• Improved ranged AI range positioning and AoE calculation.
• Reduced AI aggressiveness so it will avoid taking greatly disadvantageous battles.
• Added party size limits for AI based on difficulty.
• Goblin Bomber now maintains distance in a smarter way, only approaching if it can close the distance completely.

Balance

• Tweaked hero XP requirements based on feedback and testing.
• Reduced XP bonus from universities from 25/50% to 20/40%.
• Ballista attacks no longer ignores cover.
• Iterated some building descriptions for clarity.
• Increased the speed of Mages and Paladins by 1.
• Reduced the speed of Savages by 1.
• Increased the speed of Skeleton Militias by 1.
• Removed 'Telekinesis Summer Camp' upgrade from human town, this is now the faction unique passive.
• Added the Kindergarten upgrade to human faction.
• Increased Charge cooldown by 1.
• Lowered slightly the amount of units enemy factions starts with, especially in higher difficulties, to limit super early aggression.
• Slightly increased party speed and also increased movement point cost on roads.
• Reduced base accuracy of Quickshot from 80 to 70.
• Refractive Skin now also applies to heroes.

Visuals & Art

• Added new portraits for faction heroes and fixed how they are shown in town UI.
• Improved color customization quality, but there are fewer colors to choose from.
• Updated the world-map icons of Peasants & Spitting spiders with new art.
• Decreased the size of House Spiders' world-map icons so they'd fit the grid.
• Fresh and improved art for many ability icons and status effect icons.
• New hammer icon for the Hammer Strike and Bash abilities, which used to be represented by a sword.
• Improved visual effect for Knockback Arrow.
• Damaged trees will now display a fallen leaves visual effect.
• New visual effect for the Stomp ability.

Bug Fixes & Minor Changes

• Added controller support for town UI.
• Renamed Short Range Telekinesis to Faraway Lift.
• Frightened enemies will now try to run away in a straighter line than before, effectively opening up more distance in many cases.
• Fixed Bloodlust, it will not not stop working as it did in some cases with Insatiable Bloodlust, and will correctly apply the dodge stance bonus with the dodge stance upgrade.
• Taunt will now properly affect ALL enemies who can attack the Paladin.
• Improved Dodge Stance indication and fixed bugs occuring when more than one stack of dodge stance is gained in combat.
• Status Amplifier will no longer sometimes change statuses that have no turn limit to last just one turn.
• Fog will no longer cancel out the Refractive Skin upgrade.
• Taunt will now properly prevent enemies in range from using self-cast abilities such as Brace or Overwatch.
• Slowed units with a speed of 2 or less will no longer be able to leap three tiles for 1AP like unslowed units can.
• Grapplehooks and Knockback arrow attacks with the directional upgrade which miss their target will now push the object they are hitting instead.
  
• Stun protection and Brace indications fixed, especially with Status Amplifier upgrade.
• Paladin running animation when entering combat fixed.
• Fixed an issue causing some Visual Effects to cast shadows.
• Fixed bug hanging the controller cursor in place when switching between parties.
• With controllers, the invalid tile mouse hover marker will appear as it should.
• Fixed an issue with targeting units standing on bridge tiles.
• The controller cursor will no longer sometimes jump to the corner of the map in tactical battles.
• The exploit for stacking heroes in towns is fixed.
• Changed kick not to have height limitation (similar to other melee attacks).

Thank you for playing our game and sharing your thoughts, we're looking forward to announcing some big news in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned! Onwards!

[ 2019-03-28 18:34:21 CET ] [ Original post ]