Major Performance Update, AI Overhaul, & More

This update is a big one. A lot of the work over the past weeks has been under the hood, but it should have a very noticeable impact on performance and how battles play out!

Lore Update

We’ve started rolling out the new lore we shared during Next Fest.

• Added faction and hero lore to the Collections Panel

• Each faction now includes both a faction overview & hero-specific lore

This is just the start. More lore will continue to be added and expanded. Some of the lore is a tad outdated due to us switching out units as you'll see below. We'll update it again soon!

Performance Overhaul

The most common negative feedback we got during Next Fest was performance. We heard you loud and clear and have been focusing heavily on reducing memory usage and improving performance across the entire project.

Benchmarks

Build Size

• 8.5 GB → 5.6 GB

RAM Usage

• Main Menu: 7.58 GB → 1.97 GB

• Empty Battle Scene: 8.19 GB → 2.07 GB

• Full Battle (15v15 Iron Legion vs Green Tide): 8.34 GB → 2.72 GB

• Map Scene: 9.57 GB → 2.58 GB

FPS (RTX 3080)

• Battle Scene: 67 FPS → 102 FPS

This was primarily aimed at improving performance on lower end hardware, so seeing gains on high end systems as well is a nice bonus.

Full Project Overhaul

We’ve been deep in a full project-wide optimization pass. This means going through every texture, model, and asset in the game. While doing this we identified several assets that were extremely unoptimized and either updated or replaced them.

• Example: Jomsvikings alone were 3x the size of the entire Drakosaur Brood faction

New models completed:

• Jomsvikings

• Fleshshredders

• Ironguts

Still in progress:

• Oni

• Bloodsworn

• Several Dwarf units

Events Update

Events now provide much larger rewards to make them more interesting and inline with missing out on the rewards from a battle. Cleaned up the UI to clarify the success/failure outcome of each choice

Enemy AI Overhaul

Army Behavior States

Aggressive

• Default behavior

• Always active at river crossings

Passive

• Triggered when the army has artillery

• Breaks when:

  • Player gets close

  • Player deals damage

Delayed Passive

• 25% chance to trigger regardless of composition

• Holds passive stance for 10 seconds before switching

Flanking Improvements (Cavalry)

• Starts in back row

• Flanks wide left or right

• Direction randomized if only one cav unit

• Will not perform wide flanks at river crossings

Combat Behavior Improvements

• Defensive Stance

  • Shielded units losing combat will switch to defensive mode

• Fire at Will (Archers)

  • Triggers when army drops below 25% health

Target Prioritization

Artillery

• Targets first unit in range

• Will reprioritize to ranged units if they enter later

Archers

• Targets first unit in range

• Will switch to unshielded targets if current target has shields

Large Unit Targeting

• Non-cavalry prioritizes enemies without anti-large

Gameplay & Logic Fixes

• Enemy archers now charge into melee when out of ammo

• Improved guard mode logic to prevent idle units in combat

• Fixed archers:

  • Charging wrong targets

  • Breaking out of melee incorrectly

Bug Fixes

• Fixed unit stats overflow issue for Bulwark unit

• Fixed missing textures on campaign map

• Fixed withdrawing hotkey triggering when opening bug report panel

• Fixed tutorial icons (guard mode / cancel swapped)

• Fixed campaign loss bug when:

  • Completing battle

  • Exiting to main menu

  • Crashing at end of battle

Final Note

This update was more of a foundational one. Less flashy on the surface, but it sets up Tabletop Tavern for long term success. As always, keep the feedback coming!

See you in the tavern. 🍻