Super mega polish update 24 / 04 / 2018

Summary

Hello all! Today's patch brings us some much needed polish and bug fixing. I have been playing the campaign of VOC a lot lately, something that I don't often get to do because of how long a playthrough takes. You would be pleased to know that I have found and fixed SOOOO many freaking bugs and polish issues, that I already have the next patch ready. So.. without further ado, here is the summary.

Campaign map

• Many spelling issues have been addressed. (Much of the text is being re-written, more on that later) - Resources not displaying when interacting with village markets issue fixed. - Trading in towns now shows trade on the correct side and is consistent with all trade interactions. - Rain volume adjusted. (Lowered) - Farm output increased per upgrade level. - Defeated factions should no longer show in the factions screen. - Siege workshop description changed. - Siege workshop no longer needs to be upgraded as it doesn't do anything other than unlocking engineer units. - The elasticity of Building and Unit training panels have been fixed. No longer moves horizontally. - Auto-resolve battle button now disabled at abandoned campfires. - Trade caravans should no longer spawn as ships. - Armies should no longer spawn with general stars, or king icon unless required. - An issue where AI towns could generate armies beyond their population has been resolved. This could have been perceived as AI cheating, was not intentional :) I will likely need to keep balancing as fixing this issue has weakened the AI. - Routing a quest army that does not involve killing the hero will no longer create a quest object on the retreating army. - Easy and medium quest gold reward has been increased. - Prisoners needed for medium - hard quests increased slightly. - Dismissing unit will now revert all units back to the army, avoiding the perception of disappearing units (Units were still there, but only once you load the window again). - Auto-resolving quest battles would add quest component twice if the army retreated, resulting in un-completable quests. This has been resolved. - Purchasing peasants in villages will properly reset the slider panel after purchase. - Rank needed for the hero to be declared king has been lowered to 12. - Camp map battle drone SFX changed and mixed. - Tutorial panel to sit on top of events panel. - Leadership bonus now added during internal calculation of an armies strength. This should give more accurate indications before the battle. - Hero productivity now increases siege equipment production speed. - You can now build siege equipment using gold carried by your army as opposed to just faction gold. - Carried resources now properly added to combatants from bandit camps and campfires during auto-resolve battles. - Hero leadership bonus now added to the auto-resolve balance of power. - Bandit camp unit training increased. - Game loading issue caused by General stars amount fixed.

Battle scene

• Audio rolls off nicer, improving audio quality. - Audio reverb zone added to simulate the outdoors. - Removed doppler effect from charge sound. - Charge audio no longer cut short. - 'The crag' Castle walls now fully interactive. - 'Battle drone' SFX during large battles. - TAA antialiasing adjusted to reduce 'ghosting'. - Horsehair should now be impacted by fog and shadows. - Cavalry charge SFX added. - Helper text now displaying UI elements properly. - "Pursue or spare" panel should no longer show when an enemy army has been annihilated. - Exception caught when loading The Crag map with reinforced walls. - Caught exception creating reinforcement. - Units sometimes spawning in map center bug has been fixed. - Fixed pathing issues in some castle maps. - Siege engines now respond to unit movement speed - should no longer have 'floating' ladders. - You can now view each armies current stats by mousing over the power display bar. Including active units, reserves, kills, losses, and general influence. - Pooling of Blood improved - increased optimization. - Fixed errors when using a small dead bodies pool. - Using advanced targeting controls will now correctly select Axe units. - Longer battles are more optimized meaning they shouldn't bog down when going on for too long. All equipment, corpse, horses are now properly pooled and removed when needed. This should also improve siege performance. - Units should now properly face their opponent in battle. - Caught ranged unit targeting error. - Mounted hero units will always be selected when selecting the mounted sword card. - Mouse over hero units will now show name and title of hero unit. - Caught exceptions caused by pooling of dead units. - *Updated* -An issue with arrows not resetting when pooled has been adressed. Overall it should also optimise them as they were falling through the terrain and remaining active for the duration of the battle

Main Menu

• Many spelling issues have been addressed. - Increased starting gold for most starting conditions. - Merchant starting condition now starts with scout, merchant, and peasant units. - Keyboard zoom/keybinding added. Page up / Down default. Also recognized in the game tutorial. - More antialiasing options: Off, Basic, Advanced. - Baren of Greywatch and Desperate miner name changes.

Mod Support

• An issue when starting a custom battle after selecting a new mod has been corrected.

Whats next?

As we move closer and closer to leaving early access, we are pushing hard to bring the game up to a standard worthy of your amazing support. I will continue to playtest and polish the game so expect many smaller updates between now and when we announce the release date. The amazing team at Humble Sage Games are also providing some pretty exciting updates, including new models for all ranged weapons, a re-write of the tutorial/building/unit descriptions. and many more art assets to gaze at. My other priority is to improve the combat AI. I have been taking notes and have a pretty good idea how I am going to do it. Expect a more challenging enemy AI in the future. That is all from me today, I hope you enjoy the update! Take care! Kerry Fawdray