Polish and balance patch mach 2! 30/04/2018

Overview

Another polish and balance patch you say? Heck yes! As we get closer to our goals, I intend on releasing a bunch of smaller updates so we can get to the real meat & cheese of this polishing sandwich. I must say, after playing VOC with completely custom and unique units in each faction makes the non-version seem like a mere demo, so get ready for your world to be blown right open once we reveal our release date. Now to the update...

Campaign map

• If a player is involved in a siege, the siege will never start without the player's input unless the defender decides to sally forth. - Dismiss unit buttons disabled during the tutorial. This has been the cause of the infamous "Can't create an army tutorial" bug because of accidental clicking on the dismiss unit button. Only took me a year to figure this one out. - Mercenaries are now a lot more fleshed out, common, and an Inn is no longer required. - Ability to bank gold in town (when visiting towns) is no longer restricted by the towns treasury level. - Town prisoner exchange option (when visiting towns) no longer requires the prison to be built. - Quest tracker should find the correct town when objective it to return home. - Quest tracker arrow should now update position after completing quests. - Army size indicator now based on army strength instead of population. - An issue with deserters being loaded as a regular faction has been resolved. They should no longer take villages. - Quest options to be reset when clicking on village leader option when speaking to the village elder. - Hero units actual loadout added to army strength calculation during all encounters. - Tribute chance is now impacted by how much gold the player has and their current relationship, and not the receiving factions gold. So it should be a lot cheaper and reasonable. - Merchant unit carry weight increased. - Merchant unit movement speed reduced (Because they carry lots of stuff... duh). - Loading screen should now say 'Loading' instead of 'Accept'. - You can now store more resources in a village than its capacity from armies that enter the village, but it will not produce more resources while it is above capacity. This should prevent the player from losing resources when they enter an owned village. - Quitting a siege halfway through a battle and then reloading your game should no longer result in your siege being broken. A temporary save is now created before a siege battle and is loaded once the siege is over. - AI will now build engineers even after they are building higher tier bludgeon units. - Ability to sort unit purchases by Tier. - Confirm armory panel should appear on top of other town panels. - Later stage building upgrades building time increased dramatically.

Armoury

• Scale surcoat colour variations added + 9

Battle scene

• Army power bar should properly reflect military might on the battlefield compared to the campaign map. - Weird archer arrow scale issue should be fixed. - Added a friendly fire damage reduction for ranged units. - Caught many exceptions to do with mounted units dismounting for ladders. - During multi faction battles, will check only your enemies retreating to decide when to bring up the retreating enemy options. - After selecting pursue enemies a button allowing the player to end combat at any time has been added. - Unit text at the start and battle end should now scale nicer and use proper localization text. - Forces selection scrollbar should scroll properly from the top - bottom. - Arrow and bolt damage increased. - Flaming arrow damage increase.

Main Menu

• Default antialiasing set to basic. There is an advanced option (less stable it seems was the cause of many crashes but was much prettier)

Mod Support

• Unit tier added to the unit information. Used for sorting units when purchasing but may have further implications for the future.

Notable Updates

Mercenary units (Tier 2) are MUCH more readily available in towns, no longer require the Inn to be available, and multiple types will be available at once. They are quite expensive to hire, but they should be a much sort after commodity when taking your first castle. Unit tier sorting in towns Makes it much easier for you to sort your units when purchasing based on each tier level. Buttons have been added to the unit purchase menu. Quitting a siege battle and re-loading no longer breaks your siege! This took me a while to figure out the best way, as all data is saved before a battle. Your game is now saved before anything is processed, and updated version is loaded once the battle is complete. This should be a welcome fix to many a siege quitterer. Later buildings now take longer to build. Earlier build levels are not affected by this, but the purpose is to prolong the time it takes for each town to be fully upgraded. Giving the player a better chance to take a castle in the earlier stages of world development. Ranged units are more powerful: I found ranged units to be quite weak, this has changed. Igniting your arrows now has a greater benefit. Prepare to alter your tactics, and make use of cavalry.

Whats next?

This week I plan on starting my crusade to improve the AI combat potential, stay tuned as battles could be getting more challenging. Ai decision making will be based on the enemy generals leadership ability. Many more balance and polish updates! Thank you all! I hope you enjoy todays update! - Kerry