Hi everyone,

For the last month, I’ve been focusing on various game improvements coming from both your feedback and internal goals. I’d like to share the highlights of this patch as well as include a full change log. If there’s anything you think is missing in this patch or should be added to future ones, please let me know!

Game difficulty and balance

As you might have noticed, the game can get very tough quite quickly, even on lower difficulties. My goal is to create a game that’s easy to pick up, but hard to master. A game that both new and experienced strategy fans can enjoy.

Therefore, I’ve made some rigorous changes that mostly apply to Easy (now called Casual) and Normal difficulty. From reducing enemy numbers in campaign missions, to adjusting how the AI plays in general, and allowing for more vision range on lower difficulties.

I'll be monitoring closely how the difficulty changes are perceived, and I'll adjust accordingly.

Graphics

I’ve updated some of the graphics and animations in this build, but the work here is far from finished. You’ll see that the farms now show farm land, and the crops actually grow when created and decay when destroyed. Also, the dirt underneath the farmland stays, affecting the landscape permanently. This is just the start of the graphics changes planned for the game; more will come soon!

Change log:

New Ura intro missions

• Small mining map

• Storm island map 

  • New storm landscape visuals

  • New thunderstorm event

• You can play as the Ura in the main missions
  

Difficulty adjustments

(These adjustments affect lower difficulties far more than higher difficulties)

• The AI holds back resources to use when they need it most, meaning they play less aggressively and have more comeback potential.

• The AI uses their hero much less, making them level up slower.

• The AI changes strategy less often, making them easier to counter.

• Easy and normal difficulty allow you to have increased vision.

• Easy is now called casual.
  

Visuals

• New wind animation.

• New Monceaux farm grain animations.

• Monceaux farms permanently spawn a visual dirt layer.

• Destroying a Monceaux farm with fire attacks now causes a fire wave through the wheat.

• Mission 8: The Capital, received a big visual update.

• Reduced animation stutter on some units.

• Troops are spread out more while walking.

• Nighttime is updated visually, and more changes are coming soon.

• The cannon has updated shooting animations and cannonball visuals.

• Corpses now blend into the background.

• Characters bounce more while walking.

• Hostage visuals are updated.

• Troops killed by lava now turn to ash.

• Shadows are darker.

• Added a darkening background when in dialogue.
  

Balance improvements

• Ranged hero attacks now pierce enemies, making it easier for them to clear camps on their own.

• Increased nomad warrior attack speed.

• Decreased cacti damage.

• Reduced canon damage.

• Jet golems can now jump towards buildings as well.

• Naturally placed cacti deal less damage.

• Reduced Fahad farm upgrade cost.

• Changed homing missiles:

  • Decreased attack speed for units with the missile upgrade.

  • Reduced missile area damage.

  • Slightly increased missile towers' attack speed.

• Increased attack speed for units with the napalm upgrade.

• Greatly decreased Moss’ mace slam ability cooldown duration.

• Decreased Taji’s reinforcements ability cooldown duration.

Bug fixes

• Improved army pathfinding when lots of troops take narrow paths.

• Attempt to fix a crash some people experienced when trying to play the battle mode.

• The menu now correctly loads a random unlocked map that the AI battles on in the background.

• Fire and wind sounds work again.

• Castle descriptions now correctly mention that they can train heroes.

• Buildings are now correctly drawn on the minimap.

• Missiles now correctly damage flying units.

• AI doesn’t build on the edge of the screen anymore.

• Fixed a crash when pausing during campaign dialogue.

• Fixed an issue where the wrong texts showed up after going backward in the dialogue.

• Upgraded farms now always spawn the right workers when exiting the building.

• Piercing shots now correctly have their damage reduced by the damage dealt.

• Fixed an issue where the enemy Ura metalworks would override their own production.

• Fixed an issue where the Emperor hero stopped throwing spears while in the animation sometimes.

Other

• The Usurper's name has been changed to Tavira.

• Various small dialogue changes.