Battle Realms: Zen Edition update for 26 March 2021

Greetings, warriors!

Thanks to everyone who shared their NetLogs to help us track down sync errors, and those reported various bugs that the game liked to boast. We're slowly but surely polishing things up, another update is now ready to be released...

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1.57.3 Changelog:

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Technical:

• Replaced password feature with 'private lobbies' (steam exclusive) with according interface changes.

You can now choose if you want to create a private or a public lobby by ticking/unticking the 'Private Lobby' option. Private lobbies are only joinable via friend invite (done through your Steam friend list) and are not visible in the general Steam multiplayer lobby.

• Redesigned lobby screen:

• Fixed a visual bug that resulted in misplacements between text rows.
• Moved country tag from the game name to a separate column.
• The last column will now show if the game is started or not.

• Reduced chances for sync errors to occur when players prematurely leave a match.
• Fixed crashes on maps that contained a lot of visual effects and wild life.

Gameplay:

Introducing the restored Siege Damage System!

Understandably not many are aware of this, but Battle Realms employs a "Siege Damage System" which is related to how effective a unit is against buildings. However, that only worked for melee units and was, for some reason, disabled for missile units, which resulted in several techniques in the game simply not working (Serpent Cannoneer's "Steel Cannonballs" in the Sharpshooters Guild) or partially working (Dragon Chemist's "Phosphorous Powder" in the Alchemist Hut).

The most notable example of a "siege unit" you know is the Wolf Clan Sledger who eats buildings for breakfast. Basically, a melee focused "siege unit" would deal full base weapon damage to any building where as the same "non-siege unit" would deal 50% of that damage.

We have now made that system work for missile units albeit with some little tweaks. From now on, any missile focused "non-siege unit" will deal 25% less damage to any buildings, where as a missile focused "siege unit" will deal its full normal damage.

Keep in mind that buildings in Battle Realms also have Armor Multipliers, same as units:

Cutting AM - 0,5 - All buildings take 50% damage from cutting attacks.
Piercing AM - 0,25 - All buildings take 25% damage from piercing attacks.
Blunt AM - 0,75 - All buildings take 75% damage from blunt attacks.
Explosive AM - 1 - All buildings take 100% damage from explosive attacks.
Magical AM - 0,75 - All buildings take 75% damage from magic attacks.
Fire AM - 0,25 - All buildings take 25% damage from fire attacks (compensated by fire point damage e.g. Fire consuming buildings).
This makes missile units less effective against buildings unless they're "siege units", which is how the original developers were planning to make it work, but for some reason didn't. The system is now back in the game and affects missile units as it should, the mentioned techniques were rebalanced and now work as intended.

New Siege Damage System changes:

• Non-siege missile units will now deal 25% less damage to buildings.
• Siege missile units will deal full damage to buildings.
• Fixed an interface bug where the attack cursor wouldn't become "gold" when a unit learnt a technique that added siege capabilities.

Introducing more innate abilities!

And our guest today is the Lotus Reaper from the "Winter Of The Wolf" addon. It's no secret to anybody that the "WOTW units" are pretty underwhelming. We'd like them to really stand out, but for now we're not completely sure what we want to do with them. However, as a sneak-peek and an experimental feature, we present a new innate for our reaping friend:

Innate Ability: Execution
Reaper will execute units with less than 20% health.
Go check it out right now and tell us what you think!

Other Gameplay Changes:

• Serpent Cannoneer's "Steel Cannonballs" technique will now make him deal his full base weapon damage to buildings because it makes him a siege unit.
• Dragon Chemist's "Phosphorous Powder" technique will now give him an overall 20% damage increase, 75% AoE increase, and will make him a "siege unit" which further increases his damage to buildings.
• Techniques that were supposed to increase Units' AoE never worked properly and are now fixed.
• "Bond Of Pestilence" now affects both Infested and Diseased and will increase their AoE by 50%.
• Previously broken "Pressurized Kegs" technique for Dragon Powder Keg Cannoneer now gives him a 20% damage increase for his missile weapon.

After these changes, all techniques in the game work as they should. We may rebalance something later, but for now what matters the most is that they are properly functioning.

• Lotus Infested and Diseased base AoE has been increased.
• Diseased One's "Rotting Pool" (after-death innate ability) will now poison any enemies that step in it.
• Made Chemist's "Mandrakes Spores" rockets' visual effects to follow affected units instead of being stuck in the air.
• Restored Bandit's "Looting" (Innate Ability) visual effects.
• Units under "stun" and similar effects will no longer play different idle animations and will be immobile.
• Improved conditions that prevent stunned units from regenerating health and stamina.
• Fixed a bug that caused missile units to go into melee range when ordered to attack.
• Fixed a bug that caused missile units to get 'stuck' when attacking (resulting in endless animation loops).
• If a building has rally point set beyond the screen borders, it will now point you to the direction of the rally point when selected.

• Fixed a bug that caused AoE battle gears to not apply damage percentage to horses (whirling spear, concussion smash, etc..).
• Missile units will not insta-shoot after they disengage from melee combat to prevent exploiting.
• Fixed !time command, it will now show the real game time instead of the "lobby creation time".
• If a player's stables is full and peasants still caught horses, instead of idling with the horses, they now will go to stables first and idle there until a slot for horses frees up (player takes horses from the stables).
• Fixed battle gears not applying on time (delayed) / blinking / never applying (goo, sentry, etc..).
• Fixed a bug that allowed combat units to attack horses with a help of a peasant (being in the same squad (no more Lotus Brothers abusing wild life for stamina!).
• Fixed a bug that made units lose stamina while being on a horse and running.
• Fixed a bug that made 'Poison' not work on projectiles (beware of ninjas' shurikens now!).
• Units won't regenerate health if poisoned.

Campaign and AI changes:

• Campaign difficulties have been rebalanced.

  How it worked before (in the legacy game):

All Campaign levels are always script controlled, not allowing AI to play like it does in Skirmish (full freedom of action).

An AI profile (like the ones you can set in skirmish) with all stats being 50% was taken as the base enemy model.

The difficulty levels (that could be set in 'Options') did the following:

EASY: Set intelligence to 15% and decreased all enemy unit armor by 25%.
NORMAL: Set intelligence to 30% and decreased all enemy unit armor by 12.5%.
HARD: Set intelligence to 45%, all enemy unit armor remained unaffected.
What does 'Intelligence' in the AI profile do? Well, it defines just how good the AI is at matching units against each other e.g. utilizing the damage/armor system and picking proper counters against what player does.

A little bit after this update, we'll update the Online Guide and provide detailed information on the AI behavior and couple other things.

How AI works now (Zen Edition):

All Campaign levels are still script controlled, not allowing AI to play like it does in Skirmish (full freedom of action). Still the same AI profile with all stats being 50% taken as the base enemy model.

The difficulty levels do the following:

EASY: Set intelligence to 30% (AI won't recover from 'blindness' effects) and decreased all enemy unit armor by 25%.
NORMAL: Set intelligence to 64% (AI won't recover from 'blindness') and all enemy unit armor remains unaffected.
HARD: Changes the AI profile to 'Nightvol' (All stats at 100%, will recover from 'blindness' effects), all enemy unit armor remains unaffected.

While still limited by campaign scripts, the "HARD AI" will now make more units and attack in more efficient ways, this will now be a tough challenge even for seasoned players.

• Fixed a bug that made AI sometimes leave tamed horses idling around stables.
• Fixed a bug that made AI sometimes idle in campaign (campaign scripts will still make them idle here and there).
• Fixed a bug with AI sometimes not manning watchtowers.
• AI will now bring back any army to base if under a 'high-risk' attack.
• AI will now try to position towers near rice fields.
• AI won't build same buildings more than once (excluding peasant huts and towers).

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Community & Discord:

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Discord has proven to be a very helpful and fun program to use for us, so we're quite keen on maintaining it and have it as a bridge between us and the community. It's already populated by more than 3000 members!

If you're having issues, planning to report a bug or just want to learn something new about the game and communicate with others - we'd like to see you there, come around!

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Miscellaneous info:

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• Report any issues you experience in this topic.

• Complete Battle Realms Info Guide.

• Battle Realms on Facebook.

• Battle Realms on Reddit.

• Battle Realms Wiki

**Stay tuned for more updates!

• The Battle Realms Team**