Frogboy Frogboy

War of Magic: v1.29 beta log

▼

War of Magic: v1.29 beta log

from JoeUser Forums

It’s looking possible that this week will see the first beta of War of Magic v1.3.  v1.3 is the most significant gameplay changes since the game launched.

We are anticipating having 3 beta phases of it. v1.29 (this build) will introduce most (though not all) the coding changes. v1.29a will being introducing the balance changes and the AI overhaul. And v1.29b and on will be polishing, bug fixing, and tweaking.

Here’s what is in the v1.29 build:

 

Brad

Elemental: War of Magic v1.29

Change Log

+ AI more reactive about updating strategy when a target city has been conquered / destroyed
+ Janusk has been removed.  Goodbye old friend. See you in the Fallen Enchantress tutorial...
+ AI now evaluates which player they care about the most with Dynasty ties being a big motivator. When a sovereign dies, it will give its kingdom to its heir.
+ Repeatable improvements now increase with cost as more are built.
+ World difficulty now sets the default AI player difficulty
+ Modders can set the base cost of repeatable improvements in the appropriate .xml file
+ Base unit CON reduced from 5 to 3
+ Special buildings now longer required to build special units. Instead, these buildings provide bonuses (i.e. no need for a command post to train groups)
+ Minimum number of units you can train has been increased to 4.
+ Trained units default HP reduced from 5 to 1
+ Trained unit groups that survive a battle will heal to full strength (i.e. If your group of 4 survives the battle with 1 guy left, it will be replenished to 4 over time). Hat tip to Konan.
+ Insufficient free tiles message added
+ Zone of control from improvements reduced
+ Tech costs increased
+ Number of starting quest locations increased
+ Pedastrians disabled (for now)
+ More aggressively freeing memory
+ Notable locations may now be explored regardless of your level.
+ Notable locations will be spawned NEAR you when you increase your exploration level (but now remember, your opponents can access them too so don't do it if you're surrounded)
+ Objects that have been marked as destroyed are now ignore by subsystems (performance improvement, stability improvement) This is throughout all game systems.
+ LOTS of code to handle the increasing costs in terms of people to run your improvements. If anyone thinks that getting highly talented people remains equally easy as you grow, ask google, microsot or apple about that. It's not.
+ Random events added (not many random events yet though)
+ Pioneers are still trained as individuals
+ Units move faster by default on the map (animation-wise)
+ Units move A LOT faster in tactical battle (let us know if it's too fast)
+ Minor factions removed. Sorry guys, they're just too lame to live for now.
+ New notable locations added to provide weapons, armor, and other "stuff"

IF it makes the window for this week, it will be Thursday evening EST. 

 

Update: We've staged the beta build but QA wants to give it more of a go so it won't be publicly available until tomorrow afternoon EST at the earliest.

Cheers!

174,000 views 89 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

So any word on the likelihood of the 1.29 beta release tonight?  Did it make the window?...I imagine you would know by now.

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

20:13 <Kadrium> Cari_Elf, where's my beta?

20:28 <Cari_Elf> in QA

So anything is still possible.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Well at least it looks like there is a chance it will be out.  :thumbsup:

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

In the past they have had 8-9pm releases so I wouldn't give up yet.

Reply #55 from Demigod Forums Top

To draw attention:

Update: We've staged the beta build but QA wants to give it more of a go so it won't be publicly available until tomorrow afternoon EST at the earliest.

 

:fox:

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kitkun, reply 55
To draw attention:
quoting postUpdate: We've staged the beta build but QA wants to give it more of a go so it won't be publicly available until tomorrow afternoon EST at the earliest.

 

 

Thanks for the update!

Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

Updating now...........

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

Really? It isn't showing up as available on impulse for me yet...?

 

Correction:  It see it now ! !

Reply #59 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dowdyhoody, reply 57
Updating now...........

 

I got the update, but it was 1.2b and not 1.29 (aka the beta for 1.3)

What gives?

Reply #61 from Elemental Forums Top

Impulse is getting me an error on downloading, at 0 percent.

 

Pls advise.

Reply #63 from Elemental Forums Top

Udpated, and noticed that;

Opponent continually sends pioneers next to my city where my Sovereign can easily slay them.

In one tactical battle my Sovereign was continually casting spell blast (the spell that does 30% of sovereign's intellingence in damage) at enemy forces while they chased one of my units around the map. Even when adjacent to my sovereign they did not attack him. If they had just slew the sovereign they would have won the battle.

Looking forward to 1.3 with the improved tactical AI.

Reply #64 from Elemental Forums Top

Hmmm...some of these I'm happy about but one I have a problem with is the combination of Tech cost increases with Study cost increases. As it stands right now (v1.2) you should build 3 to 4 times more Studies than Labratories to even keep techs somewhat competitive. This might put more emphasis on magic (which is, to be honest, not all that great at buffing your troops to begin with) which means you'd need more mana producers or your army will quickly fall behind the enemy quickly.

A few things I'm surprised were not addressed are things that quickly distract and crowd the main screen out:

1) the list of units and settlements on the left side taps out at 10 with no visible scroll option. After 10 units/settlements these notifications are a distraction and reduce the visible map

2) the 'incomes' at the top can slide under the "date" bar at the top of the screen. i've had an empire with people, gold, diplomatic capital, materials, food, mana, crystals, horses, wargs (I took over an Empire's territory) Elementium, metal, and a BUNCH of elemental shrines. I had NO idea how many people or money I had in my kingdom until I went to a shop (for the money) or tried to build something in a settlement and found no options because everyone had a job.

3) some crash issues regarding the tech tree - for instance when playing Kingdom and researching 'Housing' to get "Villas" the game freezes up regardless of game being played (three times on three different games so far), forcing me to CTRL+ALT+DEL to close the game, reload and choose a different tech result.

 

I appreciate the game and think it has LOTS of potential. I hope that these (and other suggested updates) don't fall by the wayside with FE in development.

Reply #65 from Elemental Forums Top

Updated, and the version number says it is 1.2b, not 1.29, is this just impulse being weird or did I really revert to a beta of 1.2? Anybody else have this issue?

Reply #67 from Elemental Forums Top

This new update 1.2b is the same 1.29b (aka 1.3)??

Reply #68 from Elemental Forums Top

No, they were originally going to call the first "1.3 beta" version 1.29, but they changed their mind and called it 1.2b instead.  I'll see if I can get Frogboy to update the name of this thread to eliminate confusion.

Best regards,
Steven.

Reply #69 from Elemental Forums Top

One major problem--the increasing population requirements for structures mean that, quite often, conquering a city means you suddenly need several hundred more people than you did before. If you were already near full utilization of your population, and near your current population cap given your food supplies, it can make it nearly impossible to build anything anywhere for several dozen turns.

Reply #70 from Elemental Forums Top

+ LOTS of code to handle the increasing costs in terms of people to run your improvements. If anyone thinks that getting highly talented people remains equally easy as you grow, ask google, microsot or apple about that. It's not.

Indeed, though the argument (in lore temrs) could be made that as a population grows into the thousands, and you already have studies (schools) built, more and more educated / skilled people are available compared to when you first began with a settlement of 50 people.

Reply #71 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Almonihah1, reply 69
One major problem--the increasing population requirements for structures mean that, quite often, conquering a city means you suddenly need several hundred more people than you did before. If you were already near full utilization of your population, and near your current population cap given your food supplies, it can make it nearly impossible to build anything anywhere for several dozen turns.

Thanks, i will add that to my list of reasons why I hate the citizen system. When it doesn't work (like before) it's an irrelevance that only succeeds in forcing you to check on your towns every 5 turns to build your 300th study. When it does work it results in insane catch-22 situations like these.

It would be so much more balanced and plain easier if they just limited you to a certain number of builings per level and be done with citizens and this newfangled exponential costs workaround. Then you can schedule all your construction on level up. Add more levels if need be. Make buildings produce 0.1g/building/person if you want to give population direct significant. But there's no point in dividing populations up into significant chunks when we already have the level system to do that.

Reply #72 from Elemental Forums Top

I was looking into it more, and I think there's just something broken. I don't think it should ever reach the point where a single building requires over 200 population to man.

Reply #73 from Elemental Forums Top

When can we expect 1.3? This may be a common question and may have been answered, but I'm not as attentive to the boards as I used to.

+ LOTS of code to handle the increasing costs in terms of people to run your improvements. If anyone thinks that getting highly talented people remains equally easy as you grow, ask google, microsot or apple about that. It's not.
Best rationale for a mechanics change ever.

Reply #74 from Elemental Forums Top

1.2b Thoughts:

1) Game seems A LOT more stable.

2) I also agree (as others have stated) that the citizens requirements for new buildings are too much.  I'll conquer a city and then have to wait 50+ turns before I can build anything else because I am at negative 300 citizens.

3) Unless this has been addressed some other way, please allow us to either group heroes into an army that's treated as one in the city menu or have a "un-station all" button.  I tend to create armies of heroes and it's super-tedious to click and un-station ALL my heroes after conquering a city. 

4) Tech is too expensive.  Magic costs (arcane points) feel right.  Accumulation of mana feels right. 

5) Animations (over-world map and in battle) feel faster, in a good way.  Battle animations could even be a tad faster.

6) I miss the animated citizens in the cities!  :-(

Reply #75 from Elemental Forums Top

+ Janusk has been removed.  Goodbye old friend. See you in the Fallen Enchantress tutorial...

Good riddance tosser!

Bit worried about all the con reductions, real happy with the army healing, allthough I believe it should take them one turn to rest in order to allow counterattacking that weakend army with another army if you lost the previous fight. Bee-lining through the Military tech with research tech for support feels like a real must (on paper).

Baffled by the more quests... Last game I played my map was littered with them; my lands were filled for close to 70% with quest and goodie tiles. If I'd change it, I'd make it worthwile and more sparce so that you want to race there. Right now I cant be bothered for a couple of guildar or some crappy item; i'll loot the goodie tiles (eventually; love the character point books) but above all they really downgrade the "strategic" element for me as it is now. Ow well I may be pleasantly surprised with the quests in 1.29.