April Round Release Notes

[Shadow]

Hey all,

Another round of beta come and gone, and another round of changes to start off the next one! I'll give a TL;DR version here and some more detail below. windhounds has also been working on a few very exciting projects of his own, but I'll let him give you the details himself :)

There will be a theme this round but you'll have to discover it on your own. A standard round, but with a stick in the spokes, as windy puts it.

Attack System

• Leader attacks moved back to attack buff status (added on to troop attacks) but success is determined the same way it is now (ie, leader ratio)
• A failed troop attack can still have a successful leader buff component, but it will only do half damage, ie, you need to break with troops to do fully effective leader mission, but you can still do weakened ones without it
• Murder power increased - you will lose more health the higher your health is, but it will still take about as long as now to reach 0
• New spell: rob granaries. Does the same thing as steal but for food instead
• Steal only takes cash again

Economics

• Cash and food settings now affect only worker output, not passive output from foragers and markets. This means that you can switch between economic settings without lessening the effectiveness of your markets and foragers. People using 100% settings on way or the other will not notice a change. Indies especially will notice that your economies are much more flexible without having to rebuild all of your buildings each time you swap settings, and going 50-50 eco settings is no longer a wasteful thing to do (depending on race stats, of course).

Market

• merc sell button appears after 6 hours instead of 48

Cosmetic

• More informative news reports for leader attacks and leader success messages
• Warning displayed when your health is capped by taxes on turn use

General

• No longer allowed to scout for 60 minutes since you last dropped land

People originally like the basic idea of the troop buff attack system, but the old formulas for it were too biased in favor of lockers. The  new system takes the suggestions of cloud and snare and makes current leader attacks into troop attack buffs, so that they succeed independently of troops but are more powerful if you do break with troops. This should give more options to customize your attacks while taking land, while making leaders less of a pure force in the game as originally intended.

Note that because of the way I coded leader attacks, when you use a buffed attack, it will actually count as two offenses (one troop, one leader) and will show up that way in your news feed. This makes no physical difference, since the combo of things will only cost 2 turns and as much health as an attack usually does, but just be aware of the difference in reporting.

Outstanding balance issues:

Indy is weak compared to cashing, and the way I have the equations set up it is difficult to tweak because increasing troop output also increases worker death, so the overall effect is difficult to predict (well it isn't, but the formula is ugly as sin and not worth working with). The solution is conceptually simple but will require re-balancing of the numbers, so I am going to put if off for a round while I do some data mining ingame. I will tell you the details of this little project at the end of the round since I don't want to bias results in the meantime, but just be aware that these issues are being looked at in detail.

Farming is also weak, but the solution is trickier here because making it stronger might make keeping food green as an indy too easy. I also think that cashing output is too high. Expect changes in this area around May.

For this round, I am going to be doing some balance stuff behind the scenes, collecting info that will help me redesign a few game aspects to be more in line with how people actually use the game. Nothing personal of course, just aggregate game trends, the details of which I will release at the end of the round.

For now, thanks for your patience, and I hope you are enjoying things!

PS: these things are still in the works, you won't notice them on turbo for another couple of hours probably.

[Sevz]

ya sound like a n00b

WOOT WOOT
in brief, his margins are way out but pinpoint the issue and he'll nurf it.

Where's windy?

[Ian2424]

Do you still get a free revolt if you're in protection? Because I accidently signed up as a painted one instead of a fox. :(

[Shadow]

I'm pretty sure revolt is free in protection, though it might be only if no turns used.

Try it and see. Worse case scenario it just says you don't have enough leaders.

[Raggon]

Ugh! The suspense of this "secret theme" is killing me!

[Shadow]

:D

Should be a good time once people catch on.

[Ian2424]

I tired revolting. Not enough leaders so I built huts. I revolted, and lost stuff, including 100  turns. :(

[Sevz]

I got a notice about healing when my tax is high, also noticed that production thing ya mentioned but missed this candy you speak of.
Revolting is free before you use a turn so sign up as a wildcat to sell troops then choose a race

[Peace Alliance]

Yet another lil exploit sevs never thought to report - albeit relatively minor.

[Sevz]

dude. that's been around since the first code of promisance released on the internet.

also, there's some bug going on. Shadow just deliberately failed attacks on the top guy now he's maxed with less health? what's all that about? This is blatant cheating and Shadow needs to be disabled. Also they were 100% fails but says some were successful leaving 53% defence rating. This is also cheating since a failed attack should never discredit the name of the successful defender. I'm appalled. I demand a recount. I demand some justice.

[Shadow]

What I did was use a 1 rat leader mission. Failed attacks do not count toward maxxing (the top guy is not maxxed, why would you think he is? My guess is that you are Chaotic Energy)

The leader component of the attack succeeds, but only does half damage. Leader buffed attacks count as two attacks. The troop component fails but leader succeed, hence a 50% defense rating. This is all explained in the release notes...

Rarara Shadow is a cheater. Get a new line already.

[Sevz]

I don't have leaders prepared but he does so I can get an espy. Jus says no raiders when I click his name and 100 defences in the last few hours if I click the ? mark.

Looks like you wasted 200+ turns reducing his health by 50%?
if it counts as 2 attacks in 2 turns plus the healing requirements you essentially did no literal damage but made twice as many attacks as you should be eligible for.
Making failed attacks unlimited is obviously a stupid idea but eh, you'll see soon enough cheaty mccheat cheat

[Shadow]

Stop pretending Chaotic Energy isn't you, it's pretty obvious ^_^

[Sevz]

Offenses: 137 (61%)
That's 50 fails out of apx68 attacks and your bs bonus 50. You should be ashamed of yourself but I guess your only new so we'll let it slide

[Shadow]

Why are you so hung up on these numbers? They are literally irrelevant to the actual game. It's like that because it was easier to code like that.