Hey everyone! It's been a while since our last update. The reason for this is primarily because we were doing a big overhaul of the combat system, which required poking everything in the game in terms of art, animation, code and design. With just four of us, you can imagine that takes a while. Thanks for your patience!

Combat Update

For combat we had a couple major issues we wanted to address. The first was clarity. We really wanted it to be clear how your choices of terrain and positioning impacted combat. For this to work, we had to expand on the combat system a bit, adding some depth that actually simplified interaction.

Combat Engagement

All units now have a concept called engaged. If two units that aren't engaged fight in melee combat, they become engaged to each other. This means that while the engage is active, they can only target each other. This represents the idea that the units are actively fighting each other in a battle line.

You can break engage by moving away, but your movement is limited and if you don't cover the retreat, you can easily be re-engaged.

Engaged Units and Flanking
Flanking as a concept is now when you attack an already engaged unit (and you are not engaged). This unit is occupied battling their engage target, so you truly are flanking them when you attack. An engaged unit you attack also cannot attack back, making the choices of flanking and engaging a part of the tactical decision making.

Special Actions and Engage
Each action indicates in the tooltip how it interacts with engagement. Some actions function like standard melee attacks and begin an engage, while others will give you the ability to displace units and break engagements, allowing you to free up the previously engaged unit (ie Archers) so they can escape or pick new targets.

Combat Width

Another new concept for clarify of combat is "Combat Width". So that terrain and positioning decisions could have a larger impact on combat outcomes, we now calculate a combat width for a tile where combat occurs. The tile considered is always the tile being attacked.

Combat Width represents the literal width of a front line, so that chokepoints can be represented as more easily defended areas. As standard, the width is always 100% and various terrain factors reduce it. Width will reduce the total number of men in a unit that can fight, making it harder to dislodge defenders.

Additionally the path to a target is considered in width calculations, meaning if you're defending a narrow gap in a wall, or a single land bridge between water, you have reduced width. Information on the width is shown in the tooltip at all times.

New Actions

Since we expanded on the core combat systems, we found that the Special Actions we had weren't giving enough choice. So we added about twice as many specials that interact with the core combat in interesting ways.

One of these new actions is a Flaming Arrow attack, which leaves tiles burning for 3 turns forcing units to avoid them, or take damage. Both the Archers and Horse Archers have this attack.


Another is the Charge attack, which is now applied across all melee capable units. You can also see here the new Action tooltips, with a lot more info and clarity of interaction.

Additionally all actions now have a damage multiplier to the basic attack. Previously actions did no more or less than a normal attack, and only their function made them special. Now there is more variation in their value (some weaker, some stronger).

Siege Weapon Ammo

We really wanted siege weapons to feel impactful, but they also have to balance with the fact they can sit and fire indefinitely from range. To solve this, we've added an Ammo system to the Ballista and Catapult. For now, Archers and Crossbowmen have unlimited ammo, but we may find in future it offers a good balance option for them.


There is a new action that lets you reload a siege weapon at the cost of tactics points.

Hills and Terrain

One confusing aspect of the previous combat was the idea of height. Our terrain has built in height, but it didn't make it clear if you were "on a hill" or not. We tried to go for a more general terrain approach, but with tiles it gets confusing. Now, a tile is either a Hill or not and you can see how it's rendered in game in the screenshot.

Additionally we've clarified the terrain on the tooltip for each tile. Whether it's forest, road, hill or water you can see the terrain type and the impact it has on speed and combat width.

Night Maps

With the update to Unity 5.3 and the new lighting system, we really wanted to take advantage of it some more, so we've added night maps to the game. In the story mode, there are numerous maps specifically set at night which fit the narrative.


We've also added the option to play any Battle or Multiplayer map in Day or Night.

Main Menu Background

While we liked having an animated background, we felt like the original main menu background looked a bit like a tablet game. Since we already have this great looking game, we decided use that!

Updated Tooltips

We did a big pass on the tooltips in game to make them prettier on the eye, and clearer on information. Less to say, more to show.

New Grapple Attack

Trait Tooltips

More Detailed Unit and Terrain Tooltips

HUD Changes

We made some minor changes to the HUD to simplify access to information. There is no longer a combat window, and instead you have a second Unit panel on the right, which shows the current unit under the mouse. This panel updates with combat specific traits if you are about to engage a target.

Additionally the end turn has been moved to the top left turn frame.

Balance

With all of these new features and mechanics going in, balance will have taken a dive. We wanted to get the features out there for feedback, while we continue ongoing balancing ourselves. Action costs, action damage and what units have actions are all subject to change.

Optimisation

We've done some heavy optimisation on textures this build, which should help people on lower end integrated cards. If you've had trouble loading the game before, let us know how it goes.

Lua DLL error

We've recompiled our Lua library with a new runtime. There seemed to be issues with Steam and the VC2015 runtime which has caused a few people this error. Let us know after this update if it's still happening.