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Hi everybody,
The team has been hard at work with the feedback we’ve got since release. Before we roll out the first patch officially next week, we have decided to release a beta preview patch. This optional update is placed in a separate branch on Steam and will be available officially next week on both Steam and GoG. This allows users to check whether system incompatibly issues have been fixed for them, as well as getting gameflow feedback from the grognards on an experimental balance pass. If this patch doesn’t work for you, or if you want to start multi-player with friends not having the V1.08 beta patch, you can easily revert to the current official build. First we’ll list the fixes, then we’ll describe on how to switch to this V1.08 Test Branch in the Steam Client.
If this patch resolves the issues you have, then please let us know in this topic. If you find any new critical issues in the patch, please let us know about that too.
Some of the balance changes – especially those slowing down research and obtaining large stacks of end game unit – are experimental. We’d love to know what you think of these changes, so we can make adjustments. If all this switching and test code is not for you, you can stick to the current build (i.e. change noting) and wait for the official patch to auto-update later.
How to Switch to the V1.08 beta Patch in the Steam Client
We’ll deliver the Beta of this patch to you in a branch on Steam, before making it available to everyone. If you are experiencing one of the issues noted below, this is how you can move over to that branch.
1. Right Click ‘Age of Wonders 3’ in your Steam Library and select ‘Properties’ from the menu that appears.
2. Select the ‘BETAS’ tab in the ‘Properties’ window.
3. Set the top most combobox to ‘patch_v1.08_beta – Patch test build’.
4. Close the ‘Properties’ window.To move back to the official version of the game, repeat these steps but switch to ‘NONE – Opt out of all beta programs’ on step 3. Please note that if you wish to play a multiplayer match, everyone needs to have the same version.
Note for GoG Users
We are sorry for any GoG users wanting to participate in this test, but the DRM free installer means there is no branching / reverting / auto updating system available for us to deliver this beta patch to you. You’ll get the polished, official patch next week!
Change Log:
Fixes:
• WQHD / QHD (up to 2560 x 1440 / 2560 *1600) native resolution display support (the Black & White boxes and blurry text should disappear). Fix has been verified to work up to and including a resolution of 2560×1660.
• Fixed an issue for people using Intel HD Graphics – specifically for HD4000 and Surface 2 Pro – in combination with certain driver version, that caused a crash when opening interface screens – e.g. starting the game, opening options menu, skill book, etc.Performance
• Fixed frame drop when armies were selected.
• Fixed decreasing frame rate occurring during extended play, particularly in longer battles.
• Fixed a memory leak when Windows was locked.
• Optimized a feature effecting maps with water, which should now show increased framerate.AI Improvements
• Fixed some cases where the tactical AI would come out from behind the walls of cities and fortresses too soon.
• Stopped the AI spamming disjunction, so players can now use global magic more easily.
• Fixed an issue where the tactical AI would cast a resurrection spell on an invalid target.
• Made ‘squire’ AI easier to beat.
• AI settings for players were changed to compensate for this change, to keep the same level of challenge on normal difficulty.
• Using the ‘restart’ option in a campaign map now returns the player to the briefing, allowing map difficulty to be changed.Scenario & Campaign
• Campaign: Heroes being mind controlled no longer causes you to instantly lose a campaign map if you rescue them by the end of combat.
• Campaign: Heroes which are protected by the ‘resurgence’ effect – e.g. the theocrat’s ‘rebirth’ spell – can now die in tactical combat without causing you to lose the campaign map, as long as you win the battle that they die in.
• Blightmouth Crater: Closed a gap in impassable mountains.
• Blightmouth Crater: Removed two superfluous hearts of the blight.
• Blightmouth Crater: Fixed the behavior of independent armies.
• Elven Resurgence: Player 6 now starts with more gold mines, making the starting positions more balanced.
• 4th Elven Court map: Independents no longer interfere with one of the starting quests.
• 4th Commonwealth map: Fixed a message that missed an icon under specific circumstances.
• 5th Commonwealth map: A ‘defeat leader’ quest no longer reveals that leader’s position.
• 5th Commonwealth map: Fixed a story message that had overlapping lines of text.
• 6th Elven Court & Commonwealth maps: Prevented story characters from dying when you are victorious.
• 6th Elven Court and Commonwealth maps: Added a few building upgrades to starting cities to give the player a better starting situation and more options.Other Fixes.
• Fixed settings – e.g. graphics settings – not being saved when using the ‘guest’ profile.
• Fixed the stack confirm movement button being disabled in some situations when a stack was auto-moving.
• Fixed a rare crash caused by a player razing a city with a heart of blight, tropics, etc in its domain
• Fixed an issue where a backstab bonus wasn’t being correctly applied. This led to situations where a unit could backstab a target without flanking it.
• Fixed a crash triggered by clicking on a “You lost your throne city!” event.
• Fixed a crash triggered by selecting a ‘Egg has hatched’ after loading the save game.
• Fixed the ‘Remove army from event list’ shortcut key function so armies are properly removed from the list.
• Fixed an issue where the ‘Protect your leader and throne city’ quest failed to complete on victory.
• The game now ignores controller input, to prevent camera drift when a controller is plugged in.
• ‘Spring of life’ now rewards units when explored.
• When creating a new custom leader, the field for setting a name is now left empty by default.Balance:
• ‘Shrine of smiting’ is no longer ‘Devout’, nerfing ‘Shrine of smiting’ doom stacks which relied on stacking ‘Devout’ bonuses for the ‘Smiting prayer bolts’.
• ‘Shadow stalker’ now does cold damage. This fixes an issue where rogues had limited options vs. blight immune troops.
• Increased the research costs of skills to slow down progression through the skill tree.
• Increased cost of racial tier 3 unit building to 300 gold and 100 mana.
• Decreased the base production of cities.
• Fixed issue with ‘Libraries’ and ‘Observatories’ generating too much knowledge.Features:
• Added buttons on either side of the city name that cycle through cities owned by the player.
• We added a quick save option, bound under CTRL+S by default.
• Added extra text to the preview popup when attacking a city wall. Players can now see the hit points the wall have remaining as they plan their attack.We hope we’ll this patch resolves some of the issues you might have encountered. We plan to roll this patch out to all our players early next week and we’re already working on the next patch, so please bear with us if your issue did not make it into patch.
Thank you for all of you feedback. With your input we’ll make the game even better!
-The Team @ Triumph Studios.
Looks like end-game tier 4 spam is going to be significantly postponed with the new features. Less production means slower building of tier 4 units so a smaller tier army for a quick rush is now much more feasible. Ditto for slower research.
Yay for shadow stalker cold damage!
Thank you for the fast patch! I have a question for you: How does the beta patch affect savegames? I am considering trying the beta but don’t want to mess up my campaign saves. Will it impact my savegames? If I don’t like it and roll back, what about then?
All in all,this are probably great changes.
Only thing I am not sure of, is the lowered base production of cities.
I would have preferred to lower the growth rate instead.
But still, definitely the right direction ,lets see how it plays out 🙂Looking great, guys. Very excited for this.
but but but……early next week I still have classes! What the heck, Easter break is coming. Really disappointed I didn’t get the steam version where I could have had the beta patch.
I also hope that online/offline/guess saves would be fixed (in case it is not in the list of fixes) since it is a bit annoying that I have different saves for online/guess.
So can the quick save be used in a battle? I can never find the quick save option when in a battle. Going to options just takes me to the base game options (sound, graphics, etc.).
What about quick load?
Sorry, we don’t support saving during battles 🙁 It was never planned, so there’s literally no support in code for it.
There are some great fixes and improvements in that list! It’s great to see all this going in so soon after release.
I’m a bit sad to see the Shrine lose its Devout buff. I would’ve rather seen either a rebalance of the base damage numbers, or a change to how other Devout units increase the Shrine’s damage. For instance, you could only count non-machine Devout units to increase the damage of SPB, which would have the same effect on the stacking Shrine issue as removing the Devout buff, without having to actually remove the buff from the Shrine. That way, they can still benefit from Devout-themed spells, and won’t cause any issues with getting damaged by skills that Devout units are immune to, like Divine Vengeance.
I’m a bit sad to see the Shrine lose its Devout buff. I would’ve rather seen either a rebalance of the base damage numbers, or a change to how other Devout units increase the Shrine’s damage. For instance, you could only count non-machine Devout units to increase the damage of SPB, which would have the same effect on the stacking Shrine issue as removing the Devout buff, without having to actually remove the buff from the Shrine. That way, they can still benefit from Devout-themed spells, and won’t cause any issues with getting damaged by skills that Devout units are immune to, like Divine Vengeance.
+1 on this!
I think the better solution is nerfing the bonus from each Devout unit, not making the Shrine lost its Devout status.
THe problem with that is, a theocrat can end up having all their base infantry and cavalry being devout as well, Swordsmen, Crushers, ect, Knights, Cavalry, unicorn riders, ect.
That means …that devout itself would have to be messed with.
Most of my performance issues seems to be fixed
THANKS TRIUMPH !
Keep up the good work 😉
THe problem with that is, a theocrat can end up having all their base infantry and cavalry being devout as well, Swordsmen, Crushers, ect, Knights, Cavalry, unicorn riders, ect.
Removing Devout from the Shrine doesn’t fix that though. It only affects scenarios where you bring stacks full of Shrines, in which case changing the Smiting Prayer Bolts skill to only benefit from non-machine Devout units would have the same effect.
Like esvath suggested, another option would be to nerf the bonus SPB gets from each Devout unit, or just get rid of the stacking boost altogether considering the high damage numbers with a full Devout army, although I’d prefer to see it limited in other ways so it can still get a bit of a boost.
Wow you guys are efficient 0_0
Thanks for slowing down a game little, step in right direction.
I think you should add some arrow butons to cycle between armies same like you did with cities.
Oh one more thing, please let us permanently turn on the hexes. I have to turn it on again everytime I go in to tactical/strategic map and vice versa.
And another thing.
Could you make some sort of skill tree screen ? So you will see what skill in research leads to what ? You know something like old Diablo skill tree or something.
I think that would be greatAmazing work guys, really great to see how dedicated you are and how quickly you’ve worked! You’re easily becoming my favorite developers!
I’ll pick up the patch later today after I finish a sorcerer game and report here with any findings or improvements for the RC of it 🙂
Looking forward to trying this. 😛
And another thing.<br>
Could you make some sort of skill tree screen ? So you will see what skill in research leads to what ? You know something like old Diablo skill tree or something.<br>
I think that would be greatYes. Even something I could just find on the webpage and print off would be nice. Trying to ‘plan’ my research and unit building is all but impossible.
Way better visually but perfs are still bad :
2560×1600 : ~30 FPS / 15 fps when you click on a unit to see its details
1920×1080 : ~60 FPS / 30 fps when you click on a unit to see its detailssettings ultra ( i tried high and without bloom AA etc, no change).
i tried with and without SLI => exact same results.Config :
windows 7 SP1 on a 128go OCZ Vector
Game is on a 250go OCZ Vector
2x MSI 770GTX Lightning edition (780GTX perfs)
Intel 4770k
ASUS Z87 Sabertooth
16 Go DDR3 @1333MhzI am a little disapointed to hear about the squire changes. Now there is no non cheating hard ai. Is there any chance in the future one could be added?
Could someone clarify what was done to the AI? Squire doesn’t cheat, but the rest do? Isn’t that how it was earlier?
Lennart – Many of us that purchased the Gog version are well verse with knowing we’d need to re-install the game when the official patch comes out. Please make the beta version available to us as a hidden link or something. I don’t mind uninstalling the game then re-installing when it goes official and honestly, if I’d known this might happen I would have never purchased the GoG version.
Great patch! My biggest gripe was the stuttering scroll while an army was selected and I am happy to confirm that the beta patch remove the stutter for me. SSAO is still a beast though and forces my GPU to be at a constant 85%+ usage but I love what it does for the game so I will deal with the extra heat and noise.
Thanks again.
I don’t think they have specifically said what they are doing yet. But before all the AI was the same. They all played the same way except each difficulty cheated more then the previous.
Awesome! Only thing missing I want is more settings for less of things on random maps. As it is now the few setting is still too many of things especially cities so we can slow things down even more.
With the change in difficulty which setting is now the setting where the AI plays its best but gets no cheats?
Thank you Triumph!!!
I am glad to see that the tier4 and late-game is on the devs radar aswell as an issue. And i look forward to a bit slower gameplay pace, and perhaps a bit more lower tier units in the end game.
Could someone clarify what was done to the AI? Squire doesn’t cheat, but the rest do? Isn’t that how it was earlier?
Correct, but if I recall people were still getting their asses handed to them somehow. I’m imagining the fix for this was turning down the aggressiveness of the AI as well so not only do they get no bonuses but they’ll likely be docile ducks or won’t build as large as armies.
having endured years of continually lowered expectations with respect to the speed at which patches, and balance changes take place, (yes… i have played a lot of blizzard games) I must say…. you guys have restored my faith in humanity! … Well… let’s not go that far…. you have restored my faith in game companies.
thanks for the very rapid adjustments.
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