Andalia
Introduction Tips & Animation Performance
Additionally the introduction maps now have advisory markers that accompany the tips given to new players.
AI Player Improvements
A new patch is here with some significant improvements on so-called "AI" players in this game.
So far the set of possible behaviours of an AI player has always been very limited. Essentially an AI player would always choose a preset of developments depending on available resources in the environment and play its static actions from there on, only building up an army and keeping launching offensives in intervals.
The biggest flaw was that an AI player would never develop its town beyond a certain state and that its economy would never improve or alternative actions taken.
After some work, I've been able to improve on this significantly and added new behaviours as described below:
1. Continued development
AI players will now pick further developments beyond the ones written in its basic playbook on certain occasions. These developments are picked somewhat randomly and can range from building more farms and houses over researching a unit upgrade to building a resource silo in the outskirts.
2. Advanced development
AI players may choose, if possible, to advance beyond their basic chosen development. For example the Ziggurat - AI configuration which includes basilisks may advance towards upgrading the reptiliary with a hydra pond and recruit hydras into its army. Other configurations may even construct a monument to reach victory this way.
3. Skirmish troops
Some AI configurations will recruit skirmish troops of small size that will roam the map early on and attack workers or enemy bases they come across.
4. Defensive buildings
Some AI configurations will make use of defensive buildings which are constructed around their base and staffed with shooters.
5. Misc behaviour additions
AI players are now able to make use of a marketplace to buy needed resources or sell redundant ones. Refuge players will now plant trees around their base to boost their wood economy. There is now an AI configuration for Castle which recruits griffins into its army. An AI player may now switch its basic development playbook if the needed resources don't exist in the environment anymore.
6. Easy AI players
Some people who aren't seasoned RTS players maybe prefer a lighter challenge. So I added an easy AI player.
Naturally I've also been improving and fixing numerous smaller bugs and issues along the way while doing these additions.
I hope you like this patch.
Have fun playing!
Various improvements and fixes in Andalia
here comes a new patch, which brings some improvements and a few bugfixes in Andalia.
New & missing features:
- The mini map now shows mountains. This helps you to orient yourself on the mini map more easily.
- If you try to send a unit to a non-reachable place on the mini map (or place a waypoint), the command is blocked and a red cross showed briefly. This helps to set up a route for your scout in the early game that it can actually follow through.
- The civilisation selection in the lobby now includes an abstract symbol for each civilisation.
- If you let workers repair buildings that are being attacked, only a 1/4 of the usual reparation occurs. This makes it more difficult to block huge armies, just by mass-repairing the wall that is under attack.
- The attacks of Fairy dragon and Behemoth now cause area damage.
- For necropolis players it is now possible to send souls to allied players.
- Souls are now included in the game statistics and also influence the points gained from a completed game.
Bugfixes:
- The multiplayer connecting and re-connecting code has been improved further so connecting and re-connecting on large maps should now work properly.
- Carried resources of Skeleton workers are now visible on remote clients.
- Shooting sounds of missiles are now played properly on remote clients.
A bugfix patch
- The new necropolis achievements are now unlocked properly.
- Idle skeleton workers are now properly displayed as idle workers.
- Builders will no longer try to reach wall sections which are within mountains or other non-reachable places.
- Pine trees in forest environment now appear as normal trees again, rather than in their death-influenced shape
- The flying behaviour of falconer - hawks around obstacles has been improved. Among other things they will now fly over mountains rather than through them.
A new Civilisation
After some months of time, spent onto developing the new Civilisation, I'm happy to announce that the moment has come: The Necropolis is now here for you to play and enjoy.
A big thankyou to everyone who has expressed interest in my work. It's helped me to keep going and finish my work just as I've envisioned it.
The Necropolis
The Necropolis is a civilisation of skeletons who have risen from realm of the dead to bring Death and havoc over the world of the living.
This civilisation features a number of unique gameplay elements:
- Souls as a unique resource, required for the recruitment of units.
- Death terrain which is spread by your buildings, killing all flora in its reach, leaving a lasting mark on the land.
- Ability to raise the maximum population limit (with the help of a building) above the one set for other players.
- Two unit spells capable of raising fallen enemy units as skeletons that remain in your service until killed (using up population slots)
Instead of using a generic skeleton for all of these, I implemented numerous skeleton variants, in accordance to the units that are raised as such after Death.
At the same time the Necropolis comes with some disadvantages, though:
- Inability to lift taxes. Instead you will generate souls with the help of Soulstones.
- Your units, being without Life, don't recover their wounds over time.
- Inability to be allied with any of the other civilisations. You can still make teams consisting of Necropolis players.
While these disadvantages may seem harsh, the Necropolis more than makes up for it with the sheer amount of units it can recruit and send into combat in a short time. If you ever decide to choose a Necropolis AI player as your foe, be prepared to face a challenge like none before.
Some key units and their abilities:
Skeleton Workers, Skeleton Warriors and Skeleton Archers
You will always keep recruiting these baseline units throughout your game. They are extremely cheap and, expectedly, not very powerful. Skeleton Workers and - Warriors have no gold cost.
Skeleton Mages
Cheap spellcasters that feature some remarkable abilities. With the spell Assemble Bones they can "repair" fellow skeletons to full health, even if perished. The Bone Shards spells allows them to cause area damage.
The Harvester
This will be your hero unit. Its deadly scythe can hit several enemy units at once. Furthermore it can cast Death Bolt, a spell which inflicts 90 points of damage on its target and causes it to return as skeleton on death, if killed shortly after.
The Lich
Liches are the dreaded masters of death magic. They can raise up to 5 perished enemy units as skeletons, using the spell Return of the Dead. No less impressive is their spell Incense of the Dead, creating an area around a corpse that will continuously damage living units and heal undead units at the same time.
Wraith
A wraith is a restless ghost that, due ot its ethereal form, receives only 1 point of damage from each physical attack, while magic and fire attacks still inflict full damage. The Wraith features the ability Disappear that allows it to vanish into the void and appear at its destination location 10 seconds later. If put on auto-casting, the Wraith will use this spell to avoid further harm as soon as its hitpoints have sunk below 20.
These are not all units. I'll leave it to you to discover the other ones, though.
Other improvements:
Apart from my works on the Necropolis, I did some improvements on the spells of other civilisations. In particular the cooldown times for many spells have been revised, meaning, made shorter.
The Poison Rain of the Masterwitch has been renamed to "Acid Rain". It now causes damage on undead and mechanical units aswell, to reduce the disadvantage of Ziggurat players against Necropolis.
The Summon Phoenix - spell of the Master sorceress has been modified so it causes a lot less damage on allied units that are accidentally hit by it, removing cases where a master sorceress accidentally clears all of the sprites in her group. Additionally the phoenix has been improved so it will no longer head for the closest enemy unit but for the center of a nearby enemy unit accumulation.
This is all for now. I hope you enjoy this update.
If you come across any issues with the new civilisation or if you would like to give any other feedback, you are welcomed to do so on the Steam-included forums or drop by our discord server.
A preview on the Necropolis
some time has gone by since the last update in August. I've been extremely busy since then and haven't had as much time to work on Andalia as I'd liked to.
With that said let me just share a few pics of the ongoing work on the 6th civilisation: The Necropolis.
The Necropolis, as the name suggests, is a civilisation of the dead, composing its ranks mostly from skeletal units of various types aswell as ghosts.
Since the dead do not need to eat and do not pay taxes, there is no such thing as farms or dwellings for them. Instead, the power of the Necropolis is fuelled by restless souls, which are periodically gained from small monuments, called Soul Stones.
Soul Stones will always gather souls, regardless of whether there is any other resource is available, and the cheapest units of the Necropolis, the Skeleton Worker and the Skeleton Warrior do not require anything else but souls and a little bit of wood/ore, to be recruited, making it easy to build up your economics and a sizable army quickly.
However, here comes the major drawback: Since there are no taxes, the Necropolis entirely relies on external gold sources to cover any gold expenses, which will occur for any buildings or their more powerful units. Without access to gold, one needs to resort to using the cheap, but relatively weak base skeletons.
Being a civilisation of the dead, the Necropolis will spread death wherever its buildings will be placed, killing the local trees and herbs, so they will no longer regrow and reproduce. As the Necropolis has no use for herbs and most buildings will be based on stone, it will take no disadvantage from it.
Lastly, there is no strategy game with undead civilisations, which do not revive their fallen enemies. This is not yet implemented, but the Lich, a powerful wizard skeleton unit, will be able to call the souls of fallen enemies into their ranks, who will return from Hades as (probably highly individualised) skeletons.
This is all for now. Expect the Necropolis to show up in Andalia sometime in the course of the next year.
See you then.
Fixes, Optimizations, Balancing and Outlook
Fixes:
For a while there has been an annoying behaviour of archers on a wall to keep running away from their posts on various occasions. I needed to do a bit of work on the AI behaviour of units to get this problem resolved. From now on your shooters on battlements will stay at their position unless you tell them otherwise.
Additionally I fixed the bug of missiles shooting through gates rather than hitting them and causing damage as intended.
Unfortunately I seemingly missed some issues with multiplayer in the previous updates. After it seemed that Inland Sea had become playable in one of the previous patches, I figured out, it hadn't and I had to do more fixing and testing to ensure that it loads in multiplayer again. I hope this will be the last and finally successful attempt at fixing it.
Optimizations:
Ever noticed that slight lag that would sometimes occur upon pressing a recruitment button? I investigated, found the source of the problem and (very probably) fixed it.
Another more hidden performance impact occured in connection with hovering or selecting various objects in the game. I've been working with a so-called observer - pattern to notify objects about being hovered or clicked. But especially with such maps as Inland Sea the flaw of that approach became apparent, since there were thousands of objects (observers) reacting to each of these messages and causing a peak of activity each time it would happen. I've changed the system to be more elegant and less resource hungry.
Balancing:
This is always a finicky topic. I often think too much about it and it can drive me crazy, as changes in stats of units or buildings often entails having to adjust and think about stats of other units and buildings and so forth. And in the end you are never certain if things are actually well-balanced, taking everything into account.
These are the changes I settled with for now:
- The Bastion main building now shoots twice as fast.
- Main Buildings of other civilisations shoot 20% slower.
- Goblins, Goblin Hunters and Goblin Mercenaries now have 80 hitpoints.
- Orc Axethrowers and Orc Archers now have 90 hitpoints.
- Hound riders now have 100 hitpoints.
- Gnoll bruisers now have 80 hitpoints. At the same time their gold cost was raised back to 60.
- Lizardmen now have 90 hitpoints.
- Lizard witches now have 150 hitpoints.
- Sorceresses now deal 14 ranged damage (previously 12)
- Mages now deal 16 ranged damage (previously 15)
There were also some cost adjustments for buildings. The most significant change being the reduction of gold cost for Alchemical Kitchen, Laboratory and Supply Tunnel to 200. Witch Huts now cost 120 gold. In accordance some follow-up buildings have gotten raised costs. The gold cost of the Arsenal has been lowered to 500 gold aswell.
Finally an outlook on future development:
I have done some very first works on the 6th civilisation in Andalia: The Necropolis. Model and textures for the main building have been completed, but there is still a lot more to be done.
The Necropolis, a civilisation of skeletons, ghosts and other undead, will be very unlike any other civilisation in Andalia, the biggest difference being that its economics will not be based on agriculture and taxes. There won't any be taxes in the first place. Instead the player will be gathering souls, which s/he can spend on recruiting various undead beings. Overall, recruiting a large army will be much cheaper and faster.
I hope I will manage to implement the Necroplis as I'm envisioning it and I hope it will be fun to play, once released.
More multiplayer fixes and casting effects
- Farm plants now properly spawn on remote clients again.
- Workers again depart from their resource building after resource delivery. After the recent patch, they would often stay inside of the building indefinitely. The basic bug here also caused a number of other weird things. Now it's been fixed.
Additionally there is a new feature now:
I let myself be inspired by certain roleplaying games and added a magical circle effect around casters of spells during their casting animation. It doesn't only look nicer, it also makes it clearer to the player when a particular unit is casting something.
Other than that, my current pipedream for Andalia is adding a sixth civilisation with a large number of unique mechanics to it: The Necropolis. Due to real life obligations and other things it may take a while before I can realise that dream, however.
Multiplayer Fix & Colored Unit Icons
Up to now it hasn't been possible to start a multiplayer game with the Map Inland Sea. Remote players would consistently get disconnected upon trying to join the match. This has been due to the much larger amount of objects, in this particular map, that had to be transferred over the internet.
What I did to address this, was making the server transfer the data over the course of a slightly longer time (one or a few seconds, depending on the amount of data) rather than all at once. So far this seems to have resolved the problem for me. But if the problem still persists for any of you, let me know.
In addition to this, I tweaked the appearance of unit icons. In the last patch I added a symbol in the upper left corner to help easier identifying various types of units. Now I added the players color to this symbol, which makes the symbol visually clearer and also adds a nice stain of color.
Gameplay Improvements
Nevertheless here are a number of gameplay improvements, largely based on feedback by other people who've played the game and found various minor things that could be improved upon.
And these are the new features:
Targetformation - Rotation:
Now it's possible to rotate the target formation of selected units. This is achieved by keeping the right mouse button pressed while hovering over the target area.
The positioning of units in the rectangle formation has also been slightly improved: The last row in the formation is now centered.
Construction - Enqueueing:
If you keep shift pressed while placing a new building, the building menu is now kept open and you can continue placing further buildings without retracting your workers from their current construction.
Moreover, when builders have completed constructing a building, they will search for further buildings to be constructed in a larger radius than before. Both of these things together now allow you to conveniently enqueue several constructions.
Wallplacement - Improvements:
The placement of new walls has been improved to allow players to position wall pieces in proximity of the map border. Previously this has been very difficult if not impossible.
Minimap - Marks:
Now it's possible to put marks on the mini map to inform your allies about points of relevance.
While the flag serves only to mark general locations of interest (only relevant for multiplayer games), the crossing swords can be used to let your allied AI players prioritize a certain enemy player when launching their next offensive. The AI player might even launch an offensive on the marked player right away, if it has got at least 2/3 of the combat strength it would otherwise need to start an offensive.
AI players who start an (self-initialized) offensive will also put an attack mark on the player it wants to attack.
Unittype - Symbols:
All unit icons have gotten a symbol in their upper left corner to help players recognizing the role and function of the unit more easily.
Bug fixes:
- The Golem Repair - ability of the mountain dwarves is functional again.
- The white screen overlay of the Ingame Menu is back after getting broken in a recent update.