A few of you, in the last few weeks, seemed to find the Scout Towers a "useless waste of resource". Well then, I am here to clarify why I have to disagree with it, and why I think the little straw-capped fellas are more than useful, in theory and practice!
After some of the recent feedback, I did further lower the Scout Towers building and repair costs too, but let me start with a list of the reasons why I think they are useful.
Without Scout Towers you will have no information about enemy waves until they appeared in map (aka too late to build anything)
Scout Towers are the only mean to detect the Sappers special paths (tunnels, forest paths or blown up rocks)
Flying Enemies don't follow any standard path and have the ability to damage the headquarters also upon death. Scout Towers are the only mean to detect them and destroy them far enough from the Headquarters.
Skirmishers are invisible to the attack towers unless in the area of a Scout Tower, Rangers or Temple with the Eye of Kaer ability activated. In order to kill them in time, detecting the Skirmishers far enough from the Headquarters is often vital.
Scout Towers are very cheap (after the last update even cheaper)
A Scout Tower can be used as a cheap decoy to draw enemies damage abilities away from the attack towers. Build a Scout Tower in front (and far enough) from a Repeating Crossbow, to make sure Brutes and Steam Carriages won't take your best tower down and leave undamaged.
Upgrading a Scout Tower to Outpost Tower is cheap (it's also been lowered with the last update) and will make the Tower resistant to fire (and therefore a lot more robust against Sappers' and Gliders' fire bombs)
Outpost Towers have no attack abilities, but can be endowed with Caltrops (that cause continuous damage to enemies nearby) and Nets (that slow down passing enemies).
As you can see, the Scout Tower has been designed to be a quite flexible asset.
While in the first maps you can live with not knowing where the enemies are coming from (as long as you cluster all of your towers next to the Headquarters), in the later maps, being able to predict the exact paths of the next wave will allow you spread out your towers for a far more efficient killing ground.
Once the Steam Carriages are in game, using Scout Towers as a decoy to protect your larger towers, becomes really paramount, as their front-mounted cannons can easily take out one tower with one shot otherwise.
I hope this clarified a few things, if you got question, ask away, I hope I also got answers for you! Cheers, Dr.H
1.031
Fixed an issue with missing Japanese characters
Fixed a text size overflow in russian in some UIs
1.03 Japanese localization and other fixes!
There we go, I was silent for a few days, but I am working around the clock for the game. Finally, after having been tested and approved, the Japanese localization is finally ready!
I really hope you will enjoy it! Two more localizations are coming soon, Korean and French!
And, here we go with a round of Fixes and balancing that you guys recommended. There is still a couple of major but really rare bugs occurring (one with the sappers getting stuck if killed during work in some specific cases, and one with some maps getting stuck with the passing of waves). I am working on them, but they are terribly hard to reproduce (i think once found, the solution is gonna be trivial though). Don't despair, I am on it!
1.03
Added Japanese Localization
Fixed a bug that prevented ESC for working after closing a Barracks menu
Fixed a bug that with ESC closed the menu but left the settings open
Fixed some Typos in Localizations (Italian, Russian, Spanish)
Fixed some untranslated Texts in the main map
Fixed position of F11 Feedback text
Set to Global the summary Leaderboard for Arcade Maps
Automatically adding a new player to a new Arcade map with a default score of 0
Fixed the preview of Reinforcements that showed the wrong value
Reduced the building and repairing costs for all Temples
Increased the Health Points, Fire rate and Range for all Temples
Reduced building and repairing costs for Scout and Outpost towers
v1.02
v1.02
Fixed a bug that prevented building towers in some Arcade maps
Fixed a bug in a dialog in Chapter 2 about the Barmaid
v1.01
v1.01
Fixed a bug that prevented using the Religious building in Sandbox even if unlocked
Empires in Ruins is Out from Early Access!
It was a crazy ride, and even though it's not fully finished yet, it's been amazing to reach this point. There is still some content we would like to add to EiR in the next months, and some polish and maybe patching that will emerge from the release players, but we did it!
We did get to click the magic Release button for the third time now in our gamedev career, i can tell you every time it's more exciting.
Empires in Ruins is now out there, with several language localization and more to come, with a lot of maps, and 10-20 hours of campaign, and more 33k words! Not bad for a tiny indie team right?
Now a few days of break, but we will be around ready to fix patch and help!
Cheers, Dr.H
v 1.0 - 29 Minutes to Release, German Localization officially in!
We did it, on the edge of the abyss but we did it!
Empires in Ruins now has a German Localization! It's been tested, but if you have feedback or comments, don't hesitate to write us!!
Cheers, Dr.H
French, Japanese and Korean localization coming in the next two weeks
I need to apologize, I really wanted to have all the languages available at release, in 34 minutes, but it was impossible. Having produced and developed the game alone for the last 13 months, unfortunately I couldn't 100% every single aspect of it.
There were some technical issues with these translations, and I decided that it was better to take a few more days, but let them be done with quality and proper testing.
I apologize once again, but I promise that I will be working to get them in as soon as possible!
Cheers, Dr.H
v.099.1 Brazilian Portuguese localization in, and getting ready for the show!
A few hours and we are getting there with the full release. We are working frantically, believe me! Finally, tested and glorious, the Brazilian Portuguese localization is in the game for you to enjoy!
v.099.1
Added Portuguese Brazilian localization
Fixed several minor UI bugs with previous localizations
Fixed a bug with Catapult targetting system
v0.98.98
Fixed a bug with the maximum number of barracks buildable per map
Fixed a bug with no victory animation in case of 1-star result
