Fire & Maneuver
Update Coming Soon + DLC Changes
Just wanted to make a quick announcement about the upcoming update and DLC changes.
We haven't done a large update in quite some time and this is because we have been busy working on reworking some mechanics and adding lots of new content. The main theme for this update is cavalry and so we are adding in new cavalry formations and changing several traits that cavalry have across all rosters. Additionally, certain rosters (such as the US, CSA, and Italy) will be receiving some new cavalry units. These changes will be free to all players, and the next update will also include free new maps, ranked mode, and a new free campaign.
This update has been challenging to balance and so we've taken longer on its implementation. You can expect the release around December 16th!
We also are making some changes to our DLC. We will be retiring the "Franco-Prussian War Music Pack" but anyone who owns this DLC will keep it and still be able to listen to its music. The reason we are retiring this pack is because we will be merging it into the otherwise lackluster "European Empires" DLC.
After this merge, we will change the name of "European Empires" to "Rise of Empires" and add some new campaigns and maps to this DLC. Anyone who currently owns "European Empires" will receive this free upgrade. Anyone who currently owns "Franco-Prussian War Music Pack" will not receive the upgrade but will retain the music they have.
The "Rise of Empires" refreshed DLC will grant players the following content:
- 3 French Marching Songs (from fpw music pack dlc)
- 3 German Marching Songs (from fpw music pack dlc)
- Unlocks all Base Nations (currently in european empires dlc)
- 6 New Battle Maps (NEW!)
- New Franco-Prussian War Campaign (NEW!)
- New Austro-Prussian War Campaign (NEW!)
This change will coincide with the new update (Ride of the Valkyries), however our Austro-Prussian War campaign is still a work in progress and will only be added to the Rise of Empires DLC with the full release of the game.
Finally, we hinted toward a "Grand Campaign" in our last post but we've decided to suspend this idea indefinitely, as we want the team to be 100% focused on delivering a polished release of the core game. If Fire & Maneuver becomes successful in the future, we can always revisit the idea of a Grand Campaign.
The only other DLC we currently have planned is one which will add the Boshin War to F&M.
Therefore we plan on releasing our game in February 2023 with the following DLC:
- F&M | Expansion: American Civil War
- F&M | Content Pack: Rise of Empires
- F&M | Expansion: Boshin War
That's all for now, I just wanted to keep you guys informed about our future plans!
Thanks,
Griffin
What Will Change for The FULL Release?
Now that the year is coming to a close, I just want to talk a bit about what we have planned for the full release of Fire & Maneuver, which should be around February 2023.
tldr: We are adding several new scenarios, new campaigns, a grand campaign system, improving and polishing the battle and campaign systems, adding attack/defense game mode, implementing huge optimization changes, overhauling cavalry, overhauling artillery, adding a ranked mode, improving ui/animations as well as sounds, and increasing our map count to 100! All of this will be done before we declare our game FINISHED.
I'll first start off by saying that we are aware of frustrating bugs with the new cosmetic system (namely, outfits being removed even after unlock) as well as the battle and campaign systems. We have two large updates remaining before F&M comes out of Early Access, and bug-fixing will be a major part of each update (especially our final update).
Besides that, we're also aware at the lack of content and unpolished content that is in the game. There are only a handful of scenario battles and they aren't very fun. The campaigns aren't very balanced and there is only one free Campaign with the game. There are also just 23 maps in the game, which is practically nothing when the game is trying to represent battles from America to France to Italy to Crimea. The battles are laggy, and cavalry and artillery aren't very fun to use. Oh, and the playerbase is small which only exacerbates the problems with the game's lack of singleplayer content... We have solutions to all of these issues.
Scenarios
The scenario battles currently featured in Fire & Maneuver include:
- Williamsburg (ACW DLC)
- Milazzo
- Malakoff
Scenarios can be a fun way to jump straight into a match on a historic battlefield and that's why we'll be expanding the scenario system.
You can see here that scenarios will now come in sets of three, allowing the player to play series of battles sequentially. The Expedition of the Thousand, Fall of an Empire, and Allied Incursion scenario packs all planned to be free, but the Western & Eastern Theaters, as well as the Blood & Iron and Empire of the Sun packs will be DLC. You may notice that the Blood & Iron pack is under a DLC called "Wars of Unification Pack." We are not actually creating a new DLC for this pack, but rather, adding it to an existing DLC (Franco-Prussian War Music Pack) and renaming that DLC to have more content in it. Currently, we are planning to create only one additional DLC for the launch of F&M which will be centered around the Boshin War in Japan and include two new factions. More information will be available about that early next year...
Finally, we included a few one-off scenario battles like Paris, Gettysburg, and Solferino, which we wanted to include as single scenarios.
Campaigns
I won't go into too much detail about the F&M Campaigns, you can read about the upcoming changes to campaigns in this post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1679290/view/3405310798875486932?l=english
The biggest change we're making is zooming further out geographically, to give players more of an open sandbox to wage a larger military campaign. Something I did not mention in my last post about campaigns is that we have been working on a GRAND CAMPAIGN MODE that spans Europe and Northern Africa. You can see the early sketch for how we plan on dividing provinces here:
Players will be able to assume control of all countries displayed on that map, including minor nations. We have enlisted the help of prominent community members in the F&M Discord to help us create over 100 new unit cards for all of these minor nations, and they're doing an excellent job. I am very gracious to have their help, they are "Badbrix," "Mauzer," "Ocean," and "That Belgian Guy." The unit cards were originally created by Nico Vico, an excellent artist- but there's no way he would be able to finish 100 new unit cards in time for our full release!
The last thing I'll say is that I do plan on adding some more tutorials about how the campaign works, but considering that we're reworking so much of how the campaigns work, I will be holding off until release day.
Battles
The next two updates will be centered around first reforming cavalry, and then reforming artillery. Our next update will be titled "The Ride of the Valkyries" and is set to release on December 8th. With it, there will be changes to every nations cavalry rosters, with the skirmishing and efficiency trait applied to many more cavalry units. This is because all cavalry units will receive new formations and so will finally have a use for efficiency. The skirmishing trait is also undergoing another rework which makes it more applicable to more cavalry units. Our goal with this update is to make light and heavy cavalry more distinct, and to make light cavalry, in particular, more predictable.
Our artillery update will also add in new formations, but we can't give out too much information on this just yet. We are also considering giving artillery a new "suppression" mechanic which will allow it to pin down enemy's cohesion from afar, making artillery bombardments far more useful.
Something I am very excited about are all the new maps coming to F&M. I (Griffin) have personally designed every map and will continue to do so until I reach 100 maps. If you're curious to see which maps I plan on making, you can take a look here.
This is just a preview here
Maps in red I plan on remastering.
Maps in green are already in the game.
Maps in purple are finished but aren't in the game just yet.
Maps in light grey I am in the middle of working on and will be in the next update.
Maps in dark grey (Boshin War) are maps that I can't work on yet until we've finished all of the environmental assets.
You may notice at the bottom of the image above that the Total Map Count has been brought up to 41 from the current 23 maps in game. My goal is to reach 50 total maps (more than doubling the map count) for our next update. And in the update after that, to hit 100.
It goes without saying that a lot of polish needs to be done on UI, sounds, and animations. We will be dedicating time to this in January or February, but will not be making many polishing improvements until the game is solid and all major bugs have been addressed.
Modes
Recently we just rolled out capture zones in Quick Match and we will be extending this mode to Ranked. Ranked mode is going to roll out either in the next update or the update after, and will come with a leaderboard!
In addition to that, we are adding a new Attack & Defense game mode to custom battles, which should be a lot of fun to play on in the historical battlefields (like Gettysburg). This can be used alongside our multi-day battle system, so players could theoretically fight a 3-day long attack & defense Gettysburg battle. There are some other quality of life features coming to battles that improve on the UI, but we'll speak more about them in the changelog for the next update. We are hoping to eventually make the Attack & Defense game mode the default for Campaign battles so that if an enemy army attacks your fort, you are actually dynamically defending the area.
Bugs & Optimization
There isn't too much to say about this besides that we are very aware of the bugs in F&M and are working very very hard to fix them. You will need to be patient however, as the bulk of the polishing and bugfixing will come with our final update early next year. That said, we are working on making sure any gamebreaking bugs are eradicated for the upcoming update. In the month of October, our small development team completed 79 new tasks (including features/bugs/polish, etc). In November, we've completed 153 (so far). We are working incredibly hard, around the clock, to polish Fire & Maneuver and release it as a fun and polished experience. We very much appreciate all of your support, and the recent positive reviews acknowledging the improvements we've made are very encouraging.
As far as optimization goes, it's always been our goal to get F&M to run on as many computers as possible. We would like to eventually get F&M on Mac & Linux, but there are no promises yet. As far as FPS drops go, we have implemented a new change to how our foliage sprites (tree/bushes) are rendered, and on our development build this has resulted in an FPS increase of anywhere between 10 and 30 frames. This should be a massive boost in performance for anyone playing on maps full of forests! Past that, we are looking into improving the way the unit sprites are rendered, but that will prove to be a harder challenge.
AI
AI is going to see some large changes, but mostly in the final F&M update. We are working now to allow players to finally change the difficulty of the AI, as well as edit its aggression levels. This will allow you to fine-tune the AI you're playing against to recreate historical scenarios in custom battles. It will also add variety in campaign battles, with different AI armies having different levels of aggression in battles. This will most likely be rolled out in our final update, but we'll see!
Playerbase
The player-base has been pretty low recently, but this hasn't discouraged us at all. All of the marketing money for F&M has yet to be spent and is going to be heavily pushed for our FULL RELEASE, when the game is finished, the way we intended for it to be played. To celebrate our Full Release, I will be regularly streaming F&M on my channel (The Armchair Historian) and setting up streams with other gaming youtubers. In addition to this, we'll begin regularly hosting tournaments and events again in our Discord: https://discord.gg/fireandmaneuver. Right now, I'd rather put 100% of our time into finishing the game instead of dividing it amongst hosting events and tournaments as well as development. We are currently all working full-time on F&M, the same amount of hours (if not more) as we did during the actual development.
This is all for now, I hope it's been informative!
Griffin
Update 1.3.3 "The Battle"
Update 1.3.3 is now live! This month continues to be focused on fixing bugs for your online matches. There are many new fixes along with one new map called Hill Towns, a Crimean rural landscape with many small hills. As the team marches towards the end of this month, you can definitely expect more quality of life features and fixes while we continue to polish Fire & Maneuver.
General:
-Depth of Field intensity has been lowered.
-"Hill Towns" map has been added to the game.
-Grasslands map has been renamed to Lille Brook.
Campaign:
-Fixed corps bug which crashed the game when destroyed.
-Fixed players getting stuck on the loading screen as they entered battles in the campaign.
Quality of Life:
-Fixed players being able to move to any slot which would crash the game.
-Interactive tutorial now launches with the game for the first time player.
-Interactive tutorials issue fixed when the player issues a command in the wrong order of the tutorial.
Battles:
-Fixed players not be able to play with A.I. when another player joins the lobby.
-Fixed objective zones not syncing across the network during an online match.
-Fixed preventing units that are bogged to be able to charge.
-Fixed cavalry charge not doing any damage to enemy units.
-Fixed units facing direction when they spawn into a map.
-Fixed units not standing over mountaintops.
-Fixed the back units in reserve with a cancelled order moving to the frontline.
-Fixed units in open order not being able to shoot when set to a diagonal rotation.
-Fixed units in square formation facing the wrong way.
-Units now able to swap between formations when in the same tile as another unit.
-Units now able to change direction when in the same tile as another unit.
-Gatling Gun and Mitrailleuse price has been increased by 40 points.
UI:
-Fixed animals of nations appearing large in the lobby screen.
-Fixed the text that says “Update JSON” when players unlock a new faction.
-Fixed the end turn hotkey not updating the envelope UI.
-The Kills-to-win setting is now locked when set to objective mode.
-Formation button updates when you select a unit.
-Country names now update based on the correct time period.
-Fire-At-Will icon is now being removed properly when a turn is completed.
Update 1.3.2 "The Battle"
Update 1.3.2 is now live! We are continuing to do hot fixes and adjustments as we prepare for update 1.4, which will be our next big update scheduled for the end of the month. For now, we have this smaller update which fixed a lot of bugs taking place during battles. We have also updated the rotation of the cosmetics, updated older maps, as well as some visual issues.
General
- Depth of Field intensity has been lowered.
- Training Feature has been reenabled and fixed from previous iterations.
- Grassland Arena map has been remastered.
- Hickory Hill map has been remastered.
AI
- 2v2 with 3 AI no longer getting stuck at loading screen.
Battles
- Depth of Field is no longer automatically enabled when starting a battle.
- Default Game Mode has been changed to objectives.
- Objective tickets is updated to 200 instead of 150.
- Disabled the ability to change artillery/cavalry formations.
- Units with less than 6 starting HP are no longer able to form square. This makes smaller units with the skirmishing perk more reliant on their ranged resistance from fire and more vulnerable to charges.
- AI no longer spawns with melee weapons.
- AI now has weapon limits.
- Fixed AI starting with the incorrect weapons.
- Fixed being able to select units with the field UI.
- Fixed cavalry teleportation bug
- Fixed free movement bug when cancelling an order in which your own units occupy the tile you were previously in.
Campaign
- Fixed cancelling and purchasing units bug.
UI
- Fixed the visuals in the lobby panel
- Fixed After-action report no longer displaying the opponent from the previous game.
- Fixed Field UI overlapping with the forest.
- Armory info button is now working.
- Beta warning window added when playing on Beta.
- Bear pants have been redrawn in the cosmetics page.
- Italy faction added in the cosmetics window.
- Options V-sync and anti aliasing has been fixed in the options menu.
Update 1.3.1 "The Battle"
Cosmetics are now live in 1.3.1 update! Using your merits earned in battle, you may now look through the shop and cycle through the current available options. These skins will be in a constant rotation between updates as we continue to allow every player to pick their favorite skin.
There have also been a few balance changes with the Ottomans receiving the breakable trait as well as the skirmish perk changing in value. Aside from balance, we have gone through a majority of your comments and concerns regarding bugs and have focused most of our time on removing the bugs listed in the log below.
As promised we have also added two new maps. Wissembourg and Bull Run (only available for the Civil War DLC). We are working hard on bringing you a variety of maps that offer unique playstyles so you can expect more to come.
Feature
-Cosmetics now available
-New map: Wissembourg, a historical 1v1 map on a French town on the river Lauter.
-New map: Bull Run, a (Civil War DLC) historical 1v1 map based on the first major battle of the American Civil War.
Quality of Life:
-AI no longer shows a negative amount of casualties when the player surrenders.
-Auto resolve pre calculation accounts for difficulty.
-Reduced recruitment time in the campaign from eight to six.
-Updated implementation of hotkeys.
-Added a warning box "Are you sure? You still have unused orders" popup for if a player ends their turn without using up all their orders."
-Updated the cancel button on cosmetics.
-Hidden the arrows on the learn tab.
-Added buttons for players to zoom in/out of the map.
-Overwhelm Data is now being used for wounded modifications.
-Optimized building objects.
-Quickmatch and unranked used symmetrical or tournament maps, while ranked uses symmetrical and tournament.
-Set map trees to use large sorting order.
-All sprites to use the same layering order.
-Quickmatch now uses 12 orders in late, 8 orders in early.
-Updated HQ spelling mistake in campaign.
Battles
-Attack column does +1 damage on charges.
-Units can no longer infinitely melee pursuits as long as adjacent.
-Damage applied evenly between reserve units.
-Fixed clashing system to halt units who clash (units no longer continue running through each other when they clash).
-“Breakable” has been given to Ottoman Lancers, Dragoons, Cuirassiers. As well as all Ottoman artillery.
-Changed Ottoman Mounted Rifles to receive Disorganized instead of Breakable.
-Cavalry Change
• 4 Cohesion to be worth 40 instead of 35.
• 5 Cohesion to be worth 70 instead of 65.
• Increased Skirmishing from 20 to 25.
-Hills automatically block LOS for units lower than them, so you can't shoot through them.
-Dynamic Zone count is now based on map size.
-Crimean War campaign overhauled. Completely new starting locations and starting forces. -Difficulty slider will now affect the game massively.
-Unit’s fire orders no longer go through when blocked by line of sight.
-If frontline dies immediately, your second fire order is no longer thrown out.
-Skirmishing removes flanking damage when shot.
-Right clicking on an empty tile in range of a unit will no longer flash.
-Tile no longer flickering when hovering over UI.
-Order canceling no longer cancels all orders from that unit.
-Unit with efficiency is set to the correct formation when order is canceled.
-Dragging order list no longer resets or shows pop out page.
-Changed cinematic mode controls to control+c.
-Canceling an order no longer reverts the unit in the wrong direction.
-Adding an AI and faction changing no longer crashes the game.
-Added new hill models in river path.
-AI artillery can no longer fire from reserve after moving.
-Maps have roads replaced with the new decal road system.
-Able to modify the correct AI composition.
-AI check added to ensure units dying properly (especially when it charges while being shot and killed simultaneous)
-Skirmish Perk now set to 20 instead of 25.
-When a player selects “Medium” unit size, it no longer adds in British infantry sprites.
Fixes:
-River path now has collision on hills
-Fixed crash when winning a custom battle, going to the main menu, and playing any scenario.
-Out Of Sync Retreating Post Battle.
-Fixed auto resolve in campaign causing an overflow.
-Fixed losing units when winning a battle in the campaign.
-AI now orders new corps from their army screen.
-Unit count settings.
-Damage desyncs in which the client sees something dead but the host sees it alive or vice versa.
-Fixed tutorial bug crashing the game when firing before the task.
-Fixed machine guns being able to move and go on fire at will.
-Fixed reserve/frontline being able to swap in deployment phase.
-Units no longer face diagonal when in melee pursuit.
-Unit’s fire orders no longer go through when die during the turn.
-Cavalry & Artillery can no longer access Formations when using hotkeys.
-Reinforcement Corps in the Campaign are now being assigned correct weapons.
-Fight button now works against AI in the campaign.
-Fatal error when loading in campaign battle.
-When you drag new division icon with a unit being moved now creates a new division.
UI
-Italian bottom cosmetic skins updated.
-Replace campaign background images.
-Merit count has been added to the shop.
-Fix the Animal Stand Rooster/Turkey.
-Sound effects added to After Action Report
-Sounds effects added to the shop menu.
-Option buttons can now be clicked on in battles.
-Post-Processing update based on three features.
-Unit info tab working on the nation's tab so players can read about the units in a nation's roster before they purchase them.
-Customize enemy forces button is disabled when leaving a lobby.
-Empty slot in the nations loadout has been updated to reflect the animal itself instead of an empty box.
-Fixed unit info tab showing units from different nations.
-Renamed animation speed settings to “Slow,” “Normal,” “Instant.”
-Cosmetics now appear after being recently bought.
-Post-Processing is now being refreshed when turning off features.
-Ready up now clears itself after exiting and rejoining the room.
-New tooltips for hard cover/soft cover/attrition/bogged Down/speed boost.
Known Issues:
-If you fire into a melee, you only damage the enemy.
-Open order diagonal is not working as intended.
-FAW icon not being cleared after the turn ends.
-Invisible units fighting in melee.
-Units not appearing visually damaged when spawning into campaign.
-Ready system in the lobby.
-Free movement with units based on their order.
-Lag issues while firing.
-Reserve unit movements points not reduced to the same as the front line during movement.
Next Up:
As we progress through the development, we are always achieving new ways to optimize Fire & Maneuver. There were many optimized systems added such as the new quality settings but our continued goal is to find effective ways to make the game playable on many devices. As always, we will continue listening to all the feedback from the steam, youtube, discord and online community to improve your experience.
Update 1.3.1 "The Battle"
Cosmetics are now live in 1.3.1 update! Using your merits earned in battle, you may now look through the shop and cycle through the current available options. These skins will be in a constant rotation between updates as we continue to allow every player to pick their favorite skin.
There have also been a few balance changes with the Ottomans receiving the breakable trait as well as the skirmish perk changing in value. Aside from balance, we have gone through a majority of your comments and concerns regarding bugs and have focused most of our time on removing the bugs listed in the log below.
As promised we have also added two new maps. Wissembourg and Bull Run (only available for the Civil War DLC). We are working hard on bringing you a variety of maps that offer unique playstyles so you can expect more to come.
Feature
-Cosmetics now available
-New map: Wissembourg, a historical 1v1 map on a French town on the river Lauter.
-New map: Bull Run, a (Civil War DLC) historical 1v1 map based on the first major battle of the American Civil War.
Quality of Life:
-AI no longer shows a negative amount of casualties when the player surrenders.
-Auto resolve pre calculation accounts for difficulty.
-Reduced recruitment time in the campaign from eight to six.
-Updated implementation of hotkeys.
-Added a warning box "Are you sure? You still have unused orders" popup for if a player ends their turn without using up all their orders."
-Updated the cancel button on cosmetics.
-Hidden the arrows on the learn tab.
-Added buttons for players to zoom in/out of the map.
-Overwhelm Data is now being used for wounded modifications.
-Optimized building objects.
-Quickmatch and unranked used symmetrical or tournament maps, while ranked uses symmetrical and tournament.
-Set map trees to use large sorting order.
-All sprites to use the same layering order.
-Quickmatch now uses 12 orders in late, 8 orders in early.
-Updated HQ spelling mistake in campaign.
Battles
-Attack column does +1 damage on charges.
-Units can no longer infinitely melee pursuits as long as adjacent.
-Damage applied evenly between reserve units.
-Fixed clashing system to halt units who clash (units no longer continue running through each other when they clash).
-“Breakable” has been given to Ottoman Lancers, Dragoons, Cuirassiers. As well as all Ottoman artillery.
-Changed Ottoman Mounted Rifles to receive Disorganized instead of Breakable.
-Cavalry Change
• 4 Cohesion to be worth 40 instead of 35.
• 5 Cohesion to be worth 70 instead of 65.
• Increased Skirmishing from 20 to 25.
-Hills automatically block LOS for units lower than them, so you can't shoot through them.
-Dynamic Zone count is now based on map size.
-Crimean War campaign overhauled. Completely new starting locations and starting forces. -Difficulty slider will now affect the game massively.
-Unit’s fire orders no longer go through when blocked by line of sight.
-If frontline dies immediately, your second fire order is no longer thrown out.
-Skirmishing removes flanking damage when shot.
-Right clicking on an empty tile in range of a unit will no longer flash.
-Tile no longer flickering when hovering over UI.
-Order canceling no longer cancels all orders from that unit.
-Unit with efficiency is set to the correct formation when order is canceled.
-Dragging order list no longer resets or shows pop out page.
-Changed cinematic mode controls to control+c.
-Canceling an order no longer reverts the unit in the wrong direction.
-Adding an AI and faction changing no longer crashes the game.
-Added new hill models in river path.
-AI artillery can no longer fire from reserve after moving.
-Maps have roads replaced with the new decal road system.
-Able to modify the correct AI composition.
-AI check added to ensure units dying properly (especially when it charges while being shot and killed simultaneous)
-Skirmish Perk now set to 20 instead of 25.
-When a player selects “Medium” unit size, it no longer adds in British infantry sprites.
Fixes:
-River path now has collision on hills
-Fixed crash when winning a custom battle, going to the main menu, and playing any scenario.
-Out Of Sync Retreating Post Battle.
-Fixed auto resolve in campaign causing an overflow.
-Fixed losing units when winning a battle in the campaign.
-AI now orders new corps from their army screen.
-Unit count settings.
-Damage desyncs in which the client sees something dead but the host sees it alive or vice versa.
-Fixed tutorial bug crashing the game when firing before the task.
-Fixed machine guns being able to move and go on fire at will.
-Fixed reserve/frontline being able to swap in deployment phase.
-Units no longer face diagonal when in melee pursuit.
-Unit’s fire orders no longer go through when die during the turn.
-Cavalry & Artillery can no longer access Formations when using hotkeys.
-Reinforcement Corps in the Campaign are now being assigned correct weapons.
-Fight button now works against AI in the campaign.
-Fatal error when loading in campaign battle.
-When you drag new division icon with a unit being moved now creates a new division.
UI
-Italian bottom cosmetic skins updated.
-Replace campaign background images.
-Merit count has been added to the shop.
-Fix the Animal Stand Rooster/Turkey.
-Sound effects added to After Action Report
-Sounds effects added to the shop menu.
-Option buttons can now be clicked on in battles.
-Post-Processing update based on three features.
-Unit info tab working on the nation's tab so players can read about the units in a nation's roster before they purchase them.
-Customize enemy forces button is disabled when leaving a lobby.
-Empty slot in the nations loadout has been updated to reflect the animal itself instead of an empty box.
-Fixed unit info tab showing units from different nations.
-Renamed animation speed settings to “Slow,” “Normal,” “Instant.”
-Cosmetics now appear after being recently bought.
-Post-Processing is now being refreshed when turning off features.
-Ready up now clears itself after exiting and rejoining the room.
-New tooltips for hard cover/soft cover/attrition/bogged Down/speed boost.
Known Issues:
-If you fire into a melee, you only damage the enemy.
-Open order diagonal is not working as intended.
-FAW icon not being cleared after the turn ends.
-Invisible units fighting in melee.
-Units not appearing visually damaged when spawning into campaign.
-Ready system in the lobby.
-Free movement with units based on their order.
-Lag issues while firing.
-Reserve unit movements points not reduced to the same as the front line during movement.
Next Up:
As we progress through the development, we are always achieving new ways to optimize Fire & Maneuver. There were many optimized systems added such as the new quality settings but our continued goal is to find effective ways to make the game playable on many devices. As always, we will continue listening to all the feedback from the steam, youtube, discord and online community to improve your experience.
Overhauling The Campaigns
We are about to drop a large patch at the end of this week which is going to include a lot of bug fixes, a new form of progression, and some updates to the Crimean War campaign. And now I'd to take some time to discuss what our plans our for F&M's campaign mode and the lessons we've learned since we released into Early Access in July.
The current campaigns included in F&M are the Crimean War Campaign, the Peninsula Campaign in the American Civil War Expansion, as well as the Overland Campaign which is also part of the American Civil War Expansion. In my opinions, all three of these campaigns have a rather poor design, and bugs as well as a lack of tutorials have hampered any kind of fun that can be had on those campaigns. So, we are taking a new approach.
Before the end of the year, we plan on deleting the Peninsula Campaign and Overland Campaign. We then plan on adding a large "Eastern Theater" Civil War campaign as well as a "Western Theater" Civil War campaign, which will both be playable on multiplayer. We will keep the Crimean Campaign but it is being reworked and will function as more of a short introductory campaign. Our new goal when approaching the design for F&M's campaigns is to make them more of a sandbox in large recognizable locations. The current campaigns provide players with many large cumbersome armies and little opportunity to customize and build your own forces that match your particular play style. We want to start the player with less, but more funds/manpower so they can customize their forces from scratch. Furthermore, we are deleting the two Civil War campaigns because the area they focus on is too small, and we'd rather have larger open-ended campaigns for players to take in their own direction. Below you can see a size comparison of the Peninsula Campaign (in the red box) overlaid within its actual location on our giant new Eastern Theater campaign map.
This is will be a free update for all owners of the American Civil War Expansion.
We also soon plan on adding large sandbox style campaigns for the Franco-Prussian War as well as the Austro-Prussian War for owners of the "European Empires" Pack.
Finally, all free-to-play users will get a sandbox campaign expansion for the Crimean War: the Caucasus Front, fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. Here is a preview of the Caucasus Campaign relative to the Crimean War campaign (which has been downsized in the top right corner)
To reiterate, the Caucasus Campaign and Crimean Peninsula Campaign will both be free-to-play for all users. The Eastern and Western Theater Campaigns will be free updates for owners of the American Civil War Expansion. And, the Franco-Prussian War and Austro-Prussian War Campaigns will be free updates for owners of the European Empires Pack.
In addition to more open-ended sandbox campaign experiences, we will continue polishing the campaign system to be more stable and engaging. Once we start rolling out these larger campaigns, we are going to also release a tutorial series to go along with them.
That's it for now, I just wanted to share something we're working on!
Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!
Griff
October Week Long Sale
All of our DLC is on sale including:
Prussian and French Music pack will be 66% off ($3 $1 USD)
Comes with Yorkscher Marsch, Koniggratzer Marsch, Duppeler Schanzen Marsch, Vouz n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine, Le Boudin, and Marche Lorraine.
Steam Link
American Civil War will be 35% off ($15 $9.75 USD)
Comes with new maps, 2 new campaigns, 2 new factions, 8 civil war marching songs Steam Link
**European Empires Starter Pack will be 35% off ($15 $9.75 USD)
Comes with all base game factions. This will save you merits that you would have spent on factions so you can spend those merits on buying cosmetics that will be released early this week!
Steam Link
You can get all the DLC for $20.50 $14.35
Or purchasing the "F&M Standard Edition Bundle" which is also currently on sale includes ALL DLC and is currently priced at $14.35
This sale will last from Oct 3rd to Oct 10th.
If you also missed the info on our latest patch, check out last blog post going over all the details for "The Battle"
Update 1.3 "The Battle"
It's been a while since our last update and I'm really excited to share all these new features and fixes with you! The cosmetic system is on the way and will most likely be arriving on Monday or Tuesday, so consider that part of this update. We will not add microtransactions as a form to purchase these cosmetics for another few weeks, but even when we do, all cosmetics will be earnable with Merits without needing to spend any money at all.
Since so much focus has been placed on stabilizing the F&M battle system in this update, we have thematically called version 1.3 "The Battle." We've been naming updates after famous 19th century orchestral pieces and so this one is named after Tchaikovsky's piece in Act I of the Nutcracker.
There have been some major mechanical and balance changes which should make defensive strategies less overpowered and that make melee a more viable strategy again. Read about these changes specifically under the "Quality of Life & Mechanical Changes" section. We wanted to add more maps in this update but we spent all of our time making bugfixes and balance changes. Next update, you can expect to see some new maps! 😊
Note, we plan on doing a big sale for all of our DLCs on Monday!
Balance:
- Units with the breakable trait no longer die when their path is blocked. They also don't automatically fall back a tile when their cohesion is 0. Instead, they take 1 point of HP damage for every turn they have 0 cohesion. This makes them far more viable.
- Charge vulnerability has been changed to +1 instead of +2, making melees less extreme.
- Range vulnerability has been changed backed to +1 instead of +2, making march columns, attack columns, squares, and cavalry more resistant.
- Melee drill now deals one damage at the end of each turn in melee instead of reducing charge impact damage by one.
- Melee drill cost penalty is now 30 points instead of 20.
- Units with 4 HP are now 10 points cheaper.
- Italian Grenadiers now have the rugged trait.
- Italian Militia now have the rugged trait.
- Italian Bersaglieri now have efficiency instead of rugged.
- Max unit count in games changed to 24.
- Confederate Stonewall brigade now has melee drill.
- Bavarian Line Infantry is limited to 6 for the Prussians instead of 4.
- Horse Artillery now costs an additional 20 points for all countries.
- Breakable trait now reduces a unit's price by 15 points instead of 20.
- Removed maps Monte Villa, as it was unpopular.
- Removed map "Heights" as it was unstable.
- Removed map "La Moncelle" as it was poorly designed.
- Auto resolving now considers the weapons you have equipped.
Fixes:
- Fire at will is now removed when a unit changes into marching column (a non-combat formation)
- Leaving a melee or entering a reserve no longer causes a rubberbanding effect where the unit snaps back to his original position and then corrects itself onto the new tile.
- Attrition now applies to units who have 0 cohesion and move even when they aren't bordering an enemy unit.
- The client's turn timer now is fully in-sync with the host.
- Issues with vulnerabilities have been fixed, no longer will you charge into an open order formation and take full frontal damage.
- Units with the cumbersome trait can no longer utilize fire-at-will when they move.
- Visual issue where sprites would face backwards after winning a melee has been fixed.
- If your army goes into a campaign battle and takes losses, the game will no longer count those casualties against you in every subsequent battle. Previously, your losses would compound and the casualty reports would include any losses you took in previous battles which would continuously stack casualties.
- Cinematic mode has been improved and no longer can glitch your unit's UI.
- Reserve units should no longer be able to have their fire orders go through.
- Units shouldn't change direction when charging now.
- Fixed an AI glitch where if an AI had an order to charge you, you wouldn't be able to shoot it.
- AI would sometimes detach itself from tiles and break which is now fixed.
- Broken buildings would not update with the correct broken/scratched model.
- Percentage kills at the top of the screen has been fixed and now displays properly.
- Players are no longer loaded into a scenario battle instead of the tutorial.
- The ordering system has been improved, you will no longer have orders that float off your page and execute incorrectly, or orders that linger from previous turns.
- This entire time the German DLC music has been unplugged and instead been playing French marching music. So now, if you own the Franco-Prussian War DLC Music pack, you can finally hear all the famous German marching songs!
- Some fixed have been made to cancelling orders, which often results in the wrong positioning for the units who were reverted.
- Fixed crashing that would result from range calculations on hills breaking the game.
- Austrian Dragoons would spawn in with breech-loaders instead of their sabers, which has been fixed.
- You can now quit the tutorial at any time.
- Fixed tutorial bugs that would freeze the game.
- Cavalry & Artillery can no longer change formation.
- Formations would sometimes appear as greyed out completely requiring you to unselect your unit and reselect him several times to fix.
- Fixed artillery being able to launch charges.
- Fixes for players getting stuck on the loading screen into custom battles and quickmatches.
- Supply map mode fixes in campaign.
- Fixes for save game files in the campaign mode.
- Fixed the AI from repeatedly attacking the same area over and over in a loop in the campaign.
- Quickmatch stability fixes.
Melee Rework:
- Melees no longer change direction when additional units join a melee fight, instead they just fall back into reserve which makes melees more stable.
- Lots of melee-related bugs have been fixed, including game-breaking ones.
- Players can no longer order retreats THROUGH an enemy unit, now you must retreat backward out of melees.
- Units with fire orders can no longer use those fire orders if they are engaged in a melee. Same with fire-at-will.
- Order preview fixes when it comes to charging (previously showed the wrong angle a unit would be charged in the ordering phase).
- When the defender of a melee charges in an extra unit he won't charge himself anymore, that damage will go to the enemy.
- The new simultaneous turn changes (read more under Quality of Life) now results in a new mechanic called "Clashes" happening when two units accidentally move to the same tile at the same time. Both units will take frontal charge damage.
Quality of Life & Mechanical Changes:
- The game is now FULLY simultaneous. This means the host will no longer receive an advantage when two units are given fire or charge orders at the same time. Previously, two units told to charge each other at the same time would result in only the host's order going through. Furthermore, if two units were told to occupy a tile at the same time, the host would always get their first, but now both units will enter the tile in an accidental melee brawl.
- Enemy units can no longer block your fire orders by moving an untargeted unit in front of your men. If an enemy is blocking your target, the fire order will still go through but it will apply to the new enemy unit that is in range.
- Fire-at-will has been redone. Instead of being able to leave fire-at-will on for as many turns as you want and getting as many hits with it as is possible, it now expires at the end of every turn. This means you can no longer rely on setting your army on fire-at-will and not engaging the enemy actively. Fire-at-will can also now be broken by artillery barrages.
- An error sound and popup now appears when you run out of orders for the turn.
- Formation button should update to whatever formation your unit is currently in.
- Prices now calculate properly when buying AND trading weapons in the armory system.
- All terrain bonuses and penalties now update in real time instead of receiving a bonus at the end of the turn. This means the moment you occupy cover, you will receive the protection.
- Player names are now displayed in the lobby.
- Health bars over buildings now always display even when they're occupied.
- Multi-page order system has been made into one long order which you scroll through. It makes it clearer to navigate when you have a lot of orders. This also opens up the opportunity for us to make order counts limitless instead of having 16 at a cap (since that's all that 2 pages could hold).
- A new after action report has been added which tells you about your battle!
- You can now edit the AI's composition for their army!
- The AI has seen massive overall improvements.
- A notice will appear when you've played the maximum battles that you're allowed to against AI to gain merits for the day.
- Tapping right click on an enemy unit counts as a fire order, holding right click counts as a charge order.
- Right clicking units always reveals their range.
- Shift + left clicking a unit marks them.
- Shift + right clicking a unit opens their info tab.
- NEW controls menu added so you can rebind all controls in battles.
- The new tooltip system has been expanded into the custom battle lobby.
- AI now recovers more wounded men after battles on harder difficulties.
- New formation hotkeys, change formations easily by using 1,2,3,4,5.
Content:
- New multiplayer campaign system added. WARNING: I do not recommend playing it right now as some game-breaking bugs were discovered which don't let players progress past their second battle. We are going to patch this out immediately and get multiplayer campaigns working again very soon.
- New multi-day battle system has been added which allows you to adjust the starting time of day, amount of days that can be fought across, and the speed of the day/night cycle. Players will now need to redeploy their forces for the next days of battle, with an animation to go along with each evening.
- New "Getting Started" video tutorial added.
- New "Choosing your Nation" video tutorial added.
- New "Formations Overview" video tutorial added.
- New "Utilizing Terrain" video tutorial added.
- New "Intro to Combat" video tutorial added.
- A tab for Steam guides has been added in the "learn" tab.
- New song "Blue Danube" by Johann Straus II added as a generic battle track.
- New song "The Battle" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky added as a generic battle track.
- New historical map "Saarbrucken" added which is also in the Quickmatch pool.
Graphics & Optimization:
- The bloom effect no longer effects roads, so they no longer glow.
- Turning off post-processing settings no longer makes the game oversaturated, it's now perfectly viable to play without post-processing and you could gain an extra 10 fps.
- The game has seen a massive optimization update with some players reporting they've gained anywhere from 10-20 fps. We are still working on improving larges-scale battles though which still result in a lot of lag. One option we're considering is reducing the sprite count in 2v2s.
- Animal nation flags as well as the flag UI in-game now shows the correct flag depending on the time period you're playing in. No more German Empire flag shown in scenarios taking place in the 1850s or early 1860s.
The following flags were affected (listed in the early period --> late period)
Prussia --> North German Confederation
Austria --> Austria-Hungary
USA --> USA (more stars)
CSA --> CSA (new design)
Russia --> Russia (new design)
- A new minimap UI has been added in-game with a day tracker.
- UI at the top of the screen has been improved.
- UI has been redone in battle to appear clearer and players can move their cameras closer to units to see the UI up close. Resolution of all trait icons have been reuploaded in HD.
- Melee-only trait now appears as an icon under sabres in the armory.
- Unit card fixes, some were holding the wrong model rifle.
- Fire-at-will has a special activation and deactivation animation.
- Credits added to the main menu.
- New Civil War loading screen added.
- The main menu map has been completely redesigned.
Known Issues:
- Units can charge an enemy that more tiles away than that unit has movement points.
- Units can bypass bogged down tiles through exploits using efficiency.
- Fire-at-wills can sometimes cause lagspikes.
- Multiplayer campaign system not stable.
- Units are spawning with the wrong weapons in the campaign system.
- If you play a battle, and then try loading into a scenario, your game will freeze.
- Attack column still isn't doing +1 on charges.
- When melee drill is in the reserve it's not doing +1 at the end of each turn in melee.
- Units with a lot of movement speed that move through each other's path now clash but then immediately walk through each other.
- Fire-at-will icon sometimes lingers on the screen even after deactivation.
- Sometimes the client and host see units with differing HP's when they fight in melee.
- Crimean Campaign is missing flags (will fix asap)
- There are some menu issues when you back out of certain menus repeatedly.
Next Up:
In addition to addressing bugs and the "Known Issues" list, our next focus will be adding a ranked mode and quickly getting cosmetics working. Next, we want to allow cavalry to dismount and change formations. After that, we will be making massive changes to the animations of units and the sound effects in-game which haven't received much work at all. We also want to add more maps and overhaul the scenario system. Lastly, we will be giving away a free campaign for the Caucasus in the Crimean War and we will be redoing the two Civil War campaigns to be more zoomed out areas, which will be free for all Civil War DLC owners. We also want to flesh out the Union and Confederate rosters with more units being added to those nations, as well as one new unit coming to the Italian faction. We also want to give players the ability to target specific tiles.
Update 1.2 "Blue Danube"
I'm excited to bring you our second major update for Fire & Maneuver. We've made some substantial changes that impact melee mechanics, fire-at-will, the tutorial/tooltip system, and several other aspects as well. We mentioned a few weeks ago adding in the new cosmetic system and progression for the animal avatars, but instead of introducing in-game monetization we wanted to focus on fixing bugs and stabilizing the game first.
Finally, instead of calling our updates titles like "General Improvements" we're going to name each update after a famous 19th century orchestral piece and in some extra music each month to go along with it; update 1.2 is titled "Blue Danube" because many of the changes we made incidentally affect the Austrian faction.
We plan on releasing one more update toward the end of this month which will hopefully add in cosmetics and fix more bugs.
Balance
- Cavalry prices increased by 25 points.
In this update cavalry is getting a large nerf so their cost has gone down slightly to reflect that.
- The Cumbersome trait now decreases a unit's price by 40 points instead of 10. We wanted to make field artillery more viable, especially light artillery.
- 3 range units are 45 points cheaper.
- 4 range units are 25 points cheaper.
- 5 range units are 5 points cheaper.
- The "range vulnerable" debuff which is applies to all cavalry and the infantry march column formation now gives a +2 penalty instead of a +1 penalty when being shot. Attack columns are now also range vulnerable. This means playstyles that rely on rushing are going to be harder to pull off.
- Units on hills can now fire over obstacles making non-indirect fire units more useful.
- Dismantling supply caches in the campaign now gives 33% of your cash back.
- Units with the "breakable" trait will no longer be able to receive orders until they can regain cohesion. This state of continuously retreating and not being able to be ordered is called a "rout."
- You can now hurt units in hard cover if you shoot at their flanks or use the "range drill" perk. Otherwise, you will need to blow up their cover with artillery before moving in.
- Square formation can no longer receive flanking penalties, this has been something the community has been asking for for a while.
- Artillery's "charge" button has been disabled.
CSA
- Sharps Rifle has been removed from the "early era" for the Confederate faction.
USA
- Zouaves from 0 to 6 limit
Italy
- Added Fusil M1866 rifle with a 2 limit
- Bersaglieri from 0 to 4 limit
- Carabinieri from 0 to 4 limit
Ottomans
- Added Fusil M1866 rifle with a 2 limit
- Egyptian Line Infantry from 0 to 6 limit
- Zouaves from 0 to 4 limit
Russia
- Added Berdan M1868 rifle with a 2 limit
Britain
- Added Martini Henry rifle with a 2 limit
- Highlanders from 4 to 6 limit
- Dragoon Guards from 0 to 4 Limit
Prussia
- 2 limit on the Werder rifle
- Bavarians from 0 to 6 limit
France
- Zouaves from 0 to 6 limit
- Voltigeurs from 0 to 2 limit
Austria
- Austrian Line Infantry to lose "melee drill." We felt like last update we overcorrected the Austrian melee-focused playstyle. We kept the Hoch & Deutsch as a strong melee unit, but made the regular infantry more vanilla. We wanted the difference between Hungarian & German infantry to be more distinct.
- Saxon from 4 to 6 limit
- Bavarians from 0 to 6 limit
- Grenzers from 0 to 6 limit
- Austrian Kaiser Jaegers get range drill instead of efficiency. Because the Hoch & Deutsch are now a melee-focused unit, the Austrians did not have any range options.
Fixes
Fire at Will
This mechanic has been completely overhauled. It has a new visual display over units and will fire reliably at enemies crossing its path.
- Fire at will will no longer be able to trigger when a unit is engaged in melee.
- If an artillery unit with the cumbersome trait moves then its "fire at will" stance will not be able to activate that turn.
- Units in march column (who can't shoot) can no longer use fire at will.
Melee
- If a third unit joins a melee, that unit will no longer alter the direction of the melee; instead, it'll fall into the reserve line of its ally.
- Charging into a melee will no longer damage friendly units.
- Withdrawing from a melee is more reliable, you can now withdraw diagonally if you were charged at an angle and the bug where units could only retreat forward through an enemy instead of backward has also been fixed.
- Withdrawing from a melee and cancelling the order no longer flips the units who were in melee.
- Ordering a charge and cancelling the charge order no longer breaks the orientation of the unit who was going to charge.
- Infinite melee-pursuits are fixed. If a unit tries to charge and an enemy withdraws out of the charging unit's range, the charge won't go through. For example, light cavalry can no longer charge across 4 tiles (past its total movement cap) to complete a charge.
- Units can no longer bypass the bogged down terrain by moving into a forest and then charging through it.
- Units who have orders to charge will no longer go through with that order if they get charged first during the turn.
- Units with the "breakable" trait will now retreat from melees when their cohesion hits 0.
Miscellaneous
- Damage desyncs have been fixed. In some games two players would see different amounts of damage on the same unit.
- Attrition was not applying to units who didn't border an enemy unit, this has been fixed. Now, as long as you have 0 cohesion and move you will always take attrition (unless you have the skirmishing trait).
- Added some stability to 2v2s, players who experienced freezes should have smoother games. Let us know if you detect any further issues.
- Playing a battle and then jumping into the tutorial would previously get stuck on the loading screen which has been fixed.
- When a unit with the "breakable" trait routed it would cause the game to lag, which has been fixed.
- A bug where players would select an "age of rifles" breech-loader, then go into an "age of glory" lobby and then left click to drop it in has been fixed.
- Infinite loading screen in campaigns is fixed.
- In campaign units with 0 strength will no longer be able to enter battles.
- In 2v2s sometimes your orders from previous turns would show up on your order page and couldn't be gotten rid of. I believe we fixed this, but if we didn't let us know.
- Arrows on the game board no longer linger from previous turns, they are cleared consistently at the end of every turn.
- Players are no longer able to charge their teamates in 2v2s.
- When players leave lobbies their names will now get cleared instead of lingering.
- The Hard & Soft Cover system has been remade and is far more robust. Shooting/charging into cover now deals the correct amount of damage.
- The locks over countries were backwards and natitutons would appear as locked while they were unlocked, this is fixed.
- The little orange/blue pips on a unit card now clear when a unit is dead.
- Bugs relating to equipping cavalry carbines are now fixed.
- 2v2 maps no longer show up under the 1v1 section, but they are still playable in a 1v1.
- Changing resolution would revert when hitting apply, this has been fixed.
- Turning off shadows on graphics option now works.
- Depth of field now works.
- Crimean War campaign gave the wrong popup.
- Bug relating to occupying enemy HQs in the campaign fixed.
- Corps splitting exploit fixed, now creating now corps cost money and you lose movement points.
- Bug where players who played quick matches can't play custom matches until they restart their game fixed.
- Empty "zombie regiments" in the campaign are now disbanded.
- In quick match some players got the "early era" and some got "late era" in the same lobby, this has been fixed.
- Math corrected for high influence modifier in the campaign. High influence now grants 1,250 manpower per turn instead of 250.
- Training match now chooses between several maps instead of always playing on the same one.
- Players who do not own the Franco-Prussian War music DLC will not be able to hear the bonus music.
- Training matches now choose between early and late instead of the "All" era.
- The quick match lobby timer ticks instead of being frozen.
- Level display in lobbies is fixed.
- Late period CSA cavalry now have the correct default weapons.
- Cover has been added to the frontier map's forests and villages.
Quality of Life
- Changing formation will now give you a preview just like moving to a new tile does during the ordering phase. We plan on making the preview system better when in the ordering phase so that players can see a "ghost unit" of where their unit was and where they intend on moving to, that'll be for a future update.
- An info panel has been added to the armory if players are confused on how to equip weapons.
- A brand new interactive tutorial system has been added to the game. Players are no longer forced to play through it, but may revisit it under the "learn" tab.
- A brand new set of over 65 nested tooltips have been added to battles. Every mechanic of battles are explained through the nested tooltips.
- New 1v1 map "Monte Villa"
- New 1v1 map "Twin Creeks"
- New 2v2 map "Alpine Foothills"
- New 2v2 map "Magenta"
- New scenario system. This sytem still needs a lot of work, but you can now jump into historical scenarios on the world map, they include:
- Malakoff, Crimea
- Milazzo, Sicily
- La Moncelle, France
- Williamsburg, Virginia (DLC-required)
- Players can now right click on a unit's UI to assign it a number. This is good if you want to keep track of certain friendly or enemy units.
- Arrow movement preview is turned off when the mouse hovers over UI.
- Envelope in the bottom right now tells you how many other players ended their turns, especially useful in 2v2s.
Content
- A new objective-based game mode has been added for custom matches. If you guys like it, we can make it the standard way to play quick-matches. We buffed artillery a lot in this update, but we also don't want to see people sitting in corners with their artillery. An objective-based game mode in quick matches could help remedy corner camping. Let us know!
- Added an "All time periods" custom match option.
- Dynamic time of day has been added!
- Multi-day battle system has been added. If you play long enough it will become night time and you will need to redeploy your men for the next morning of battle! In the next update we will add some UI to make this feature clearer, and we will add a game option to turn this off if you don't like it.
- In the Campaign the AI is smarter and can now buy its own troops to rebuild armies!
- Several new maps added to the quick match pool so you aren't playing on "River Path" all the time...
Graphics & Optimization
- Playing with post-processing turned off no longer looks super oversaturated.
- Graphics menu UI updated.
- Players can now customize the music they want to hear under the audio tab.
- Animals/flags on the "Nations" tab are much higher resolution.
- Every nation now has a unique background in the "nations" tab.
- The game border is now lifted up slightly so that farmland that extended off the map is covered up.
- Brand new tooltip graphics (read more under quality of life)
- Brand new battle UI, a new chat system, and kills-to-win bars. A mini-map will be added soon.
- More sound effects/polish on buttons that previously felt dull.
- Buying weapons/troops under the army builder is more intuitive, buttons are clearer.
- The unit info tab has been moved to the top left of the screen.
- When you unlock a faction, the nation's victory theme will play.
- Selecting a unit now has a unique voice line associated with it. We will continue adding in more voice lines each update!
- Buildings weren't generating fire/smoke when destroyed, this has been readded.
- New loading screens have been added to startup and when going into battles/campaigns.
- New quotes have been added for loading screens.
- The "Delta" map had floating trees and a missing hill mesh fixed.
- Units hold their rifles better in the campaign unit cards.
- The text "Attack" has been changed to "Fight" when an enemy attacked you in campaign.
- The flags the animals held in 2v2s no longer layer improperly.
- Bloom reduced on the main menu map.
- Icons for the French carbines, Russian M1856 Rifle, Ottoman Enfield rifle, and the Italian weapons in the armory have had their icons corrected.
- Did a little work to optimization but not much this update. Next update we are updating our project and cleaning up files, and optimizing how sprites are loaded.
Known Issues
- Spawning on Antietam puts your camera at the wrong area and spawns troops backwards. Will fix asap.
- New tooltips can be a bit buggy and not very smooth when appearing on screen.
- Hotkeys still need to be fixed.
- Players can't add more than 1 AI in a match.
- Ready button UI needs to be changed.
- Units crossing bridges look ugly when not in column as they spill into the water, will fix.
- Players aren't able to put cosmetics on their animal avatars.
- Sprites sometimes face the wrong direction after finishing a melee
- Animations suck and need to be worked on for sprites.
- Players have a lot of merits but nothing to spend them on, especially players who spent $18 on the "European Empires" pack. They will soon be able to spend these merits on cosmetics and more things in the future...