As work continues on update 4 there are still opportunities to release content for Update 3.
COMBAT REPORT
The first new feature is the combat report. When combat is over you will be given a pop-up report that allows you to review the activity of each character and see how they performed compared to the others. This feature will feed into a new feature coming in Update 4. (See below)
Attack Quickkeys
The community has requested the ability to press a key to set attacks. The keys QWERT have been linked to the various attack types, allowing for a quicker allocation of attacks.
Era 9 Housing (Modern housing)
This is one of 3 buildings that were missing from the original build. The modern building rewards those who live their with extra status and health and is ideal for the core characters that are going to face down the end battles in era 10.
Era9 Roads
The final upgrade to the road system and increase in supply speed. Now your settlements can look like they belong in era9.
Era9 Warehouse
The last of the 3 missing buildings is the logistics centre. This will finish off the look of your settlement and add a little more storage room.
UPDATE 4
The work continues and you may be wondering when you will get your hands on the new content, as well as what kind of new content will be coming free in the next update.
Legendary Skills and Feats: These skills and feats are extremely powerful and will be sought after by all of your characters. However each character may only even have one of these, making it useful for less used characters to be played so they can obtain them.
Wondrous Buildings: Special buildings that get built from their own interface. 2 Buildings will be released as part of update 4.
The Graveyard: When built you will not only be able to review dead characters but should you have enough gold and enough death urns, you can even bring them back from the dead.
The Hall of Heroes: Once built, when your characters pass certain milestones, this building will unlock special bonuses, Legendary Skills and Legendary Feats.
DLC 1
As well as work on Update 4, the first Paid DLC is also in progress. I can now announce its name: The Moonstone Grove.
Without giving away too many spoilers on what is in store, I can let you know that there will be:
New Monsters, New Items, New Pets, a New adventure, a New Village, a New Playable Race (Yes you read that correct!), a New World Map, New buildings, New Legendary Skills and Feats and more.
The DLC is an optional purchase and is there to add extra content for players who want more adventure for their characters. The game can be played, enjoyed and completed without it. The DLC is aimed at era 1-2 and if successful, future DLC's will continue to add content all the way to era 10 and beyond.
Changes and Fixes in this build.
Fixed: The bear helm did not sit correctly on male heads. Fixed: Removed the tooltip pop-ups on plots that could not be built upon (mainly settlement 7) Added: There are now plot signs on areas where buildings can be placed. Changed: Reduced the to-hit bonus from the Inspire skill. Fixed: Combat pets did not clear correctly upon character death. Changed: Continued code improvements as part of Update 4.
As always, check out my twitter feed to get the latest inside information. Twitter
Take care and enjoy! Tormunda
Live Update: 1.3.7
Hello to all and I hope you are all doing well in these times.
Although the current live update has been listed in the beta branch as part of the 1.4 build, there are a few updates and enhancements in there that deserve to be moved into live.
The live build is listed as 1.3.7 to make it clear that the 1.4 update is still to come.
What is new in 1.3.7
Combat text.
In combat there is a button to turn this on/off. Doing so will give you a new text feedout when you mouse over characters and monsters.
A new item selection interface.
A new interface is available with more filter and sort options for equipment.
Cleaner world map images
Fixed a memory leak from combat.
Toxicity now correctly spawns.
Scouting for bosses at era 6 or above would sometimes allow you to scout for them, even if none were available.
Some items continue to be tweeked and rebalanced.
Several performance improvements.
Adding the extra combat text uncovered a few minor glitches in combat that have been fixed.
Equipment images in the item selection interface have been improved in quality.
Fixed a few minor art glitches
Fixed an issue where you could select double strike without the skill.
Fixed an issue where the 'click to send scouts' settlement circle would not work.
Launching the game and then exiting straight away no longer warns you that you have not saved the game.
Opening the character sheet from the science lab no longer hides the character sheet.
Merchant Jamby has stopped people calling him Jambie on some menu's.
A long standing character status error has been fixed.
Character feedback on formation and inspire in combat, is now correct.
Enjoy and stay safe,
(follow me on twitter to get exclusive news and updates: https://twitter.com/TreonGames
Beta Update Build 1.3.6.4
Today's beta update should be the last of the beta updates for 1.3
Combat speed should now be as good if not faster than in 1.2
Extra support has been added for 4k screens, allowing them to fully enjoy the game at high resolution.
Many other minor bugs have been fixed.
Combat text is not available at the moment. So I will explain why. Once 1.3 is complete, I will be moving onto 1.4 free (with many more game quality enhancements) and the first paid DLC. During this time I am going to add a battle report screen at the end of a fight that will give greater detail into how your characters performed. As part of this I will be collecting a lot more data in combat and as such it is only right that I merge the combat text scripts with the new data capture scripts. So both will come out at the same time.
As long as there are no show stopping issues, the current 1.3 beta will go live tomorrow.
I recommend all players take the time to switch to the beta path to test the current update on their machines before it moves to live.
Update 1.3.6
I have made several changes to the new combat and added bug fixes, as listed below.
Faster combat. The overall speed of combat has been improved.
Auto Combat toggle. If you need that extra boost of speed, you can toggle automated combat on/off as you wish.
Threat values. Threat numbers have been added to the monster mouse over text. As well as this threat details have been added to various action tooltips to help understand how much threat each action will produce.
Improved mouse response when clicking on a monster rapidly. The updates and quicker combat should provide a smoother response when attacking monsters quickly.
Improved Reserve character mouse over response.
Supply Issue fix. This is the second update for this, please let me know if the issue is resolved.
A bug that would cause a decrease in ultra rare drops on very high difficulty settings has been fixed.
A line 0 bug error has been caught and fixed.
An issue that could cause a combat lost response when an automated combat was won, has been fixed.
1.3.5 Update Patch
This small update fixes a few minor issues in the 1.3 update.
AutoCombat Now Gives XP! - Not really a bug but a change in the way auto combat works in the game.
A small diplomacy bug has been fixed
Several minor back system bugs and artwork glitches have been resolved.
Next week I will launch a new beta update, focused on adding some changes to the current combat system. Things that are in scope for the first wave of changes.
Adding some kind of text feedback which used to be available in the previous combat.
A way for a player to view the value of threat against each character
A focus fire option to allow for quicker attacks against a single target, speeding up turn cycles.
Tormunda
UPDATE 3: ENHANCED COMBAT
UPDATE 3: ENHANCED COMBAT
Welcome to the third and free major update to Evolution Of Ages: Settlements. This update focuses not only on overhauling the combat screen and combat mechanics but also on adding lots of extra equipment, bosses and feats as well as high definition portrait artwork.
For new players, the game offers 100's of hours of gameplay and for those who have played before, this is an ideal time to take up the challenge once again and enjoy not only the new combat system but also the more balanced and enjoyable progression path through the game.
Here is an overview of some of the new changes to combat. The combat screen visuals have changed, enemy agro is now clearly displayed as each of the front line enemy move towards the character generating the most threat. This new mechanic allows for quick and easy understanding of threat generation, enabling ideal tank-agro management. All monsters and characters now record and generate threat throughout the combat. There is no more sneaking off to the back in order to drop threat. (Although threat is quickly lost while you are out of sight.) Armour damage has been introduced into battle. Your characters are able to repair this damage between fights, however losing armour in the middle of a fight could be devastating. All equipment and pets have been reworked so that they are specialists in certain types of combat, making all set-ups viable and increasing options. This is especially so with regards to new bosses and some of the new boss mechanics that have been added.
Another long requested feature has been added. The ability to let the computer fight the battle for you. This feature can be turned on at any point in the fight, allowing you to manually handle the difficult parts of the combat until it is clear that victory is at hand. Once activated, the computer will only hand back control if your characters are about to die. (Please note: No experience is earned while in automatic mode).
As part of the combat overhaul, all equipment was re-balanced and many new items added. These include: 11 Suits of Armour, 33 Weapons, 6 Misc Items, 3 New Shields as well as several new Recipes, a Science research step and 7 new Character Feats.
To add more challenges for those of you who wish to test themselves. 4 new bosses have been added, including the first Era 9 Boss. 4 new Steam Achievements have been added so you can show off your victories over these bosses.
It has long been requested by the community that the portraits were improved. This update is happy to answer this request with all portraits now being upgraded to high definition. This is just the first planned upgrade to the games artwork, with plans to improve more of the games art in the future.
Thanks to the testing of the dedicated and much loved community of this game, many historical bugs have been brought to light and squashed. Adding to this an overall performance sweep, the game is more accessible than ever.
Now is the time to take up the challenge. Save mankind and defeat the blight.
Beta Combat (Step 1) Update is available.
Hello and I hope you are all well in these times. With many people unable to work and probably unable to earn money, I am focusing on adding content to a game you already have, free of charge. I would rather that, than pushing out a new one that will cost money people can ill afford to spend.
Beta Combat (Step 1) Update
So people have things to play, I have released what content I have completed for now. There is stuff missing from the combat pass, but the combat is stable enough to allow you to start playing with it and reporting bugs.
What is missing?
Many monsters are still awaiting their new images.
All of the new boss monsters are not in game yet.
There are still some artwork updates to finish.
What have you releases then? Well, that is a lot to go through...
There have been many performance and function changes to systems outside of combat. This enhancement will continue while I finish Update 1.3 However, the main focus of this update is on combat.
COMBAT
The whole screen has been redone.
Every weapon mechanic has been re-balanced to fit the objective of each weapon type.
There is no text readout. All combat feedback is now visual.
The 2nd pet has been removed from combat, it will still offer combat buffs as well as crafting and production buffs but will not fight.
Many pets have been re-balanced.
Armour can now be damaged. Acid attacks and criticals will reduce your armour value slightly. This damage is repaired between battles. Main tanks should now equip over the 90% cap in order to have some extra armour to counter these effects.
There were many small errors in the old combat. These were found and fixed during the rebuilding of the system. So you may find some things are easier or harder just because of a fixed broken system, rather than a new one.
Threat is now clearly displayed by the monster locations.
Threat is not lost once a character goes into a reserve position.
Characters in reserve can still generate threat if they are doing a lot of damage.
Characters in reserve can now select all weapon attack modes based upon their skill.
Automated combat
AUTOMATED COMBAT
That's right. You can now sit back and watch your people get slaughtered! You can fight a battle normally for as long as you wish. Once you decide that things are safe to just 'finish' the fight, or you just like being cruel, you can automate the rest of the battle. Please note the following points.
Once started, you cannot stop the automated system.
If a character is close to death, the system will drop out of automation in an 'attempt' to save them.
They still may die if other monsters are still left to attack before you get a turn.
NO XP will be awarded while the system is in automated mode. So do not use it if you want the experience.
Full treasure will be awarded for a battle that finishes in automated mode.
High Definition Artwork
I have started rolling out a few of the new portrait artworks. Once I have finished pushing out the new boss fights and mechanics, I will be moving onto updating all of the character and equipment pieces to a higher definition.
Have a go at the new combat system in beta even if you do not wish to stay in beta. There are a lot of changes to how things work.
Stay safe all. I will be fixing issues and rolling out content to beta over the next few days without posting a new news item until the bosses are in and working.
Enjoy. Tormunda
Update 1.3 Pass 2 is now in Beta
This was going to wait until Monday, but I knew you all wanted something new for the weekend.
This is the second part of the 1.3 update and focuses on re-balance of Armour, Helmets, Misc items and Pets. It also has a few bug fixes and the initial upgrade on artwork.
Artwork upgrade.
I have enhanced some of the old code to improve performance. I have upgraded the Portrait pixel count to allow for much better portraits. NEW Portraits are NOT in game yet. I will be working on these during pass 3 and pass 4 with the plan to have them done for 1.3 to go live. The new armour that has been added in this update does have the improved artwork.
Bug Fixes
The following recently reported bugs have been fixed. Other bugs, mainly to do with combat, will be fixed during the combat pass (Part 3).
Fixed the fine tribal shield not linking with the non-fine version on the resource list.
Fixed, Improved the slow artwork rendering.
Character maximum hit points now recalculate after battle, taking into account any hit point gain from kills.
The placeholder "Minted coins" should not appear in your item list. Note: If extra coins are produced when crafting, you will not end up with extra coins if you were crafting X qty. Instead the craft process will complete having used up less raw materials.
You should no longer be able to trade with a merchant once they have left.
New Items
There are many new items added to the game in this pass, including new weapons. Many of these new items will not be available until the 4 new Boss Encounters have been added. (Pass 3)
ARMOUR REBALANCE
The goal of the re-balance was to make sure all armour types are of value and new suits are available during the course of the adventure. The Changes and Definition of each armour are below.
HEAVY ARMOUR Quantity: 29 Rares: 3 Starting Era: 1 Ending Era: 10 Heavy armour is designed to sacrifice everything for raw protection. Many suits also offer bonus hit points to help the warrior survive in the thickest of combat. The missing 'Fine Steel Breastplate' has been added as well as a boss drop.
LIGHT ARMOUR Quantity: 23 Rares: 5 Starting Era: 2 Ending Era: 9 Light armour fills 2 main roles. 1) The ability for high dodge characters to be able to utilise this while adding armour. 2) To enhance the group commander. The focus of light armour has shifted slightly to award greater Status, Ranged Defence and Health. 4 new craftable light armours (2*Common, 2*Fine) have been added as well as an ultra rare boss drop.
CLOTHING Quantity: 15 Rares: 6 Starting Era: 3 Ending Era: 9 Clothing has been enhanced. While it was there to offer better production speeds for crafters, it now also improves the chance of crafting criticals. 2 new craftable clothing (1*Common, 1*Fine) have been added as well as a rare drop, a boss drop and an ultra rare boss drop.
HELMETS
Quantity: 36 Rares: 12 Starting Era: 1 Ending Era: 10 Festival Items: 2 Helmets were rebalanced to make sure that the stats of each helmet were correctly aligned with its rarity.
RINGS
Quantity: 36 Rares: 12 Starting Era: 1 Ending Era: 10 The role of rings is to allow for bonus Status to be obtained, giving a boost to leadership abilities. A boss drop and an Ultra rare boss drop ring have been added.
MISC ITEMS
Quantity: 54 Rares: 29 Starting Era: 1 Ending Era: 10 Festival Items: 5 These cover all kinds of special functions and have not been changed. 1 new boss drop Misc has been added.
SHIELDS
Shields were covered in a recent update. 1 new Ultra Rare Boss drop shield has been added.
WEAPONS
A few minor changes were made since pass 1. A new Boss drop Era 8 Hammer has been added to the CLUB/MACE line.
PETS
A few pets have been adjusted based on the difficulty of obtaining them. Some improving while others weakening. No new pets have been added.
I am now moving on to the 3rd part of the 1.3 update. This will add 4 new boss fights and some new combat mechanics. During this pass I will be looking to improve combat as well as adding in some of the new portrait upgrades.
Please let me know of any bugs in this beta release on the forums, thank you. Tormunda
Update 1.3 Beta Pass 1
The content for the 1.3 update is going to be quite large, as such I will be breaking the update up into several smaller beta passes. Each pass adding specific content or features.
Once all of the 1.3 update is in beta and the bugs have been ironed out, it will move into live. Everyone is free to switch to the beta branch and play this version, please be aware that there may be bugs.
Currently your save games will work in beta but will not work if you then move them back into live, so make a backup of your saves.
PASS 1
This pass focuses on weapon re-balancing and making sure each weapon type fits its role correctly. The Tech tree has also been changed to add another stage into the Ballistics branch. If you have already passed this technology you will obtain the missing blueprints.
There are hundreds of changes to the current weapons and over 30 new weapons have been added. So I thought it would be best for me to go through the weapon groups and help players understand what each group is for and highlight any major changes that way.
DAMAGE.
First of all I would like to talk about damage. Many players look at the raw damage of a weapon as the main factor for progression. To this end I will explain the various parts of damage.
BASE DAMAGE: Example: 8-15 This is the core damage of the weapon with a low-high roll.
PENETRATION: Example 5 This is the amount of the target's armour that is ignored. If your target had 10 armour and you used the above example weapon, you would actually be doing 13-20 base damage. However vs an unarmoured target it would still be 8-15
DAMAGE / SKILL POINT: Example 0.3 This is a very important number as it is how much extra damage you do per skill point you have in the weapon type. (I.e: Archery). Although a level 10 Archer would only be doing an extra 3 points of damage on a 0.3 item, rare drops can have up to 0.6 D/S making the weapon far more valuable to your skilled characters.
WEAPON GROUPS
SPEAR-STAFF-POLEARM Quantity: 20 Rares: 4 First Era: 1 Last Era: 9 The spear is your baseline starting weapon. They are designed to have slightly higher initiative than the other starting weapons and some penetration. Between era 2 and 4 they switch to the staff weapons. These are very fast attack weapons obtaining 2 attacks at just 3 skill. They use 2 hands but you are able to block with them. They are excellent at skilling up quickly. Polearms fill the role from era 5 to era 9. Like the staff they are 2 handed blocking weapons but they lack the speed of the earlier weapons, gaining more damage instead. The most Lethal of all the Polearms is the Energy Lance which requires Warrior 6.
CLUB-FLAIL-MACE Quantity: 15 Rares: 3 First Era: 1 Last Era: 7 The Club/Mace weapon line is designed to have a higher critical chance than other base melee weapons. It's stagger critical effect can help reduce the combat effectiveness of enemy targets, giving your team a chance to wear down the enemy. The Fails that are available in eras 5-6 have great anti-block values, making them ideal to get past defenders using shields. This weapon group requires very little skill with most top end weapons only needing Warrior 3
AXES Quantity: 16 Rares: 4 First Era: 1 Last Era: 8 Axes swap the initiative and penetration of spears for ability to hit and slightly higher critical chance. They are a great versatile melee weapon that also has the ability to destroy enemy shields. Like the Club/Maces, a Warrior skill of 3 is enough to use all but the rarest of Axes.
SWORDS Quantity: 19 Rares: 5 First Era: 2 Last Era: 7 The sword skill line is designed for pure critical damage. Their critical effect is an extra 20% damage bonus. To maximise the effect of using this weapon group, you should always focus on trying to raise your skill level to the max and increasing critical chance.
DAGGERS Quantity: 14 Rares: 4 First Era: 2 Last Era: 7 The Dagger skill line is designed to key off of the Intellect stat, allowing for smart but weak characters to have a melee weapon they can use in case of attack. They are extremely fast, allowing for 2 attacks at just 3 skill as well as having a small amount of penetration and anti-block ability. All but 3 daggers require no skill to use at all, making them suitable for late game characters with low combat skills.
MARTIAL ARTS Quantity: 11 Rares: 1 First Era: 4 Last Era: 9 Not using any weapons and trying to kill the enemy with your fists is a difficult role to use in Settlements. For those brave enough to try it, there are several items in game to assist in damage output. No matter which weapon you use, the main damage and defence of the weapon group comes from the martial arts skills themselves, not the weapons.
PISTOLS-SHOTGUN Quantity: 21 Rares: 3 First Era: 6 Last Era: 9 Pistols are dual wielding melee weapons. They cannot shoot into the rear ranks of the enemy. Pistols come in all forms from the slow Flintlock to the high speed Machine Pistols. Their core roll is high critical, penetration late game melee damage. With the rare pistol "The Widowmaker" having a D/S value of 0.6 it can be lethal in the hands of a 10 skill gunslinger right up until end game. Shotguns are 2 handed close melee weapons that can be used to block as well as having a good chance to hit and usually 100% chance to avoid being blocked. If you are going into a boss fight with a high amount of blocking enemy, shotguns are the way to go.
ASSAULT RIFLES-SNIPER RIFLES-SUPPORT RIFLES Quantity: 23 Rares: 3 First Era: 6 Last Era: 10 Like the pistols, the Rifle group is designed to be high Critical, high Penetration late game weaponry. Slower than the pistol and usually more suited to reserve shooters. The assault rifle is your 1 size fits all end game weapon. It can be used in the range slot for your reserves to use, it can be used in the melee slot with a blocking ability and can also shoot at rear enemy from the melee position. Perfect for taking down monsters that do not stay still. Sniper rifles cannot be used in melee and are only of use to your reserve shooters. They are very slow but with the highest penetration values in the game. They also cannot be blocked and with the Mosin-Nagant having a 0.6 D/S, they deal high damage to single targets. With the exception of the Mini Gun, Support Rifles cannot be used in melee. They are high rate of fire machine guns, focused on hitting as many targets as possible, they are ideal for thinning out the trash mobs.
I hope the above breakdown is helpful to all players, although the core storyline can be completed using whatever weapons you like from a roleplaying point of view. For those players who focus on trying to take down the hard challenge bosses, using the correct weapons is a key tactic.
I will be focusing on armour / helms and some initial graphic improvements during Pass 2.
Enjoy!
Please report any bugs on the forums with the words BETA in the title.
Next Update in the works!
With everyone staying at home and maybe short on money, I thought it was apt to add value to existing games.
I am currently working on another content update for EoA:Settlements that I hope to move to beta sometime in the next few days.
What will be in it? More of everything. More weapons, rare drops, boss monsters! Something requested for several times: A full rebalance of all weapons, especially firearms.
