The Book of the Game
V1.01.03 is now live!
Major Features
3D Battlefields! (AKA Hills). Note that there is no movement penalty - they are not so high... If you are on higher ground there is a melee and missile bonus. You can also use them as cover.
Beasts! Warhounds and the quite rare warhawk. Remember you need the new Falconry skill to use the warhawk. (available to some professions only on a double roll)
4 new special locations.
2 new recruitable special characters.
Feral dog pack encounters.
Added hugely to info available. The combat tooltip gives a lot more info on the modifiers affecting the attack, and all hit percentages are written to the combat log.
You can always see the enemy troop numbers on the encounter intro screen.
Vastly expanded info available on all skills and traits
Minor stuff
Combat AI tweaks - performance and tactics.
New screen on specialisation / reaching level 5. It spells everything out (no shields, armour warnings, etc) and gives you the chance to go back and change your mind.
If playing Veteran level or higher, the start of the game is not so easy.
The Elf invasion will happen later on. Much later on on the easier levels.
New option on starting a game to turn off the story-line elder races invasions. You will still have to deal with the orcs and anything you have unleashed.
keyboard shortcut added to combat encounter intro screen.
Speed 3 on the strategic map - speed is now increased quite a bit.
Reduced defender surrounded penalty slightly in combat.
Cut autosaves again (just added a max 30s limit)
Some skills were reworked (Spot trap, Sniper, Distract and Overwhelm) as part of the info overhaul - they were found to be too good, too bad, or just wrong...
Bugs
If you clear a camp (etc), and there was a mission to clear that camp at nearby towns, these missions are now removed properly.
Initial traits and bonus ST didn't give bonus HP as intended.
A couple of achievements would never fire - fixed.
If you were defending a city and the city was attacked, then you fled, the attackers would then not actually raze the city - fixed.
Some voice corrections for some boss characters.
Crisis rats corrected properly this time... (they were too fast) Newly generated rats only though...
v1.00.19 is now live
Fixed many many human armies bug on return from Northlands. (You will have to wait for them to go home though, if you are already experiencing this)
Pressing escape on the Hire Confirm screen no longer gets you a free adventurer.
In combat - pathing now ignores enemy zone of control squares if that enemy is fleeing.
Dodge missile skills reduced against high skill archers.
You can hold down the button to speed up enemy movement on the combat screen.
There is now an option on the Options screen to change scroll speed - use this with caution! It is only intended for people experiencing very slow scrolling...
v1.00.18 is now live
Changes:
Treasure Share is now capped at 5% per adventurer, 60% total.
Wages now increase nearly twice as fast as before.
The effects of asking for an improved contract increased. (This was very minor before though)
I've also added a recalculate wages on Load - so these changes will take effect immediately.
Balance
Changed relationship between weapon and damage bonus. Best tactic for a high strength character before was to use a fast attack weapon like a dagger, which wasn't very realistic. Now the strength modifier (plus or minus) is adjust by the weapon type. Examples:
Axes/Maces/Great weapons all get full strength bonus/penalty making them a good choice for high strength characters.
Dagger/Staff damage is affected by wielder's strength far less.
Crisis rats - were too fast to catch. New ones created will be much slower.
Finding ruins on the strategic map. This now takes terrain into consideration, just as it does for the units on the strategic map. If you are in open terrain, you should now find it much easier to spot ruins/camps etc, and can climb a mountain for extra visibility. Finding things in the jungle will stay a bit more difficult though.
Bow damage (not crossbow) now has a minor adjustment for firer's Strength.
Allied deaths no longer affect your morale - this already worked for summoned creatures, but not allies, such as militia on a mission with you.
Warlock now allowed shields.
Veteran, Hard, Hell levels, all lowered in difficulty very slightly.
Bugs
Level up bug fixed. It was possible to get multiple level ups by going back and forth between adventurers and by using escape, rather than the back button.
Formation bug - two guys in same space. I couldn't recreate this, but added an extra check on entering the screen to look for this and correct.
Map New World for Elves - this can now be completed at any elf city.
Fixed bug preventing city events firing. Watch out for some drunken antics and getting arrested and more...
Wobbling militia fixed! (Sometimes they would give up chasing bandits, only to start chasing them again, then give up, and so on.)
Allied archers would not draw swords if enemy reached melee range.
Sometimes tiring characters removed from the Next Adventurer queue erroneously. (i.e. pressing space would never get to them, although they had full AP)
Massive relationship loss if you attacked Adventurers. Removed, this was unintended.
Other
New "Declare for the Elf" mission. Basically, you swear a permanent alliance with the Elves, making Cassius think twice about invading. He won't be impressed though! (Not to the point of attacking you)
Added Symbiosis skill to Elf units, and message about this in encounter intro. This is the Elven ability to shoot through trees and bushes. (The ability was always there, but now there are warnings about it)
On level up, if you take a characteristic upgrade (Strength, Agility...) then you get a message to tell you how big the increase was.
Nest mission reworked. It will now not be given by Elves (nature lovers), but by Humans, and the Nest may be some distance away. Look to the forests!
Adventurer's stats tooltip added to Level-up screen.
Score reworked - now takes into account the game difficulty level.
v1.00.17 is now live
Before it was far too easy to get everyone to hate you - now it shouldn't matter how many small transgressions you make, Humanity won't declare war on you just cos you failed to guard a caravan.
Also increased the level Humans judge you an enemy, so if you have any save games effected by this, hopefully those cities should be white again.
Reworked Treasure Share - capped lower and increases slower.
No effect in existing games until you level up though!
When receiving free skills (e.g. on reaching level 5) instead of receiving Sword, you will get another level of whatever weapon skill you are best at.
Legendary items re-work:
There are now very few items with no special powers.
A few new powers added.
Most combat effects double in power (Precision, parry, etc)
Far less Will Power items - also fixed this, it previously did nothing.
A few other fixes.
Caravans - Perhaps too many - they were feeding orcs and bandits (Both these get stronger after every win) resulting in the game advancing too quickly.
Added new rule counting caravan successes and fails - if too many caravans don't reach their target, the number of new caravans will decline.
On resting (finally) prevented the ghost face that appears sometimes...
A few text clarifications and minor fixes.
v1.00.16 is now live
This one is all about magic items.
It was possible to lose item's powers when you picked them up, after winning an encounter, leaving you with a magic item that did nothing... Nobody wants that! Fixed!
I also fixed the inventory screen to update properly when you moved magic items about - the whole rightmost pane is now rebuilt every time. (Display bug only)
V1.00.15 is live
V1.00.14
If the frame rate was very high, the slow fade after combat got stuck on a black screen...
Nothing to see for most people!
v1.00.13 is now live!
BotG is game with many random events, but sometimes, it seems, the action lulls.
Added a new routine to check for a lack of enemies and add more in, if the level has fallen too low. What gets added depends on the state of the world map. Normally, it will be bandits, adventurers and camps, but if many towns have fallen, you may notice the wildlife of Leman enjoying a renaissance!
Loot in the dungeons in the Northlands and the New World increased! (Those dungeons are more dangerous, after all)
Missions to destroy camps, crypts and nests will now be time limited to 30 days as originally intended.
Bugs
Minor bug on formation screen - not initialised properly so if someone died, their old square was still lit up...
If you have a mission to destroy a location, and the location is destroyed somehow (not by you!), the mission will now auto cancel.
Exploit where you could hire and fire, and profit from their equipment - fixed!
Adventurer cost is now x1.5.
Common chainmail and leather both halved in price.
To compensate for this, many of the bandit encounters now yield more gold.
Info
Extra tooltip added to info/inventory screen, on the character figure, showing all their base combat stats.
(And some minor fixes highlighted by the above!)
Comsetic
A few extra pics added on screens that were all text.
v1.00.12 is now live
Whilst trying to find the above problem I also added an option to force save locally, rather than Steam Cloud. This is not required, but I will leave it in as an option.
We also have a new subtitle to aid searching within Steam.
v1.00.11 is now live
Instead of missing your first turn, you now get a turn as normal, but with only 40 AP - this should enable you to at least get in a good defensive position.
Improvement to injuries received! This was half done before, but many injuries were random. Now you should receive burn, bleed, blunt, slash etc injuries, depending on what killed you.
Added tooltip to menu gold which gives daily wage bill and adventurers treasure share.
Entering some special locations does not necessarily lead to combat. However, they still showed a skull rating on the mission intro which put some players off even entering.
Where this is so, the skulls have now been removed.
Fixed an obscure bug on the load screen which could overwrite your band name with another...