Since Turn-Based Carnival has started on Steam, and Zodiac Legion is featured as part of it, we figured it would make for a good occasion to reveal the latest upcoming addition to our bestiary – great, hulking, intimidating, monstrous beasts!
The first one you may already be familiar with, since it’s been lurking in our screenshots and other materials for a while, but we’ve never introduced it properly. The scorpion beast is a living weapons platform employed by the fleshcrafters of the Aegidian League. Heavily armoured and with fearsome pincers to match, it projects a terrifying presence on any battlefield, but its most devastating weapon is its stinger, which is capable of launching magical projectiles over great distances, making the scorpion a natural artillery unit. Zodiac Champions will need to carefully consider how to tackle these abominations – whether to seek shelter from their barrage or approach and be torn to shreds in close combat.
Next there are two very special newcomers. The French region of Provence is known for its chivalric traditions, and so we sought its support in financing the game, and the grant we’ve received has allowed us to make room for two monstrosities from Provençal folklore. The Coulobre and the Tarasque are the first dragons to slither their way into Zodiac Legion. The former is a great winged serpent – slaying it may prove a challenge given its lethal breath and razor-sharp claws. The latter is a lumbering behemoth with a carapace tougher than any steel, and with a strength and ferocity that let it crush its foes even when greatly outnumbered, literally stomping them into the dirt.
It will take all your might and cunning to bring down these dreadful creatures! Standard infantry formations may not save your men from bombardment, deadly sprays and trampling. Only with faith in the stars will your knights emerge victorious.
Until we meet again!
Zodiac Legion at Steam Strategy Fest
Greetings Commanders,
We’re happy to announce that Zodiac Legion will take part in the Steam Strategy Fest with an updated demo. The current build has mostly minor changes as well as various stability fixes, so you can take command right away and head out into battle without worrying about interruptions (subject to the disruptive influence of the cosmos).
But while today we have “only” small things to share, there are a lot of really major changes incoming, though these are still being tested or in the middle of implementation. They encompass almost all the aspects of the game, from basic mechanics, through battle maps to general user convenience.
For starters, we’ll be introducing a significant rework to the combat rules to give you more flexibility of approach. The core of this will involve changes to how armour works, with heavier gear providing the wearer protection from almost all physical attacks. To break through plate mail, you’ll now have to strike a critical hit, because bashing your sword against a heavily armoured knight will only make your arm hurt.
However, the added protection will be offset by the addition of special attacks and combat stances. With the former, you’ll be able to overpower and overwhelm your opponents by knocking them prone or reducing their stamina until they start seeing stars (which others in the business would call “beating into submission”). The latter will allow your characters to adopt combat styles focusing on some aspect of combat over others. These may increase the likelihood of landing a critical hit against armour, increase defence against multiple opponents at the cost of offence, favour duelling over formation fighting, and more. And best of all, assuming certain stances will make it more likely for some body parts to be targeted by the attacker, letting you exploit weaknesses and gaps in your opponent’s armour. Prices on all helmets have now doubled.
We’re also working extra hard on adding randomized maps to the game for added replayability. Most of the battle maps will combine procedural generation with hand-crafted content by mixing and matching premade rooms, buildings and areas in specified zones. Thanks to this, what is a guardhouse in one version of the map, could be a sacred grove in another, or a lake, or more, and the layout of the guardhouse could be different each time as well. Needless to say, this requires the most care by far to make sure that you don’t teleport into a building without exits, but we’re satisfied with the results already. Furthermore, once we have the random maps in place, this will pave the way for the strategic layer and a seamless gameplay experience with continuity involving the proper management of your realm and knights between missions.
Finally there’s optimization. A new pathfinding algorithm will make it possible to save calculation time, especially during enemy turns and on mouseover, which should speed things up considerably. A cache rework will also reduce the number of line of sight checks made when actions are taken, further boosting performance.
Once all of the above is implemented, we believe the changes should take the game to the next level in terms of both the tactical and strategic depth, and we can’t wait to share them all with you in practice. For now, you can enjoy the updated Strategy Fest demo – make sure to give us all your feedback.
Thanks for reading. May the stars shine in your favour.
To kill a knight...
Greetings, commanders! In this update, we're excited to share with you the forthcoming changes to our combat system and the design objectives that guided these modifications.
Knowledge is power
In designing Zodiac Legion's combat system, our primary goal was to imbue it with a sense of authenticity that aligns with the game's narrative of transitioning from a traditional late medieval era into an age of magic. As combat is a critical aspect of the game, we wanted to make sure that it reflected historical medieval fights as closely as possible. This entails a realistic portrayal of armored combat, shifting away from the individual idiosyncrasies commonly seen in many games and films, where armor doesn't function as expected and provides sub-par levels of protection.
To rectify this, I undertook extensive research, through historical treatises and personal combat. This also allowed me to gain insight from enthusiasts who have spent considerable time studying or practicing these disciplines.
The Role of Armor
One crucial fact about late medieval combat is that plate armor was virtually immune to cuts and even thrusts. Recent tests suggest that breastplates were even resistant to arrows fired from a longbow, and injuries were primarily inflicted when less armored body parts were hit (i.e, by "critical hits"). In hand-to-hand combat, armor often necessitated the use of specific techniques to strike an opponent's vulnerable parts or to gain access to them. Techniques like half-swording or the mordschlag employed weapons in ways that deviated considerably from their original intended purpose. Grappling, often a dungeon master's worst nightmare, emerged as a critical skill to facilitate this, as the protection offered by armor also made it possible to go much more up-close against an opponent. Interestingly, the classic D&D armor system aimed to depict this. Initially, I believed damage reduction was a superior mechanism, but understanding that most attacks should be virtually 100% reduced by armor, I now appreciate the need for recognizing the many poorly protected (or completely unprotected) areas on most armor.
Armor and Attacks in the game
To more effectively represent heavy armor within the game's context, we're considering two distinct methods.
The first approach involves regular attacks only inflicting "impact damage" on heavily armored characters, with heavier weapons causing more of this damage than balanced ones. To inflict significant damage, a thrusting or impact weapon would require a critical hit.
The second approach involves introducing special targeted attacks, varying by weapon but capable of achieving one of the following:
Reducing the opponent's defense against future attacks by attempting to seize their weapon arm
Stunning the opponent through a forceful blow to the head
Forcing the opponent to the ground
Thrusting at the target's least protected areas
Both strategies will also help differentiate between weapons and armor types. The difficulty of hitting a weak point, and the consequent reduction in protection, will depend on the armor type. In contrast, the effects of critical hits or the special attacks available will depend on the weapon type.
Armored Teamwork
Most of these techniques would be impractical to perform within a formation as grappling leaves both fighters very exposed. However, team support already plays an essential part in our game rules, as characters aid their teammates in both attack and defense, unless this support is negated by the presence of other characters. Therefore, we don't anticipate significant changes to this aspect. Taking teamwork into account, some of the special attacks may leave both the attacker and the defender with the "exposed" condition. Additionally, "pushing contests" between formations, a common feature in ancient and medieval foot combat, could isolate opponents, allowing your second line to engage or finish them off with minimal effort.
What about magic?
The idea of magic becoming more available as the game progresses is one of the reasons we wanted authentic combat in the first place. It’s a game-changer that opens up new tactical options. While armor provides excellent protection against physical attacks, it offers less defense against magical powers. Some spells might bypass armor completely, striking directly at the enemy's life force, making magical artifacts and protection incredibly valuable. On the other hand, magic can also enhance the capabilities of your mundane warriors by punishing enemies for maintaining their formation with a fireball, and leveraging telekinesis to pull your target into your own formation.
Authentic assets
A good part of the work of the past weeks has been focused on using AI to improve our animation workflow by drafting frames of new elements from our existing ones. That should allow us to add a few missing armor types, like gambesons or brigandines. It's also easier to add new animations by first only making them for a single set (here, a "naked" barbarian), and then generating an initial draft of all the variations needed to accommodate our existing sets. The animations we're working on implementing include making opponents prone, reloading a crossbow, or thrusting/half-swording:
Conclusion
Thank you for your attention. As always, we're eager to hear your feedback about the planned changes, and what else you would like us to talk about. May the stars align in your favor.
In-Depth Let's Play of Zodiac Legion by Sampstra Games on YouTube
Greetings commanders,
We're excited to report that Sampstra Games has just released an insightful and detailed Let's Play of Zodiac Legion on their YouTube channel.
What sets this Let's Play apart is Sampstra Games' thorough explanation of the game's rules and mechanics, including flanking, support, pinning, attack rolls, and defense rolls, so it is a great introduction video to the game.
You can watch the Let's Play here:
Note that the video ends on a cliffhanger, though!
Remember to like and subscribe to their channel for more tactical and strategic content.
May the stars align in your favor, Alexandre
Let's Play by Bumpy McSquigums for Turn Based Fest
Greetings Commanders, Turn Based Fest is upon us, and I'm thrilled to announce that today it will feature Zodiac Legion. The game will be showcased by Bumpy McSquigums on his channel and here on the game's Steam page - on Thursday evening / Friday night depending on your timezone, at 6 PM EST / 3 AM CET.
A new build of the game is live for the event. It doesn’t add any new content, as the randomized maps we're working on are still being tweaked, but it should be better optimized than the previous build, and the display issues some of you might have encountered on the Steam Deck or Proton should be sorted out.
Thank you for your support and may the stars shine upon you.
Let's Play by Bumpy McSquigums for Turn Based Fest
Greetings Commanders, Turn Based Fest is upon us, and I'm thrilled to announce that today it will feature Zodiac Legion. The game will be showcased by Bumpy McSquigums on his channel and here on the game's Steam page - on Thursday evening / Friday night depending on your timezone, at 6 PM EST / 3 AM CET.
A new build of the game is live for the event. It doesn’t add any new content, as the randomized maps we're working on are still being tweaked, but it should be better optimized than the previous build, and the display issues some of you might have encountered on the Steam Deck or Proton should be sorted out.
Thank you for your support and may the stars shine upon you.
Tacticon Dev talk video, Flanking, support, and pinning in Zodiac Legion
Greetings commanders, Let’s talk about the way support and flanking work in the game, and about our plans for the future regarding the basics of combat.
Support
Currently, characters provide support in offense if they're next to the target, and in defense if they're next to the attacker. But for that to happen, they must not be within another enemy's zone of control. In the game, support is shown by the shield and crossed swords icons.
In the image above, 1 is the attacker, and 2 the target. 1 is supported by 4, but 5 is supporting 2 in defense.
Flanking
When the target is between two characters, they both get a flanking bonus to their attacks against it. In our previous example, 3 has his support negated by 6, but as he's behind 2, relative to 1, he provides a flanking bonus.
Moving around zones of controls and pinning
Moving through enemy zones of control needs careful maneuvering. This is why such an action requires passing a pinning check.
When trying to move around opponents, support from both the starting and destination tiles is summed, and characters who can support both the starting and destination tiles have their support value doubled. This support counts as a modifier to the pinning check - passing it means walking through safely, but failing will stop a character in his tracks, prevent him from moving further this round, and apply combat penalties to him.
As seen above, the difficulty of the pinning check is shown by the number of skulls on a contested tile that you want to move through.
The future of formation combat
I think support and formations are a great way to make weapons feel different. Shields currently provide support against ranged attacks to adjacent allies, as long as the shooter is at the same distance or closer to the supporting shieldbearer than the target. Larger shields even provide their ranged defense support bonus when in an opponent's zone of control.
I plan to have halberds provide no support against adjacent opponents, but instead give it to adjacent allies against enemies at a range of 2 hexes. Being unwieldy, flails won’t be able to benefit from support, or provide it to adjacent allies (but they will have a very good attack and damage rating to make up for it). I'm also thinking about giving some sort of anti-formation bonus to greatswords.
Currently, bowmen also provide support to and against adjacent characters, but that will change as well.
Tacticon, Tabletop Gathering and Indiecade
I'm glad to announce that Zodiac Legion will be featured both at Tabletop Gathering (November 3rd to 10th) and Indiecade (November 4th to 11th).
Kormakrtv has just uploaded the LP and dev talk he hosted during the Steam Tacticon festival here: Until next time! May the stars align in your favor!
Zodiac Legion at Games Made in France
Greetings commander, As I said yesterday, Zodiac Legion will also be featured for Games Made in France on Saturday evening, on Mr MV Twitch channel or here on Steam:
The build will be the same as today, but the stream will be in French. We will probably showcase another level.
I am not sure the stream will appear on the game page, but it should appear on the sales page.
Thank you for your support, and may the stars shine on you.
Zodiac Legion Livestream at Tacticon and Games Made in France and demo update
Greeting commanders, We are thrilled to showcase you the new elements we added in our demo build for Tacticon and Games made in France. Traps and pressure plates can now be hidden on the ground.
And if you missed it, since the Gamescom build in late August, the AI can no pro-actively open doors to engage your party or reinforce an area.
As with every major update, this one probably broke a few things, so please excuse us in advance for the inconvenience. I only had time to modify the prison (jailbreak) and cathedral (iconoclasm) level to add traps and secrets to them.
For Tacticon, I will have an interview with kormakrtv followed by a LP on Twitch tomorrow (8PM CEST) twitch.tv/kormakrtv, or here on the TactiCon Steam page.
and with Games made in France on Saturday (11h30 PM CEST). Thank you for your support, and may the stars shine on you.
AI in Zodiac Legion and Tiny Teams festival update
Greetings commanders, First of all, we updated the demo build, but the changes are mostly under the hood. However they should have a big impact on the flow and balance of the maps :
Changes
Alarm locked doors have been added to all maps
AI groups also have an alarm lock level now
AI groups will now reinforce each other and seek the player party once the alarm threshold is passed and they become active. They will also open doors that have an alarm lock level lower than the current alarm level.
Fixes
Some minor AI turn crashes have been fixed (it happened when pressing TAB during AI turn, after all the AI parties had been played, but not all animations had been processed).
This update is the perfect occasion to introduce our vision for the AI, and the general pacing of the levels in Zodiac Legion. One thing we wanted to avoid was to have the player party jump from one micro-encounter to the next. We wanted the whole dungeon to feel like a coherent battlefield, but it was not possible before, as the AI was not authorized to open doors.
But we also wanted to avoid all AI groups leaving their initial positions to charge the heroes' staging area, so the compromise we have found was to add alarm lock levels to some groups and doors. Once the alarm level is higher than the alarm lock, the groups will become active, and be allowed to leave their area in order to engage the player party. They are not omniscient, but they will reinforce a group engaged in battle, or move to one of the previous known locations of the party to seek them. They can also reinforce objectives instead of looking for your party.
This means that the alarm level is not only about adding reinforcement to the map, but it also represents the AI groups present getting a higher readiness level, and taking more initiative as it becomes clear that it is a major attack.
The next upgdate will teach the AI how and when to deal with blocking objects. This will allow us to add the ice wall spell you can see in the trailer without trivializing the levels. The AI will also be able to use active props too. It won't open chests to deny them, but they will use things like the thunderstrike capacitors against your party (the AI can already do that, but it is still very erratic, and the probability of an AI character doing so is pretty low at the moment).
We are also working on setting level wide priorities for the AI (defending a given objective, regrouping somewhere, going after a given character), and the low level tactical considerations, like teaching it to use and deny formation, and protecting its backline because AI archers can be a bit suicidal now, especially if they don't have enough melee friends to protect them).
We will also introduce more active terrain items, like teleporter pairs, but we'll cover active terrain elements in a following update :
Zodiac Legion will also be part of the Tiny Teams festival this week (but the game should not be covered on the stream).
Thank you for your support, and may the stars shine on you.
