Changelog13 — Songs of Conquest

Notable additions

There is now an option in game lobbies that lets you enable “Mixed Factions” for the game:

— When playing using Mixed Factions you will immediately claim enemy towns and settlements as they are after a battle (no option of occupying/razing/converting). This allows you to recruit troops and wielders from outside your starting faction and freely mix them.
— Neutral hostiles can be made up of troops pulled from multiple factions.
— Neutral troop dwellings allow any faction to recruit from them (and can thus never be pillaged).

A new map was added named “Under One Banner” that is made to experience the mixed factions in a fast and fun way.

The number of artifacts transferred as loot after a battle is now capped at 3. We felt that losing all equipped artifacts after a battle was a bit too punishing. It is however always the three most powerful artifacts that are transferred.
Losing wielder will gain XP after a battle for the enemy troops it has killed, same as the winning wielder.
A maximum of 1 building can now be sold per town/settlement and round. This was implemented primarily because the fact that you could immediately sell all of an enemy’s buildings after capturing a town/settlement when playing using Mixed Factions was too powerful, but we also felt that it was better for balancing overall.
Pricing to Faey buildings and research have been reworked and now cost a mix of Ancient Amber and Glimmerweave. Hopefully, this will make the Faey more viable to play as a specific strategy.

— Faey Grove upgrade costs 5 less Glimmerweave and 5 more Ancient Amber
— Faey Grove generates an additional Faey Spirit
— Faey Court upgrade now costs 10 Glimmerwave and 10 Ancient Amber, was 15 and 5
— Faey troop research now costs 5 Ancient Amber and 5 Glimmerweave instead of 10 Glimmerweave

Eth’dra dmg raised to 9-14 to give that unit a bit more viability on its own
Scarred Brutes now have defend ability
Wielders skill pools have been reworked to make sure some overlooked ones are more viable in a competitive environment

M’sugna has long been one of the strongest wielders, with a very strong starting army backed up with excellent skills and spec. This has been changed, she’ll still be strong just not quite as strong.

P’chas starting skill changed to Creation since he stole it from M’sugna
Ambertinas starting army changed to 1 scavenged bones and 5 toxicologists to give her more destruction to start out with

All Wielder’s view have been increased by 2 and all Lookouts, Fallen Beacons, and Farseers Vessels have been increased by 1. This is to help a little bit with exploring and choosing and also to have a slightly higher chance of seeing the enemy in time.
Scouting skill now gives 3 view, 6 view, and then 2 movement. This is to give players a better way of getting a scouting wielder.

Selecting the spell quick bar will now select the previously selected spell making it easier to cast cheaper spells in sequence when playing with a controller
The spell target no longer ends up in weird places when playing with a controller

Removed option to click outside random event popup to close it. Too many players accidentally close it before reading.
Added tooltip support for toggles, sliders and dropdowns in options. Works for controller too!
Certain choices now requires the user to hold the button to accept when playing with a controller to avoid accidentally choosing the first option
Neutral troop dwellings now have a more specific description (“Source of troops”) and better mouse over cursor states
Wielders in the wielder recruitment menu are now ordered by their type
Fixed attackable settlements not using the “attack” cursor on mouse over
Added toggle for Mixed Factions above Game Settings button in Lobby

Removed “embedded area trigger” from neutral hostiles since that has never been supported. Place a nearby area trigger map entity instead if you need the functionality.

Made online game flow more robust to counteract softlocks and strange behavior in cases such as the host leaving while a client is joining
Fixed exception when a player disconnected from the game during a battle and was replaced by an AI

Epic music now plays when fighting enemy wielders even if they are the ones attacking you
The moment Merkoth arrives in Arleon mission 3 has been made more moody

General army recruitment improvements to cope with troop permutation increase (Mixed Factions)
Optimize costly troop recruitment calculations
Fix pathing issue when trying to find a path to a walled town through portals
Improve long distance pathing to have better accuracy when looking for a shorter path through town gates and similar entities

Fixed issues with quick- and autosaves getting stuck and reusing a single save file over and over if the player deletes some of the existing files
The number of quick- and autosaves available are now fixed at 9

Added new map Unexpected Allies that is intended for Mixed Factions play
When playing with Mixed Factions enabled, you can trigger random events for any faction that you control a town or settlement of
Rats and Plague Rats are now Beasts
Fixed issue with host migration leading to weird wielder states (movement and positioning being wrong etc)
Fixed dropdowns in option sometimes softlocking the game while playing with gamepad
Fixed single-choice popups from sources such as tents not working when playing with gamepad
Fixed XP gain being shown after battles for towns/settlements without defending wielder
Fixed issue with adventure AI not properly prioritizing developing its towns/settlements
Fixed rare case of adventure AI becoming softlocked due to a very specific sequence of opened and closed magic gates

Fixed AI softlock when playing the second Rana campaign mission on Overwhelming difficulty