Demo Hotfix - July 26 - Building revamp, siege revamp and more tweaks

Mercenary Brotherhood Demo · published

This hotfix heavily reworks two key areas; multi-story buildings and sieges. Unlike many medieval/fantasy turn based tactics games, I really wanted to have buildings in this game that you can enter. And not just normal buildings but multi-story ones. Some of my favorite games, like XCom, have this already so I wanted to add it. And I thought it would be really epic to have a large, sprawling, multi-story castle to attack. Sounds great on paper but turns out the reason it mainly works in games like XCom is that they have guns. Shooting enemies in a 3rd story building? Sure. Having to run up 3 floors to kill just that one enemy? Not fun. This was pretty common feedback during the demo and long story short, now all buildings have one floor.Sieges used to be two phases; build up and then attack. Now it is just a longer build up.Lots of other smaller changes.

Tip:

- Level 3 is when the game starts to really click and unit builds + tactics really open up.

Gameplay

- Flattened all buildings to only be one floor. This significantly simplifies maps like the Castle but also some of the towers and forts. As there are no walls to climb, also removed Wall Climb ability

- With sieges, combined the early siege prep time with the battle phase. Now they start the battle right away but casualties don't start for a few phases. This means it lasts just as long as before, it just is one combined phase instead of two

- New Codex that unlocks to show info about races, specializations and backgrounds that you have hired. This continues between saved games

- Can reorganize units on the roster screen

- Arcane shield can now be cast on self, not just the casting unitsUsability/UI

- Added a toggle on the level up screen to show base vs total stats so you can see what stats you really need to work on

- Accessibility option to switch between colorblind colour palettesBalance

- Tweaked some level up traits that were too similar to balance and differentiate them a little. Traits tweaked: Keen eye, Sharpshooter, Marksman, Eagle eye, Relentless, Arrow Dodger, Quick Reflexes, Hard Head, Deep Breath

Fixes

- Adjust the Ascension screen to only show 4 paths, not 8 (never intended to show all of them)

- Fixed rare issue where enemies 1 tile diagonally away in a forest tile couldn't be targeted with melee skills

- Fixed issue with fatigue pips appearing incorrectly as large ward bonuses

- Remove siege quests as it has some issues and overlaps with other mechanics

- Fix with Rest and Guide sometimes having same hotkey

- Fix issue with mages learning telekinesis when they shouldn't

-Beast packs shouldn't start in buildingsMisc

- Tweak sound for a lot of abilities

- Sound effects for walking

AI

- Minor AI tweak to escape buildings when blocked in. May need to tweak a little