Slaves of Magic News

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a great holiday season and let me welcome you to this year's first devlog about Slaves of Magic! I think we start this year with a bang, as we have completed the first finished tileset for the game.

[h2]Changes since the demo[/h2]

People who have taken a closer look at the game's campaign map could notice, that generally, it has 4 regions. Every region will have its own tileset and the ones you will see in the pictures are based on a temperate climate with medieval European architecture.



In the picture, you can see the reworked temple. It received a lot more details all around, plus as you can see we have added light emitting wall torches as well, rather than the old standing ones.



But that is not the only change for the temple! We have added some environmental storytelling as well. These temples are repurposed by the invaders as a base of operation, as they masquerade as the returned gods. They have erected new statuses to their image, as they try to destroy and replace all kinds of depictions of the old gods.



You can find some quite worrisome sights if you take a look into the priest's private room. You can only guess what kind of experiments they are conducting in secret! In addition, you can see that the lighting system has been reworked to support multiple colors of light as well.

But of course, that is just one of the many hand-made tilesets that have been created for this region. While I want to leave some for you to explore in the game, I want to show you one additional smaller tileset, which has some interesting new features as well.



As you can see, we have added support for the visual representation of damage to the environment. You will be able to find ruined houses like this one by default, but this was done in preparation to support environmental destruction so that combat can destroy houses as well! We just need to actually add skills that destroy walls and obstacles!

[h2]Closing thoughts[/h2]

So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support, the best way to do that right now is to join our Discord here. Otherwise, see you next time!

Hello everyone! This year's last devlog is about presenting our new reworked artwork for the campaign map, plus other gameplay changes related to it.

[h2]Campaign art rework[/h2]



Let's start with the flashy bit! Every asset on the map has been reworked, and their size and positions adjusted. Take a look at a few examples of how it looks.











[h2]Typical month[/h2]

But not only the art change but the gameplay as well. In our previous devlog we talked about bases, and how they function, so if you are interested in that I advise you to check that out! Today we will talk about the invaders, what are their goals, and how they want to archive them. When the player clicks on their holy city, they will see an intelligence report which shows some vital information about their general resources.



You can see 3 important values:

• The first is their supply level. Its level will affect the number of units on missions, plus they can use it to activate stronger missions for their armies (like building a new base).
  
• The second is their research level and progress. When they reach a new level new they will receive new stronger units.
  
• And third is how dangerous they think the resistance is to them. While this doesn't have any immediate impact it does affect AI decision-making.
  

At the start of every month, the AI assigns missions for the armies, taking into account these 3 values. For example when the resistance is deemed not dangerous, they will more likely to choose high-risk high reward missions, while they choose a more slow and steady approach if the resistance put up a fight. There is a bit of randomization added to the choosing and assigning of missions so that the player can't accurately predict the exact missions.

But what are these missions? There are 3 common missions:

• The first is tax collection. If the army succeeds in it, the invaders will gain supply, and the region's loyalty value will be reduced by 1. How much supply will be gained depends on the region's loyalty value at the start of the mission. Generally speaking, they will receive a high amount at 4-5 loyalty, medium at 1-3, and low at 0.
  
• The second is abduction. This mission is nearly identical to tax collection but instead of gaining supply, the invaders gain research progress.
  
• And the third is a crackdown. This mission does not provide any resources to the invaders if successful but will reduce the territory loyalty by 3.
  

There are other missions as well but those cost extra supply to conduct. One such mission is to build a new forward base:



This mission can't be countered by the player and will build a new forward base for the invaders in a region which does not have one already. Besides in the first month, this can only be played on a territory that has 0 loyalty. An enemy forward base will provide extra supply and research progress for the invaders at the start of every month, and makes countering missions in that region harder. Later in the game, the resistance can learn how to destroy these, but till then, they will pose a big problem.

Throughout the month, these armies will conduct their given mission at a randomized time. When they start their mission, the player will be presented with a screen like this:



There is an important part, namely the enemy amount. The quality of the units on a mission will be defined by the army size, but the amount will depend on this value. You will get a summary of what modified this value, but in general, it depends on the enemy supply level, if there is a resistance/invader base in the region and the current loyalty value of the region.
[h2]
Closing thoughts[/h2]

So, that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support feel free to join our Discord here. Otherwise, I wish you a great holiday season, and see you next year!

A recording of an interview with the developer plus let's play of the demo with kormakrtv.

Hello everyone! We had our hands full with the release of the demo at TactiCon and we had to blow off a bit of steam after that. But we are back now with a new devlog about the resistance base -or more accurately- bases!

[h2]The old ways[/h2]

Before I go into how it was changed, a quick recap of how it worked previously. It was pretty much identical to how XCOM 2 did its base. It was set up like an ant farm underground, and every level had 4 slots for rooms. Like so:


Now that is okay, after all, it worked for XCOM as well. But to me, it doesn't feel like the player has too many decisions to make here. Mostly it's just the order in which the player builds stuff. In addition, I had another problem, namely that I wanted the player to care about the different territories a bit more in the campaign map.

Then a solution dawned on me that could solve both of these problems. What if I break up the bases into smaller ones, and place them inside territories on the maps? This creates bases that need to be protected, leading to certain territories beings more important than others. Plus I can make bases more unique depending on which region they reside in.

[h2]What can a base do for you?[/h2]



Every base built will provide the region base resources, by simply existing. These are smiths, scholars, soldiers per month, and gold per month. Smiths provides equipment points that govern how much equipment can you bring into a combat mission, scientists speed up research and skill acquisition, soldiers per month governs how many new recruits you have at the start of the month, and gold per month is well, the gold you receive per month.

The base rate for these resources is different for the 6 regions on the map so that itself differentiates the bases. But that is not all! Every region has attributes(reminder, every skill belongs to an attribute) that belong to them, and the player will only have access to those in which they have a base in. So for example, if you want to use swords, you will need to have a base in a region that is known for sword-wielding. That means the choice of the base location is not only determines your income but your available and researchable skills and equipment!

[h2]Anatomy of a base[/h2]



The base itself is a tavern that acts as a front for the secret base below. Every base will have 4 slots to build into. At the beginning of the game, you will have four buildings you can build, corresponding to the 4 resources a base can provide. A black market for gold, a laboratory for scholars, a smithy for smiths, and a training center for soldiers. In addition, if you research one of the early techs you will unlock the scrying room, which will add scrying charges for your planning phase in combat.

What is important to note here is that income these buildings provides are not flat but dependent on the base value of the region. So for example building a laboratory is more beneficial in a region naturally high in scholars.
[h2]How to lose them[/h2]



Now I have deliberately avoided what makes territories different inside regions for a base. The reason is there is nothing if all of the territories have the same loyalty to the resistance. But the amount of territory does matter! If a territory loses all of its support for the resistance the base will be lost. But if there is another territory still valid for a base in the region, the player can play an evacuation mission to move the base there. How much of the base he manages to evacuate depends on the player's performance on the mission of course.

The player will start with one base for free, and additional bases will be buildable, for a considerable cost. This system provides a natural defeat condition for the player as well, the game will end if all of the player's bases have been destroyed.

[h2]Closing thoughts[/h2]

So that's it about the new bases! For me, it feels like this was the last piece of the puzzle that was necessary to make the decision-making in the campaign portion compelling!

For more general news, the TactiCon event feels like a big success for us, as we managed to more than double our wishlist count! I want to thank everyone who is supporting us in this project! In addition, we have started a Discord channel where we post everything related to Slaves of Magic, so if you want to ask us anything, or just want a central place for all the news related to the game feel free to join us here.

Hello everyone!

The third bugfix for the demo is live with the following changes:
- Various optimizations to improve the combat map performance.
- Implemented small usability improvement. Now at the beginning of the player's turn, one of his/her eligible units will be selected, and the camera will focus on that unit.