Gods Against Machines News

[h2]General[/h2]

• When rerolling new spells or blessings, discarded choices will get much lower priority on the next rolls (this effectively makes marks of fate stronger). Note: does not work for other reward types
  
• The spawn points of player and enemy bases are now a little bit closer than before - previously we separated both factions as much as possible, but this made building-heavy builds too slow or useless due to the large distance between bases and it also reduced the danger coming from enemy artillery turrets too much
  

[h2]New spell abilities and blessings[/h2]

• Power overwhelming - chance to temporarily increase the damage of your spells
  
• Quick energy - chance to temporarily decrease the cooldown of your spells
  
• Controlled force - same effect as Power Infusion (chance to increase damage) but also makes the spell move in the same direction always
  
• Charged arrow - blessing that increases critical strike chance (stronger version of Blazing arrow)
  

[h2]Spells[/h2]

• Ice Wall - changed Power Infusion into Controlled force and increased the base damage of the spell by 10%
  
• Flame sword - slightly reduced the damage at higher levels (about 5% reduction)
  
• Fireball, Ice Shard and Rock Spike had their high-level damage reduced very slightly (about 5% reduction)
  
• Storm Pillar - maximum range increased by 10% to allow offensive usage of this building
  
• Thunderstorm - greatly increased the chance of casting Tornadoes when the "cast spell" upgrade is activated
  
• Furnace, Healing Waters - added Quick energy ability that temporarily decreases cooldown of spells (must be activated)
  
• Spike field, Rejuvenation, Healing Waters - added Power overwhelming ability that temporarily increases damage of spells (must be activated)
  
• Spike field - increased the damage by 10%
  
• Water shield - added the ability to add a temporary blessing called Healing Waters that increases the corruption resistance (must be activated)
  
• Time shift - added the ability to add a temporary blessing called Charged arrow that increases the critical strike chance (must be activated)
  
• Rain Of Fire, Blizzard - added the Power Infusion ability (must be activated), this ability transfers to spells cast by these (Fireball, Ice Shard)
  
• Whirlpool - add the ability to trigger the Sacred Hammer blessing (must be activated)
  
• Fire eater - added the ability to spawn a Fire Phoenix (must be activated)
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Rising Tide - capped the height of water but introduced a 300% buff to drowning damage when water is at max height. This means that in some rare cases, enemy bases cannot be fully drowned, but when maximum height is reached the damage will overwhelm enemies quickly even on highest difficulty
  
• Eternal flame - increased the damage of the blessing at higher levels considerably (30%) to make it more in line with the Rising Tide changes
  
• Webbed menace - the damage and hitpoints of spider minions has been reduced by 20% on average due to them being way too strong when fully upgraded even on the highest difficulty
  
• Mana crystals - slightly decreased their damage and hitpoints (roughly 10% reduction)
  
• Enemy reinforcement events that summon buildings have been strenghtened at higher levels to give enemies more chance to recover from base destruction at higher difficulties
  
• Enemy builder drones had their range increased by 20%
  
• Increased alien terraformer corruption output by 10%
  
• Enemy laser turrets had their damage increased by 10%
  
• The blessings Servants sacrifice and Servants vengeance were too strong for minion heavy builds so their power has been reduced by 25-30% (these are the blessings that remove corruption or resources when your minions die) - they are still quite strong but not as broken as before
  
• The blessing Protectors of nature was too weak so it's power has been increased by 35% (this blessing clears corruption when you bargain with powerful spirits)
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Gift of purity - fixed the description and fixed a bug that caused it to calculate the amount of corruption to cleanse incorrectly
  
• Reduced the volume of some sound effects to make them less annoying (Ice wall, spider death)
  
• Empower spell can now be cast on water
  
• Fixed a bug that caused units to stop attacking when there was too many of them
  

Today we are releasing the second major update to Gods Against Machines nicknamed "Gaia".

In this update, you can look forward to a new Gaia power, optional mission objectives and new rewards for completing them - Gaia's Gifts and Wonders! There are also several smaller changes, such as more control over game scaling in EASY difficulty, as well as tons of fixes and small improvements, and of course balance changes.





We have added a new baseline (always active) Gaia power - Wonders Of Nature!

By upgrading this power, you will be able to encounter optional objectives (more on this below) in missions more often and receive better rewards for completing them. It will also allow you to use wonders more often and gain access to more powerful wonders. But what are these wonders and what are the optional objectives? Read on to learn more!





In some regions, you will have the opportunity to complete an optional objective. These make it more difficult to defeat the enemy by requiring you to play a certain way - remove a certain amount of corruption, use only certain types of spells, not use miracles, etc. Some objectives even have a time limit - for example, you have to kill bosses fast enough to complete them. If you can't, don't worry - nothing bad will happen, but you will miss out on powerful rewards that you can't get any other way! Fortunatelly you can see what kind of objectives (if any) will be active in the available regions:



Some optional objectives may be very easy because your build is very good at solving that particular challenge, while others may be nearly impossible. The choice of which goals to attempt is entirely up to you!

But what about the rewards? Let's take a look at what Gaia's gifts and wonders are:





Gift's are rewards that are used immediatelly when you pick them up. When you complete an optional objective, there will always be at least one gift to select among the options. There are eight different gifts in the game - here is an example of three of them:

• Gift of power - Earn maximum number of rewards for winning this region regardless of corruption.
  
• Gift of clarity- Corruption in this region won't be added to world corruption.
  
• Gift of fate - Earn 3 fate charms.
  

Wonders are a completely new mechanic which we are introducing in this patch. They are tokens that you can use to request help from Gaia at any time during a region battle. This should allow you to have more control over the battle and tackle extremely hard challenges more easily. You can gather wonders in advance and then use them at the right time to overcome even the strongest of foes.



The Wonders Of Nature Gaia power is relatively weak at first, but once you spend a good amount of essences to upgrade it you will be able to get many wonders and use them as often as you like!



There are six different wonders in the game and each of them comes in two flavors: normal and greater. The greater wonder has a much stronger effect than the normal one. For example:

• Wonder of fire - Destroy all small enemy military units.
  
• Great wonder of fire - Destroy all small enemy military units as well as military producing buildings.
  

We have also added a small feature that has been requested on our forums - the ability to change how enemy power scales in EASY difficulty. You can now reduce or increase their damage and hitpoints as well as the amount of resources they have so that you can test your powers or experiment with crazy builds!





With new features come new achievements! We did not want to make them too grindy, so you can get all on NORMAL difficulty, but it will still require you to challenge yourself. Can you earn all three?





As always, there is a lot of small fixes and improvements in this patch. Here is a list of some of them:

• Promised power blessing now gives twice as many shards than before (shards for bargaining with powerful spirits)
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the loot chance to be displayed incorrectly in the stats window
  
• Increased the amount of shards that can be obtained in a single region (from drones) to 6 (was 4) before diminishing returns kick in
  
• Fixed a bug that caused only 1 mark of fate to be rewarded for completing a region even though 2 (or more) should have been awarded
  
• Fixed a few bugs in descriptions of spells
  

Hopefully you will enjoy this update! We have more things in store for future. Please keep the feedback coming, we read our forums regularly and take everything you say seriously!

Peter