Songs of Conquest News

Greetings Wielders! We are proud to be back with our first big update for the fall. The biggest news we bring you is the Battlegrounds mode!

In this game mode – accessible directly from the main menu – you can jump straight into a battle without having to set up an Adventure game. Just pick an army created by us or create one yourself in the Army Creator and start battling in Quickplay. With the Army Creator, you can build an army based on predefined Wielders and the troops of your choice. Start battling against random opponents online, tackle the AI, or invite a friend to a match – see you in the Battlegrounds!

Army Creator and VS-screen

Trying our cunning battle skills against the Lavabrain AI

We are also releasing a new map called Bad Neighbors. No need to play nicely, this one is all about victory, no matter the cost! The campaigns have also gotten an “Easy” setting, so you can make it all the way to the end without breaking too much of a sweat!

The hot seat mode is also now much more clearly communicated and easily accessible from the Multiplayer section of the Main menu.

Sneak peek of the new map, Bad Neighbors, released with this update!

As for gameplay changes, there are a few ones of extra noteworthyness! Dead Wielders now count towards the total number of Wielders the player can have, and Wielders can no longer be disbanded. However: Dead Wielders can always be revived, even if it brings the total number of living Wielders above the current limit. Disband and Wielder limits weren’t working as we intended and hopefully, these changes will remedy that!

Of course, we have been doing a lot of small and big bug fixes, but if you want to go into the nitty-gritty details of those, I suggest you check out the latest changelog as this is supposed to be a lighthearted and easy to grasp update, not a tech log!

Do you dare to challenge nerds of this level?

To celebrate the release we are inviting YOU to play against us, the developers, between 19:00 to 20:00 CET (That’s 12PM to 1PM CST for you Americans!) each day from the 22nd of September to the 26th of September. And not only that, to bring more people into the fringe, we have decided to celebrate the Battlegrounds release with a sale during the same time. So grab your friends who haven't got the game yet and tell them that now is a great time! (The sale starts at 10AM Pacific Time / 7PM CET/CEST) - So the same time as you can challenge the developers in the Battlegrounds!

As of a few days back we are working on a new sprint where we primarily optimize the game performance, explore and implement UI-scaling and improve the simultaneous multiplayer turns experience. Work has also started on a general balance pass across the board.
Expect more updates to follow around every fourth week up until our next vacation period around Christmas. Until then, we hope to see you all in the Battlegrounds!

Team Lavapotion

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CHANGELOG V0.77.7 – SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

Notable additions

• New multiplayer mode: BATTLEGROUNDS. You can now play Battle only matches against friends, AI or random people online. Just pick an army created by the developers or create one yourself in the Army Creator.
  
• Add Easy setting to campaigns
  
• Add Turkish language option
  

Additions

• Large skirmish map Bad Neighbours added
  
• Add notifications and updated round text for maps with a round limit
  
• Add video option to limit framerate
  
• Add Hotseat link to Multiplayer section of Main Menu
  

Gameplay changes

• Dead Wielders count towards the total number of Wielders the player can have
  
• Wielders can no longer be disbanded
  
• Dead Wielders can always be revived, even if it brings the total number of living Wielders above the current limit
  
• Pre-requirement for march skill updated for Awakened
  

Gameplay bug fixes

• Fix not receiving gold incomes from occupied towns when continuing on a saved game
  
• Fix rare movement edge case where AI could get stuck in an endless loop
  
• Fix battle AI not being able to handle casting several spells on higher tiers when they can be cast on more than one troop
  
• Fix Wielders sometimes moving because of newly constructed buildings even when it wasn’t necessary
  
• Fix issue where battle maps with forest and mountain themes were not selected as often as they should be
  
• Fix buff/nerf tooltips in battle showing spell descriptions instead of spell effects
  

UI

• Add better camera zoom values in battle to support wider screen resolutions
  
• Fix no visible level up button in the wielder list
  
• Fix incorrect attack action in tooltip for towns
  
• Fix guard tower upgrade tooltip
  
• Fix mouse instructions hidden in tooltips when not your turn
  
• Fix memory leak when hovering the mouse cursor over selectable things on the map
  

AI

• AI upgrading and also switching out (weaker) troops when entering towns/settlements has been made more likely to happen.
  
• Recruitment has gotten a overhaul in general, promoting more sensible recruiting
  
• Skill selection scoring has been changed, in some ways to promote command in situations when it got pushed to the bottom.
  
• Add more decision inputs for when deciding what to build
  
• More diverse and flexible ways of building has been added
  
• AI concept of handing out roles specific roles to its wielders
  
• Pathing/tracing nearby items for pickup/claiming has been fundamentally changed
  
• An improved retreat option is in place to make feeding weak wielders to opponents less likely to happen.
  
• Fix bug where it inverted treat checks which made Suicide opponents appear as Very Easy, this was particularly nasty.
  
• Fix bug where the AI could not "see" some items under hostile zone of control, nor items it was standing next to.
  
• More detailed cache invalidation to help speed up think loop times
  
• Stop AI from casting Fury spell when it has only ranged troops
  
• Added dynamic caching of data in multiple places to help increase performance
  

Localization

• Minor fixes on missed localisation
  

Multiplayer

• Can now open spellbook during opponent's turn in Battle
  

Audio

• Update Piper’s Post sfx
  
• Update Merchants Guild sfx
  
• Add Barya Workshops sfx
  
• Fix Sassanid footsteps
  
• Rework and update other Barya sounds
  

Optimizations

• Optimize Fog of War update when walking with a wielder
  

Known issue
Battlegrounds: Army Creator — when dropping a troop on a slot where you already have units the resources will not be refunded correctly. You will need to delete the current troops and add new troops. You can always cancel and redo the army if your resources have been offset.

[h2]Notable additions[/h2]

• New multiplayer mode: BATTLEGROUNDS. You can now play Battle only matches against friends, AI or random people online. Just pick an army created by the developers or create one yourself in the Army Creator.
  
• Add Easy setting to campaigns
  
• Add Turkish language option
  

[h2]Additions[/h2]

• Large skirmish map Bad Neighbours added
  
• Add notifications and updated round text for maps with a round limit
  
• Add video option to limit framerate
  
• Add Hotseat link to Multiplayer section of Main Menu
  

[h2]Gameplay changes[/h2]

• Dead Wielders count towards the total number of Wielders the player can have
  
• Wielders can no longer be disbanded
  
• Dead Wielders can always be revived, even if it brings the total number of living Wielders above the current limit
  
• Pre-requirement for march skill updated for Awakened
  

[h2]Gameplay bug fixes[/h2]

• Fix not receiving gold incomes from occupied towns when continuing on a saved game
  
• Fix rare movement edge case where AI could get stuck in an endless loop
  
• Fix battle AI not being able to handle casting several spells on higher tiers when they can be cast on more than one troop
  
• Fix Wielders sometimes moving because of newly constructed buildings even when it wasn’t necessary
  
• Fix issue where battle maps with forest and mountain themes were not selected as often as they should be
  
• Fix buff/nerf tooltips in battle showing spell descriptions instead of spell effects
  

[h2]UI[/h2]

• Add better camera zoom values in battle to support wider screen resolutions
  
• Fix no visible level up button in the wielder list
  
• Fix incorrect attack action in tooltip for towns
  
• Fix guard tower upgrade tooltip
  
• Fix mouse instructions hidden in tooltips when not your turn
  
• Fix memory leak when hovering the mouse cursor over selectable things on the map
  

[h2]AI[/h2]

• AI upgrading and also switching out (weaker) troops when entering towns/settlements has been made more likely to happen.
  
• Recruitment has gotten a overhaul in general, promoting more sensible recruiting
  
• Skill selection scoring has been changed, in some ways to promote command in situations when it got pushed to the bottom.
  
• Add more decision inputs for when deciding what to build
  
• More diverse and flexible ways of building has been added
  
• AI concept of handing out roles specific roles to its wielders
  
• Pathing/tracing nearby items for pickup/claiming has been fundamentally changed
  
• An improved retreat option is in place to make feeding weak wielders to opponents less likely to happen.
  
• Fix bug where it inverted treat checks which made Suicide opponents appear as Very Easy, this was particularly nasty.
  
• Fix bug where the AI could not "see" some items under hostile zone of control, nor items it was standing next to.
  
• More detailed cache invalidation to help speed up think loop times
  
• Stop AI from casting Fury spell when it has only ranged troops
  
• Added dynamic caching of data in multiple places to help increase performance
  

[h2]Localization[/h2]

• Minor fixes on missed localisation
  

[h2]Multiplayer[/h2]

• Can now open spellbook during opponent's turn in Battle
  

[h2]Audio[/h2]

• Update Piper’s Post sfx
  
• Update Merchants Guild sfx
  
• Add Barya Workshops sfx
  
• Fix Sassanid footsteps
  
• Rework and update other Barya sounds
  

[h2]Optimizations[/h2]

• Optimize Fog of War update when walking with a wielder
  

[h2]Known issues[/h2]

• Battlegrounds: Army Creator — when dropping a troop on a slot where you already have units the resources will not be refunded correctly. You will need to delete the current troops and add new troops. You can always cancel and redo the army if your resources have been offset.
  

Hello, Wielders! Since the development team is now back from vacation and hard at work we figured it was time to provide you with a roadmap update. But, before we get into the roadmap we want to send out a huge thanks to all players who have bought or wishlisted the game so far! We had no way to anticipate such a huge interest in the game already in Early Access and we are now in a position where we can support the ongoing development for a long time!

The full crew recently sat down to plan the development up until 1.0. We had a long good look at all the user suggestions over at our Feature Upvote page and discussed both the top suggestions as well as interesting ideas with fewer votes. The team also reviewed the first version of the roadmap and considered if it still would hold up. After a long and constructive meeting, some follow-up planning, and discussions, we are now happy to release an updated roadmap!



The roadmap is also available in text format on www.songsofconquest.com/roadmap. You can also click the image above for a larger version.



Major changes?
The only real major change is that the next campaign has been pushed to early next year. We are still looking for a new Lead Artist and figured it would be hard for us to deliver within our previously estimated timeline. We have set the bar high when it comes to cutscenes and it simply takes a while to produce this level of content to spice up the campaigns!



Other changes
Smaller changes to note are for the scope of the rest of 2022. Spells will be updated, and we are working on more unit traits and abilities. However, a richer siege battle experience has been moved to 2023. Also, what we previously called Lobby facelift and updates have been moved into the UI & UX improvements section. More skirmish maps will come as they are designed, crafted, tested, and refined during 2022 and 2023.



New features!
Oh yes. As you might have noticed, we have listed a whole new game mode in the during 2022 column. Battlegrounds is a game mode where you can test your mettle against the AI, friends, or strangers online. It is a way to jump straight into combat without having to play adventure at all. So you’ll be able to try out late-game strategies, untried army builds, or just have a quick and fun match against a stranger online! We look forward to hearing your feedback on this new game mode, which will be released next week!

We have also bumped up the visibility of the ongoing AI development slightly, to make it clear that this is of the utmost importance to the team. It’s an aspect of the game that is not done in chunks or increments but rather something that is continuously worked on. Our AI lead, Marcus, dropped an AI development Steam post last week, which I suggest you check out if you haven’t already!



Upcoming roadmap changes
Going forward, we will label all the revisions of the Roadmap so you can easily check when it was last updated. As we have stated before, the roadmap can and will change. Sometimes with delays and sometimes with additions of new features or content.

Building this game is a dream come true and the road to 1.0 will be truly exciting! We have lots of cool things to come and we can’t wait to show it all to you! Do you have any feedback, game-related anecdotes, or just something that you want to share about your game experience? Please drop a comment below and stay tuned for next week's update with Battlegrounds, big AI improvements, and more!

/Team Lavapotion

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Hello everyone!

We've been quiet for a while as the team has enjoyed their Swedish summer vacations. But, since a few weeks back the team is now hard at work again. And we are soon to drop some news and updates for you. Starting right now we would like to introduce you to the upcoming AI improvements. Some of these improvements are already live on our internal development branch, however, AI improvements are an ongoing process, rather than just one update!

Since this is one of the most discussed topics in the community, we want to emphasize that we value your feedback a lot and are aware of many issues related to the AI. It is definitely not finished and we will continuously work on improving it as time goes by - So please, if you have the time, post your feedback regarding the AI in the comments section of this Blog Post. It helps a lot!

We've started to add the concept of wielder roles. So, now the AI will start looking at its wielders in the terms of roles, and from that it can take certain decision. I.e. who should get the strongest troops or what skills to pick when leveling up. This is in an early stage still, but we are quite certain it's going to affect more and more decisions. The inital roles we have created for the first iteration is Warrior and Explorer, more will come after the system has matured a bit.

This a non-exhaustive list of what has been worked on lately:

• The AI upgrading and also switching out (weaker) troops when entering towns/settlements has been made more likely to happen. Previously the AI simply topped off what it had and filled empty slots, often leading to weak and pretty insignificant troops being left in slots.
  
• Recruitment has gotten an overhaul in general, previously recruitment was only part a long term decision which meant that if it walked by its own town it did not always recruit even if the town was overflowing with units. It's now more likely to recruit if it happens to walk by. Also it should use neutral dwellings much more often than before.
  
• Skill selection scoring has been changed, in some ways to promote command in situations when it got pushed to the bottom. This was previously a mitigation due to other issues the AI had, having many troop slots just lead to it having empty troop slots. The root cause has been fixed for this so we could remove that mitigation.
  
• How the AI reasons around buildings has been updated and we've added more decision input for when it decides what to build. For instance, it can check how much resource surplus it has if it would buy all units it produces every round. Or what starting resources are lying around the starting area.
  
• Deciding what to build has also previously been a bit unbalanced between the factions, which is one of the reasons why the AI has been weaker playing certain factions.
  
• An improved retreat option is in place to make feeding weak wielders to opponents less likely to happen.
  
• There has also been several bugs fixed which caused behaviour problems rather than crashing the game. The two major ones being: 1. It inverted treat checks which made Suicide opponents appear as Very Easy, this was particularly nasty. 2. The AI could not "see" some items under hostile zone of control, nor items it was standing next to.

The above points will be iterated upon even more, this is what we have had time to look at after coming back from our vacations. More to come in the future!

We've made a fundamental change to how the AI traces items nearby for pickup/claiming. The previous solution started out well with what we had available at the time (without making the AI even slower, it did not need that ...) but it has scaled poorly and created lots of edge cases.

The AI is now better at determining if something is on the way to where it wants to go and interact with it on the way. This is being verified currently and the initial tests look great, it also has better scaling capabilities when it comes to improvement and performance so we expect this to improve even further.

As always, if you have any questions or comments about this, please put them below.

Until next time!

/Marcus (AI Lead) and Team Lavapotion

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• Fixed issue where you could recruit endless amount of troops from defence tab if you had lots of research
  
• Fixed memory leak when you where hovering over objects in adventure mode
  
• Fixed issue where mini map could not be opened in the level editor
  
• Misc localization updates
  
• Fixed issue with wielders moving too far when a building was built or when an artifact was dropped
  

We also released a small patch on friday the 8th of July, that we forgot to post the changelog for. The changes of that patch were:

• Fix null reference exception in GetRoundsUntilRevival (usually after battle)
  
• Fix null reference exception in Upgrade Troops (exception after battle)
  
• Fix issue where listeners weren't cleaned up in TroopManagementMenu (exception after battle)
  
• Fix issue with AutoSaves no longer working
  
• Fix issue where you sometimes couldn't start a loaded online game from the lobby