Songs of Conquest News

Greetings Wielders, fearless adventurers, and strategists!

We are absolutely thrilled to bring you our latest update. Get ready to dive into it and read up on all the pixelated details! We are blazing ahead and ticking off those items on our new roadmap at a great pace and in general, it’s really looking like we are just perfectly on time.

Version 0.87 gives you a whole bunch of quality-of-life improvements, making sure that things are starting to reach the quality we want before reaching 1.0. For example, we are now introducing an improved version of our sim-turns, making sure it’s more dynamic and tactical than ever before. We have also, thanks to our amazing community, identified and taken care of a bunch of bugs, so thank you for reporting them!

We sent our best guy on bug fixes!

So what about those sim-turns? Well, we finally got around to improving them, making sure it all just runs smoother. The basic approach is that we want as many players to play simultaneously as possible, but still avoid situations where players would benefit by doing something as quickly as possible (for instance frantically buying all the troops your coffers can afford before the other player has the time to click to attack).

In short, human players are grouped together in as few groups as possible. Putting you together with your co-op partner is a given but you can also sign a little non-aggression pact while playing using a new “friendly” icon on the banners. Be warned though, that little icon is in no way a guarantee that your neighbor doesn’t pull a sneaky move on you, beware of backstabbing!

We never trusted that Robin guy anyway, clearly up to something.

As we said, we did a lot of work with quality-of-life stuff, and that includes a bunch of polish by our look-n-feel team. We have reworked a bunch of VFX and added or redone a whole heap of tooltips, everything to make things look just a little bit better. This might not be game-changing stuff but you have to do some polish as well as the big things.

It's worth getting a brand new Hellroar just for the new combat animation!

But wait there’s more! Well to be fair the list is pretty long and you’ll have to read the changelog linked below to really get a grip on the amount of work we’ve done. There is however one more massive thing that we just have to mention!

There have been a lot of multiplayer fixes, making sure that there will be way fewer disconnects by reducing the amount of traffic sent during an online game. We have also added an option where you can try to reconnect or gracefully leave the game through a menu if a disconnect does happen, you aren’t just lost in the void! Another new thing is the option of replacing any team with a human or an AI when loading a multiplayer game!

A bit harsh, but you get the point

And speaking of AI, it’s just getting better and will continue to do so every single update until launch! There have been improvements in path-making decisions, tactics, and adventure behavior. A great example for that is that is an improved threat assessment and increasing chances of making fewer suicidal attacks. After all, we want you to feel like the great Wielder that you are after defeating a worthy foe!

We have great faith in our new robot overlords.

In short, get ready for an enhanced multiplayer experience, smarter AI, and a smoother adventure in Songs of Conquest. We can’t wait to see you all in action!

So what are you waiting for? Start up the new update now and experience the magic of our little game. Share your epic tales, strategies, and feedback with us - your adventures really are a great inspiration for us!

Let’s conquer this world together!

/Everyone at Lavapotion

Read the new changelog here!

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Greetings Wielders!

We’ve been in Early Access for just a little more than one year now. To all who've played, joined our community, or given feedback: a heartfelt thank you from the Lavapotion dev team! Initially, we aimed for a full release this quarter, but after careful thought, we've decided to move it forward. Please allow us to clarify the decision.

Nearly half a million people have wishlisted our game, which is to be honest both unexpected and humbling. The Adventure Strategy genre isn't the largest anymore, yet you've demonstrated that the demand endures. But to put it simply: if the game isn't 1.0-ready, we have to acknowledge it and persevere through ongoing development. So let's check out the new roadmap, upcoming changes and the reasons for them.

A version with better resolution, or simple text format, can be found on our webpage!



The AI
First of all, we want to acknowledge that we are not satisfied with the current state of the AI for a full release. We have a solid development plan for it and we know what to do, it just has taken longer than we had planned. It takes a lot of time to get all the basic systems working and we are close to that point right now. With nine out of ten play sessions being single player it is obvious that the AI is of utmost importance.

The new region system features natural borders and minimizes changes to it over time, in order to better guide the AI in navigating and expanding across the map.



Randomly generated maps
Around a fourth of all game sessions are played on random maps. We want to make sure that the experience is varied, exciting and perfect each time. We are currently collecting feedback regarding the random maps in order to refine and improve the code and design elements behind it all. For the game to stay relevant long term it is important that the randomly generated maps feels and plays just right.

Iteration, testing and improvements, that’s the recipe for success they say! So, we’ll iterate this some more and then improve it with the help of your feedback.


New user experience
Since we released into Early Access, we have created a lot of new features. We need to make sure that new players get to try out these new features and get the best possible experience when trying the game for the first time. This means taking a look in the rearview mirror and coming back to things (like campaign maps) that were designed years ago and making sure that they use all the new cool stuff. Similarly the UI needs to be adapted in order to best present all the new features, as well as highlighting the wonderfully handcrafted maps that you've created.

In March 2017 the game looked like this. Sometimes it is good to take a step back and remind ourselves just how far we have come…



Steam Deck release
This one might come a bit out of the blue, but a lot of you guys want to play on your Steam Deck. Let me be clear that the addition of Steam Deck support has not impacted the decision to delay the release. It is an added bonus, rather than an obstacle in our development process. It is a lot of work, mainly because our UI needs a lot of re-scaling in order to work well on smaller screens. Fortunately we are helped by a great studio called Bitwave, so the time required on Lavapotions end is minimal. Bitwave are currently working with us to ensure that playing on the Steam Deck will feel like a native experience, not a sloppy port. The added benefit is that this will also enable us to have full gamepad support.

The game is running well on the Steam Deck, but UI elements and fonts still needs to be scaled up.



To sum it up
In the words of Shigeru Miyamoto: a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad. We are here for the long haul and we want to make this the best game it can be. The best days are still ahead of us and you can expect more exciting news in the coming months!

With utmost respect and gratitude,

/Team Lavapotion

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THE BEST EVENT OF THE YEAR IS HERE!

What better way to spend July than in front of the comfort of a computer screen? It might not be summer everywhere in the world, but the Steam Summer Sale is in full swing, and Songs of Conquest is right there with it! 

Never have our loving homage of a game been cheaper! A shining 50% to celebrate all things Summer and our upcoming vacation! So tell a friend, buy it for your grandmother, or just pick some flowers and enjoy July! 

Regardless if you buy it or not, we wish you the very best! We'll be back in August, rested and with more news and more updates for you! 

Glasses AND a flower necklace, thats the summer style!

Keep up the adventures!

/Everyone at Lavapotion

Greetings Wielders!

We are thrilled to present the latest update, the last update before the Lavapotion devs go on our Swedish summer holidays! This update has some exciting new features, crucial bug fixes, and gameplay elevating improvements! We will be hard to reach next month so don’t expect answers as quickly as you are used to until we get back in force in August!

Thats us during the summer, peak Swedish!

We're happy to announce a new way to enhance your gaming experience, making it harder or easier, whatever your preference is. This update features a system that allows you to fine-tune the game difficulty to your liking. Say goodbye to hardcoded AI settings because now you have the power to balance the game according to your preferences.

So what does that mean? Well, we have added options to calibrate your unit multiplier, applied per town/settlement to that town’s per-turn troop production. This makes it possible for you to choose if you want an easier game or give yourself a real challenge. You will also have the option to start with a marketplace, changing all prizes for you and giving you the option to trade from the very start.

Look at me! I'm a human and now I can also have my own invisible bonus marketplace! Take that AI!

Another new feature is that you can change your xp multipliers, making your Wielders into either slow learners or the quickest-leveling Wielders in Aerbor

You can also alter your income, changing how much gold you get from all your settlements, mines and Wielder bonuses. Imagine the difference between a standard game and one where you earn a fraction of what you usually do!

It’s going to be hard to field an army with that income, but we believe in you!

We have worked hard on tracking down bugs these last weeks, everything from AI pathing to fixing that troops aren’t “hidden” in the garrison when we evaluate threat levels. But most of all we have worked on network bugs, things that threw you out of online games and didn’t allow you to get back in there. The work of bug-catching is ever-going and this won’t be the last we see of this issue but we believe that we made it a lot better last update. As always we appreciate your bug reports as they help us track down the issue!

The only good bug is a dead bug!

If you really want to delve deeper into everything we did we really recommend reading the changelog, it’s filled with lovely details about what we have been working on.

With that, we wish you the best of summer or winter, depending on where you are! We’ll be back in August but we’ll be checking up on our socials and our Steam page sporadically, we just can’t stay away.

Keep adventuring and don’t forget your sunscreen! Or just stay indoors and play video games, that’s the best protection there is!

/Everyone at Lavapotion

https://www.songsofconquest.com/changelogs#changelog086


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