Age of Wonders III v1.09 Patch Released

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Written by BuckGB on April 9th, 2014

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Triumph Studios is already incorporating player feedback into Age of Wonders III, and that's demonstrated by the release of a new v1.09 patch for the strategy/RPG that adds support for higher resolutions and Intel HD embedded graphics, as well as a slew of AI improvements and gameplay balance tweaks. The full announcement post and notes to follow:

Hi everybody, since the release last week we've been hard at work with the feedback we've gotten and we can now present you with the first official patch for Age of Wonders III. (Auto Update via Steam, Patch download available on GoG) Many thanks go out to players testing this patch over the past week!

Our overall goals with this first patch are: fixing hardware specific issues, registration issues, performance optimization, AI behavior and critical balance fixes. We also added a couple of features such as quick saves and native high resolution support.

Thank you for all of you feedback, and we're looking to bring you many, many more updates! Up next are networking fixes (VPN / Hamachi support) and late game economy fixes. Please continue to provide your feedback in the forums!

Kind Regards,

- The Team @ Triumph Studios.

V1.09 Change Log:

Compatibility

• WQHD / QHD (up to 2560 x 1440 / 2560 *1600) native resolution display support (the Black & White boxes and blurry text should disappear). Fix has been verified to work up to and including a resolution of 2560×1660.
• Fixed an issue for people using Intel HD Graphics specifically for HD4000 and Surface 2 Pro in combination with certain driver version, that caused a crash when opening interface screens e.g. starting the game, opening options menu, skill book, etc.

Performance

• Fixed frame drop when armies were selected.
• Fixed decreasing frame rate occurring during extended play, particularly in longer battles.
• Fixed a memory leak when Windows was locked.
• Optimized a feature effecting maps with water, which should now show increased framerate.

AI Improvements

• Fixed some cases where the tactical AI would come out from behind the walls of cities and fortresses too soon.
• Stopped the AI spamming disjunction, so players can now use global magic more easily.
• Fixed an issue where the tactical AI would cast a resurrection spell on an invalid target.
• Made '˜squire' AI easier to beat.
• AI settings for players were changed to compensate for this change, to keep the same level of challenge on normal difficulty.
• Using the '˜restart' option in a campaign map now returns the player to the briefing, allowing map difficulty to be changed.

Scenario & Campaign

• Campaign: Heroes being mind controlled no longer causes you to instantly lose a campaign map if you rescue them by the end of combat.

• Campaign: Heroes which are protected by the '˜resurgence' effect e.g. the theocrat's '˜rebirth' spell can now die in tactical combat without causing you to lose the campaign map, as long as you win the battle that they die in.
• Blightmouth Crater: Closed a gap in impassable mountains.
• Blightmouth Crater: Removed two superfluous hearts of the blight.
• Blightmouth Crater: Fixed the behavior of independent armies.
• Elven Resurgence: Player 6 now starts with more gold mines, making the starting positions more balanced.
• 4th Elven Court map: Independents no longer interfere with one of the starting quests.
• 4th Commonwealth map: Fixed a message that missed an icon under specific circumstances.
• 5th Commonwealth map: A '˜defeat leader' quest no longer reveals that leader's position.
• 5th Commonwealth map: Fixed a story message that had overlapping lines of text.
• 6th Elven Court & Commonwealth maps: Prevented story characters from dying when you are victorious.
• 6th Elven Court and Commonwealth maps: Added a few building upgrades to starting cities to give the player a better starting situation and more options.

Other Fixes.

• Fixed settings e.g. graphics settings not being saved when using the .uest' profile.
• Fixed an issue when logging in with usernames of two characters.
• Fixed the stack confirm movement button being disabled in some situations when a stack was auto-moving.
• Fixed a rare crash caused by a player razing a city with a heart of blight, tropics, etc in its domain
• Fixed an issue where a backstab bonus wasn't being correctly applied. This led to situations where a unit could backstab a target without flanking it.
• Fixed a crash triggered by clicking on a (You lost your throne city!) event.
• Fixed a crash triggered by selecting a '˜Egg has hatched' after loading the save game.
• Fixed the '˜Remove army from event list' shortcut key function so armies are properly removed from the list.
• Fixed an issue where the '˜Protect your leader and throne city' quest failed to complete on victory.
• The game now ignores controller input, to prevent camera drift when a controller is plugged in.
• '˜Spring of life' now rewards units when explored.
• When creating a new custom leader, the field for setting a name is now left empty by default.

Balance:

• '˜Shrine of smiting' is no longer '˜Devout', nerfing '˜Shrine of smiting' doom stacks which relied on stacking '˜Devout' bonuses for the '˜Smiting prayer bolts'.
• '˜Shadow stalker' now does cold damage. This fixes an issue where rogues had limited options vs. blight immune troops.
• Increased the research costs of skills to slow down progression through the skill tree.
• Increased cost of racial tier 3 unit building to 300 gold and 100 mana.
• Decreased the base production of cities.
• Fixed issue with '˜Libraries' and '˜Observatories' generating too much knowledge.

Features:

• Added buttons on either side of the city name that cycle through cities owned by the player.
• We added a quick save option, bound under CTRL+S by default.
• Added extra text to the preview popup when attacking a city wall. Players can now see the hit points the wall have remaining as they plan their attack.

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