Update 6-9-2013

Fixes:

- A bug preventing players to finish the Tutorial has been fixed.

- A bug causing Guild Commands arrows to be shown on different Regions than they should has been fixed.

- A bug causing problems with the Mute function has been fixed.

- A bug causing black screens has been fixed.

- Several minor bugs have been fixed.


Additions:

- There is a 3 days cooldown to join a Guild when you leave one or you are being kicked from one to avoid exploitation of Guild Commands and Influence gaining.

- New units have been added to the game. The Cave Giant, the Troll, the Giant Spider, the Spider Swarm, the Ogre Pitmaster and the Ogre Skullplucker. They are called Mercenary units and Guilds will be able to recruit them next week, when Guild Warfare 2 goes live and as long as the Guild controls a Region with a Mercenary unit as a regional bonus. They will also be accessible by other players in the form of premium units. However, Guild Mercenary units have a higher level cap compared to the ones which can be purchased with Gems. Some more details regarding the units:

The Giant Spider has the Web and Tower special ability. Giant Spider is a Merc Unit which spits web from afar, inflicting damage, but it also has a probability to web a unit and immobilize it for a time period. Although its main weapon is its web, it should not be considered an easy opponent in melee. The Tower special ability renders the Giant Spider immune to Flanking and Rearing effects.

The Spider Swarm has the Evasion special ability. A quite fast unit with good melee capability and with a special ability which gives a probability to the Spider Swarm to reroll a failed Melee check when defending, making it a quite difficult opponent to kill.

The Cave Giant has the Tower, Crush and Confusion special abilities. He is therefore immune to Flanking and Rearing effects, due to its massive size. The Crush ability gives a probability to the Giant to inflict a number of automatic hits with very high Strength against an enemy unit (or UNITS!) while in melee. In high levels, it could even kill 12 troops with a single blow! Finally, Giants are not very famous for their intelligence, so sometimes when things around them become too hectic and they have to process too much information in a very short time, they might get confused and stay idle for a few seconds. The user will not be able to give any Move or Attack orders to the Giant while he is confused.

The Troll has the Tower, Regeneration and Acid Splash special abilities. Regeneration will regenerate HP for the Troll, while Acid Splash will inflict damage to the enemy when the Troll is damaged. Both special abilities work on a probability roll of course.

The Ogre Pitmaster has the Rage and Killer Instinct special abilities. Rage will increase the Strength of the unit and Killer Instinct will provide an automatic successful roll when the Ogre rolls Strength Vs Endurance, when it is attacking. As always, successful probability rolls are needed for the special abilities to be activated.

The Ogre SkullPlucker has the Rage and Stun special abilities.special abilities. Rage works as above and the Stun will allow the Ogre SkullPlucker to stun enemy units in combat with the force of their blow forcing them to lose their combat round(s).

Mercenary units have levels, as all the current users, so depending on their level they may have some of their abilities enabled or not. For example, the Cave Giant has the Crush ability enabled at level 3.

- Unit and Hero level caps raised to 20.


Changes:

- Epic and Godlike items stats have returned to their old values. Epic items: 10-15 and Godlike items: 15-30  All items which were created after their nerfing will receive the following bonuses. Epic Items: +2 to their stats , Godlike Items: +5 to their stats

- AI has been slightly upgraded to become a little more challenging. Whenever there is a slow moving unit in an AI army, the rest of the units will move according to its speed. This will prevent situations from happening where fast moving enemy Infantry units could be disposed first and then the late arriving Heavy Infantries could be dealt with ease. Also, Ranged units and Cavalry units will assess the battlefield better, before they decide to attack, allowing enough time for the melee units to move forward before they act. Suicidal attacks should be minimized now.

- The difficulty of the battles has been changed so as to scale according to the level of the player's units. There exist some min and caps for each difficulty level, but we will leave it to you to find out how exactly the system works. It is part of the fun, right? ;)We will not let you swim into dangerous waters though so here are the mins for each level of difficulty:

Normal: Min AI level of unit 2

Hard: Min AI level of unit 5

Nightmare: Min AI level of unit 9


(Mercenary units as AI enemy units will start appearing against players with level of units higher than 4. The level of the Mercenary units will also depend on the player's units as well.)


- CO-OP battles will also scale according to the level of players' units involved in the battle. Before this change a high level player participating in a battle would trigger AI enemy units with levels close to his levels and therefore his allies would have to face very high level of units. Now, AI units levels will range from the lowest to the highest level of players' units. Also, the system will try to serve CO-OP matches to players of the same level range and if that is not possible, then the system would match him with a higher Tier.

- Because of the changes in the AI, we have slightly increased the rewards for Hard, Nightmare and CO-OP battles.

- We have reduced the Tiers to 5. Tier 1 (Level Range 1-4) Tier 2 (Level Range 5-8 ) Tier 3 (Level Range 9-12) Tier 4 (Level Range 13-16) Tier 5 (Level Range 17-20) Tiers are now defined by the level of the highest level of unit participating in an army.

- Gear Score (GS) value is introduced. Gear Score is the total value of the items a unit has equipped along with the items that a Hero assigned to it may have. The value of Heroes' items is 60% lower than the units' items.

- Every unit has now a specific GS cap according to its level. The reasons behind this change are the following:

1) We wanted to provide a smoother game progression. As the units gain experience and level up, they become more effective and they are allowed to equip higher and higher items. This is too important for the game for two reasons:
   
  i) No more low level units with Godlike items giving the opportunity to exploit game mechanics and harm the PVP gaming experience.

 ii) Further increasing the gap between F2P and P2W. We want to provide even opportunity to both paying and non paying users. Paying users can still obtain gear much faster and a lot easier than non paying users, but the GS limitations are valid for both of them. We believe that supremacy should depend more on experience (time and effort invested in the game) than on items. Items are of course still very important, as they will always make a good unit a better one, giving it the edge on the battlefield.

2) Balance PVP further. As Tiers are defined by the highest level of unit participating in an army and as GS caps are being introduced, the bonus gap between two armies due to items has been greatly reduced to provide a more balanced PVP gaming experience.

- Understanding that the GS caps is a huge change in Battle Conquest, but knowing wholeheartly that it is for the better, as it will improve the gameplay experience we have decided to do two things:

  i) Enable the GS caps, but not the validation mechanism to go to battle. That means that although you will be able to see whether your gear has exceeded the GS Cap for the level of your unit (it will show up in red if it has exceeded the cap), your army will still be allowed to go to battle, something that wouldn't be allowed if we had that mechanism enabled. In other words, you can see the GS caps and whether you are exceeding it with your gear or not, but it will not prevent you from using a unit which has exceeded its GS cap in battle. This will allow you to test using different sets of gear.

 ii) Provide a universal 5% XP bonus to units to all players, to help them level up their units faster.

The above will be valid for approximately 9 days, until the 16th of September, in an attempt to help the Community get acquainted with the new change.

Some of you may have already read the GS caps per level, as they are posted in the Forums. We have decided to increase the GS caps for the low level units, to provide a little more room for gear. By the time you are reading this, we will have already posted the new GS caps.

Also, as the GS caps are not fully activated, for the reason mentioned above, you will not be able to experience the difference in PVP matchmaking yet.


As always, from the whole team of Battle Conquest...Thank you for your continuous support and have fun!