Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition v1.09

New Features & Major Fixes
Total and complete performance improvement in all areas of the game
CPU performance reduced across the board with 37% of the previous usage
Major improvements to AI sieging towns
Updated town level design really rebalanced gameplay towards sieges

Fixes and Additions
Various improvement to units in combat
Various improvement to units in combat
Greatly reduced lags when tasking large number of battalions
Zombies are now working in Skirmish mode
A lot of redesign for towns both in campaign, skirmish and survival mode
Reworked all bases for 3 races – towns now just have 1 entrance
A lot of level design changes for 3 races towns
Towns now have a lot less staircases, towers
Removed useless parts of walls in Orcish and Elven towns
Completely reworked unit battalion sizes – often a bit smaller
Reworked all formations for units

Balancing Changes
More variety between battalion sizes from 60s to 30s depending on units
Workers reworked to use smaller battalion size, but be just as effective
Major rebalancing of all resources income – for a bit faster games
Rebalanced all units relations and stats with the new battalions
Super elite units like Heroes and Dragons are stronger now
Very large unit battalions rebalanced to be weaker – skeletons, goblins, dwarves e.t.c
Zombies are now a lot tougher, but spawn in somewhat smaller numbers

New Features & Major Fixes
Major visual improvement with distance fog and other effects
Main menu presentation improved with distance fog
Players can now set Vsync in the options – performance draining!

Fixes and Additions
Main menu now opens races background in Skirmish and Survival screens
Main menu no longer has the bad looking Campaign screen
Fixed Zombie Survival and Skirmish not giving proper rewards for surviving waves or killing AIs
Campaign chapter 1 fixed all kinds of startup issues related to the intro rain sequence
Campaign chapter 1 removed the black text intro
Got rid of the long white fade out between main menu scene changing
First step in visual performance improvements - several FPS on mid to high range systems
First steps in improving performance when fighting larger battles - but a lot more work ahead
Fixed various issue that could effect connectivity for multipayer games

Balancing Changes
Fixed Skirmish rewards - 10 for easy AI kill, 15 for medium, 20 for hard
Zombie Survival rewards are now given after each wave, starting from 1 per wave to 15 for higher waves.

Major Additions & Improvements
Completely reworked in-game camera
Much better visual performance, on average 10-15 FPS
Stability improvements with several rare crashes fixed
Major improvements to main menu backgrounds
Full Ground view camera is now only available in cinematic view
More flexible minumal and medium camera settings
Complete rebalance of the Gem system - it`s much easier to progress now

Fixes and Balancing
Rotating minimap is now on by default
Fixed healing ability for heroes and units
Fixed various misc abilities for heroes not working
Reduced lag during ranged combat
Reduced lag when Marauders fire arrows
Redesigned main menu background camera
Fixed bad bug with skirmish rewards always giving 1 or 2 gems
Reward for Skirmish greatly increased with 20,40, 60 for beating easy, medium, hard AI
Reward for Zombie survival greatly increased with around 20 every 3 waves (that was in the previous commit)
Starting Gems raised to 250 from 150

SURVIVAL EXPANSION

• Wave 1+ Zombies: Zombies are the most common form of undead. While they are quite harmless by themselves, they are very deadly in numbers. Zombies are very weak to slashing attacks.
• Wave 3+ Skeleton Thanes: Skeleton Thanes have lower health than Zombies but do significantly more damage. They have a very high resistance to pierce damage and are almost invulnerable to fire damage. Skeletal Thanes are very weak to crushing attacks.
• Wave 6+ Zombie Ogres: Zombie Ogres have high health and aim to destroy your walls and gates. They have all around low resistances. It is advised that you destroy them either by range or melee before they reach your walls!
• Wave 9+ Skeleton Warriors: Skeleton Warriors have average health but are near invulnerable to piercing and fire damage. The best way to defeat these minions is to send your warriors out to meet them in battle.
• Wave 12+ Demonic Minotaurs: Demonic Minotaurs have high health and do high damage but do little to walls. They have mostly lower resists other than a little higher resistance to slashing damage. It is recommended you weaken them with archers before facing them in melee due to their higher damage!
• Wave 15+ Skeleton Archers: Skeleton Archers have very low health but are highly resistant to piercing damage and are near invulnerable to fire damage. Skeleton Archers deal high damage and it would be wise to make sure they do not linger long outside of your walls.
• Wave 20+ Zombie Behemoths: Zombie Behemoths have the highest health of all undead. They have lower resists apart from an increased resist to crushing damage. They can decimate your gates if you let them knock at your door. Use everything you must to keep these minions at bay!

FIXES AND ADDITIONS

• Arrows now track moving targets
• Survival now has six new minions that spawn
• Additional performance improvements
• Survival is now an Iron Man mode. When you are defeated you must start over
• Fixed issue with Skeleton Archers ammo
• Fixed Healing Aura to not create extra units
• The Stronghold upgrade for Humans is now properly locked until researched
• Fixed bug that would sometimes cause statistical issues in Survival
• Ogres now move to the player base when spawned
• Knights should now be able to change formations

BALANCING

• Survival statistic system completely rebalanced
• The Undead no longer heal at town wells
• There is a greater difference between the difficulties in Survival
• Fixed an exploit used to receive gems in Skirmish
• Fixed a save game exploit used to receive gems in Survival

Hey Everyone,

It`s been a great launch week - many new players have discovered the game during this time, but more importantly thousands of old players came back to the game! Myself and others from our small team had a great time playing games with many of you, and chatting in-game. Thanks for all the feedback, suggestions and reviews!

With launch craziness behind us, we are switching from daily hot fixes to bigger updates every few days, and we are happy to introduce our first major update to KW2DE - 1.4!

Keep in mind that you will need to update the game in order to continue playing in online mode.

Thanks again for supporting the game - please consider leaving us some feedback on the forums or review sections. We`d love to hear from you what we are doing right, and what still needs out attention.

We are looking forward to staying in touch with you in the game chat all day long, as well as on our forums.

And so introducing Update # 4:

MAJOR CHANGES AND ADDITIONS

• Social Invite player to a game mode now randomizes the map
• AI will now open and close gates properly
• Login button added above the three GUI quickplay buttons for those that are offline

PERFORMANCE AND OPTIMIZATION

• Updated all worker (i.e. Peasant, Laborer, Warden, etc.) code to improve FPS (More improvements coming)
• Zombies spawn 10 minutes after a battalion has died (Make sure to clean up the battlefield after big fights!)
• Zombies that spawn remove corpses.
• Corpses are removed after 15 minutes in skirmish mode, 12 minutes in survival
• Zombies will start to decay after being alive for 10 minutes if not killed in Skirmish and 12 minutes in Survival
• Zombies will temporarily stop spawning if higher than max number on the map
• Temporarily removed Skeletons from Survival until properly optimized

FIXES AND ADDITIONS

• Orc AI Hard will now properly send units to attack you
• Players do not receive a Defeat message when sending units to allies unless they have zero units left.
• Fixed Card Power Functions and in-game use texts to align with their abilities
• Social Invite player to a game mode now checks the game version before the match
• Fixed a bug causing corpses to get stuck in walls
• Decreased the max fly height of arrows and bolts
• Slightly increased zoom level due to popular feedback
• Starting camera distance is set to max zoom out of “Minimum Camera Setting”
• Added, "Disabled in Offline Mode" tooltip to Tech Tree and Card Powers when in Offline Mode.
• Chat bar now scrolls to the bottom of chat after a loading screen
• Removed Attack Move from various units (depreciated/same as aggressive stance)
• Fixed Font for the Chinese Language

BALANCING

• Adjusted difficulty of Survival to make late games much harder
• Due to popular feedback, Resource Cap has been increased to 10k in all modes
• Decreased the Cost of Wardens by 30%
• Decreased the Cost of Female Wardens by 15%
• Reduced HP of Skeletal Units that spawn from Crypt

KNOWN ISSUES

• When three AI races are selected - one of the races do not upgrade their walls.
• Aura healing can cause lag for some users (Spell FX currently disabled)
• When a wall breaks the animation can cause lag for some users.
• Some worker’s battalion leaders will move to a tasked resource first before the rest follows (at long distances)

- Many fixes to multiplayer connection issues
- Fixed a bug that could crash Custom Multiplayer Game window
- Added Russian Localization for Chapter Six and Skeleton Units
- Added build limit to Crypts (3)
- Added Skeleton Battalion spawn limit per Crypt (3)
- Survival spawn points for Zombies now do damage to Skeletons
- Garviolas are now much stronger in late game
- Elven Deep Wizard spells now unlock in the correct order
- Alchemy Card should no longer trigger anti-cheat
- Destroy Building added to Great Trees
- Destroy Unit added to Peasants
- Increased price of Crypt by 25%
- Increased Skeleton spawn time by 25%
- Zombies do 3x damage against Skeleton Units

-Reworked melee combat - battalions will mostly attack as one unit
-Reworked pathfinding - individual battalions will run around much less
-Reworked combat - swarm mechanics greatly improved
-Performance improvement - much lower CPU usage during combat
-Improved cinematic mode camera - close zoom in, much further zoom out and low, ground level angles
-Added new Defensive Stance to units - will return to original position once attacked, only reacts to units attacking
-Ladders, Tower and Treant now have Detach functionality, and can be reused
-New Dev Trades added to the Market - 5 new trades per player, every day
-Upgrading to large gatehouse keeps gates closed
-Fixednot being able to task units away from attacking palisade gates
-Fixed menu breaking when receiving Friend invite while searching
-Fixed menu breaking when sever announcement is shows while searching
-Peasant and Warden Female Hotkeys changed
-Fixed problems with building decoration objects when loading the saved game
-Fixed common error with Crafting window
-Updated filters for restricted names and words including adolf hitler and others
-All ranged unit volley damaged reduced and balanced
-Wolf NPCs attack reduced by 37%
-Orcs use Worker Hut drop off much better
-Zombie Spawn area in survival - heals Zombies and drains player units
-Fixed hide ability breaking in multiplayer hiding units from the player that controls them
-New forest spirit icon that allows seeing how many are producing
-Men Swordsman: 10% HP, 12% attack, 20% Armour
-Men Cavalier: 15% HP 13% attack
-Men Mounted Knight: 18% HP 11% attack
-Men Foot Knight 17% HP 18% attack
-Men Crossbowman 28% attack
-Men Halberdier 18% HP, 12% attack
-Men Maceman: 15% HP
-Elven Rootant cost increased by 100 gold
-Elven Rootant hitpoints reduced 25%
-Orc Marauder nurfed, takes 20 seconds longer to train
-Orc Marauder Worker Hut cost increased by 60 food
-Orc Marauder Hit Points reduced 10%
-Orc Grinder damage increased 100%
-Orc Grinder now do 300% more damage vs Zombies, take 10% damage from Zombies

Hey Guys and Girls,

Just 10 days after KW2B launch, we are ready to unroll our second massive update, and the best part - this time around it was You guiding the team.

This update was all about what our Players want to see changed and fixed. We`ve collected over 20 player suggestions, and dozens of bug reports from our very helpful player community. And the result - is this massive update, giving You - what You want to see changed. We`ll continue working in the same direction for our next update.

Our next update will be ready towards theend of the month, and will feature a lot of great new features and fixes.

And so presenting 1.02 "The Players Patch"

Major Updates and New Features
-Major change to multiplayer - replaced options with one Find a Game feature. Find a game will look for 1vs1 matches, or 2vs2 and FFA depending on player population
-New feature - give selected units to allied player - button under Minimap
-Fixed issue with campaign progress not saving if losing internet connection
-Auto save option for singleplayer
-Campaign difficulty completely re-balanced for Easy and Medium - much easier
-Fixed problem with Repair Gate never un-greying Gate Controls
-Gatehouses now properly show Rebuild Gate button when gate has been destroyed
-Control scheme changed, no longer need to hold Space to use WASDQE
-Double Click on Group icon to shift camera
-Added Friends Only option to Custom Battle
-Added Player Colour options to Custom Battle
-Adjusted sorting custom game list by friends and friends of friends
-New AI difficulty drop-down box that also applies to Random AI selection

Minor Updates and Fixes
-Ten seconds after victory all players are taken to the main menu
-Chapter 2 easier - more starting resources, less attacking units
-Chapter 3 easier - more starting resources, Dragons easier to kill
-Chapter 4 fixed a bug with loosing on start
-Chapter 4 a lot easier - less attacking units
-Chapter 5 a lot easier - less attacking dwarves
-Chapter 5 death counter goes up much faster on easy and medium
-Fixed Large Human Gatehouse breaking on loading saved game
-Zombies do ten times less damage to Dragons and Hydra
-Zombies move up to 30% slower in Survival mode
-Arrows flight speed increased 30%
-Fixed several errors with chat
-Fixed Challenge notification if already in battle
-Main menu icon tooltips will not show if Multiplayer window is open
-Fixed extremely loud audio for campaign voice overs
-Fixed problems with certain cards not working
-Fixed problems with building palisade in Grand Hut
-Fixed problems with constructing Warg Pens
-Fixed rare error that would break interface
-Fixed canceling User Rename breaking the menu
-AI Orc Grand Hut will no longer spawn units after defeat
-Show tooltip about Campaign saving automatically on campaign loading screen if no save file exists for campaign