2.2 Preview Now Available (rev 33399) [UPDATED]

[rob]

A preview release of Hegemony Rome 2.2 is now available in the 'update_testing' branch. This major update includes an all new ambush/recon system, updated tactical mechanics, improved AI, modding samples, improved memory performance for 32 bit machines and a bunch of bug fixes. See the changelog below for more details.

As with earlier previews, this is still a work-in-progress so there might be some new bugs and there will probably be a couple more changes before the official release. Let us known what you think and feel free to send any bug reports to us at [e-mail]

[UPDATE: Nov 17, 2014] 2.2.0 Beta 2 is now available see additions to change log below.
[UPDATE: Nov 24, 2014] 2.2.0 Beta 3 is now available see additions to change log below.

Change Log:

New Ambush/Recon System

Sneak up on your enemies and launch devastating ambush attacks with the new ranged and melee ambush stances. Available to most infantry units, these stances allow units to move within an enemy's normal view range while remaining undetected. Engaging an enemy within a few seconds of being sighted will give your units a significant combat bonus. Each unit has new ambush and recon stats that determine how close to an enemy they can get before being spotted and, like other stats, these can be improved by promoting officers and generals.

New Modding Samples

To help out the modding community, the main game now includes sample mods on how to add new units, stances, updates and scenarios. These are located in Mods folder of the main game, but must be moved into your 'my documents/Longbow Digital Arts/Hegemony Rome/Mods' folder to be activated. Most .xnt data files are extensively commented, but don't hesitate to ask us if you have any questions.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• increased feedback for tactical maneuvers like charging and flanking
  
• significantly increased potential number of AI raid targets
  
• adjusted AI criteria for defense sorties
  
• improved AI's use of forts/camps
  
• improved AI's use of mercenaries
  
• fixed problems with linked groups of units crossing bridges
  
• fixed problem with groups scavenging from farms
  
• fixed pathfinding problems crossing multiple bridges
  
• fixed hostility decreasing message
  
• units will now automatically update their formation size after combat
  
• fixed problem with incorrect formation previews when exiting cities
  
• fixed mismatched colour of the belgae faction in chapter 2
  
• fixed problem with the AI putting too many workers in farms
  
• number of slaves killed when a farm is captured is now rounded up
  
• memory optimization on 32 bit machines
  
• fixed problems with the AI building invalid upgrades
  
• fixed multiple animation issues with ranged combat units

Changes to 2.2.0 Beta 2 (rev 33271)

• modest performance improvements for systems that are CPU bound
  
• enemy units are no longer sighted by routing player units
  
• routed player units should no longer be visible in the fog of war
  
• fixed potential crash on load/save game screen if a scenario mod had been deactivated after saving a game
  
• adjusted balance of city/fort stances

Changes to 2.2.0 Beta 3 (rev 33399)

• multiple crash fixes related to the optimizations in beta 2
  
• fixed bug that caused intermittent slowdowns
  
• multiple fixes for new fog of war system
  
• fixed problem with black savegame previews

Update History

And for players who've been away for a while, a lot has changed since the launch in the Spring so check out these links for more details:
2.0.1
2.0.2
2.0.3
2.0.4
2.0.5b1
2.0.5b2
2.1.0

[Raied]

Thanks, cant wait for the official release.

[Dual_Cored]

Awesome thx guys!

[Dual_Cored]

Hey Rob, is the AI a little more aggressive in this build? I've been playing a new game with the 2.2 build and the AI is not attacking. All ai set to random except for two set to aggressive. Thx.

[rob]

Originally posted by Dual_Cored:

Hey Rob, is the AI a little more aggressive in this build? I've been playing a new game with the 2.2 build and the AI is not attacking. All ai set to random except for two set to aggressive. Thx.

Thanks for feedback. We have diversified the AI behaviour a little more in this build (fort construction, raiding, etc) so this might affect how aggressive it feels. We're also continually balancing how much the AI should go after the "best" targets (often other AIs) versus going after the player. If you want to send me your save game ([e-mail]) I'd be interested in checking out the AIs decisions in your particular case.

[lllib]

Hi,
this may be bit off-topic in this thread because it's from current official build, but nevertheless, if it's not yet addressed:
-Occasionally, ai will capture some camp to which it has limited to no supply lines. It will make fort and put strong garrisson in there. Eventually units in fort run out of food, and after some time AI seems to disband the units there, as far as I can see, later sends more units, which will run out of food and get disbanded, etc.
Now, above is major problem considering unit upgrades (I assume those are lost). I am not sure it gets recruits back either.
As for aggresiveness, I have observed mostly passive AI even after manually setting each and every faction to aggressive, in sense that there doesn't seem to be much going on before player gets anywhere, very few experienced units around (playing as nervii I checked England after ~7200 days, and have seen maybe one unit with experience, and all the factions more or less as they started (but observed one city being taken when my ship waas near). Which makes me wonder if there is not something bad in AI handling of various situations (i.e. disbanding veteran units). AI also don't seem to be doing optimal choices regarding selecting units - Dumnoni had about three spearmen as far as I could see but those were garrisoned far from border while fight was going on with bunch of skirmishers clashing again and again (yet no experienced units seen there).
I have even started new game on expert as Remi. AI seems to be sometimes doing very neat actions (i.e. sending few units to unfortified city in my territory and I had some awesome fighting for the river lines to the south however AI seems to be all too often going to limbo, and I haven't seen it deploy siege equipment once.
I wonder if one of the problems may be that ai is spending too much manpower on workers (I don't think I have seen it capturing my defeated units, they seem to kill my men when I lose a fight occasionally ).
Another thing that AI seems to suffer with is food management - I seem to always have tons, but I have seen e.g. suebi cities having out of food icon pretty much along the whole river border. Also maybe there were too many routes. Thinking about that, suebi especially should not have such problem - could there be some bug doing this, or is AI too optimistic about food?
I will try beta mentioned in the original post.

[Dual_Cored]

Thx for the reply Rob. Where can I find the saved games to try and send you mine?

[lllib]

feedback regarding update_testing branch:
-feels like quite a different game(this time played santones), and skirmishers have something to do in late game with ambushes(in which they are much better than heavy spearmen, and outclass them there. Unit that profits most is archers, because it is quite likely for it to benefit from pretty much whole period of ambush (whereas for spearmen it's almost impossible to benefit unless enemy runs into them).
Some bugs observed:
Game feels laggy - especially zoomed out, when there are units moving. Perhaps more accurate is to say game feels randomly changing speed occasionally (time 2x, time 0.5x).
I was surprised to see veteran AI units, although sadly found out they are not veterans but mercenaries.
Not sure if I just haven't noticed before or something changed, however AI will use mercenaries in the cities under attack. This feels bit gamey although it does give much more fun and challenge to siege battles.
AI feels more aggressive (arveni had multiple cities taken already by the time I got to them, but not if there are fortifications - it will resort to trying to cap unfortiffied cities/forts and lay waste to farms, but I have yet to see coordinated attack on walled city. Actually it seems AI will cancel any attack on city if it even has any hint of wall - I noticed lone unit marching on my unfortified capital and hit the fortify button just few seconds before it would reach it - and AI turned away to go looting, aven if the wall was just starting to be build and I had no unit there,
AI seems still not to use it's starting general.
Supply system felt more challenging - seems that costs/percentages were raised, unless it's so different from northern part of map.
As someone wrote in another thread, projectiles are sometimes missing (actually slingers seems not to run animation most of the time, and if they run animation projectiles won't show).

[ValkyrieMoon]

This is just great news.

[lllib]

Actually I think I had seen some attack on wood-walled city, but it was Andegavi - even wood walled, there are only two spots for attackers and
1) without siege tovers (which I think were not used but can't say with 100% certainty as it wasn't in my sights most of time)
2) without ballistas (haven't seen neither them nor siege towers by AI yet)
3) with additional help from mercenaries
AI is having hard time overcoming it (ie it failed, although it made my next attack all that easier (even so I had to switch siege towers as first was getting killed halfway through).

EDIT:
Even if units are hidden, they still get shot at by garrissons - combined with missing projectiles bug this can create some unexpected results.
And regarding sieges, ai is often out of manpower, so maybe the problem is it is exhausting itself in not so effective raids and then doesn't have strength to mount an actual attack (and teaching it to "cheat", i.e. to supply manpower by moving workers from other kindred cities may be of big help, unless they are out of manpwer too...).
Regarding AI handling of it's units and not really developing veterans - it may be worth considering to rework mechanics a bit, in sense that units would be tracked globally (not per city) and even if it's home city gets lost ai would recover that unit (with all the officers and spare experience) in another city instead of just building new one. Or at very least make ai not to optimize its situation by disbanding veteran units regardless of what's going on.
EDIT2:
it seems sometimes not all experience for kill is assigned. This seems to be especially case for kills in initial charge, at least as far as the XP gain shown on screen is concerned, and if there is charge to back of unit that is engaged with another unit, xp for kill from the charge seems to go to other unit. At least it feels/seems like that.

[lllib]

Some additional things to update_testing branch (but not just only):
As for ambush system, you wrote that ambush stats can be improved with officers, but I haven't seen any hint of information which officers those would be in-game. For that matter, it would be nice to have some general overview over what all levels of all kinds of officers do exactly, prefferably in one place.
Also related to this, I wonder how garrisoned generals (governors) work, if they do, and what effect they have, if it's already there and not work in progress.
I hope it's clear from my posts that I'm not trying to criticize but that I like the game and I'm trying to give what I hope could be used as useful feedback.
One other thing I wondered about - right now there seems to be not really any difference between Gauls, Britons and Germans, apart from graphics. Have I missed something, or is this something to look at some point in future, or is this intentional, please?

[rob]

Thanks for all the great feedback, it is very helpful. I wish could answer every point, but unfortunately we're really crunched for time here trying to get the update ready. However, I've taken notes on a number of issues that I will look into as soon as possible. For the moment I can say:

• Regarding lag, Update 2.2.0 beta 2 should have some modest performance improvements for machines who are CPU bound i.e. not limited by their graphics card
  
• The raider upgrade will boost a unit's ambush skill and the scout upgrade will boost its recon skill.
  
• The governor system is functional, but admittedly most general's attributes are focused on units as opposed to cities. However, the marksman general will improve the city's ranged defenses, the standard bearer general will improve it's morale, etc
  
• Aside from their starting position and any faction specific bonuses, the differences between the Gallic, German and Briton factions in the original game are largely aesthetic. Early in the design we envisioned more unique upgrades and units for the different faction groups, but unfortnately creating and balancing that many more combinations just wasn't feasible for a team our size. However, we've tried to improve that with the DLC that does feature more diverse unit types for each faction including the unique Suiones raiding ships for the Britons or the heavy lancers for the Germans (plus more to be announced shortly).

Originally posted by Dual_Cored:

Thx for the reply Rob. Where can I find the saved games to try and send you mine?

Save games are in your Windows user folder under 'Saved Games/Hegemony Rome' We've got a little more info on finding on our support page: http://www.longbowgames.com/support/#savedgames

[StarDreamer]

" improved memory performance for 32 bit machines" .
Well maybe I will have to try and play this again! =)

[Dual_Cored]

Performance seems much improved with the new patch update. Great work!

[Hero123]

Great game. When is the next patch going to be released?

[BaTMaN]

yes i also wait to hear for an answer for the next patch