Songs of Conquest – Battlegrounds Update Now Live

The team over at Lavapotion brings us a new early access update for their kingdom management RPG Songs of Conquest. This update’s main new feature is the Battlegrounds mode that allows you to fight some turn-based battles without the whole kingdom management part. The update also introduces an easy mode for the game’s campaigns and fixes some assorted issues.

Here’s more on that:

Greetings Wielders! We are proud to be back with our first big update for the fall. The biggest news we bring you is the Battlegrounds mode!

In this game mode – accessible directly from the main menu – you can jump straight into a battle without having to set up an Adventure game. Just pick an army created by us or create one yourself in the Army Creator and start battling in Quickplay. With the Army Creator, you can build an army based on predefined Wielders and the troops of your choice. Start battling against random opponents online, tackle the AI, or invite a friend to a match – see you in the Battlegrounds!

We are also releasing a new map called Bad Neighbors. No need to play nicely, this one is all about victory, no matter the cost! The campaigns have also gotten an “Easy” setting, so you can make it all the way to the end without breaking too much of a sweat!

The hot seat mode is also now much more clearly communicated and easily accessible from the Multiplayer section of the Main menu.

As for gameplay changes, there are a few ones of extra noteworthyness! Dead Wielders now count towards the total number of Wielders the player can have, and Wielders can no longer be disbanded. However: Dead Wielders can always be revived, even if it brings the total number of living Wielders above the current limit. Disband and Wielder limits weren’t working as we intended and hopefully, these changes will remedy that!

Of course, we have been doing a lot of small and big bug fixes, but if you want to go into the nitty-gritty details of those, I suggest you check out the latest changelog as this is supposed to be a lighthearted and easy to grasp update, not a tech log!

To celebrate the release we are inviting YOU to play against us, the developers, between 19:00 to 20:00 CET (That’s 12PM to 1PM CST for you Americans!) each day from the 22nd of September to the 26th of September. And not only that, to bring more people into the fringe, we have decided to celebrate the Battlegrounds release with a sale during the same time. So grab your friends who haven’t got the game yet and tell them that now is a great time! (The sale starts at 10AM Pacific Time / 7PM CET/CEST) – So the same time as you can challenge the developers in the Battlegrounds!

As of a few days back we are working on a new sprint where we primarily optimize the game performance, explore and implement UI-scaling and improve the simultaneous multiplayer turns experience. Work has also started on a general balance pass across the board.

Expect more updates to follow around every fourth week up until our next vacation period around Christmas. Until then, we hope to see you all in the Battlegrounds!

[…]

CHANGELOG V0.77.7 – SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

Notable additions

• New multiplayer mode: BATTLEGROUNDS. You can now play Battle only matches against friends, AI or random people online. Just pick an army created by the developers or create one yourself in the Army Creator.
• Add Easy setting to campaigns
• Add Turkish language option

Additions

• Large skirmish map Bad Neighbours added
• Add notifications and updated round text for maps with a round limit
• Add video option to limit framerate
• Add Hotseat link to Multiplayer section of Main Menu

Gameplay changes

• Dead Wielders count towards the total number of Wielders the player can have
• Wielders can no longer be disbanded
• Dead Wielders can always be revived, even if it brings the total number of living Wielders above the current limit
• Pre-requirement for march skill updated for Awakened

Gameplay bug fixes

• Fix not receiving gold incomes from occupied towns when continuing on a saved game
• Fix rare movement edge case where AI could get stuck in an endless loop
• Fix battle AI not being able to handle casting several spells on higher tiers when they can be cast on more than one troop
• Fix Wielders sometimes moving because of newly constructed buildings even when it wasn’t necessary
• Fix issue where battle maps with forest and mountain themes were not selected as often as they should be
• Fix buff/nerf tooltips in battle showing spell descriptions instead of spell effects

UI

• Add better camera zoom values in battle to support wider screen resolutions
• Fix no visible level up button in the wielder list
• Fix incorrect attack action in tooltip for towns
• Fix guard tower upgrade tooltip
• Fix mouse instructions hidden in tooltips when not your turn
• Fix memory leak when hovering the mouse cursor over selectable things on the map

AI

• AI upgrading and also switching out (weaker) troops when entering towns/settlements has been made more likely to happen.
• Recruitment has gotten a overhaul in general, promoting more sensible recruiting
• Skill selection scoring has been changed, in some ways to promote command in situations when it got pushed to the bottom.
• Add more decision inputs for when deciding what to build
• More diverse and flexible ways of building has been added
• AI concept of handing out roles specific roles to its wielders
• Pathing/tracing nearby items for pickup/claiming has been fundamentally changed
• An improved retreat option is in place to make feeding weak wielders to opponents less likely to happen.
• Fix bug where it inverted treat checks which made Suicide opponents appear as Very Easy, this was particularly nasty.
• Fix bug where the AI could not “see” some items under hostile zone of control, nor items it was standing next to.
• More detailed cache invalidation to help speed up think loop times
• Stop AI from casting Fury spell when it has only ranged troops
• Added dynamic caching of data in multiple places to help increase performance

Localization

• Minor fixes on missed localisation

Multiplayer

• Can now open spellbook during opponent’s turn in Battle

Audio

• Update Piper’s Post sfx
• Update Merchants Guild sfx
• Add Barya Workshops sfx
• Fix Sassanid footsteps
• Rework and update other Barya sounds

Optimizations

• Optimize Fog of War update when walking with a wielder

Known issue

Battlegrounds: Army Creator — when dropping a troop on a slot where you already have units the resources will not be refunded correctly. You will need to delete the current troops and add new troops. You can always cancel and redo the army if your resources have been offset.