The Daily Update at the Com

[johnhughthom]

I've got a feeling the answer to that will be "The patch is savegame compatible, but a new game is advised to get the benefit of all the changes." Or something similar.

[Beskar]

Last I heard, you can play your previous saves, but your saves don't benefit from the changes.

[Negative]

I just want to know if artillery will be fixed. Will it limber/unlimber like it should, and will the cannons cease fire when you tell them to?

Also, will sound effects work properly? I'm sick of hearing gun shots and cannon fire 30 seconds late.

[Servius]

Well, since the elimination of a campaign-killing bug is something I want to benefit from, I guess I should wait.

[Rhuarc]

The final version of the patch has gone into beta community testing, and we're going to test it over the weekend. We had hoped to have it on general release tonight but it was felt there should be longer dedicated to international version testing

.

Well, I'd rather they test fully before giving us something that introduces more problems, so good.

I didn't see mention of some of the things I had hoped to see. It sounds like they have focused a lot on bug fixes, but I do hope they fix the battle deployment flip-flop. Right now, I'm avoiding every battle that could include reinforcements, since this means you always start out surrounded. To say that this affects gameplay is a huge understatement.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to talk about Naval invasions if I may. The technology behind naval invasions is actually really rather heavy and is still causing some issues. The gameplay upgrade will make naval invasions possible but they will be rare. The AI now has a proper mechanism for the planning involved and can execute that mechanism when required, however increasing its frequency is a balance issue we haven't been able to get fixed in time for this upgrade. So in short, naval invasions are now possible and may occur, but they will not be frequent, which means we have to up that likelihood.

This is great- I think. I'm a little troubled that CA refers to this problem as 'naval invasions,' as if this is an AI aggression issue. Maybe, but I don't necessarily want a hyper-aggressive AI, and honestly, I don't care about the AI planning complex naval 'invasions', although this would be nice. All I really want is the AI to be able to move troops by sea. Period. If this has been fixed, and Spain/France/Britain can and will now reinforce their overseas colonies, then I am happy camper ready to start a fresh campaign.

Cheers

[johnhughthom]

.


I didn't see mention of some of the things I had hoped to see. It sounds like they have focused a lot on bug fixes, but I do hope they fix the battle deployment flip-flop. Right now, I'm avoiding every battle that could include reinforcements, since this means you always start out surrounded. To say that this affects gameplay is a huge understatement.

I'm pretty sure one of the earlier updates mentioned this had been fixed.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Today at the com

April 27th

Dear All,

Today's update is very short. We're finishing the testing of the patch at SEGA's in-house QA and verifying the weekends results with our beta group. Provided they are content we should be able to sign the patch off for general release and distribute it tommorrow evening (28/4/09) around 1900 GMT. Naturally if there are any unforseen problems this might move a little, but it's looking strong at the moment.

We're currently writing up the full changelist which we'll include with the patch, so you'll all be able to see the full extent of the problems addressed and features added/tweaked.

Today saw the regular SEGA/CA annual conference take place at which we discussed Empire's future and the future of the TW series in general.

I appreciate today's update isn't technical in nature, as hopefully, all this information will be released tomorrow evening.

Kind regards,
Kieran

Patch tomorrow !

[maestro]

\o/

Yay!

[Marquis of Roland]

w00t new campaign tomorrow