Warlords 4 Patch 1.04
################################################################################
Infinite Interactive
Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria v1.04
January 2005
README_104.TXT
################################################################################
Spells:
* Holy Armor now gives armor +2 (formerly +1).
* Shield now gives armor +2 (formerly +1).
* Unholy Armor now gives armor +2 (formerly +1)
* Pyrohydra now summons a L5 Hydra (formerly L6) to keep in line with all rare spells summoning L5 units. The by product of this is to lower the multi-attack value to +3 from +4 when combined with a L10 Gate skill.
* Eagle Eye in addition to its current benefits now grants a +1 Fog of War view bonus to all stacks on the map (so a +0 bonus becomes +1, a +1 becomes +2 etc).
* Mass summoning spells (those summoning > 4 units) now have an extra mana penalty imposed on them for casting outside of a city. The penalty is a rate of 1.5 mana per square. This was needed with Fog of War coming into play to prevent bats/imps from becoming overly powerful/dangerous.
Abilities:
* Scouting now grants a +N Fog of War view bonus to the stack where N is the level of scouting. Note: a +5 scouting skill will NOT unfog the map, it will merely grant an extra 5 squares around the stack (see the note on Fog of War).
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed a bug that caused a crash if there were no quests available in the quest folder.
* Fixed a rare bug that could occur if the XML parser couldn't find a token.
* Fixed a bug in multi-player mode where a non host player wouldn't receive the city when he payed the fealty cost.
* Fixed a bug where units created outside the city due to the city being full were all created with the same unit id. This led to a problem of units morphing into other units of the same id or a game crash in multi-player mode.
* Fixed a bug where regenerating the spell list wouldn't properly use the spell research times of the newly listed spells but instead used the original list.
Random Maps:
* Fog of War was added as a game option (Thanks Steve!!!) and can be used on its own or in conjunction with the hidden map option. This has the following effects on the game:
1) The map completely re-fogs at the start of a players turn and only unfogs around a players stacks, cites and sites belonging to a city. In other words there is no gradual refogging of the map ala Warlords Battlecry.
2) The default Fog of War view is a radius of 2 squares around a stack and 4 around a city. This radius can be increased by the scouting skill. Enemy units will appear visible on the map 1 square into the fog effectively giving a radius of 3 squares (this is an effect of Direct X according to Steve) of viewing.
3) For those of you who care (or have a lot of time on your hands), the DLR 'boot check' method can be used to find stacks deep in the fog tho you have to be slightly more clever in War4 than merely looking for a cursor change.
4) Cities and Ruins in the Fog have their garrisons completely 'blacked out' so you can't identify how many men may be there (tho you can identify a cities owner) until you unfog the city. This has the effect of forcing players to scout every city/ruin to 'see' the garrison count rather than cherry picking weak cities/ruins by sending stacks directly to known weak points. In other words, open map games are no longer races to weak cities.
5) In the campaign setting the difficulty level to Emperor will automatically set the Fog of War option on for the map.
6) The AI completely ignores Fog of War in all its calculations.
The AI:
* For emperor level warlord games the AI retinue will no longer contain heroes with useless skills like scouting, scavenging, build, income, various slayers etc. This should slightly improve the quality of the retinue.
* The AI unit level up logic underwent a massive change to improve the skills chosen by the AI when a unit increase its level.
* The AI city capture logic underwent a change so that all cities who race is more than 2 away on the race wheel will be razed/rebuilt so that the AI gets faster build times for its units.
* Fixed a bug where the AI was not building anything in a city on the turn it captured it. The AI now defaults to a 1/2 turn unit to immediately generate garrison strength.
* The AI city production logic underwent a massive change to improve the production of armies. The changes now specially handle the capitol city and take into effect sites such as production -1, combat and life when making production decisions. The AI also takes into account how far ahead or behind in terms of armies it is when deciding what to make. The result is the AI does more mass production now than ever before.
* The AI now choses the skill its units will be built with based on a ranking of all the skills in the game. This lets the AI produce a wider variety of skills and eliminate making units with useless skills (scouting, income, build, scavenging) for the AI.
* The AI city garrison logic underwent a massive change to improve the defenses of the AI cities. The changes now increase garrison strength overall at earlier turns in the game. The AI takes into account nearby enemy forces when determining how much garrison it needs for a given city.
* Fixed a bug where the AI was counting neutral cities and garrisons when determining nearby enemy strength.
* The AI tactical combat got a quick and dirty update to hold off putting siege units into battle if the enemy towers are not destroyed.
* Fixed a bug where the AI was mistakenly putting units with heal into battle instead of holding them out of battle.
* For more detailed information on how the AI changed visit http://www.warlorders.com.
Miscellaneous:
* Back by popular demand are DLR merchants! Merchants will now occasionally show up (base 15% chance) and offer a random item for sale to a hero according to the following rules:
1) The percentage chance of a merchant offering an item goes up by 1% for every 1000 gold a Warlord has (merchants are much more likely to notice an opulently dressed hero as opposed to a dirty bedraggled one).
2) Only Minor and Major items are offered for sale. Merchants don't have the intestinal fortitude to undertake quests for Artifacts.
3) Items range in price from 250 gold for the Helm of Life to 1800 gold for the Crown of KGB. Merchants may offer an item at a price markup or markdown so if you don't like the price, don't buy.
4) Unlike DLR, items may appear more than once in a game.
5) A hero must be capable of accepting an item in order for the merchant to offer it for sale. So if all your heros are wearing a helmet and the item a merchant has for sale is a helmet then no offer will be made that turn. So you may want to always leave one hero bare of items to ensure you don't miss a potential offer.
6) Merchant offers are the LAST thing checked at the start of a turn. So you will only have a chance to get an item if you do not have retinue joining, a new hero joining or mercenaries joining.
7) The AI will buy some items that it's offered but not all.
* Please delete all old saved games. Older saved games or PBEM games will not work with version 1.04.