Updates | War of Conquest

Tournaments Suspended

7/17/20

Due to rampant use of exploits and too few players for there to be real competition, the weekly tournaments will be suspended once the current tournament finishes this weekend..

4/16/20

Today’s update ends the experiment of re-introducing cash prizes. For more information see this post.

Changes

Prize winnings from Orbs can no longer be cashed out. They can still be traded in for credits.
New nations now start with twice the manpower max and manpower generation rate that they previously started out with.

Partial Reset, Mobile Launch and Cash Prizes!

1/8/20

Today’s update relaunches War of Conquest before its introduction to the iOS and Google app stores.

Changes

Partial server reset in preparation for the new game economy: all nations have had their purchased credits, won credits, and current winnings removed. All ranks and player XP have been reset. Nation rebirth counts have been reset to no more than 10. However, this isn’t a complete reset: all nations still exist as they did before, with their levels unchanged.
When a nation’s current winnings exceeds , the winnings can now be cashed out via PayPal.
Credits can now be earned by filling out surveys. To do this, hit the (+) symbol on the Credits bar.
Bonus credits can also be earned in many different ways (see the Guide for details). Your current bonus credits amount shows up on the Bonus Credits button. On mobile, bonus credits can be claimed by tapping the Bonus Credits button to watch a quick ad. On PC, bonus credits are claimed when earning credits by filling out a survey.
Most level boundaries have been moved slightly to the east, to allow more space at the western edge dedicated to nations of level 10 and under.
All payments made to purchase credits within the past 8 months have been refunded via PayPal.
War of Conquest should appear on the iOS App Store and the Google Play store in the next few days.

Laying the Groundwork for Future Changes

11/4/19

Today’s update preps for some big changes coming to War of Conquest soon.

Changes

Credits can no longer be purchased.
Orbs no longer award credits directly. Instead they award winnings, measured in dollars, that can be traded in for credits from the Nation > Orbs panel. Winnings trade in for credits at the rate of 2 credits per [insert_php]
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Nations will no longer be sent to raid their own allies.
The 500×500 limit on a nation’s range has been removed.
A nation’s supportable area now only increses by 5 per level, rather than 6.
Charismatic Leader now increases Manpower per Attack by 30% rather than 50%.
On Terra Bellum, the rate of manpower generation has been increased by 2/3.

Tutorial and Raid Changes

10/30/18

Today’s update smoothes the new player experience some, by making tweaks to the tutorial and low level stats. Small changes were also made to raid rewards. The only changes made to the client affected the tutorial, so this is an optional client update.

Changes

Nations now start with the Manpower Per Attack stat at 10, up from 8. This will make it easier for very low level nations to win battles.
A defending nation’s Geographic Efficiency, as usual, factors into the amount of XP that an attacker receives. However, now it can reduce the XP to no lower than 6. This is especially necessary now that Geographic Efficiency can go as low as 5% — attacking low level nations with poor Geographic Efficiency was often resulting in 0 XP before this change.
The rewards that result from a successful raid (credits, XP, and rebirth) are now reduced if the defending nation has fewer raid medals than the attacker. For example, if the defender has only 25% of the medals that the attecker has, the attacker will receive only 25% of the maximum rewards for their league. Rewards will drop to no lower than 5% of the full amount.
Made many minor changes to the tutorial, such as introducing ‘Move To’ and ‘Occupy 5×5’ earlier, explaining Geographic Efficicency and inert defenses more fully, etc.

Bug Fixes & Geo Change

10/22/18

Today’s update fixes some more problems, and lowers the minimum geographic efficiency value.

Changes

A nation’s geographic efficiency can now drop as low as 5%, instead of being limited to no lower than 25%. This is to prevent nations from remaining fairly powerful even if they spread themselves very thin hoarding many resources.
Fixed a bug that could cause a client to fail to enter the game after creating a nation for the first time.
If the client fails to download all of the map files successfully when it first connects to a game server, it now tries again several times before giving up.
While the client is downloading files, a progress bar is now displayed.
Added logging to help track down issues that cause problems entering the game.

Bug Fixes

10/16/18

Today’s update fixes several bugs.

Changes

When one nation unites into another, normally all of its members are transferred to the united nation. Now, members are only transferred if the united nation has not yet reached its maximum number of members. On Terra Bellum that maximum is 8, and on Algaroth it is just 1, so members are never transferred during a unite on Algaroth.
Fixed a bug that, in a raid, could cause squares to no longer be attackable after they’ve been captured by enemy defenses. This would only happen if you had watched a raid replay before starting the raid.
Fixed a bug that would cause the final square of the defending nation in a raid to keep popping up elsewhere, if any of that nation’s players were currently online.
Fixed a bug that would cause an exception to appear in the console, and no ranks list to appear, when attempting to view one of several complete ranks lists related to home islands and raids.
Fixed three cases where the identity of an incognito nation was able to be viewed, in the Object and Build Info panels, and early in the tutorial.
Fixed a problem that could cause a nation’s home island manpower regeneration rate to be too low (and even negative), if that nation was burning manpower due to holding excess resources.

A Brave New World

10/5/18

Today’s update adds a second game server aimed at new, solo, and casual players, gives players on the first server a lot more manpower, allows nations to go incognito, and more.

Changes

Added a second game world server: Algaroth. This new server will be targeted at new, solo, and casual players, while the original server, Terra Bellum, will be aimed more at hardcore players. The two game worlds will therefore have slightly different rules and limitations. Algaroth will be the default server for new players. Players are welcome to have nations in both worlds — login usernames and passwords that work on one server will work on the other as well.
Players on Algaroth will be limited to using no more than one account (username) in a seven day period. Nations on Algaroth are limited to purchasing (or receiving by transfer) no more than 2500 credits per calendar month. Manpower generation and capacity on Algaroth will be the same as it has been on Terra Bellum up to this point.
On Terra Bellum, mainland manpower generation rate and capacity are now 3X what they were previously. This will allow much longer play time, or much larger teams, without running low on manpower.
The cost of buying manpower has been lowered by 50%, and no longer increases the more a nation purchases. However, nations are now limited to buying no more than 100% of their manpower capacity per day, down from over 200% previously.
Introduced the ability for nations to go “incognito”. This hides the nation’s identity so they can strike anonymously, at the cost of 40% of the energy generated by the nation. A nation must develop Mass Illusion to enable the incognito ability, and once a nation goes incognito it must remain that way for at least 2 hours. For more information see the player guide.
The Total Defense ability now comes with the advances Brainwave Disruption and Cybanthropic Merge (rather than Electronics). There is now a minimum required level for researching these advances: 30 for Cybanthropic Merge, 25 for Brainwave Disruption.
Fealty for the three level tiers now lasts 6, 12, and 24 hours (up from 0.5, 8 and 24 hours).
A nation now receives a reward of 10 credits for each level gained.
The credit payout of the Orb of Fire has been reduced from 16 to 10 per hours, and the Orb of Destiny from 8 to 6 per hour.
A nation’s starting maximum manpower capacity has increased from 7200 to 10,000 (and now 3X that on Terra Bellum).
A nation’s starting Hit Points per Square has been reduced from 8 to 6.
The chat window now defaults to a mode that displays the chat tabs.
Entries on the Quests panel now allow more room for displaying a quest’s XP reward. This is necessary because the XP reward of many 2nd and 3rd tier quests have been increased substantially.
If a device is used by a veteran player, then a Steam account on that device will now also be considered a veteran account.

Map Changes, Bug Fixes and More

9/13/18

Today’s update expands the map but (just for the next few days) puts most of the new area off limits to veteran players. Also a number of new features, changes, and bug fixes.

Changes

Expanded the game map to three times its previous height.
Made part of the map accessible only to new players (as opposed to veterans). Initially only the top 1/3 of the map is open to veterans, but next week it will be expanded to be the top 2/3 that is open to veterans, while the bottom 1/3 will remain reserved for new players.
After choosing to migrate your nation, the panel that allows you to select whether to migrate the whole nation or only one square can now be closed, to abort the migration.
Decreased the wait between free migrations from 48 hours to 24 hours.
The weekly tournament has been re-activated. A new tournament will begin each Sunday morning.
Added /restart_tutorial chat command, to start the tutorial from the beginning. (Make sure that the option to hide the tutorial is not checked, on the Options panel.)
Added /docs or /guide chat command, that opens up the War of Conquest player guide in a browser.
The panel that displays info about a defensive structure now lists the advance that is required to build that structure.
When a username joins a nation other than their home nation, their rank is set to Civilian until upgraded by another member of the nation. This is once again the case even if the nation being joined has no other members in it.
Every level III defense advance now also comes with a +1 bonus to a combat stat.
The Orb Ranks lists now show the top 10 highest ranking nations for the orb, and only after that list up to 5 lower ranks by the viewing player’s contacts.
Changed the way that zooming in and out of the map view is limited, so that (for example) rolling the mouse wheel rapidly won’t result in zooming too far.
Pressing the enter key will now reliably activate the chat entry field.
Pressing the up and down arrow keys while in the chat entry field will scroll through the history of previously entered chat commands.
When a nation rebirths, any previous fealty that its members have to lower level nations will be cleared so that they will be able to continue playing in the rebirthed nation immediately, if they’d like.
Fixed a bug that would cause the first attempt to log into the game on a given device to usually fail.
Fixed a problem that would sometimes cause the log in or account creation process to be cancelled and the Welcome menu to reappear.
Fixed a bug that would cause energy burn discounts not to be applied when walls are built by a defense such as Tree Summoner and Roots of Despair, and so would cause a nation’s energy burn rate to become permanently too high.
Fixed a bug that could cause button text to disappear on some Android devices.
Fixed a problem that could cause raid replays to stop before the end of the raid.
The War of Conquest Steam store page is now online here, in preparation for the Early Access launch next Thursday, September 20th.
This list of game updates can now be found on the War of Conquest web site, here.

Enhancements and Bug Fixes

8/17/18

Today’s update adds new art as well as several small features and bug fixes.

Changes

When a defense would activate but cannot because it is inert, it now emits a puff of smoke.
A dotted boundary line now shows the limits of a nation’s 500×500 maximum range.
Energy bar now displays energy reserves level (in light blue) as well as excess energy generation (in deeper blue).
The “Move To” option is no longer available for squares outside of a nation’s 500×500 max range.
The “Raid” button will no longer appear until a nation has placed its Orb Shards on its home island.
On Android, fixed an issue that could cause the screen to appear stretched or squashed after the device’s orientation has been changed.
On the mainland, if a nation is burning energy faster then they are generating it but still have energy reserves, defenses are now correctly not yet shown as becoming inert.
Energy Reserve value is now regularly updated on the Nation > Stats panel.
Fealty notice no longer shown before a nation occupies an empty square, or evacuates its own square (since neither of those actions result in fealty).
New art: splash screen, game logo, company logo, and tutorial character images.
Added the ability to reserve a part of the world for new players. This feature has not yet been activated.
Assorted back-end improvements in preparation for launching on Steam.

Home Island & Raids, Player Guide

7/18/18

Today’s update adds a major new aspect to the game, full gameplay docs, and some smaller changes.

Changes

An online guide to playing War of Conquest is now available, here. If you find anything missing or incorrect, please post about it on the forum.
Added a new aspect to the game, “raids”. Each nation now has its own home island, and players can raid other nations’ islands to gain XP, credits, and rebirth countdown. Defending the new Orb Shards on your own home island also results in rewards. For more details, see the updated tutorial, or check out the Home Island and Raids section in the docs.
If a nation runs out of manpower because its manpower penalty due to excess resources is greater than its manpower generation rate, the scarcity of manpower will now result in lower hit points for each of that nation’s squares. The greater the manpower defecit, the lower the hit points will be reduced to. This will make nations that sit on resources far in excess of the resource cap much more vulnerable.
Shift-click on your own nation’s square will now salvage a defense, or evac the square if there is no defense in it. Ctrl-shift-click will both salvage and evacuate.
Shift-click on an enemy square will now cause a splash attack (if your nation has splash damage). This is an alternative to choosing “Splash Damage” from the pop-up menu.
Fixed a problem that could prevent the Advances list from updating when it should.
Advances panel now defaults to list view.
Fixed a problem that prevented any offer from being made when sending a unite invitation from the Allies panel.
Text of messages is now run through the chat filter.
Note: due to a problem with this update, last night’s data backup had to be restored, so several hours of gameplay were lost.

Defense Tweaks

5/2/18

Today’s update mostly refines recent changes and fixes some bugs.

Changes

Total Defense now only lasts until any member of the nation logs in (rather than lasting until a logged in member performs an action, as it did before).
Total Defense is no longer automatically available to every nation; instead, it’s a bonus that comes with certain advances (Electronics and Brainwave Disruption). One of those advances must be developed in order for a nation to go into total defense mode two hours after all of its members have logged off.
Total Defense and Insurgency have been added to the Nation > Stats panel, under the “Defense” heading.
Insurgency now increases the base hit points per square of a nation’s interior squares by +50% rather than +100%. Total Defense now increases base hit points per square by +50% rather than +60%.
Unite is no longer allowed between two nations that, when their lands are combined, would be larger than the 500×500 max.
Fixed a problem that could sometimes cause map coordinates on the Resources, Orbs and Map Flags panels to be incorrect.
Fixed an inaccuracy in the stats that would be shown in the Nation Info panel.
Updates have been slow lately because I’ve been working on a major new feature that isn’t finished yet. This also means there have been a lot of changes under the hood, so keep an eye out for new bugs.

Defense and Game Balance Changes

4/20/18

Today’s update brings back some features from the original WoC and makes several balance changes to reduce the ability of a small number of nations to dominate the map.

Changes

The “Insurgency” temp has been changed to behave the same way as it did in the original War of Conquest. Rather than double the base hit points of all of a nation’s squares, it only doubles the hp of “interior” squares, that is, squares that are surrounded by many other squares belonging to the same nation. This way, it is a strong defense against a nation’s main being checkered, but does not improve the defense of small, far flung areas. When attacking a square that has insurgency in effect, a red shield appears on the defender’s icon in the battle pop-up.
Added “total defense”, another feature that was part of the original WoC. Each nation’s base hit points increases by 60% two hours after a player was last active in that nation. This is to provide added defense to nations that have no players online for extended periods of time. Total defense switches off as soon as a player is active in that nation (attacking, occupying, evacing or building). It does not turn off just because a player logs in and looks around; this allows players to check in on their nation without increasing its vulnerability. When attacking a square that has total defense in effect, a blue shield appears on the defender’s icon in the battle pop-up.
On the list view of the Advances Panel, a stopwatch icon now shows which advances are temporary.
The amount by which a nation’s supportable area increases for each level gained has decreased from 10 to 8.
Adjusted the bonus amounts to geographic efficiency and hit points per square of several advances.
A nation may now span an area no larger than 500×500. While that’s still 25% of the map, it will force higher level nations to choose between hanging back near lower level areas or pursuing the higher orbs and resources in the east. This change doesn’t affect nations that are already larger than 500×500, until they rebirth or otherwise become smaller.
A pop-up notice now appears before taking an action that will cause you to declare fealty to the nation you are logged into, if you have more than one nation in that fealty tier.
Each player is now limited to using no more than 5 different usernames within a 30 day period (rather than 10).
The option to disable the chat filter has been removed. Many players found it inconsistent to offer this option while at the same time banning players from chat for using words that are hidden by the filter.
An option has been added (on the Options Panel) to disable flash effects. This is for players with conditions such as epilepsy that cause photosensitivity.
After the current weekly tournament is complete there will be no more tournaments until further notice, due to the small number of players.

Enhancements and Fixes

4/13/18

Today’s update makes a variety of small enhancements and bug fixes.

Changes

The energy bar in the main UI now displays how much, of the energy that is being generated hourly, that is not being burned to maintain defenses. That is, energy generation rate – energy burn rate. This should be more useful to refer to frequently, because it shows how much energy is being used to maintain defenses, and how much excess energy still remains, allowing more defenses to be built. The nation’s total amount of energy held in reserve, which the bar used to display, can now be found on the Nation Panel’s Stats tab under “Energy Reserves”.
An inactive nation can now be suspended indefinitely without rebirthing. If a nation’s area is 1 (or zero because it’s been eliminated from the map completely) and if it has not occupied an orb in the past 24 hours, its rebirth countdown will stop decreasing.
Nations are now limited to adding no more than 1000 to their rebirth countdown per cycle, by purchasing credits. Click the rebirth info (i) icon on the Nation Panel’s Settings tab to see how much rebirth countdown your nation can still purchase during its current cycle.
When a defense is built, it now shows up as red immediately if it is inert, so that this will be obvious right away.
The mute feature is now permenant. Click on a line of chat or a message and choose “Mute Player”, and you will never see messages or chat from that player again. You can clear all of your mutes by pressing the “Unmute all” button on the Nation > Settings panel.
Updated tutorials for several gameplay changes made in the past few weeks.
The escape key can now be used to close any panel that has an “X” close button in its corner.
Alt-clicking on a square has been added as a shortcut to initiate a “Move To” that square.
The geographic efficiency bar now updates immediately when a nation occupies, attacks, or evacuates a square, rather than updating only every 30 seconds as it did before.
Fixed a bug that caused the security question’s answer to be stored incorrectly for new accounts, which made password retrieval more difficult for the affected accounts.

Resource Changes

4/2/18

Today’s update makes several changes to how resources work, increases the frequency of some resources, and fixes a few bugs.

Changes

The way that resource bonus caps work has been changed. Resources can now raise stats beyond +300%. However, if resources raise a stat beyond +200% there is an hourly manpower cost for processing the excess resources. The greater that the stat is raised beyond +200%, the higher the manpower cost increases, exponentially. So, nations will be able to choose whether to raise some stats above +200% and accept some amount of manpower cost. This change will also make it impractical to hoard resources, since the manpower cost would be prohibitive.
Geographic efficiency now affects how much of a benefit that a nation gains from the resources that it holds. For example, if a nation’s geo efficiency is 40%, it will only gain 40% of the stat bonuses that the resources it occupies would normally confer. In this way, geographic efficiency now affects a nation’s performance in both attack and defense (but only if the nation relies on resources to boost its stats).
Geographic efficiency has exactly two effects now: it determines how much benefit a nation gains from the resources it holds, and low geo will cause some of a nation’s defenses to become inert. Geographic efficiency no longer has any special effect on a nation’s defense stats, and no longer has any effect on a nation’s energy generation rate.
There are new flashing indicators that appear beside the relevant bar in the UI, when geographic efficiency is below 100% and when excess resources are causing manpower to be lost. Clicking on these indicators will display information about the problem.
The Nation > Stats panel, Nation > Resources panel and the descriptions of the various stats have been changed due to the above. The Nation > Resources panel will now show any manpower cost for occupying excess resources.
The frequency of several resources has been doubled, and the bonuses that they grant have been reduced by half. These include Fresh Water, Fertile Soil, Quartz Deposit, and Geothermal Vent.
When a square containing an enemy defense is captured, the chance that the defense will crumble quickly (in less than a minute rather than the usual hours) has been increased from 10% to 20%.
Holding shift while clicking on a square that has a defense built on it will now salvage the defense and evacuate the square.
Fixed a problem that caused the list of tournament contenders to carry over from one tournament to the next, rather than being cleared.
When joining an empty nation, a username is now correctly given the rank General.
When a nation rebirths, its members have their fealty to that nation removed.

UI Enhancements

3/28/18

Today’s update adds a resources management panel, a geo efficiency meter, and more.

Changes

On the Nation Panel there is a new “Resources” subpanel. This panel lists each of the different types of resources that a nation occupies, shows the sum stat bonuses the nation receives from each resource type, and also shows the total stat bonuses received from all resources. Click the [+] beside any resource type to expand the list of all resources of that type that are occupied by the nation. Each resource’s line shows the stat bonus received from that resource, and you can click on the line to go to that resource on the map.
New Geographic Efficiency meter on the left side of the main UI.
The “bulb” part of each of the meters on the main UI can now be clicked to bring up information about the stat represented by that meter.
Every so often a “captcha”-style question appears, to make sure that a human is playing the game rather than a bot.
Automatic processes (Move To, Evac 5×5, Occupy 5×5) now abort if they haven’t completed after 5 minutes. This is to prevent their being used to keep a client logged in indefinitely.
When one nation unites into a second nation, all of the usernames being transferred over with the unite have their fealty to the first nation removed, so that they can attack immediately in the nation they’ve united into.
Fixed Autonomous War Base so that it now appears centered in its square.

Tournament and Defense Changes

3/23/18

Today’s update introduces a weekly tournament, and makes major changes to defenses.

Changes

Added a new Tournament feature. Each week a tournament will begin on Saturday night. Any nation will be able to join the tournament for the first two days. After that, the lowest ranking 1/3 of contenders will be eliminated every day. Nations rank up by earning “trophies” when capturing land from other tournament contenders, and holding it for at least five minutes. On Saturday night the highest ranking tournament winners will receive prizes, that tournament will be over, and a new one will begin. For more details click the “Join the Fray” button that will (should) appear when the first tournament starts this Saturday night.
In addition to going inert when a nation runs out of energy, defenses will now also go inert if a nation’s geographic efficiency drops below 100%. If a nation’s geographic efficiency decreases to 90%, then 10% of the nation’s defenses will become inert; if it decreases to 50%, half of their defenses will go inert, and so on. This change was made so that checkering can now be used to weaken a nation’s defenses; before this change, established defenses could often be impenetrable. This change will also force nations to defend their mains. Because this change is experimental and a work in progress, tutorials and UI descriptions will not be modified until this change is finalized.
The lowest a nation’s geographic efficiency can drop to is now 25% (up from 15%). This is so that, with the above change, a nation’s defenses can at most be 75% disabled.
Some lower level defenses now have longer cooldown times.
Cannons, Artillery Batteries and Rocket Launchers have returned to how they used to behave: they will attack any enemy square within range, not just squares that have no defenses in them.
The level ranges for the three fealty tiers have been changed to 1-39, 40-79, and 80+.
The fealty delay for the 40-79 level tier has been increased from 3 to 8 hours.
In addition to preventing attacking from more than one nation in a level range, fealty now also prevents building defenses.
The rebirth countdown now decreases more quickly for nations with level above 120.
A square can now be evacuated more quickly by holding down shift while clicking on it.
When joining a nation that currently has no members at all, a username’s rank will be set to General rather than Citizen.

Fixes and Small Changes

3/8/18

Today’s update limits the max number of accounts and makes several other minor changes.

Changes

A player is now limited to using no more than ten different accounts (usernames) within a 30-day period. Any players who’ve used 10 (or more) accounts in the past 30 days will be unable to create a new account until enough time has passed that fewer than 10 accounts have been used in the past 30 days.
Added a new chat command, “/accounts”, that displays a list of all of your accounts (usernames) that you’ve used in the past 30 days.
The level requirements for storage structure advances have been reduced, allowing nations to run more productive “farming” operations at lower levels.
Temps that give bonuses to manpower rate have had those bonuses reduced by 25-50%.
Now that unites are potentially more frequent (limited to once every 2 days rather than 7 days), the amount of energy and manpower that can be transferred via unite is limited to 25% of the receiving nation’s maximum. This is to avoid unite becoming a loophole for generating free energy and manpower.
Fixed a problem that could allow players to get around fealty limitations.
Changed the rate that manpower and energy prices increase as a nation buys more of it in one day, and set a limit on the maximum amount a nation can buy in one day (no more is allowed after two complete fill-ups).
In the Nation > Settings panel, the Reset Advances button should now always show the price to reset.
A nation’s fealty is now re-determined when the nation’s level changes, if that changes which fealty ‘tier’ the nation is in.

Changes to Uniting

3/6/18

Today’s update makes some changes to uniting, and a few other minor changes and fixes.

Changes

When inviting another nation to unite with your nation, you will now be given the option to offer an amount of credits in payment for the unite. You can enter any number, up to the amount of transferable (purchased) credits that your nation has. When the other nation accepts your unite invitation, those credits will automatically be transfered from your nation to the nation that has united in, as the unite takes place. This system allows deals to be made, payment in credits for the uniting of a nation, without fear of fraud.
When a nation unites into another nation, the united nation no longer receives all of the XP from the original nation immediately. Instead, it receives up to 100,000 XP immediately, and then up to 100,000 XP every hour until there is no more pending XP left to receive. When a nation unites and is set to receive over 100,000 XP, it will receive a message letting it know how many hours the XP will take to arrive. You can also view what amount of pending XP remains by clicking on the XP line in the Nation > Stats panel.
Reduced a nation’s minimum wait between unites from 7 days to 48 hours.
The first fealty tier, requiring a 30 minute wait between attacking using two different nations within its level range, now affects nations within the level range 1-59 (rather than 20-59). It’s been extended down to level 1 because the low level area has players using multiple nations to gain an advantage.
Fixed a bug that would cause an exception when a player right-clicks on a chat tab.
Fixed a problem, introduced in the last 24 hours, that could cause nations to become unplayable if they had sent or received a unite invitation.

Fealty and Fixes

3/1/18

Today’s update fixes several bugs and adds the ‘fealty’ system.

Changes

In order to prevent players from dominating by switching off between multiple nations when one nation runs out of manpower, a ‘fealty’ system has been put in place, similar to the system in the original War of Conquest. After attacking as a member of a level 100+ nation, a player will not be allowed to attack as a member of a different level 100+ nation for 24 hours. For level 60-99 nations, the limit is 3 hours, and for level 20-59 nations the limit is only 30 minutes. There is no fealty limit for nations below level 20.
When determining how much XP a nation receives for attacking another nation, the difference in level between the two nations is taken into account. Now, for this purpose, the count of a nation’s unspent Advance Points is subtracted from its level. This is to prevent nations from gaining a lot of XP by attacking other nations that are deliberately made weak by leveling up but not spending their Advance Points.
There is now a display indicating when a critical hit occurs.
The Nation Info context menu option now appears for squares with a border line on them.
The Flag Location context menu option now appears whether or not the Show Grid or Show Map Location options are turned on.
Fixed an issue that could cause the client to crash upon startup on some Android devices.
Fixed exception that could occur when clicking on a random advance’s icon to get info for it.
Fixed a bug that would cause a captured defense’s crumble timer to sometimes not appear.
Fixed a problem that would cause a captured defense’s cooldown timer to appear, hiding its crumble timer.
Fixed a bug that would cause squares captured by a Guided Missile Station defense to sometimes not appear on the client as having been captured.
Fixed a possible memory leak and added logging to help find memory leaks that may be causing client crashes.
Tab navigation now works correctly on the Join Nation Panel.

Credit Purchases, Kickstarter Credits, and Fixes

2/22/18

Today’s update enables the purchasing of credits and the redeeming of Kickstarter reward credits, as well as some fixes and enhancements.

Changes

Credits can now be purchased. To do so, click on the (+) symbol on the credits bar in the upper right of the screen and choose one of several packages. There are two possible payment processors, selectable via a drop-down menu. The first is best for PayPal and credit card payments, while the second has more international options.
For those who contributed to War of Conquest’s Kickstarter campaign, at a reward tier that includes credits, your credits are now available. To redeem them, you’ll need your unique activation code, the same code that during alpha was required to log in to the game. (This code was sent to you in a Kickstarter message, but if you can’t find it contact me at contact@ironzog.com and I’ll re-send it.) The new chat command “/voucher_info” will tell you how many credits are available on your voucher code. For example, “/voucher_info XXX-XXX-XXX”. To redeem some or all of your credits, log into the nation you want to receive the credits and use the chat command “/redeem_voucher”. For example, “/redeem_voucher XXX-XXX-XXX, 1000” will redeem 1000 credits from your code and deposit them in your nation.
The new chat command “/credits” will display how many credits your nation currently has, along with how many of them are transferable. Transferable credits can be sent to another nation. Currently only purchased credits and Kickstarter reward credits are transferable.
The new chat command “/transfer_credits” can be used to send credits from your nation to another nation. Your nation must have at least as many transferable credits as you want to send. Example: “/transfer_credits AnotherNation, 1000” will send 1000 credits to the nation called AnotherNation.
Added option on the Connect panel for a patron to remove any of their followers.
When clicking to get info on a temp tech using its icon on the left side of the screen, the smaller Advance Details panel now opens, rather than the full Advances Panel.
When opening the map panel in list mode, the map view now will not perform an animated transition.
Chat bans now only ban a player from public chat. All nation chat channels remain available.
Fixed a bug that would cause a map flag to be duplicated in the list when renaming an existing flag.
The context menu option to flag a map location is now available even if the location is beyond the nation’s east or west boundaries due to its level.
Manpower and energy now more steeply increase in cost when several fill-ups are purchased within one day.
Fixed a bug that would cause the wrong Border value to sometimes be displayed in the Nation > Stats panel.
The stat details panel for XP Multiplier now shows what amount is gained from captured resources.
The display of geographic efficiency in the Stats panel now shows a digit after the decimal point, to make it clear when changes smaller than a full percent take place.
Salvaging a defense will now return a maximum of 100% of the manpower spent to build it, even if the nation’s Salvage Value stat is over 100%.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause a tab on the Messages panel not to glow when it should, to alert that a new message has been received.
The panel buttons now glow brighter to indicate that there is something on that panel that requires attention.

Features, Balance and Fixes

2/16/18

Today’s update adds a major new feature, attempts to better balance geographic efficiency, and fixes a few bugs.

Changes

Introduces a form of passive XP generation (“farming”). Each of the manpower and energy storage structures (Fuel Tank, Earth Chakra, Agro Colony, etc.) now generate XP every hour for the nation that builds (and defends) them. Each type of structure generates XP at a different rate, and they all generate at a percentage of their maximum rate equal to how full they are. So, in order to generate XP at their maximum rate, they must be defended from enemies. As before, storage structures are emptied when captured by another nation, and allies can also take manpower and energy from a nation’s storage structures. They refill from empty over the course of 48 hours.
Info for storage structures now lists the amount of XP they generate per hour. Descriptions of storage structures have also been changed.
New stat added at the bottom of the Nation > Stats panel, “XP Generated by Storage Structures”.
New login report line lets a player know how many XP their nation’s storage structures have generated while they’ve been offline.
The formula for geographic efficiency has been changed slightly; it now uses the nation’s border length (the total number of square sides along its borders), rather than border area (the total number of squares along its border). For large blocks of squares, this makes little difference; an 8×8 block has border length of 32 in the new system, as opposed to border area of 28 in the old system. But the difference is more pronounced with small blocks; a 2×2 block has border length of 8 (vs 4 in the old system), and a single isolated square has border length of 4 (vs 1 in the old system). The result is that the new system puts a greater geo efficiency penalty on having many small areas and isolated squares, and also increases the effectiveness of checkering. The intent is to reduce the extent to which nations are able to “hoard” resources without significntly compromising their geo efficiency.
Each line in the Advances panel’s list of advances now includes a concise summary of the bonuses that the advance comes with, using icons to represent different types of bonuses. This will make it possible to compare the advantages of different advances more rapidly, without having to open the info panel for each one.
The Nation > Members panel now has a header line, that has an info (i) button beside the word “Rank”. Click that button to see a list of what privileges each rank has.
A new chat command, /help, lists all available chat commands.
A new chat command, /online, displays how many players are currently online and lists any of your contacts that are online.
The /w, /whisper, /m and /message chat commands can now be directed at usernames and nation names that include spaces in them. Follow the name with a comma to separate it from the message. For example, “/w User Name, hey there.”
The Nation > Settings panel now displays a nation’s rebirth countdown even if the 2 week minimum rebirth cycle has not yet elapsed for that nation.
Increased patron and follower XP bonuses from 2% to 5%.
The 5% XP bonus that followers receive from their patron is now split evenly among all of a patron’s followers, rather than being duplicated for each follower. The old method of giving a full 2% XP to each follower was exploitable to generate large amounts of XP.
Fixed a bug with code that was intended to decrease the XP award for defeating a square belonging to a nation less than half as powerful as the attacker. Instead, this code would increase the XP award, opposite the intended effect, and could be exploited to generate large amounts of XP.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause the wrong nation’s name to appear on the nation info option in the right-click menu.
The Connect > News panel now displays the news in pages, as the view is scrolled to the bottom, so as to be faster and less memory intensive.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

2/12/18

Today’s update fixes a major bug and many minor ones, and adds a few enhancements.

Changes

Fixed a major bug that allowed nations to become nearly invulnerable. The internal count of a nation’s bonuses to geo efficiency was not being reset when the nation’s advances were reset (including when it rebirthed, and at the start of beta). The result was that some nations would maintain 100% geo efficiency even though they were spread very thin, allowing them to hold many more resources than they should be able to.
Move, evac, and occupy automatic operations will now only be interrupted by clicking on a square belonging to your own nation. This means it’s now possible to get info about other nations and objects on the map while these operations continue in the background.
The nation and object info options are now also available on the click-and-hold (right-click) menu, which makes it possible to use them on squares adjacent to your own nation.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent Advance Points from being able to be spent.
Fixed a bug that could cause the Research button on the Advance Info Panel not to disappear after that advance had been researched.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes make it impossible to research an advance whose prerequisites had all been met.
Fixed a problem with the display of the panel to purchase manpower or energy.
A map flag line no longer incorrectly appears at the bottom of the Advances list.
Fixed problem with selecting Wall and Cannon from the Advances list.
Fixed Facebook and Twitter links on the Connect > Recruit subpanel.
The sound for capturing a resource now only plays once the capture is complete.
Fixed problem that could cause the chat context menu to contain information about the wrong player, when a line of chat is clicked on, and there are multiple chat tabs open.
Added logging to help find a problem that allows part of a nation to be left behind its western boundary when its level increases. Please let me know if this happens to your nation, and I’ll check the log to look for the problem.

Server Update

2/11/18

Today’s server update does not require a new client.

Changes

A nation’s messages inbox will no longer fill up and be unable to receive any new messages.
New chat command “/countdown” displays the nation’s current countdown to rebirth.

Welcome to Open Beta!

2/8/18

Starting today, War of Conquest is open to all! You’re invited to join the conversation at the WoC Forum where we discuss game balance issues, suggestions, and bugs, and continue shaping the game as it heads toward release.

Changes

An activation code is no longer required to play the game! Anyone can play now, not just Kickstarter backers.
Attacks and other operations can now be started more immediately after the previous one finishes.
Automatic move/occupy/evac proceeds more quickly, with fewer pauses.
Fixed a problem that would sometimes cause automatic move/occupy/evac operations to abort before they’re complete.
Auto occupy now works in all situations where there is a path from a nearby square of the nation’s land; it no longer requires that a square of the nations land be right next to the area being occupied.
Fixed a problem that could allow a nation to hold area to the west of the boundary that they are allowed to, at their level.

Fixes and Minor Changes

2/6/18

Today’s update addresses several small problems.

Changes

A minimum cycle time of 2 weeks is now enforced, before a nation can rebirth.
The context menu that appears when a message or a line of chat is clicked on now has the option to display nation info.
When a nation’s last square is defeated, it will only reappear nearby right away if any of that nation’s players are online. (Otherwise it will reappear only when one of that nation’s players next logs in). When the nation does reappear, it will no longer sometimes appear beyond the nation’s eastern boundary line.
Includes most recent Unity patch that appears to have fixed a sporadic client crash.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent the last map flag in the list from appearing.
The client will now correctly handles the situation where the server goes down and is updated, without the client being shut down. The client will now check whether a new client download is required, so it will no longer be possible to log back in using an obsolete client.
Decreased the size of the text on the object info panel, to prevent it from overflowing.
Increased hit points of Brainsweeper.

Resources, Temps & Defenses

2/2/18

Today’s update adds new resources and purchasable advances, changes the rules for some defenses, and more.

Changes

Cannons, Artillery Batteries and Rocket Launchers are now only triggerd when an empty square belonging to their nation is attacked (that is, a square without a defense, resource or orb in it). This is an attempt to make these defenses less all-purpose, and to require some strategy in deciding where to best deploy them.
Doubled the number of Fresh Water and Fertile Soil resources, and halved their bonus values. Resources are now more common on the landscape, so that there are fewer areas that are completely empty.
Introduced two new relatively rare resources, Research Facility and Alchemist’s Lair, that each add bonuses to 3 stats.
Added XP Multiplier bonuses to Ancient Starship Wreckage, Cryptid Colony, and Oracle.
Added three new purchasable advances: Remote Viewing, Super Soldier Hero, and Insurgency.
Increased the duration of Great Library to 30 minutes.
Increased the duration of many temps to one hour: Transmutation, Psychic Shockwave, Akashic Explorer, Summon Leviathan, Recycling, Defense Architect, Black Market Weaponry, Ace Pilot, Krynid Army, Shamanic Tribe, Scrap Trader, Bulk Barricade, Master Tactician, Composter Worms, Arboreal Barrage, Turn Loyalty, Brewer of Death, Architectural Manifestation, Rich Humus, Talented Tinkerer, Mine Laying Cockroaches.
Increased the duration of Ancient Scry Stones from 15 minutes to 24 hours.
Increased the duration of Arcane Healer and Total Armament from 12 to 24 hours.
Arboreal Ally, Paralyzing Mosquito, and Energy Vampirism are now permanent rather than temps.
Charismatic Leader’s duration has been halved to 15 minutes, but its Manpower per Attack bonus has been increased from +20% to +50%.
Decreased the energy cost of Phantasmic Threat.
The rebirth countdown for nations that start a cycle after this update will now start at 500 rather than 100, in preparation for open beta.

Quests and bug Fixes

1/30/18

Today’s update adds multi-stage quests, as well as fixing several bugs and making a few tweaks.

Changes

Most quests now have 3 stages, with goals and rewards that increase with each successive stage. When the reward for each stage is collected, a “medal” appears for that quest: bronze, silver and finally gold.
Fixed a memory leak that could cause the client to use an ever increasing amount of memory, and eventually crash. This fix should significantly decrease the frequency of crashes on all platforms.
Fixed a problem that could occasionally cause the client not to show a resource, orb or defense that is present in a square.
Fixed a bug that would cause the wrong level to appear in the Highest Level Nations ranks lists, for a player’s own nation or their contacts’ nations.
Fixed a bug that would cause the winnings numbers to be incorrect in an orb’s list of top winners, for a player’s own nation or their contacts’ nations.
Fixed a bug that would cause a follower to remain in their previous patron’s list of followers (and continue receiving follower bonuses from them) even after switching to a new patron.
Fixed a problem that would cause build timers to disappear sometimes.
Usernames and nation names can no longer start or end with a space, or include a run of two or more spaces in succession.
Several minor UI fixes.
Increased damage of all 3 tiers of Ecto Ray.
Added minimum level requirements for most advances that allow a new type of defense to be built. This is so that each tier of each defense will have use in the game, rather than lower tiers just being stepping stones to the highest tier.

Changes to Advances and Map Panels

1/26/18

Today’s update speeds up the map panel and adds a new way to view the tech tree, along with some small changes.

Changes

The map panel has been been optimized. It also now displays only 100 map flags at one time; multiple “pages” of 100 flags can be flipped through using new arrow buttons at the top of the panel. Together, these changes make it much more practical for a nation to have many hundreds of map flags. Doing so will no longer slow down login, and the opening of the map panel, to a crawl.
A new list view has been added to the Advances Panel. It can be opened using a button in the upper right of the panel. The list displays all of the possible advances in the tech tree, grouped first into those that are currently available to the nation, then those that are not yet available, and finally those that have already been researched or purchased. Click on any line in the list to view details about the technology. For techs that are not yet available, a “Set As Target” button allows you to select that tech as your nation’s goal. Doing so will display target icons on the lines for all of that tech’s prerequisites, making it much easier to determine which advances to research in order to move toward a particular goal.
On PC, clicking the middle mouse button can now be used as a shortcut to evacuate a square.
Upon login, a player belonging to a nation that is holding orbs will get a report stating how many credits and XP their orbs have earned since they last logged out.
The titles of the lists of patrons with the most followers now correctly appears on the Ranks subpanel.
A nation’s west and east boundary lines now appear on the map panel.
Fixed a bug that would allow a player to pan their view beyond their visible area of the map, after they had opened the Map Panel.
Fixed a bug that could cause an error if a player clicked on a link in the Advances Panel after first opening the Object Info Panel from there.
When a nation recaptures a storage structure but already has its maximum allowed number of storage structures, the first structure over that limit is now automatically salvaged, rather than only the second.
The Orbs subpanel is now under the Nation Panel rather than the Connect Panel.
The status messages that appear above the chat box now have a black outline so that they show up better over light backgrounds.

Rebirth, Overburn and Storage Structures

1/20/18

Today’s update adds a rebirth countdown, and makes changes to energy use and storage structures.

Changes

Rebirth is no longer optional; at level 101 (plus the nation’s rebirth level bonus) a rebirth countdown begins (as seen on the Nation > Settings panel). The countdown begins at 100 (this will be increased to 500 when beta begins). Every day, the countdown decreases by (nation level – (100 + rebirth level bonus)), so the higher the level the nation reaches, the faster it will count down. Once the countdown reaches 0, the nation rebirths. The nation can choose to rebirth early, anytime after the countdown has begun.
A nation that rebirths now begins its new cycle at level 30 (plus its rebirth level bonus).
Each time a nation rebirths, it gains +1 to its rebirth level bonus. This is basically a free level, and so allows a nation to grow a little bit stronger after each rebirth cycle. Currently the maximum rebirth level bonus is 30. The rebirth level bonus increases the level at which a nation begins again after rebirth, as well as the level at which the rebirth countdown starts. It makes later levels require less XP to acheive — so that, for example, after 10 rebirth cycles a nation requires as many XP to get from level 100 to 101 as it took to get from level 90 to 91 in their first cycle.
A nation’s rebirth countdown is increased by 1 for each 25 credits they purchase (whether or not their rebirth countdown has already begun when they make the purchase).
The XP curve has been adjusted so that it will require less XP (and so less time) to reach high levels.
Orbs now award XP as well as credits. Rarer, more powerful Orbs award more XP; while an Orb of Noontide awards 100 XP per hour, the Orb of Fire awards 5000 XP per hour.
When a nation’s defenses burn energy at a faster rate than the maximum rate that nation can generate it (when its geo efficiency is 100%), then the nation goes into “overburn”. Its energy burn rate increases exponentially the more energy it uses, above the maximum it can generate. So, say a nation has enough defenses to burn energy 50% faster than its maximum energy generation rate, then it will effectivly burn energy 200% faster than it can generate it, and so on. This is to prevent nations who use stored energy to deploy massive amounts of defenses in the midst of battle, from maintaining too many extra defenses for very long.
Nations no longer share all of their energy with their allies. Instead, nations must build energy storage structures (such as Fuel Tanks, Earth Chakras, etc.) in order to share energy with allies. These structures fill to capacity over the course of 48 hours, and when a nation runs out of energy it will receive an emergency infusion of energy taken from its allies’ energy storage structures.
Energy storage structures can also be captured by other nations, who will receive any energy stored in them.
The above now also applies to manpower; limited amounts of manpower can now be shared among allies, via manpower storage structures like Agro Colony and Hydroponic Garden.
A meter is displayed above each storage structure, indicating how full it is.
Storage structures, like walls, are now always visible.
A nation can have a maximum of 8 storage structures total.
New stats have been added to the Nation > Stats panel, showing how many storage structures a nation has, how much energy and manpower they have stored and available to their allies, and how much energy and manpower their allies have stored and available to them.
Energy burn rates, manpower costs, capacities, build times and required levels have been changed for all energy and manpower storage structures.
New quest and new ranks list added for the amount of manpower a nation donates to its allies.
Energy burn rates for all walls have been roughly halved.
Added moderator tools.
Fixed a bug that could cause a floating number to freeze in place over the XP bar, after a nation levels up.
Fixed a bug that could cause the screen to appear blank the first time a player logs into their nation after it has rebirthed or migrated.

Roman Numerals Fix

1/8/18

Today’s update fixes one bug that could cause the Roman numerals, which display how many enemy defenses surround a square, not to appear when they should. This is the second (and hopefully last) bug to be fixed that could cause this same problem, so the roman numerals should now correctly appear when there are enemy defenses in any surrounding squares.

UI Enhancements and More

1/7/18

Today’s update fixes problems and adds several enhancements to the UI, as well as making a few game balance changes.

Changes

The boxes that appear when an attack takes place, showing the attacker’s manpower bar and the defender’s hit points bar, now show up near the top or bottom of the screen rather than adjacent to the square being attacked. This is to prevent these boxes from obstructing the view of the area where the battle is taking place.
The Messages panel now shows only the most recent 20 messages received. To view more messages, scroll to the bottom of the list and another batch of 20 earlier messages will be received from the server. This “paging” of messages will eliminate the problem of all of a nation’s messages being received from the server at login, which would cause a delay and could sometimes prevent log in or result in out-of-memory client crashes. It will also allow the Messages panel to pop up more quickly.
On the Advances panel, the tech tree can now be zoomed in and out, using the up/down arrows, scroll wheel, or pinch-to-zoom.
Fixed a problem that could cause the roman numerals (that indicate the number of surrounding enemy defenses) not to appear in some cases, after a client has logged out and back in.
Fixed a problem that could cause clients not to be updated when a defense successfully captured a square containing another defense. This could then result in Djinn Portals sometimes appearing to activate even though they were not occupied by the nation that created them. This is because the Djinn Portal had already been recaptured by another Djinn Portal, but due to this problem clients were not displaying that it had been recaptured.
The “Move To” and “Occupy 5×5” commands will no longer try to occupy land that is outside of the nation’s level-based western or eastern boundaries.
When a context menu is activated due to a square having been clicked, a glowing border now correctly appears that shows the 1×1 and/or 5×5 area that the menu’s commands would apply to.
The client’s input buffer now dynamically resizes itself so that it will not run out of space if an especially long message is received from the server.
A message is no longer received each time an advance is gained; it is now only received when an advance is researched or purchased, and the message includes the username of the player who researched or purchased it.
The size of the font used in the XP bar is now reduced at higher levels, so that the XP amounts fit within the bar.
Increased the tolerance of how much the pointer can be moved and still be counted as click-and-hold rather than panning.
Increased the visible map area on Android, particularly when the device is held in tall (portrait) orientation.
Fixed a problem that could cause the titles of map flags to appear blank within the map flag list panel.
Messages about an orb or resource being gained or lost as the result of a battle will now only arrive once the battle has been completed.
Fixed a bug that would cause a nation to be unable to build defenses that had been made obsolete by the development of more advanced defenses, during the nation’s previous rebirth cycle (or before a tech reset).
Illustrations added to main panel buttons.
When a patron purchases credits, a 10% bonus is now split among all of that patron’s followers (rather than each follower receiving a full 10% bonus). This is to eliminate the potential for abuses generating free credits.
After a wall or other defense is recaptured by the nation that built it, its hit points will not contribute to its block’s hp until its 60 second “rebuild” period is complete.
If an attacking nation is much more powerful than a defending nation, the XP award for defeating a square is reduced. This is to reduce the effectiveness of purposely creating much weaker nations to level against.
The durations of the wipes created by the Hypnotic Inducer and the Temple of Zoth-Ommog have been reduced. The wipe created by the highest level Temple of Zoth-Ommog is now 2 hours rather than 6.
Lowered the build times of Guided Missile Stations.
Lowered max damage for Rocket Launcher tiers 2 & 3.

Fixes and Defense Balance Issues

12/22/17

Today’s update makes changes to the stats of several defenses, fixes a few problems and adds minor improvements.

Changes

When clicking on a map square, an indicator now shows the square being clicked on. If the “Occupy 5×5” and “Evacuate 5×5” options are available, an indicator also shows the 5×5 area that would be affected.
Defense descriptions now specify the radius of effect.
When a defense is selected in the Advances panel, the descriptin is now followed by a “(More)” link that will open the full panel of information about that defense.
The message a nation receives when an orb or resource they occupied is captured by another nation now includes a link to the location of the object, and a link to view information about the nation that captured it.
Fixed a problem that resulted in errors being logged when a Hypnotic Inducer is triggered.
Modified descriptions of several defenses to indicate that they only become visibile when directly attacked.
Added logging to help find a problem that is causing surround counts (roman numerals) to sometimes not appear when they should.
Pestilence Launcher/Toxic Mist Launcher/Pathogen Spore Launcher: modified build times, increased damage, increased hit points.
Toxic Chemical Dump/Supervirus Contagion: Increased hit points.
Tree Summoner/Roots of Despair: Increased hit points.
Brain Sweeper: Increased hit points at highest tier.
Nanobot Swarm Base: Increased hit points, attack radius, damage, and cooldown time.

Balance Issues and More

12/14/17

Today’s update makes many changes to defense stats and combat, fixes several bugs and more.

Changes

When an enemy square containing one of their walls or defenses is captured, there is now a 10% chance that the defense will crumble very rapidly (disappearing in 45 seconds rather than the usual 10 hours). Also the standard time before a captured defense crumbles has been reduced from 12 hours to 10 hours.
When a square containing a wall or defense is recaptured by the nation that built it, it will no longer regain its full hit points immediately. Instead only 25% of the recaptured defense’s hit points will be restored at first, gradually returning to full hp according to the nation’s hit points restore rate.
Base supportable area has been increased from 200 to 300, while the amount of supportable area gained per level has been decreased from 15 to 10. All geographic efficiency bonuses that can be gained from advances have been halved.
Increased the credit bonus that comes with rebirth from 500 to 1000.
Spaces can now be used in usernames and nation names. Also, non-English characters can now be used in usernames, nation names and chat. 夢みたいだ!
Increased the hit points of Cannons and Artillery Batteries.
Increased the energy costs of Cannons, Artillery, Rocket Launcher, Supervirus Contagion, and the Temple of Zoth-Ommog by roughly 50%, to discourage their overuse. Some of these may still need to be increased further in the future.
Staggered the build times for most series of related defenses. For example, the build times of the 3 tiers each of Cannon, Artillery Battery and Rocket Launcher are now: 30,60,300; 60,300,900; 300,900,1800. Many build times have been decreased.
Increased the damage done by Radio Tower, Satcom Command, and Autonomous War Base.
Moved the HP per square bonus that come with developing the Temple of Zoth-Ommog from tier 2 to tier 3.
Changed the damage, attack radius and number of attacks of the Ecto Ray and Djinn Portal defenses. Ecto Ray has been strengthened a bit, while Djinn Portal’s max attack radius was decreased.
Modified Telekinetic Projector, Pyroclasm and Keraunocon so that they are triggered when their nation is attacked nearby rather than when they are attacked directly. Also increased their cooldown times from 5 to 15 seconds.
Increased hit points and decreased build times of Phantasmic Threat.
Increased the maximum number of map flags from 500 to 1000.
Increased the maximum number of messages allowed in a nation’s inbox.
Implemented a demand-based pricing system to automatically set the prices for all purchasable advances. This is very similar to the pricing system used in the original WoC. Prices will only change by a small amount (~10%) each day.
Fixed a bug that could cause ‘Occupy 5×5’ and ‘Move To’ operations to halt when they try to occupy certain types of resources or an area affected by a lasting wipe.
Fixed an issue that prevented the click-and-hold menu from being able to pop up for squares containing certain types of resources.
Fixed a problem that could cause a hit point bar to appear after a squre is captured, even though it’s at full hp.
Fixed a bug that could cause objects to occasionally not appear on the square where they are located.
Increased the size of the map location text.

Balance and Defenses

12/9/17

Today’s update replaces one of yesterday’s game balance changes, modifies the stats of several defenses, and more. No new client is required.

Changes

Removed the 25% minimum manpower cost per attack that was introduced yesterday. Instead:
The geographic efficiency of the defending nation is now factored into the amount of XP received by an attacker. XP recieved from defeating a square is equal to the number of hit points the square had, multiplied by the defender’s geographic efficiency. In this way, nations will still be able to slice through defenders that have low geo, easily and without spending much manpower, but they won’t gain much XP from doing so. This is intended to better address the exploit of players creating weak “feeder” nations to earn quick XP off of — a problem that had gotten even worse since the hit points of walls were increased.
The cooldown times of Cannons, Artillery Batteries and Rocket Launchers have been tripled to 15 seconds.
Rocket Launcher I’s max damage has been decreased from 100 to 90.
Increased the attack range of each tier of Guided Missile Station by 1, to make them more capable of dealing with Rocket Launchers.
Decreased the damage dealt by Guided Missile stations by roughly one half, so that each hit by one is no longer a sure kill.
Changed the stats of Hedge I and Telekinetic Block I so that they differ a bit from those of Wall I. Hedge I is cheaper but less effective, while Telekinetic Block is more expensive and more effective.
After a nation’s advances are reset, there is now a one hour period in which advances added to that nation which increase the nation’s max energy or manpower will result in the pre-reset level of energy and manpower being restored to the nation. After that one hour window, advances that increase the max energy or manpower will no longer increase the current amount. This was done to prevent resets from being used as a way to get free energy and manpower, and also to prevent resets from causing a nation to lose their energy and manpower.

Balance, Walls and Fixes

12/8/17

Today’s update closes some game balance loopholes, overhauls walls, and fixes a few problems.

Changes

Walls of all kinds have had their stats overhauled to make them much more useful, both in defense and as a tool for offense. All wall types have had their hit points increased — high level walls now have over 1000 hit points, making them able to absorb many attacks. The energy burn rate and build/upgrade times of walls have also been changed, to be proportional to the number of hit points of each type.
While a wall or other defensive structure is under construction, it now has half the hit points of the finished product. (Previously a structure under construction contributed 0 hit points to the square it was in.) This change will also make walls more useful, especially when in the midst of battle.
The context menu that can be accessed by clicking and holding on a square, can now also be accessed by right clicking (on platforms that support it).
Attacks with splash damage previously had no manpower cost for the splash damage they did to surrounding blocks. This loophole was readily exploited to do massive amounts of damage and gain XP very quickly. Now there is a manpower cost for splash damage: if a nation does 25% splash damage, the cost will be 25% of its manpower per attack for each square it does splash damage to. This will make slash damage a weapon to be deployed to do catastrophic damage in limited circumstances, rather than all the time.
Because of the above change, splash damage is no longer automatically added to every attack done by a nation that has splash damage bonuses. Instead, click and hold (or right click) on an enemy square within attack range and select “Splash Attack” to do an attack with splash damage.
Fixed a bug that would cause a square’s hit point restore rate to be counted multiple times if the square were being hit by multiple simultaneous attacks. Now the restore rate is correctly counted only once. This will have the effect of making stacked splash attacks more powerful.
Any attack on an enemy square will now cost a minimum of 25% of the attacking nation’s manpower per attack. This is to prevent nations from gaining XP while spending very little manpower by creating weak “feeder” nations to attack.
Added a shortcut menu option to create (or edit) a map flag for a square. When the menu is accessed by clicking and holding (or right clicking) on a square, an option such as “Flag 100 N, 280 W” will appear. Because this is a power-user option, it will only appear if “Show map locations” or “Show grid” has been turned on in Options.
Changed the way that stat details are displayed, to be clearer. The value in the “Temporary” column now shows the bonus percentage.
The menu option to show a square’s nation’s info will now appear even if the square has an orb or resource in it.
Fixed a bug that prevented geo efficiency bonuses (from advances) from being applied to a nation.
If an advance’s description is too long to fit in the Advances panel, a scrollbar will now appear allowing the excess text to be viewed.
Quest descriptions now incorporate the quest’s goal number directly, so the goal number shown and the one given in the descriptions will no longer occasionally differ.
The map location text (optionally) displayed below the compass rose has been made more visible: bigger, brighter, and with a dark outline.
Several client issues that could potentially cause crashes have been fixed.

Alpha Testing Begins!

12/4/17

Welcome, Kickstarter backers, to the alpha testing phase of the new War of Conquest!

Thanks to the help of the small number of testers who’ve been playing over the past couple of months, we’ve had a chance to fix the biggest show-stopping problems. Now it’s time to uncover the remaining bugs and identify all the gameplay issues that prevent War of Conquest from being as much fun as it can be.

Each element in War of Conquest — each stat, each resource, each defensive structure, each advance and quest and purchasable tech — should add something valuable to the game that helps make it more fun. If any element is so weak that it’s useless, or so strong that it’s overpowering, then it needs to be tweaked. One of the goals of alpha testing is to identify all of these balance issues and get them fixed.

Each aspect of War of Conquest should also be straightforward for players to pick up as they go along. If some aspect of the game is too complex or obscure, it may need to be simplified, presented differently, or have a tutorial created for it.

In order to build up a large enough player base to be successful, War of Conquest will need to be fun, welcoming, and easy enough to learn for new players. Any obstacles that get in the way of this will need to be smoothed out.

Ultimately, the goal is to make War of Conquest a lot of fun. Imagine thousands of people essentially creating tower defense levels to protect their own nation’s assets while thwarting one another. The goal is to make this challenging and engaging for both attacker and defender, so that each success is rewarding and each failure feels like a learning opportunity to build toward future successes.

Alpha testing is the stage where we identify and fix all of the problems that stand in the way of these goals for the game. If you find a bug or run into an issue of some kind, you’re encouraged to write it up on the forum and be part of the discussion on how to fix it.

I hope each tester has a great time both playing and contributing to the creation of this game. Thank you!

Optional Client Update

12/3/17

Today’s update makes a few fixes to the server, and a few minor changes to the client. The new client download isn’t required; download only if you want these changes. This is the final update before alpha testing begins tomorrow.

Changes

Squares that are in the process of being attacked and taken by a defending nation will still count as belonging to the attacking nation for purposes of flanking a defense, so flanking should work more as expected during a heated battle.
The “Move To” option now avoids squares that cannot be occupied due to having a lasting wipe effect on them, such as from Supervirus Contagion.
The map on the Map Panel can now be zoomed in closer, so as to be able to better separate flags that are on nearby squares.
All music now plays at a lower volume.
Music plays less frequently.
There is now a checkbox on the Options Panel, to turn music on or off.

Map Flags List and Some Fixes

12/1/17

Today’s update has one new feature, a list view of the map flags, as well as several minor fixes. This is intended to be the final client update before alpha testing starts early next week.

Changes

You can now view, edit and delete map flags through either the usual map view or a new list view, similar to original WoC. Hit the button in the upper right of the Map Panel to toggle between the two views. You can also sort the list by either flag title or location (east->west) by clicking on the list’s header.
It’s now easier to flank a defense. Any of the defending nation’s surrounding squares that contain any defense (other than a wall), or that contain a resource or orb, now count toward flanking. So, to flank a defense, all of the nine squares surrounding that defense must be occupied by the attacker or their ally, or be uninhabitable, or contain a resource or orb, or belong to the defender but contain a non-wall defense.
Framerate adjusted when the game is not in focus, so that it no longer slows to a crawl.
Added “Forgot your password?” link to login window.
When viewing chat in the small format so that chat tabs aren’t visible, the chat maximize button will flash if a chat message has been received to a tab other than the one you’re viewing.
Fixed a stats display problem that affected nations with negative base geo efficiency (which is now possible due to supportable area).
Fixed a problem with the positioning of nation labels and defense counts, that would cause them to appear to slide around the map when the view was zoomed in or out.
The scroll wheel no longer also zooms the map view when the mouse is positioned over the chat scroll.
Hitting delete key will no longer cause the map view to go blank.

Resource Bonus Caps

11/29/17

Today’s update reintroduces the concept of ‘supportable area’, which will be familiar to players of the original War of Conquest. A nation’s supportable area depends on its level, and if the nation occupies land beyond its supportable area then its geographic efficiency will decrease. There is also a hard limit that a nation cannot occupy more than twice its supportable area. Any area a nation holds beyond its supportable area is considered excess area, and geographic efficiency is now determined as: (interior area – excess area) / border area.

Changes

Added “supportable area” stat. Geographic efficiency is now calculated as ((interior area – excess area) / border area), where the excess area is any area a nation has beyond its supportable area. A nation’s supportable area starts at 400 and increases by 25 with every level gained (these numbers are the same as in the original War of Conquest). A nation cannot occupy any further land if it holds twice its supportable area.
Decreased the minimum geographic efficiency value from 20% to 15%.
Removed the cost in energy to occupy and maintain land. How much land area a nation can have is once again independant of how much energy the nation generates. The role of limiting a nation’s size has been taken over by “supportable area”.
The cap on stat bonuses gained by capturing resources has been increased from +100% to +300%. If supportable area works well in preventing nations from capturing enough resources to become invulnerable, the resource stat cap may be raised further or eliminated completely.
Decreased the amount of bonuses to geographic efficiency that are gained with several advances.
Fixed a bug that would cause nations to appear to do splash damage (without actually doing any damage) after a splash damage temp had worn off.
Added the names of all Kickstarter backers to the game’s credits (accessible through the Options panel). They are listed in order of pledge amount, and alphabetically within a single pledge amount.

Resource Bonus Caps

11/24/17

Today’s update introduces caps on how much a nation’s stats may be increased by capturing resources, and a few other changes.

Changes

Capturing resource locations (eg. oil, uranium, etc.) can now only increase a nation’s stats by at most 50% of the nation’s permanent value for those stats (the base amount plus the amount gained from advances they’ve researched). This is to prevent nations from becoming invincibly powerful by capturing many resource locations.
When a manpower or energy storage structure is captured by another nation, that nation now only receives 10% of the manpower or energy that was stored in the structure. This is to prevent abuses where multiple nations would work together to produce near unlimited manpower or energy for one of them.
The energy burn rate of manpower storage structures has been doubled.
Fixed a problem where the stats details panel would show the incorrect values for stats gained from captured resources.

Larger Map & More

11/18/17

Today’s update increases the size of the map, as well as several other fixes and changes, in preparation for the start of alpha testing.

Changes

The game map has increased from 800×400 to 2000×500. For alpha testing the map is now much wider than it is tall, to test the level progression. It will grow taller before the game is released and the number of players increases further.
The progression of level limits has been changed. The larger map allow for a wider area for nations of all levels, but most of the expanded width of the map will be available to level 100+ nations.
Along with the increase in map area the number of resources and orbs has also increased. There are especially more Orbs of Noontide; their range now extends across the map, including the high level areas.
The migrate feature now gives the option of migrating the entire nation to the new location (wiping it off the rest of the map), or migrating a single “colony” square to the new location, and leaving the rest of the nation intact.
Added a checkbox on the Options panel, “Show Grid”, that turns on a grid overlay on the map to make the locations of individual squares easier to see.
After a defense is recaptured by the nation that built it, there is a “rebuild” period (currently 60 seconds) before it can be triggered again.
An animated timer graphic will now appear over a defense during its “cooldown” period after it’s been triggered and before it can activate again. Another timer will appear over a defense that has been captured from the nation that built it, showing how long until it crumbles and vanishes. A third timer will appear during a defense’s “rebuild” period after being recaptured by the nation that built it.
The cooldown time for most defenses has been increased from 2 seconds to 5 seconds.
The object info descriptions for defenses that are inert and those that have been captured now give information about the state that they’re in.
The Orbs subpanel now shows totals for the nation’s monthly and all-time orb winnings.
Fixed a problem that sometimes prevented the winnings ranks for an individual orb from displaying.
Fixed a problem that caused some ranks lists not to appear correctly (any list that included a nation with ‘&’ in its name would fail to appear).
Fixed a problem that prevented the top player XP ranks list from appearing.

Gameplay Update & Bug Fixes

11/10/17

Today’s update addresses how defenses could be used offensively to defeat much higher level nations, slows down leveling, fixes lots of bugs, and more.

Changes

The behavior of several defenses has changed. Hypnotic Inducer, Temple of Zoth-Ommog, Nanobot Swarm Base, Pestilence Launcher, Toxic Mist Launcher, Pathogen Spore Launcher, Telekinetic Projector, Pyroclasm, Keraunocon, Brainsweeper: these defenses now only affect the nation whose attack triggered them. If the nation that the defense belongs to is offline, then it will also affect any other nation in range that has attacked that nation since its players have been offline.
The above change also applies to Dead Hand, Geographic Wipe, Toxic Chemical Dump, and Supervirus Contagion, except that these defenses also do some damage (reduce hit points by 30%) to squares in range that belong to any other nation, including their own.
Defenses that don’t occupy the squares that they defeat (such as Geographic Wipe) no longer produce any XP. Those that do occupy their defeated squares produce 10% of the XP that defeating the same square by attacking would produce.
The XP gain for random discoveries has decreased, from 100 (250 for supply lines) to 50 (100 for supply lines).
The XP gain for capturing a resource or orb for the first time has decreased (roughly halved).
The XP curve for leveling up has been adjusted. While it’s similar (and in some cases lower) at lower levels, the curve now increases more steeply at higher levels. The idea is that a full rebirth cycle should take no less than about a month, for nations that play a lot. (After initial testing of the new rate, this will probably be sped up during alpha testing so that we can test multiple rebirth cycles in weeks instead of months).
For nations that have captured orbs, the Connect panel will now have an Orbs subpanel, showing the nation’s monthly and all-time winnings from each orb they’ve captured. Click on an orb in the list to view it on the map.
Many advances have had their stat bonuses adjusted to address several different balance issues.
Each branch of the tree now has early advances that increase Manpower per Attack, to prevent very low level nations from being unable to defeat slightly higher level nations that have increased their Hit Points per Square.
Manpower Rate increases have been added and changed, and the base value has been increased, to allow nations more attacks per day. Previously manpower rate varied more between the advance tree branches; lower level psi nations would only be able to attack full on for about 20 minutes per day before running out of manpower. Now typically a nation will be able to attack full on (meaning two attacks at once, constantly) for about an hour per day, with bio-focused nations able to go for about 80 minutes.
Each of the three branches of the advance tree is intended to be better suited for a particular play style, and the advance bonuses have been adjusted to better reflect this. Tech advances focus more on manpower per attack and critical hit chance, and so produce more powerful attacks. Bio advances focus more on increasing manpower rate, and so allow a nation to attack more per day. Psi advances focus more on hit points per square, hit points restore rate, and energy generation rate, and so are specialized more toward defense.
Fixed some defenses that still had incorrect hardcoded test values; for example Nanobot Swarm Base, Pestilence Launcher, Toxic Mist Launcher, and Pathogen Spore Launcher were doing only 10 points of damage per square when activated, rendering them mostly useless.
Fixed a bug that would cause the server to hang when a nation with allies attempted to unite into another nation.
Fixed bugs that would cause the tutorials about the occupy area and evacuate area functions to come up at inappropriate times.
Added mention of the Move To function to the tutorials.
Fixed several issues that could cause the client to crash or produce an error message.

Gameplay Update

11/3/17

Welcome War of Conquest backers and testers! As we head toward alpha testing, there are many major gameplay issues to be addressed. This is the first of several updates to tackle the worst of these.

Changes

A nation’s geographic efficiency now factors into its combat stats (tech, bio, psi) when used for defense. So, having poor geographic efficiency now makes a nation much more vulnerable to attacks.
Geographic efficiency is now limited to the range of 20%-100% (rather than 25%-200%).
Each square of land held by a nation now costs 1 energy per hour to maintain. This puts a limitation on how much land a nation can hold without running out of energy. Defenses also still cost energy to maintain, so a nation will need to balance land area against defenses.
It now costs 1 energy to capture a square of land (either by attacking it or occupying empty land), and 1 energy is regained when a square of land is evacuated.
Because of the above, if a nation has run out of energy it will be unable to capture any new land (by occupying or attacking) until it has gathered some energy.
Nation Info now shows the nation’s geographic efficiency. The defense stat numbers shown also now factor in geographic efficiency.
The cost in credits to make a change to a nation’s appearance is now shown in the Customize Appearance panel.
Several stat descriptions and tutorials changed to reflect the above changes relating to the energy cost of taking and holding land, and geographic efficiency factoring into defense stats.
Unite now works.
Manpower is no longer required to occupy empty land.
Descriptions for defensive structures are now correctly shown in the Advances Panel.
The Brainsweeper’s beam now points in the right direction.
Fewer defensive structures go obsolete (and become unbuildable) when more advanced similar defenses are developed. For example, Cannon no longer goes obsolete when Artillery is developed, and Artillery no longer goes obsolete when Rocket Launcher is developed. But Cannon does now go obsolete when Rocket Launcher is developed.
Geographic Efficiency quest changed to be completed when geo reaches 100% rather than 150% (which is now impossible).