It looks just like 1.2 to me.

I thought housing was removed?

I have the option to build huts.

Am I not understanding something?

I did notice that Janusk was missing, though.

I played a little during my lunch break.  I really like finding weapons / armor in goodie huts ( this could probably be toned down a little bit cuz I'm finding way too many weapons / armor ) but this was a refreshing change nonetheless.  Then my game crashed and I had to go back to work... will play more later.

Quests don't require a Y/N.  

Really? If you dont have anything there, it defaults to yes or no.

I have played for a few hours today and I feel these changes show great promise. However I ran into a few things that could use some balance/fixing.

1. I fought Capitar's wife who had 7 armor. I was using a party (4) of spears (9 attack) and I routinely broke 20+ damage. If there is currently a "bonus" to attack from numbers, i feel it is too high when fighting a single target. After all it doesn't matter if you have hundreds of soldiers, if your fighting 1 person, only so many troops can actually engage that person at a time.
2. I feel that a training time reduction should be in order. My first unit of soldiers takes 12 turns to train. They are equipped with all padded + the spear. Since we have shifted the minimum unit size to 4, they should have the base 3 training time we used to have when training a single soldiers. I had to sit in my city until i had this unit trained because bandits and wolves lurked outside and I didn't want my city razed.
3. Combat between squads is a little too viceral right now. I attacked a equivocally armed squad of Capitars and I killed 2 of the 4 soldiers. So when they counter attacked, they did very little damage back. I would solve this by either...

• Raising the individual soldiers health so they do not all get wiped out in the first attack.
• Have retaliations occur simultaneously. This way when I kill off 2 of their soldiers, they at least get to use them. In our current initiative system, this would at least let the defender inflict some damage if they were one hit killed

I really do enjoy the random events. Got my wife through one. The lack of champions has made the ones i find feel more special.

Thanks for releasing before the weekend,

Jec

I forgot to ask, what does the war concil do since it is no longer required for groups?

Same for the archery range.

How do i update/run to 1.2b? still on 1.2a on impulse with no option to update

Here's a link to the Impulse guide:

http://www.impulsedriven.com/help

See #10 - Preferences.  The item you want is "Show pre-release versions".  If you check this box you'll be able to play 1.3 betas as they come out.

Only had a little time to play, so very initial impression.

Overall feels like another step forwards, had a "this is more like what it should have been" moment, when I had a random event pop up, which I could only beat because of the mace I found a little earlier in an explored hut.  Made the RPG part a lot more alive.  Having the champs rarer (by intent or just my luck) and most troops you build in groups made my sov also feel more special.

I liked what I saw of the economy, more careful planning definitely needed up front.  I do think some of the initial formula for train times and mats might need to be tweaked for peasants to get them out quicker --needing a good part of your starting pop and plenty of mats now + 10 or more turns to build limits exploration or protection options at start.  Another area I noted feeling slow now was research.  I like that times were bumped up overall, but might make the initial curve on the tech side to be a bit lower.  Since I can't spam studies now, its a lot of turns before I can research much.

A few other things: the AI I ran into spammed a lot of cities (pioneers were cheap compared to military units?)  Had about 6 cities before I had 2, and wandering monsters seemed ignored their lone pioneers, or they were getting lucky or something.  Just feels like you have to rush a few cities quickly or fall behind early.  Enemy units being in singles instead of group stacks now that your units train in stacks feels a bit odd, might have things like spiders group?  A few crashes in an hour of playing, which is more than the official builds.

But at least for the major changes so far I liked em, just need a bit of balance to clean it up.  I'm sure thoughts will change as I get past the initial game, and will be interested to see if the economy continues to feel tight overall, or if things start to fall apart once a good sized kingdom is formed up.

Sorry. Posted in support forum...

1. Abandoned villages don't show on 3d map. Can see them in cloth map.

2. Need a way to demolish buildings to free up population. Population is much more difficult to control now which is good as long as we have the capacity to manage it.

3. AI committed suicide by walking alone right up to a city I had recently captured from him.

4. No shard spells can be researched. I have both Air and Earth shards but can't research any spells from these areas.

5. Tech/Magic balance is way off. I am reasonably early into the game and have already researched every spell available to me yet I'm not even to level 3 Warfare tech yet.

6. Parties as a starting point are a good thing.

7. There should be a low-level missile weapon available from the start. Perhaps a sling or crude bow.

Over all this is an improvement. But man, the balance is still so far off it isn't funny in terms of tech not being the massive chore it currently is. I really hate the impact Technology has in this game. It is just way too important and dramatic - which is so arse about for a game about magic. I think I'd prefer ditching tech altogether and using city size as the limiter to what can be purchased.

Only played about  a 1/2 hour, but game definitely seems to have a better pace. 

Also seeing problem with abandoned villages showing up on cloth map but not in 3d.

Here is saved game showing that.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16706254/Jim12b_4.EleSav

Since units train in groups now the resources used reflects that, however pioneers are still single units and only cost 10 or so mats, when you switch from making a group of militia to making a pioneer the game displays the cost of a group of 4 pioneers. I think you just have to click the first grouping button to make it correct that.

Somethings I have noticed.

The adanboned mine/village and lost temple are not shown on the 3d map while some of the quest locations (enchanters/witches hut) don't always show up on the cloth map.

In the pregnant wolf quest/event? you're asked if you'd like to expend 5 essence to help it.  I said yes got two pups but lost spell casting ability on my sovereign.  I had forgotten that while hidden essence is still linked to spell casting ability.  Is it meant to cost you so much for two units?

I can suddenly find my self a large amount in the red for population eg 422/365.  By deleting a recently finished town hall this was fixed.  While tring to figure why I noticed that a cities citizen summary didnt match its breakdown and neither added up to the total usage.  Also while it said that my seventh study would cost 17 pop it only cost 4 pop each for the next 6 I built.  Workshops where similar but only costing 3 pop. It is possible to build studies and wokshops that put youre pop in the red.

House are showing increased food cost to build(ie 21 food) but still cost only one to build.

The lower hps means that it is much easlier to die  to one hit, my sovereign died to one bandit blow tring to protect his city.  On the other hand once I realise I had arcane arrow he could get away with solo adventuring.  The found crude bow with arcane weapon kills most creatures with 5hp before they can get to you.  

Nakisisa