Elemental: Reforged v1.4 Update Now Available

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3796960/view/715663387750565047
from Elemental Forums

Elemental: Reforged v1.4 Update Now Available

Get Elemental: Reforged | Full Changelog Below

The v1.4 update for Elemental: Reforged is now available. This release improves AI expansion and battle decisions, adds creature type icons to the unit panel and details window, fixes a crash when loading into or leaving a game, and preserves outpost upgrades across saves while stopping quest and monster battles from stacking on the same spot.

Smarter AI - AI factions now found outposts reliably, grab nearby treasure, keep their armies together on an attack, size up fights before picking them, hunt monsters more aggressively, and more.

Added Creature Type UI - Creature types are now visible where you need them, with a new icon on the main map unit panel showing whether a unit is a Champion, Beast, Undead, or another type, and the Unit Details window displaying that type in its title.

Gameplay and Stability Improvements - Outposts keep their upgrades through saves and ownership changes, quest and monster battles no longer stack on the same spot, rally points deliver their units, and a crash when loading into or leaving a game is fixed.

Change Log

AI

  • AI leaders now grab nearby treasure. If a sovereign or champion is standing next to a goodie hut, they grab it before heading off to do anything else

  • AI factions now correctly build outposts, AI pioneers now settle instead of wandering, and AI factions expand into nearby territory as intended

  • AI keeps training pioneers and keeps expanding as the game goes on

  • AI armies that set out on an attack together stay together instead of abandoning the plan partway there

  • AI leaders only leave a city when it is safe without them

  • When an AI's target is unreachable, it moves on to its next-best option instead of standing idle

  • The AI keeps an accurate count of its scouts, pioneers, and caravans, so it no longer overbuilds one and neglects another

  • The AI pays the real cost when training groups of units and can no longer spend gildar it does not have

  • Early-game AI scouts explore land they have not seen yet instead of re-walking territory they already know

  • Units sent to a rally point now arrive and join the army

  • Fixed the AI directing diplomatic reactions at the wrong faction

  • The AI sizes up fights more accurately, so it picks battles it can win

  • AI more aggressive about going after monsters

Gameplay

  • Fixed the Tax Office and Treasury Vault not applying their Produce Wealth gildar bonuses

  • Outposts keep their upgrade modules when you save and reload, and when the outpost changes owners

  • Fixed quest battles and roaming monster battles triggering on the same spot, stacking two fights at once

  • Blizzard scrolls now cost 780 gildar to buy, 3 Clouded Topaz to craft, and 720 gildar to replace

Stability

  • Fixed a crash that could happen while loading into or leaving a game

UI

  • The unit panel on the main map now shows an icon for the unit's creature type, such as Champion, Beast, or Undead, with a tooltip naming the type

  • The Unit Details window now shows the unit's creature type as its title

  • The battle results screen no longer shows the sovereign's retreat mana cost on rows for defeated units

  • Fixed the Warlord's army maintenance tooltip showing placeholder text instead of its description

  • Fixed the endgame countdown showing internal placeholder names instead of proper unit type and stat labels

Elemental Reforged Elemental News Stardock
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

The AI section is most of this update, and most of that is bookkeeping rather than cleverness. Pioneers that settle instead of wandering, armies that stay together once they have set out, scouts that stop re-walking ground they have already seen, an AI that can count its own caravans. None of that is strategy. It is an opponent being able to carry out an intention.

That is worth more than it sounds. War of Magic's AI did not frustrate me by outplaying me. It frustrated me by visibly failing to do anything coherent, and once you have seen that you cannot unsee it for the rest of the campaign. An opponent that expands steadily and turns up where it set out to go is present in a way that a cleverer but confused one never is.

The line I would watch is the AI sizing up fights more accurately so it picks battles it can win. That cuts both ways. An opponent that only commits to favourable fights is also one that stops bothering you once you are clearly ahead, and a late game where nobody will contest you is its own kind of empty. I would want it to still take a bad fight when the position calls for one.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The item I am watching is not the fight evaluation. It is the pioneer fixes, because those decide whether a faction is legible at all.

I build sovereigns and hand them to the AI to see what it does with them. When AI factions stop expanding, every design I make looks the same from the outside, because the traits never get enough empire under them to show. An opponent sat on two cities plays like an opponent sat on two cities no matter what I gave it.

Hubert, on your last point I would go the other way. An AI that takes fights it should lose is what made older versions feel random rather than dangerous, and I have not missed it. The empty late game you describe sounds like a pressure problem rather than a courage problem. If it keeps expanding while it is ahead you feel the lead, and it does not need to throw armies away for you to notice it is there.

The line I do not trust yet is the one about it continuing to train pioneers and expand as the game goes on. In my own games that is where it stalled, once the easy land was gone. One campaign after an update will not tell me whether it holds.

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