February 15, 2019 – Patch EA 0.7.3

As already mentioned in our last community update we were skipping the EA 0.7.2 version. All the changes we had in the EA 0.7.2 are included in the EA 0.7.3 version. We are all very excited about your feedback as we changed and added a lot in EA 0.7.3. The combat system and most of the related actions (eg. guarding) were completely reworked. You will see the first draft of our new AI system in the game. We added new life into the game by adding scenario intros, lots of sounds and voice overs. There are lots of other changes in that version as well, which you can check-out in the patch notes below. Have fun!
 

New features

  • We completely reworked the combat system. Characters can now join fights or even start fights with multiple characters. So no more just 1 on 1 fights.
  • With the new combat system characters that fall below a certain healthpoint threshold are not dying but are getting unconscious and cannot take part in the fight anymore. After a fight is over the character will stay unconscious until a certain amount of health points have been regenerated. While a character is unconscious, the character cannot defend himself or herself anymore. There are now some actions that can ONLY be executed on unconscious characters.
  • Multiple parties are now able to join a fight. For instance city guards will now join a fight on the side of the character who reacted on an illegal action. Also guarding (building, area or character) lansquenets or henchmen are joining battles now. To make it easier to see who’s fighting for whom all characters of the opponent side are getting a red circle while the fight is ongoing.
  • A fight ends if all characters of one side are unconscious. The still standing and victorious characters can then apply post combat actions on the poor fellows on the ground.
  • The pre and post combat UI window was completely removed as it was first very interrupting (particularly if you had lots of thieves/robbers) and second it created lots of issues for multiplayer games.
    • Before a combat starts the target checks whether it should try to flee or fight. If the character decides to flee, a dice roll is executed. If successful the character runs away. If not, then the fight is started. The surrender action was removed.
    • After a victory you can now select the actions Steal, Break Bones, Kill or Kidnap (depending on your character) in the action menu (Attack category) and apply the action you want on the unconscious character.
  • We also changed that attacking someone is finally illegal. So be careful where you attack someone, guards will not pass by without joining the fight.
  • Henchmen who are assigned to guard a character or building will also join fights if the guarded building is under attack or if the protected character attacks or is attacked.
  • The armor system changed as well now. There is a new derivative attribute called damage reduction, which reduces the amount of damage taken.
  • With EA 0.7.3 we generally added that characters when they die are showing a death animation and are not just vanishing like they did before.
  • We entirely reworked and fixed the sound system in the game as well. The game before felt really dead without all the ambient and sound effects. We added now sounds to most of the actions, to all scenario maps and buildings and we will add more in the future. Additionally we added voice sets for children and three different sets for male and female characters. As a next step we are going to implement the narrator voice overs to the game.
  • As you all know we are not very happy with what the AI is doing or rather not doing in the game. Therefore we started implementing a new AI system into the game. With EA 0.7.3 you can experience the first iteration of the AI objective system. We of course will keep working on that in the following sprints.
    • The moral alignments of the AI were changed from 6 different values to 3 different values. The moral alignments of dynasties when starting the game will be mainly dependent on their select profession. The moral alignments will further change depending on the actions the AI is executing.
    • From now on the AI will use all their family members to execute actions.
    • The AI will now select the skills they want to unlock based on their moral values.
    • The AI will now follow objectives. The objectives they select are also dependent on their moral values. The objectives they follow are influencing the actions the AI wants to execute. The type of objectives available for the AI are depending on the current title of a dynasty. This way we want to make sure that the AI is shifting their focus, the more powerful they get.
    • The AI will now also react on immediate loss threats like being out of money, missing an heir or having no house.
  • We added a new lose condition to the game. So from now on you can lose from getting bankrupt. So ongoing costs like salaries will actually NOT be capped at 0 anymore but will get your account below 0. If you are not getting back into the black numbers within a year, the game is lost. To make all that more transparent we are added a warning UI that shows you what’s threatening you and how long you have still time to solve it.
  • In all the scenarios you are now getting a short intro sequence, fully narrated based on the scenario settings.
  • From now on NPC Citizens will take hold of office positions if there are no dynasty applicants. From now on all offices are having an office holder from the very beginning.
  • The change mentioned above finally allowed us to setup the desired starting conditions for your scenarios. We removed all the already existing AI dynasties and their buildings from all maps. All AI dynasties will be freshly created at game start and will now have the same starting conditions like the player. As a result there is now more space for buildings to be placed and the amount of opponents you select in the map settings will be correct.
  • For the kidnapping action we added a selection UI for buildings (similar to the romance windows) so you can decide where to chain a hostage.
  • With the new version the UI will now scale correctly with your screen resolution.
  • We exchanged the previous font with a new font. First we wanted to make all the text more readable and second we wanted to use a font that covers all the necessary characters of other languages.
  • You can now also see a new notification overview window which shows all the notifications you received. We are still working on the notifications, so soonish that feature should become more useful.
  • We also made some small changes on the politics system. From now on applying for an office costs influence. Additionally we fixed the UI to correctly show what’s the highest office seat within a chamber.
  • Since a lot of feedback came in regarding the micro management of the whole family we also added the possibility to your home residence, to assign ongoing actions to your family members. This way you only need to micro-manage them if you want to.
  • In our survey for patch EA 0.7.1 a lot of you reported that you had a hard time figuring out what actions help you gain influence. We added the influence you receive when successfully executing the action to the “Rewards” section of the action’s tooltip.
  • The actionbar categories now show 10 icons per page instead of 5 to more effectively use the space we have.

 
Please note: The game does not display/load save games from outdated patch versions as they have become incompatible due to the rework of core systems.
 

New features under hood

  • Designers are now able to define which action can be shown in which building. This way we are now able to lock/unlock actions for residential buildings and businesses without changing it in the code.
  • Designers are now able to create actions that affect not just source (the executor of an action) and target but select two different targets. With that new feature we are able to create actions like “Spread rumors about a dynasty”, which decreases the relationship between two other dynasties.

 

Balancing

  • All the equipment related to combat had been rebalanced to support the new combat system. Weapons and armor are now way more powerful and it’s absolutely recommended to equip your characters well before taking up a fight with a city guard.
  • All the producible items in the garrison and the thieves hideout were moved to other buildings.
  • Prices for titles and skills have been adjusted.
  • Hiring employees is now more expensive.
  • The start base budget for businesses has been increased.
  • Adjusted the XP gained from executing actions.
  • Adjusted the prices for a lot of the henchmen specific actions.
  • Adjusted some effects of actions

 

Content

  • A new action was added for thieves: game of dice. It’s a legal action that allows your thieves to make coins from playing with unsuspecting citizens.
  • Every character should now start with a starting clothing item equipped. Citizens should wear the proper items for the clothes they are wearing.

 

Performance and stability

  • We changed the way the game is picking objects in the 3D world. All the props and fauna in the game is not considered anymore while the game is checking for pickable objects under the mouse cursor.

 

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash when the home residence was demolished.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if the main residence burned down.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if there were too many evidences to be traded in the dynasty trade UI.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if the clothes of a dead character were selected.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash when a henchman executes the conquer building action.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash upon using the spying action with a henchman.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash after the trial of an employee finished.
  • Fixed a bug that caused transporters to take a transporter slot in a building that they were visiting.
  • Fixed a bug that caused buildings to not look like their according building level.
  • Fixed a bug that actions, like break into building, are opening the interieur scene when applied on a building.
  • Fixed that NPCs and AI dynasties are not repairing their buildings. Now they are repairing their buildings if they can afford it.
  • Fixed a bug that caused NPC adults to attack NPC children. That’s not happening anymore.
  • Fixed a bug that caused to show different relationship values on characters and the character selection screen.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the amount of unread notifications to not show up anymore.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the player from exiting a scenario as the “Yes” button was missing the first time the UI was opened.
  • Fixed a bug that caused characters to not die even if they are below 0 health points.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed characters to use office actions despite not having the office anymore.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to not show pistol and crossbow animations anymore.
  • Fixed a bug that caused guards to not react properly when they are the victim of the pickpocket action.
  • Fixed a bug that prevents ambushes to happen below bridges.
  • Fixed a bug that caused characters to spawn below the surface in Augsburg.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the player to not get influence for their office position.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the selection circle of a character to vanish after loading a map.
  • Fixed a bug that caused family members to always select the same target for the “drive your workers” action.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the intro music to be played before the sound settings are loaded.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the overall volume setting to do nothing.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to take over changed sound settings without hitting the confirm button.
  • Fixed a bug that players had to restart the game to apply sound settings.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some sounds to still play despite all volume controls have been set to 0.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to zoom on double clicking.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the last item produced tooltip when hovering the mouse cursor over the currently active action icon.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the illegal and legal colors to be shown incorrectly.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to allow all members of a family to leave a guild.
  • Fixed a bug that caused transporters to not being fireable.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the kidnap action to show the success animation despite the action was actually a failure.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the “Chain Hostage in Backroom” action from successfully finishing.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to not unlock the correct amount of businesses in the career mode.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to create NPCs whenever someone used the praise action on an inn, without destroying them afterwards.
  • Fixed a bug that caused percentage values to not being shown correctly in tooltips.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to prevent the player from visiting their own herb huts and hospitals.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to stop the current weather after visiting an interieur scene.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to not remove selection circles of employees after the associated building was destroyed.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the character to not being illuminated correctly in the inspection window if water animations are enabled…
  • Fixed a bug that caused transporters to not go to the market and buy certain ingredients.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the new leader of a dynasty to be teleported to their home residence after the previous leader was killed.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the avatar, spouse and heir quick selection UI panels to overlap each other on starting a map.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the spouse twice in the quick selection UI if the spouse is also appointed as the heir.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the player to manually end a relationship by using the end relationship action.

 

Known issues

  • All office privileges were removed for now as none of the actions were working properly. We will assess the whole system and as soon as it’s properly working we’ll introduce those actions again.

 

Important information

If you are experiencing difficulties with loading and saving the game, you may attempt to delete all files from the folder “Games” in the installation directory of The Guild 3.
It is quite possible that some problems that you have in your game are caused by missing or corrupted files. In this case, the following can help:

  • STEAM -> right-click on “The Guild 3” in your Steam library, then Properties – LOCAL FILES – VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME FILES…
  • GOG -> right-click on “The Guild 3” in your library, then Properties – “More” – Manage Installation – VERIFY/REPAIR

 

What we are planning for the next patch

For the next patch we want to further improve the AI and update the notification system to support urgent notifications.
 

A short outlook…

The focus right now is on the dynasty AI but we will also start working on the politics and law system, as we want to make the offices more useful.
 
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We value your feedback!

If you have the time, we would appreciate it if you could fill out a short survey regarding the changes we made in patch EA 0.7.3: https://goo.gl/forms/S7oZWU21cXgQAfHg1
Please note: we do not collect any personal information other than your feedback – you will remain completely anonymous. This survey will end the day we release the next patch.