March 15, 2019 – Patch EA 0.7.4

Hi Everyone! Today we released EA 0.7.4! This version contains a changed dynastic trade system, improvements to make the AI more interesting, a big update on notifications, a bunch of new or improved UIs and a lot of bugfixes we think you were waiting on! Enjoy!

New features

One of the biggest changes in this version is the whole diplomacy system. Before the AI was not engaging actively in dynastic trades. The logic behind what they wanted to trade was also not existent. With EA 0.7.4 the AI will actively send you trade requests once they have the appropriate title. The content of their trade proposals depends on what objectives they are currently following. Trade proposals are sent via urgent notifications (for more info, check out the notification entry below).
So far the AI didn’t trigger feuds, didn’t make peace proposals or weren’t trying to get into alliances. We changed that. The AI will now declare feuds if it fits their objective. They will also ask for alliances. To make that more interesting we changed the way peace or alliances are forged. We moved those actions from being just actions in the action bar, to the dynasty trade. So from now on if you are in a feud you can only end it by accepting or making a peace proposal. The amount of compensation you have to pay or you can expect depends on the power balancing between the involved dynasties.
As diplomacy starts to get slowly more interesting in the game and there was no way yet to get a notion of how is actually the relationship between the other dynasties, we decided to implement a UI element which you may be familiar with from other Guild games. From now on if you hover your mouse cursor over the crest of another dynasty (or your own) you will see relationship between all dynasties and the inspected dynasty.
One big topic that was haunting us for a while now was the notification system. With EA 0.7.4 we implemented now 2 different types of notifications (general and urgent). We added voice overs and jingles to most of the notifications. There are a few different notifications categories (which can be identified by their icon) and every notification can either have green (positive), gray (neutral) or red (negative) background. This way you should be able to react faster.
- General notifications: Those notifications will be shown only on the lower left and in the message log.
- Urgent notifications: Those notifications are shown in the top center of your screen. They will remain for a predefined amount of time. If you click on an urgent notification it will take you to the point of interest. This can be a UI or an object in the 3D world. Urgent notifications will also be stored in your message log.
If you have the feeling that you get too many notifications you can filter messages via the notification filter button on the lower left of your HUD. We extended that UI, so now it shows all the different categories with their respective icons.
Another thing that we added is the new Action Comparison UI. From now on if you hover a target with an action a UI will show up on the bottom center. It will inform you about the target, the attributes that are influencing the dice roll and it will show the chance for success. The chance for success is now also directly shown next to the mouse cursor. The old comparison UI is gone.
Another UI we changed is the dynasty window. Per dynasty you will now see the leader, spouse and heir but you can also open the family tree for every other dynasty. The former children section in the UI has been removed and instead you can see the list of all buildings of the selected dynasty. You will also see per building whether you are spying on the building or not. Also we moved the evidence section over to the dynasty UI.
Wiping out a dynasty is a good thing. That’s why now as soon as one of the competitors loses, you will get a nice UI informing you about that.
We also added a UI that informs you if one of your family members or the leader of a competitor died, so you are properly up to date.
A new objective was added to the AI to follow: Increase Rank. When the AI gets the objective they will internally compare their winning points with the winning points of the other dynasties. They will try to increase their rank. The way they will try to do it mainly depends on their dynasty attitudes. So for example, aggressive dynasties will try to actively weaken dynasties with a higher amount of winning points.
Another objective for the AI that we added is the “Increase Security” objective. If they follow that objective, the AI will start hiring henchmen and assign them to their duties.
We extended the AI, so they are now properly reacting when their main residence was destroyed. They will try to build or buy a new residence and move the family in as quickly as possible.
Narrator voice overs are now played when new titles are unlocked.
Action tooltips are now also shown on actions in the production UI instead of just the name.

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.

Balancing

The avatar starts with the age of 25.
Many changes to the AI behavior.
Changed the formula for conceiving a child.
For the AI the decision to produce offspring is now dependent on their current objectives instead of just a regular interval.
We tweaked lots of the sounds and how far they are played.

Art

We completely changed the water in the game. It should have now a more natural look.

Performance and stability

Animation code optimized. Unnecessary copying of data removed, and simplified simulations for simple animations.
Objects that are not visible to the camera will now properly be marked as invisible. This gets rid of unnecessary particle animation, character animation, and plaque calculations.
Unified all the picking functions into a single function. This reduces the times when pickable objects are calculated per frame from 3 to 1.
Optimized building and character plaque rendering code to have a far smaller impact on performance.

Bug fixes

Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if an action icon was not set up correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if a building has been selected while the game was paused.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash when the player tries to hire a henchmen while the main residence is destroyed.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to “think” that the right mouse button is permanently pressed. This lead to weird selection behavior. That should be resolved now.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to block you from equipping an item if there is only one item slot available.
Fixed a bug that caused the production window to block input for other windows while they are opened on top.
Fixed a bug that caused the player to get stuck in the election scene if nothing is selected.
Fixed a bug that caused the election scene to not show up properly when an election took place in which the player is supposed to vote.
Fixed a bug that caused the trial scene to show the same crest for all characters despite being from different dynasties.
Fixed a bug that caused characters to leave prison instantly if they get involved just a moment before.
Fixed a bug that caused condemned characters to leave prison before their sentence has ended.
Fixed a bug that caused the player to get stuck in the prison scene because the leave button was missing.
Fixed a bug that caused characters to remain partly unusable after being released from prison.
Fixed a bug that caused characters fall through bridges after a trial scene ended.
Fixed a bug that caused characters to freeze their animation when they were ambushed.
Fixed a bug that caused gathering characters to stop their assigned tasks if they are interrupted by another action.
Fixed a bug that caused characters to not continue their task after being robbed.
Fixed a bug that caused the progress bar not being shown correctly while the character was collecting herbs.
Fixed a bug that caused the progress bar to not being shown when collecting water buckets.
Fixed a bug that caused the ask alliance and end feud actions to not work properly with the AI.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to allow invalid positions for actions like begging, entertainment, etc.
Fixed a bug that caused neutral businesses to hire an endless amount of workers and transporters.
Fixed a bug that caused the building plaque of the windmill to move along with the buildings animation.
Fixed a bug that caused the herb hut playing the wrong animations on characters outside of the building.
Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to not level up their attributes correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused the notification window to not show up when a new title is purchased.
Fixed a bug that caused employees to lose their clothes items after saving and loading a game.
Fixed a bug that caused the walking stick item to not grant the movement speed boni correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused buildings to still show dead family member character plaques.
Fixed a bug that caused henchmen to spawn in front of the main residence instead of the building they were hired for.
Fixed a bug that caused characters to produce endlessly despite an amount having being defined.
Fixed a bug that caused characters to still play their working animations while they are moving.
Fixed a bug that caused lamp posts to not be properly lit.
Fixed a bug that town hall, port, cemetery and lumberyard are not shown on the area map.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to keep playing the thunderstorm sound after entering and leaving a scene.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the wrong tooltip while hovering an assigned action in the production UI.
Fixed a bug that caused the street highlighting (space key) not being removed after the window lost focus.
Fixed the difficulty settings. They were inverted, that’s why you got more gold if you were playing on impossible.
Fixed a bug that caused an attacking character to be teleported to the destination of the attacked victim (if the attack was executed on a transporter).
Fixed a bug that caused the game to show the tenure of office to not show the correct number.
Fixed a number of text bugs.

Known issues

The election UI looks very broken at the moment. We are currently working on the politics system so issues like this one should soon be history.
If you play the scenario map Paris and decide to go on a long distance journey, your character will instantly die. We found the bug and will fix it for the next patch.

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 are currently working intensively on the politics and voting system. We will particularly focus on getting privileges working decently and we are currently also thinking about new political actions that you can execute if you are holding a respective office. We also want to deliver a first iteration of the tutorial, so you have an easier time getting into the game.

A short outlook…

We want to move our focus on trade routes, storage management and economy refinement.

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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 0.7.4: https://goo.gl/forms/OjBAoMnAVY2s7eRn2
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.