Hungry Hungry Hippos

Long time no see! As you will soon be made aware of, we’ve added quite a bit of features and improvements during the last couple of weeks. The most noteworthy might just be the grand arrival of the hippo. This fat son of a gun will most likely reside in the tropical areas of the map and keep to himself unless you start making a fuss. 

On a more serious note we’ve added automatic trading, which will make it easier to build, sustain and handle colonies. This is very important as colonies are and will be an even more crucial aspect of the game in the future. We want to move the game further into a direction where the players who hold/control most of the map during a game, most likely will be the ones coming out on top. 

And to promote early game aggression (and all kinds of violence really) we will make heroes drop their items (at least some of them) when killed. The same logic will probably be applied to Ports and Warehouses in an upcoming patch. 

Full details can be found below: 

Patch Notes 525

Buildings

• Added auto trading to Ports. The way it works is that one port can have one of three different statuses: Import, Export and None” If your Port is set to Import, all other Ports with the status “export” will automatically ship all of its resources to your main Port with the “import” status. So basically what you want to do (most of the time) is to have one Port with the Import status and rest with the export. The “none” status can be used if you don’t want items to be shipped away. 

• Added a level 3 defensive tower: gatling tower. This building has an equipped gatling gun, firing at a rapid pace. Gatling guns use bullets and one bullet equals 20 rounds. 

• Slightly improved level 2 towers.

• Reduced the production speed of oil drills by 40%.

Map 

• Forest/Trees will now spread to neighboring tiles at the start of each year, making forest grow at a rate that should make it very difficult to cut down all trees during a game session. 

• Added Mountains as a new obstacle. Mountains are, as you should expect, quite big and cannot be passed through. 

Units

• New animal: Hippo. Does it really need an explanation?  

• Heroes will now drop items upon their death. Items will be dropped in a “dead man’s chest” which can be looted by anyone. 

Techs

• Adjusted the cost of available techs. End game techs are slightly more expensive and will take more time to research.

• Books now take about 30 % more time to produce.

• Artillery Shells now require the “explosive” tech. 

Weapons

• Increased blast radius and damage of land mines by 25%. Neutral units, such as the trader, will no longer trigger mines. 

Other

• Fixed an issue causing all units, except the hero, to not provide vision through the fog. 

• Pressing “T” will no longer toggle the tech tree if the player has the construction menu active.

• Clicking on player avatars while in spectator mode will activate camera follow on that player.