Hey Everyone,

Tonight you’ll be able to update to v1.09E of Elemental. There are several bugfixes and tweaks in it, but the major change is the shift to a public Multiplayer build. If you’ve been playing the ‘release candidate’ MP builds, we suggest turning off ‘Show Pre-Release’ versions for anyone that has it selected that ONLY wants the official updates).

After 1.09E we’ll be shifting all our energies onto v1.1, where you’ll start to see the major gameplay shifts be officially implemented (a lot of the necessary code is actually in the builds you’re playing, to switch just hasn’t been flipped).  I’m sure you’ve seen Brad’s posts on our plans, but the major items being addressed in 1.1 are:

+ Tactical Battles (edit: sorry, this isn't v1.1...sorry for my confusion): Working on a seperate branch, the guys have the new battle system implemented and are playtesting it as we speak. You’ll be seeing a new UI, new system for using special abilities, and the new streamlined ‘Initative’ based turn ordering system. Rumor has it it’s ‘considerably better’, but I’ll settle for ‘much better’.

+ Magic: Universal mana pool and cleaned up spellbook management are what 1.1 will bring to the wizards table. No more enchantment slot cheese-tactics and summon spamming. Now each enchantment results in a per-turn drain on that global pool, so you’re going to have to make some serious choices when casting those high level spells. And I think we can all agree...the more interesting choices, the better!

+ Cities, Population management, and the AI: These are Brad’s big areas atm, so I wont steal his thunder, but I’ve been told the City changes will result in a more competent AI, so get excited to...lose more?

And of course bug fixes, memory fixes, performance improvements, UI improvements...but that’s v1.1.  Today, we have 1.09e, which should be available in the next few hours!

Enjoy!

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----------- Elemental v1.09e Change Log -----------
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** Fixes / Tweaks **

+ Fixed a bug where loot could go nuts (pioneers giving millions of Gildar)
+ Grand kids should no longer defect to dead factions
+ Map list now has tooltips & lists the map size
+ When you load a map from the world setup screen, it now updates the world size spinner
+ Fix: Minor Water Elemental summon (from Lord of Sea spell) and Storm Giant now have their “Drowning Strike” abilities
+ Heal spell working properly (Unit “CurHealth” modifiers now work with Min/Max value calculations)
+ City List now features tooltip explaining red popupation
+ Bug Fixed: ‘Resource Changed’ event not firing when the resource was already in the player’s pool (broke chapter 5 of the campaign)
+ Trigger for ‘Resource Ammount Met’ no longer requires the player to have been BELOW the required amount the turn before
+ Consolidated most of the SP/MP xml files, eliminating discrepencies between MP and SP files
+ fixed leaked ref with starting spellbook spells.
+ on new unit design screen, when hovering over or selecting an item that has no "attributes" or "costs", those labels in the selection context area will not be shown. An example is when you hover or select a hairstyle from the [OTHER] tab, equipping hair has no benefits or costs, but the labels were still showing up, which looked dumb.
+ Fixed bug where mounted units did not generate their portraits properly
+ Fixed bug where after renaming a city, the old name would still be displayed on the cloth map
+ AI being limited by the UnitType “AllowGrouping” tag (won’t groups catapults to assult the player)
+ City List: RED population when there’s not enough housing
+ City List: doubleclicking an entry acts the same as seleting it and pressing “Details”
+ City Building Mode
- turn off camera bounds clipping (fixed bug where the camera would jerk around,causing improvements to be oddly placed)
- selecting a friendly city in city-build mode selects it for city building
- doubleclicking a city-details improvement entry will auto-place it

***************** 
** Multiplayer **

+ Multiplayer enabled in public build
+ Removed checks for duplicate factions in the choose sovereign screen so that cycling through all the AI players doesn’t leave you with no choices
+ You can now right click on the team, faction, and sovereign buttons in the game lobby to cycle backwards. (for non-AI players, right clicking does the same thing as left clicking for faction and sovereign)
+ Fixed bug where map size was always tiny in the available games list
+ Fixed bug where minor factions were picking player colors
+ Fixed bug where if there were duplicate factions, they would get all the AI designed units from the other faction
+ Fixed bug where you wouldn’t have a faction if you finished or quit out of a game (now keeps the one that was previously set)
+ If you change the world size, the map name is now cleared so that a new random map will be picked.
+ Fixed stuck turn bug caused by caravans with invalid destinations
+ I believe that I have fixed the bug where if you clicked fast enough you could build multiple instances of a limited improvement, or build two improvements on one resource
+ Fixed bug where the learning queue was not saved in mp save games
+ Fixed bug with learning spells twice by spam clicking
+ Fixed bug when choosing a spell level not getting saved