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Elemental: War of Magic v1.09 Update

RELEASE DATE : 02-10-2010           PROTECTION : Stardock Activation
GAME TYPE    : Strategy             DISKS      : CRACKED UPDATE

Release Notes:

The Skid Rowdies are looking new blood to fill up the ranks.
We're a professional team of dedicated sceners with big mark
under sceners. We believe on the ground idealism of the root
of the real old school scene. We do all this for fun and
nothing else. We don't earn anything on our hobby, as we do
this for the competition and the heart of what got the scene
started in the mid eighties.

If you think you got something to offer, then don't hold back
on contacting us as soon as possible.

twice the fun   \/ double the trouble

On with the update release information:

Elemental: War of Magic v1.09 Update

Multiplayer

- Added code to prefer a random map that supports the max
players

- Cloud saving/loading enabled

- AI opponents enabled

- Added handling for if firewall is turned off

- Added check for if player is disconnected before starting
turn timer when the end turn is requested

- Added check to prevent player from going to multiplayer menu
if it's still checking for an update

Gameplay / Balance

- AI sovereigns take more care about where they are doing
their attacking

- Added code so that AIBasic is smarter about attacking units
in cities

- "Equipment Cache" goodie hut now hands out cloth armor,
instead of the patchwork armor that should not be in the
game anymore

- You can no longer train groups of Dragons, Catapults, or
Giant Demons

- New option: Players can choose not to have monsters spawn

- New option: Players can disable minor factions

- Loot given by monsters increased

- Fixed bug where some AI-controlled caravans that had already
established trade routes would wander off those routes while
delivering their stuff at a city

- Fixed a bug where caravan pathfinding through territory
owned by anyone other than their owner would still have a
penalty, even through caravans can always move freely
through any territory

- Changed dynasty kids to determine their essence based on the
BASE essence of their parents (ignoring equipment, player
ability bonuses, etc.) This should keep kids from double-
dipping from things like player-wide essence bonuses and
keep their max mana at more reasonable levels

- fixed several armor and special ability xml issues (that
were either pointed out on the forums or that I discovered
while fixing others)

Battles

- The starting side in a tactical battle is now chosen
randomly. The attacker and the defender have an equal chance
to go first.

- Added shorter/faster annimations for bow attacks and spell
attacks

- Fixed a divide by zero error in spell damage.

- Fixed some logic to determine whether or not a tactical unit
was moving.

- Added code to make sure a unit cancels its destination when
it skips a turn.

- Added some additional checks to skip turn logic in tacatical
battles to stop a turn from being skipped in the middle of
other actions.

- Fix to be sure ranged attacks don't always do max damage in
tactical battles.

- Fix to experience display for battles, and fixed a bug where
auto resolve was only rewarding experience for killing the
leader unit.

- The AI does not take its first turn immediately after the
window loads. This will prevent cases where the AI takes its
turn before the window finishes rendering.

- Fixed a spell type tag for Quicken (now shows up in Tactical
Battles)

- Fixed an issue where a single unit might lose its mana after
attacking and killing a defending team.

- Added the UsableInBattle tag for item types, will help to
determine if an item should be displayed during a tactical
battle. This defaults to FALSE.

- Items in a tactical battle will now properly stack in the

- NEW! City List window which can be brought up via a tab on
the kingdom screen

- this will list all your current cities, along with vital
information about resource, training, and building being
done there (ie: it's a city spreadsheet)

- New icons hooked up for sovereign talents

- Got rid of trailing decimal zeros for the global resource
pool tooltips, to clean up the display of resources that are
always integers

- Fixed bug where the global resources for a player didn't
refresh when a city was lost through razing until the next

- Tweaked the spell info card to get the stats to show up in
the grey bar at the bottom of the info card, and to support
multiple text entries of varying sizes

- Item Shop now shows change in Combat Speed, Defense, and
Attack for the highlighted item

- Message Box input field now limited to 20 chars

- Made auto-select next moveable unit code not select caravans

- Fixed City HUDs clipping at the end (now they all get
rounded edges)

Performance / Stability

- Moved code around that calls clean-up functions so that we
don't get false mem-leak messages anymore

- Moved clean up code around so that game within a game cleans
up properly

- Fixed mem leak in Trigger Manager, city wall nodes,
destination and selection cursors for destroyed objects

- Removed code in CTreeGraphic that was causing a leak

- Fixed big leak in DecalGraphicGraphicManager where every
decal in the game was leaking when starting a new game
within a game

- Fixed leak in CUnitSceneViewWindow (which is used on lots of
screens)

- Fixed random crash in kingdom screen with the filling of the
Lore Book

- Tile Designs now flush out the graphics for their "base
graphic" (the one that the graphic instances use to render)
once the instances for that base graphic are released

- Fixed crash if a spellcaster ever had to cancel more than
one enchantment at a time from losing 2 or more available
enchantment slots

- Fixed memory leak in UnitAnimationHelper that caused unit
gfx to leak after the unit was destroyed

- Fixed memory leak in TreeGraphic that caused tree batches to
leak on game within a game or destruction of the forest
object

Bug Fixes

- Fixed bug where mini map would not update itself after
starting a new game from within a game

- Hooked up renaming cities and units to use events (for MP)

- Fixed bug where you could go into the enchants tab for any
unit and cancel their enchantments, whether that unit
belonged to you or not

- Fixed bug where destination cursor would disappear if the
unit it belonged to was off-screen

- Added support for Resource modifier types in unit ability
bonus options to be taken into account in what resources a
unit always provides, without needing to be stationed in a

- Fixed Bug When reload a game with Wild Shard Improvements,
the game now properly relinks them to their resource hoards
(fixed issue where destroyed shrines would not regenerate
shard resource)

- Fixed particle effect render order on main map screen

- Fixed graphical bug where mounted units in an army did not
scale properly

- CalculateAbilities now uses champions for ability modifiers
(this fixes NPCs that should give bonuses but didn't, such
as "Royalty")

- Fixed bug where the NPC AI player would spawn new NPCs based
off of the unit types of dynasty kids. This would cause
champions wandering around with the same name, and with baby
portraits if they hadn't grown up yet.

- Attacking cities or lone improvements while in attack mode
now works

- hooked up the cursor to change to the crossed swords at the
right time for cities/improvements when one of your units is
selected

- Fixed comment in CityLevelUpBonuses.xml that caused
malformed xml

- Fixed badly merged text in QuestUnits.xml for Talax

- Fixed end tags in CoreCityWalls

- Fixed game modifiers and ending tag after Magnar_Staff in
CoreSpecialWeapons.xml

- Fixed end tag for Thumb in SpecialUnitProps.xml

- Fixed comments in UnitSoundPacks.xml

- note: thanks to ækenataÆ and æheavenfallÆ for helping us
hunt down those above XML issues down and pointing us to
some cool data checking tools

Modding

- Tile Editor: Fixed bug where large silhouette figure would
render in the middle of a tile design when placing
pedestrians

- Map Editor: when using the creature placement tool, defaults
to giving the creature a random wander radius, which can be
changed with the tool's third spinner in the bottom left
corner

- Also changed the wander radius 0 item to say "Don't Wander"
instead, does what the default used to do, cause the unit to
not even go into auto-patrol mode

- Added new data def type, CSpellResourceCost, which can be
used in spell def xml to specify resource costs on casting a
spell, as well as any persistent maintenance costs if this
spell is an enchantment

- tag used in the SpellResourceCost xml object to say whether
the cost is deducted at time of casting (Per-Turn is 0), or
if it is a continued maintenance cost that exists as long as
the spell is in effect through an enchantment (Per-Turn is
non-zero)

- Note: maintenance resource costs can only be per-turn if the
spell is an enchantment; there's no one-time cut to per-turn
resource production from an instant, non-enchantment spell

- Here's an example of some xml to put in a spell def, making
this spell cost 5 metal immediately when cast, and having a
maintenance cost of 1 material per turn until the
enchantment is cancelled:

Metal

Materials

- MODs folders now creatured for the user in their My
Games/Elemental folder

- Fixed Bug: Quests read in from XML (after loading the
Data.zip) no longer override QuestDefIDs

- Images and models now read in from the Mods/GFX folder
properly

- Mods are now enabled by default in Prefs.ini

- Overlay: Implement tile upload/download

Elemental: War of Magic v1.08 Hotfix Update

Gameplay / Balance

- New Sovereign Ability: Wealthy +1 gildar per turn

- New Sovereign Ability: Green Thumb +2 food per turn

- Organized Sovereign Ability removed

- Shop Costs moved to be a formula (unless specified in the

- Research costs increased

- More balancing of initial resource seeding

- Fertile land availability increased

- Long Bows now cost 40 gildar to construct

- Default shop values on weapons and armor removed from XML
(you can overrride the formula still)

- Teleport/Blink mana cost increased from 5 to 15.

- Eliminated criminal adventurers (caused confusion amongst
players)

- Pioneer Kit Gold cost reduced from 10 to 5, Materials cost
increased from 1 to 10.

- Organized ability added to general special abilities

- Late game monster respawning reduced.

- Increased movement speed of units in tactical battles

Bug Fixes

- Added logic to stop spells from dealing max damage every
time.

- Restored old terrain/tile movement costs until that can be
better addressed.

- Adjusted the combat speed from 2 to 3 for the base
male/female sov units.

- Fixed bug where Karavox, Magnar, and Verga sovs only had 1.0
for combat speed.

- Fixed bug that made it not load any maps except mp maps

- Fixed bug resetting default map size to tiny

- Fixed bug where rapidly clicking the fortify action for a
unit twice or more would cause the game to hang

- Fixed bug where, after unhiding the game lobby wnd once,
human players would get assigned team 1 when joining a
custom game, instead of an unused team ID

- Fixed crash when restarting new campaign after you load a
saved campaign game

- Fixed bug where Cancel button would not show up on
mutliplayer Join Game with Password screen

- Fixed an error where old saves with old data had logic
conflicts with new code that made spells miss.

Elemental: War of Magic v1.08 Update

Performance

- LOD optimizations across improvements and tile designs

- Continued memory optimization/leak squashing

Gameplay / Balance

- AI handles its sovereign more intelligently

- AI more effective at going after targets of opportunity

- AI sovereign is more careful about going into enemy
territory

- AI has new APIs for determining whether there are targets of
opportunity in the area

- Balance pass on resource distribution

- Base tech cost changed from 4 to 5

- Merchants/Money Changers now require 1 food to construct

- Study/Archivist now require 1 gildar per turn to maintain

- Gildar deposit now seeded near starting location

- Tracker talent cost changed from 15 to 10

- Organized talent cost changed from 10 to 20

- Combat Rating calculation altered in an attempt to be a more
accurate gauge of lethalness

- Fewer resources spawned per 1000 tiles.

- Fewer minor factions spawned.

- Added scalars to attack and defence for units who are in
home territory or foreign territory, modifiable in
ElementalDefs.xml

- Territory scalars now work as Empire v Fallen (e.g. Kingdom
guy on Fallen territory gets penalty, etc).

- Updated formula for gildar given when killing a given unit

- Child essence is no longer modified by spawn rating, but is
instead a value between 50% and 100% of the more powerful
parent's essence.

- Updated TerrainTypes.xml to make Forests and Swamps take 2
moves

- Changing the "IncreaseMorale" modifier attribute to -
AdjustMorale. It's more clear for the modders.

Battles

- Revamp of the way offensive spells hit/miss and deal their
damage

- HIT/MISS is deteremined by an attacker roll (minDamage -
maxDamage) and by the defender roll (0-DEF)

- Values can now be specified as a MinValue and a MaxValue
rather than just a Value (support for constant value spells
is still supported)

- If a MinValue and a MaxValue is specified, the Value is
defined by a rand roll between the two numbers based on the
modifiers internal rand roll.

- Updated descriptions for all core spellbook spells to show
bonus damage from INT and bonus damage from shards in the
spell description.

- The SpellbookWnd has been updated to properly display the
damage range if there is one, and the constant damage if
there isn't one.

- All core spells that were using stats to calculate the
value but didn't have a ValueOwner specified have been
fixed.

- The elemental shards unit stats now default to 0 instead of
1. The calculations in the existing spells have been redone
to reflect this.

- Fixed BURNING BLADE spell to appropriately increase attack.

- Fixed SHIELD OF FIRE spell to appropriately increase
defense.

- Fixed CRUSH SPIRIT spell to appropriately decrease morale.

- Fixed BRAVERY spell to appropriately increase morale.

- Fixed DRAIN LIFE spell to appropriately transfer HP from
target to caster.

- Changed the display code for the main UI bar to round attack
and defense rather than truncate.

- Hooked up the CTRL+ARROW and SHIFT-ARROW camera rotation and
movement hotkeys to tactical.

- Added save game descriptions

Bug Fixes

- Fixed bug where dialogs from triggers in the campaign (like
moving beyond where you should build a city) would pop up
many times when a unit moved into that tile.

- Fixed AI bug where it was doing deficit spending and
creating units still

- Removed the max spell points entry from the affected stats
in the level up wnd, since it isn't affected by any unit
stats anymore

- Fixed bug where non-aggression pact wasn't being checked for
when left-clicking on a unit in attack mode

- Fixed modifier in Refined_Economics_Amarian_MP to modify
A_Gold player ability instead of A_Wealth (which doesn't
exist)

- Fixed golem animation pack (commented out an animation that
was missing and causing t-poses)

- Fixed crash when making a mountain in map editor

- Fixed trading your spouse (if she was a recruited NPC) in
the regular unit trade

- Perceived value stuff gets hidden when arranging marriages,
instead of showing whatever was selected last

- Entries for kids when arranging marriages now use a male and
female icon to denote boy and girl, instead of the words in
parentheses after the name

- Fixed "..." from string overflowing for the divider title
when trading or arranging a marriage

- Fixed the divider title not ever changing from "And" once
the arrange marriage screen was shown

- Fixed display of tooltip text and color text on Customize
Faction window

- Tweaked SetToolTip to calculate the necessary size of the
window more accurately, to fix bug where tooltips were
sometimes being truncated

- Fixed bug where clicking a new destination while the unit
was moving would cause the unit to get a free move

- You can no longer set a units destination while it is moving

- Fixed Refined Housing and Refined Economics techs (and their
fallen equivalents) so that they correctly provide the bonus
they say they do

- When a unit inside a city or an army is selected and asked
to cast a spell, that is the unit that is used for
spellcasting now, instead of having it just fail (in a city)
or try to cast the spell from the leader of the army

- Fixed bug where summoning a unit while in a city would cause
that unit to be summoned in an army with you within that
city (causing weird behavior), now just stations the unit in
the city with you

- Fixed bug where raise land spell would not work on all land
category terrain types, like swamp or rugged terrain. Now,
if a land tile is not hills, it raises that land to hills,
instead of checking for only some terrain types

- Fixed a bug where, in the faction editor, you could select
ability bonus options for free by selecting and deselecting
them, and then spinning the race spinner, caused by
deselection not updating the faction config correctly

- Fixed units that finished training on the same turn as an
autosave not being there when the autosave was loaded

- Fixed players not being able to select their city level up
bonuses or tech breakthroughs on loading an autosave if they
were earned that turn, by having the local player mark
themselves as needing to get user input for these things
instead of unhiding the windows to allow the choice right
away during CWorld::EndTurn, and not letting the user choose
until after the next turn starts and the autosave has been
made. If one of thses autosaves is loaded, the local player
will be allowed to choose their tech breakthroughs and city
bonuses once the map is unhidden. This keeps us from having
to delay an autosave and the start of the next turn by
waiting for the user to choose their bonuses, instead making
that choice part of the start turn logic after the autosave
has been made and saving the mark saying the player will get
to choose at the start of the next turn.

- Fixed treaty turn counts not matching if an autosave was
loaded

- Based on confusion in the forums, removed ability to
automatically unlock a spell in the learning queue if it
makes it to the front of the queue when the player has
enough research to buy it, so that users rearranging their
spell learning queue don't have their spell points silently
taken away while shuffling spells around, if they didn't
intend to learn that spell next

- Now it always takes at least one turn to learn any spell

- Fixed bug where tile highlights in tactical battle would
disappear after an ALT+TAB

- Fixed bug where trees would not look correct in all cases
after loading a gamesave.

- Fixed an issue that was allowing counter attacks against
units with abilities of type DoesNotProvokeCounterattacks.

- Fixed an issue that was causing modifiers applied in
tactical battles to persist after the battle.

- This fixes the bug that causes XP and Gildar rewards after
battles to be negatively skewed if the enemy unit combat
rating was lowered due to debuffs.

- Fixed an issue with skipping turns in tactical battles that
would cause a stuck turn if done when the unit being skipped
was in motion. - Pressing spacebar now sets a tactical units
moves to zero AND cancels their destination.

Install Notes:

1. Unpack the included rar files.
2. Run Elemental.War.of.Magic.v1.09.Update.exe and install
3. Copy the cracked content from SKIDROW directory to your
main installation directory and overwrite.
4. Play the game

Additional Notes:

You don't need to have any of the previous updates installed,
as this update is featuring all previous updated content.

Greetings:

Salutes to our old Amiga friends from:

FAIRLIGHT - RAZOR 1911 - VISION FACTORY - PARADOX - QUARTEX
DCS - CRYSTAL - ZENITH - ACCESSSION - ALPHA FLIGHT - PRODIGY
THE COMPANY - LEGEND - TRSI - ORACLE - ANTHROX - CLASSIC

Salutes to our new friends in:

UNLEASHED - TiNYiSO - BReWErS - RADIKAL - POSTMORTEM - SHOCK
FAIRLIGHT - CRUDE - VACE - ReUnion - OUTLAWS - GENESIS

Logo and layout by: Eboy/SAE
Last updated 21/07/2007 by [XXX]