Build Notes October 2011

Patch Notes for October’s Patch.Patch Notes for October’s Patch
== Persia! ==
The first pro civilization—Persia—is now and available!
Please note that this is a pro civ and starts at level 20. 
;Key Features
* Begin play with a level-20 character.
* Get immediate access to higher-level content.
* Access ranked and unranked PvP.
* Access a full new tech tree and unit roster that includes special units such as:
** The Immortal, effective against infantry at short range but can also shoot arrows from afar.
** The Sparabara, a shielded infantry unit capable of withstanding ranged weaponry.
** The War Wagon, an impressive war machine able to destroy enemies with volleys of arrows.
* Persia is a great addition to complement your current Greek and Egyptian civilizations. If you own more than one civilization, you will also receive an extra unit, the Golden Hippikon.
* For those who want to try the Persians before purchasing, we have created a demo quest that lets you play as if you were a fully unlocked Persian player, with the chance to try all Persian units and upgrades.
== New Promotions! ==
For a limited time, we are offering the Special Pro Persia Launch Bundle!
This bundle includes the Premium Egyptian and Pro Persian Civilizations, plus the Defense of Crete Booster Pack for $30 (or your region’s pricing).
=== Persians Promotion! ===
For a limited time, the Pro Persian Civilization is on sale for $10 (or your region’s pricing)! Grab them while you can!
== Sparta PvP ==
* Ranked PvP is now available starting at level 20 (was level 25).
== The Defense of Crete ==
* Issues with the rewards display not showing the correct info have been fixed.
== General Updates ==
* Matchmaking for Ranked and Unranked PvP has been completely overhauled. It looks only for people at your current level for 30 seconds. If it can't find a match, it expands by 1 level and waits another 30 seconds. If it still can't find a match, it goes into a quicker expansion of levels over the next few minutes before finally maxing out at all levels. Independent of level, once it finds a match, it uses other criteria to determine whether it should match you with that player (connection quality, for example). While this change may increase matching times for some players at some levels, it should improve the quality of the matches for everyone.
* We now grant Empire points to Co-op players who help out on quests for which they are not currently on themselves.
* Guardian Treasures are now awarded to all Co-op players, if they are still active in the quest.
* The Advisor Hall is now buildable by free players. Advisors can be added to the Hall by everyone, but only Premium Civilizations can use them.
* The Advisor Hall now only displays the rarest version of each Advisor available. This reduces the clutter in the UI, but all rarities are still being tracked under the hood. It also sorts them alphabetically.
* Revision to resetting of the tech tree. It now does what it explicitly says it does: On pressing the button, it charges you for a reset (with a warning), and then resets the tech tree. At this point, you can re-spend all of your tech points, with a warning on exit about any unspent points. This is more consistent with other games and their resetting functionality. Down the road, we'll investigate whether multi-resetting is needed (particularly in light of future PvP changes). 
* All players will also get two free tech resets after level 3, when they first start getting charged. If you're already past level 3, you'll still get the free resets.
* There's a slight revision to the Sparta PvP menu. There are buttons to flip between Ranked and Unranked, with a single drop-down menu that lists the available modes depending on whether Ranked or Unranked is selected. This should address some issues with it being unclear which mode you were in.
* The Quest Log now sorts alphabetically. It always has your capital city (and its quests) as the first entry, and every other region (and their associated quests) sorts alphabetically below.
* Several quests with a bug involving shared intel and the option to disable "Smooth Fog of War" have been fixed.
* Many quests that are not intended to display in a color indicating they are above or below the player level are now locked in at green.
* Minor visual tweaks to Party UI for both the player and other party members, making it more consistent with other parts of the game, a bit more compact so it can support more players down the road, and less obtrusive horizontally.
* Temporarily disabled the ability to open the Gear Hall if in another player's capital city. You can still open it in regions.
* Consumables are no longer usable until all players have joined the game.
* The Trade Dialog will now close when the other player logs out.
* Revised the mail inbox to be a wee bit less minimalist. There's a known issue with misalignment of the background elements at vertical resolutions of 768 (i.e., 1024 x 768, 1366 x 768, etc.).
* Slight redesign for the main menu. It has new background art, the buttons have been moved around, and there's now a "What's New!" box that will cycle between new items that are in the store, things that are coming soon, and/or new features that are in the game.
* Players will now receive Ticker notifications when visiting players purchased something from a store.
* There is now a notification when a friend goes offline, to match the online notification.
* Fixed chat bug related to being unable to change channels after whispering to another user.
* Fixed chat bug where players couldn't reply to whispers received before traveling to another region or going on a quest.
* Fixed chat bug with the trade tab and large quantities of linked items causing significant performance issues.
* Fix for Defense of Crete quests not updating when a user selects an option from a dropdown.
* If a player accepts a Co-op invite and is eligible for the quest, they will auto accept the quest.
* If you accept a party invite while searching for a Co-op partner, the searching dialog will close.
* We now have a news item display on the login screen.
* Advisor cards are now sorted alphabetically in the advisor UI.
* Better creation of units in Elite Mode.
* Fix for Questgiver scrollbar inconsistently displaying in certain languages.
* Improved handling of GFWL disconnects/reconnects.
* Opening a shop, workshop, craft building, or gear hall will open all inventory containers.
* Fix for building docks on cliff faces.
* Trade requests are now auto-declined when matchmaking, to fix several bugs.
* Performance improvement—new hardware instancing pipeline for rendering static meshes.
* Performance improvement—particle emitter optimizations.
* Caravan Gold effects were added.
* A number of ambient effects were added to Empire Extra items.
* Fixed readability and seamlessness on dozens of icons, buildings, units, and animations.
== Quest Fixes ==
* "Legendary: Recapturing Marion"
** An enemy naval presence has been added.
* "Legendary: The Renegade Escapade Grand Finale”
** Issues with unit placement and difficulty have been fixed.
** A bug preventing the intended enemy unit types from spawning has been fixed.
* "Sandstorm”
** Adaptive difficulty has been scaled to ensure the core experience is more survivable, while still giving a healthy challenge for very skilled players.
** Starting resources for the player have been increased to give the player a more solid starting point.
* "The Elite Meet in Crete"
** Legendary gear will now have a chance of being awarded from the end-of-quest chests.
* "The Sleepwalking Prince Aha"
** Elite units will no longer spawn.
** Awesomely catastrophic when it happens? Yes.
** Fun? Not for most people.
* Trade Quests "Trade for Giza Limestone” and “Trade for Delphi Limestone”
** Giza Limestone and Delphi Limestone will now be awarded in bigger allotments.
* Argos Naval Quests:
** Improvements have been made to ensure that the player spawn locations are not too close to the edge of map (sometimes leading to an immediate failure of the quest).
== AI ==
* Enemy attacks that include non-military non-civilian units (such as priests) will now allow the units to properly behave. 
* Caravans now initialize gold trading on first run.
== Units ==
* Egyptian Chariot Archer Health reduced from 375 to 280. 
* We will continue to monitor current gameplay and will be making an increased number of balance changes over the coming patches.
== Known Issues ==
* There are still cases where the player and enemy starting units will be very close to each other on the Argos Naval Quests.
* Occasionally users will see a loading screen advertising the Skirmish Hall as available in the Empire Bazaar. Skirmish Hall is not available in this build, but will be soon!
== References ==
Category:Build Notes