Hi all!
Just want to verify you guys are able to see the goodies we've been putting into the vault. Feel free to comment freely here on anything you see in there.
If you were one of the early founders (long long ago) for Sorcerer King, I've been putting up some new stuff.
In the Founder's Vault: http://e2015.stardock.com/
Little shout-out on 23rd century Earth…
–RELEASED 03/12/2015–
Sorcerer King Beta 5 is now available! See below for details on Remnant Champions, the quest system overhaul, and more:
Major Updates
Remnant Factions overhaul
Diplomacy UI available from World Report button
More quest variety
New Remnant Faction champions awarded when allied
Korthox the Ice Lord
Esperaza the Necromancer
Silindros the Avenger
Adam the Swamp Giant
Ifris the Engulfed
Giott the Crossbowman
Xii the Archon
Share sight of capital and units when allied
Insulting Remnant Factions more quickly results in them siding with the Sorcerer King
Battles against enemy Remnant Faction cities now involve their champion and an army of their units
Polish pass on quest writing
Quest system overhaul
Quests give armor and items more often (instead of usually just crafting ingredients)
New Quest art
More quests with secondary locations
Starting Quests that give initial goals and Sovereign XP bonuses
More intangible rewards (courage, cowardice, wisdom, etc.) and corresponding choice unlocks
Quests now play background ambience
Quest objective display is now smaller, so 3d location on map is visible
End Game Stats Screen
More detailed end game stats
History of past game stats
UI support for SK online stat site
Main Menu Reskin
New UI style throughout
New Sovereign images
Lot of new gameplay and visual variety in units
Ogre Warrior
Fire Drake
Ice Drake
Fire Warlock
Ice Warlock
Bandit Lord
Bandit Lord Rider
Bandit Raider
Bandit Archer Raider
Harzarene Spider
Rabid Wolf
Prowler
Tyrant Warg
Tyrant Thug
Tyrant Urxen
Tyrant Trog
Logistician
Imperial Bowman
UI improvements & additions
Crafting ingredients and items now grouped and sorted
World Report screen improved
Better organization of information
Quests descriptions consistently displayed
Quest ‘Go To’ button now works
City HUD now displays City Enchantments
Improved display of Enchantments List (so you don’t have to tooltip over everything)
Improved champion skill tree art
Cities and Outposts now red on clothmap (makes the reach of your Kingdom easier to see at-a-glance)
Tweaks and improvements to clothmap art
Added missing Frozen Realm clothmap art
Revised Remnant Faction descriptions and capital names to better match up with lore and shortened to fit in game UI.
Doomsday, SK Threat, intangible resources, and Sovereign Skill awards/penalties from quests now have clear icons
Improved descriptions on many units and items
UI art for tabs more prominently ‘clickable’
More unique art for city improvement icons
Single click to go from city list window to city
City Screen: added tooltips to food/production/essence displays
Moved notification assets to bottom right side of screen
Fixed a bunch of graphical/design issues with the help screen. streamlined it
Polar vortex ability icon added
Turn button notification for needing to choose a spell to research now says "Research Spell" instead of "Choose Spell"
Other New Content
Enchanted Lands now visible as magical trees on tiles
Lots of new sound FX
New particles and animations
Added new pikeman kill attack because everyone watching the stream pointed out that you don’t slash with a pike.
Unique idle animations for Pikemen, Battlemage, Keplin, and Knight
Explosive Shot has new particle
Archers have cast spell animation
Wild Drake has new idle animation hooked up
Rabid wolf is now properly setup to have particle inside its mouth
Air elemental summon particle adjusted to look correct
Added new awaken animation for emberling
Revision to the Warlock Hut particle.
Update to Ice Lords City particle.
New assets for Harvest Forest and Harvest mountain loot drops
Polish pass on random maps
More variance for Empire of Shadows areas
Misc features, balance, and additions
The player's 'Enchantment Slot' ability now defaults to 0, Sovereigns will have an early/mid game 'Enchanted Forge' ability that unlocks item Enchanting by boosting this ability to 1
SK balance
Sorcerer King units get more moves as the doomsday counter grows
If player threat is 0 and the player attacks an SK unit it will bring up a dialog warning them that this is an SK unit. If they say yes, Threat level increased to 1
SK units will now attack shards if they can't find a player unit or city that they can take out
Killing LT only increases threat by 1 instead of 2
Stronghold battles get significantly stronger as they level up
Attacking SK city increases threat by 1 instead of 2
Removed despair from SK unit
Buffed some of the SK higher units to be more beefy
Slightly reduced the number of SK max units
Fixed issue where SK garrisons were leaving and terrorizing the countryside
Beefed up SK forces when doomsday counter is >100
Reduced SK forces when threat level is 0
SK will on normal and lower diffculties no longer generally attack player if threat level is 0
At harder difficulties, threat level starts at 1
Number of monsters the player will face in the end battle is now affected by the DOomsday counter and world difficulty
Map Size adjustments
Tiny map size renamed to Arena
Tiny map size increased from 4 x 3 to 5x3
Small size map increased from 5 x 3 to 6 x 4
Medium size map increased from 6x4 to 7x5
Large size increased from 8x5 to 8 x 6
Huge size increased from 9x6 to 10x7
Changes made to map sizes because tiny maps were crazy hard
Better distribution of spells between spell books
Hunting Grounds now have 10 turn cooldown
If player loses a battle and they had a champion die, we now deduct a maximum of 25 doomsday points from the battle no matter how many champions fell. (was 10 doomsday per champion, and happened whether you lost or won)
Units that are weak to an elemental attack type (Fire, Ice, Lightning) will no longer be able to Resist a spell of that type
Previously the calculation for the prediction of a "flawless victory" tactical battle, was that you need to be 3x their battle rank AND their battle rank had to be lower than 15. I removed that second check
High level cities now provide some logistics
Ceresa no longer gives out wraiths to allies
Full rebalancing of the crafting enhancement system (too many changes to list)
Changed "Other" to "Crafting Ingredients" label for inventory items
Increased goodie hut numbers
Eliminated annoying warning about running low on mana
Magic shrines now produce 5 instead of 4 magic
Flawless iron provides 1 defense, not 3 as an enhancement
Generally made recipes require more ingredients in order to balance the power level of the enhancements (lest everyone just crank out endless rings of defenses)
Reduced training time of Archon and Battle Mage from 500 to 300
Same for paladin
Removed "dodge missiles" from bandits as an ability
Nerfed the Nymph
Reduced some of the level up bonuses on units that are summoned
Magic is now referred to as Shards in world
Monster lairs can be within 2 tiles of each other now instead of 3
Doomsday increment from a shard being destroyed increased from 40 to 50
Harvest Shadow land cost increased from 5 to 15
Enhance land is now a universally available spell to research
Magic level determines shard count on a map (along with map size)
Monsters that are really close to your city are now likely to attack the city
City Details window now displays what level the city is
Bug Fixes
Major annoyance fixes
fogbugz 104202: fixed issues with unit path-planning (ex. enemy unit in the way on a road, you're trying to set a destination beyond him, would have to manually move around the enemy)
Ranger: Fixed "Quickfire" ability (rendering Archers useless)
Fixed gameplay issue where the player would be notified of the same unclaimed resources in their ZOC every turn. Now, if they dismiss the notification (via right-clicking it), they will never be notified about that/those resources again.
Fixed Bug: "Player no longer has Reduce Doomsday spell."
Fixed issue with high DPI monitors displaying incorrect UI element size
Fixed unit images not showing up in Select Target prompt
Fixed incorrect display of production stats on city screen
Fixed incorrect display of magic stats on manage magic tooltip
Dwarf Lord: Fixed "Merciless Strength" to not stack post-battle
Fixed Items that give City Resources to be properly factored in from Stationed Units
Summons now play awakening particles properly
Map Generation: Terrain placed under rivers in the map editor is retained when stamps are placed
Map Generation: 'Beach Edge' tile is replaced with Grassland (all this is to make sure the stamps are placed as they are created)
Fixed Bug: "Tactical battle - Dark Wisp- Curse not removing defense"
Guardian Sovereign: Fixed Sniper to properly be unlocked via Bastion.
Fixed Bug: "Tactical ability - Naphaz - Deadly favor - stat mismatch" Now inflicts the proper HP cost
Fixed Bug "0.79 - Sovereign Ability - Betrayal - Not resetting threat level" - Now reduces threat
Fixed Bug: "Casting Inspiration with 0 Thralls Incorrectly Buffs Logistics"
Fixed Bug: "Bleed / Hobble still lands if the hit misses"
Fixed Bug: ".796 - Mibly/noble legacy burns spellcast at battle start"
Courage Spell now gives +5 HP and Spell Resist to ANY friendly unit (was limited to Champs)
Winter Wind text fixed to match the effects of the spell
Alphabetized the various lists (improvements, spells, items, etc) on the Help Screen.
0.793 - Commander Tree - Healer's Guild - Description Doesn't Mention Improved Heal Rate
0.793 - Commander Tree - Guild Master III
Arcane - Raise Skeleton (Not subtracting correctly)
Fixed Icon for "Amulet of Flames"
Fixed "Amulet of Souls" to no longer give a "130% off mana Costs" buff.
"Haunted Army" spell can no longer be cast on water. It now has a slightly lower mana cost (25 from 30) and can only be cast on
Removed some Logistics prereqs for units that shouldn't have required Logistics (units given to you from the Minor Races)
Removed Casting Time and changed it to a 2 turn Charge Time (Trogs now have to wait 2 rounds before they can use 'Battle Cry').
Pyrebrand: Fixed to use the proper Shard tag in the calculation.
Fixed bug that prevented enchanting items if switching items during mid-enchantment process
Fixed bug that allowed stacking more than max enchantments of same type on items
Fixed bug in DXAtlasWin where force regen wasn't working
Fixed bug where selection cursor sometimes disappears
Fixed bug where Tactical Abilities couldn't be disabled via modifiers
Fixed daze particle from floating in the air
Ranger: Fix "Master Stealth" to work with unit stat
Keplin: Fixed "Swiftness" and "Greater Reflexes" abilities
Fixed bug where doomsday decrement bink would play when loading a game
Burst of fire ability now plays particle
Fixed bug where units got stuck between tiles
Tweaks to idle animationss to make them loop better
Added our standard button click soundfx to several screens where it was needed
Fix bug where Minor Races were being incorrectly placed on the borders of Pre-made maps
Fixed "Eternal Supply" to work as described. Now takes an Essence slot.
Cave Bear given the non-summon skin, hooked up to necessary goodie huts and starting units
Fixed bug where Unit Details Screen was not showing tactical unit's current health info, when in a tactical battle.
Remove 'Slow' as a default skill - Add effect to "Eight Eyes Hypnosis"
Fixed some Modifier code that was causing Mods to be applied 2 times
Quest Items should now show up properly as Quest Items in the Player Inventory.
Revised Remnant Faction Quests so that they properly remove Quest Items from the player's inventory when the Quest is completed.
Random event with SK now longer ends with a blank dialog
Crash fixes
Fixed a very common shutdown crash in the destruction code for the Main Game Window, identified by Steam crash reports.
GWG - old crafting item persists - add enchantment to non-existent item
Story-Teller Camera - Low Angle Rotate and Zoom
Quest lookup crash
Adjusted code to be more thread-safe in various places (player resources, city resources, unit stats) after investigating crash reports from QA
In case you haven't seen it, the founder's vault is here:
https://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/vault
Uploading a ton of stuff today.
Greetings!
When you get the new beta I think many of you will be shocked at how far the game continues to come. It is so much more polished than anything we've done before on the fantasy side of things.
That said, the marketing team has put in a request that we MOVE the date to July. While we have lots of developers and artists, we have finite "biz" people and with Galactic Civilizations III's release coming up along with the Servo and Ashes prep coming up, they have asked if we could hold the release up so that they have time to do a bigger release.
Of course, we would use that extra time to continue enhancing the game and it opens the door up for other improvements to the game that we had not originally intended. But on the other hand, that would mean more months in early access which is beyond what a lot of people signed up for.
So before I make a final decision on what the release date should be, I wanted to find out form our early access customers what they would prefer.
Thanks!
This week Stardock will be releasing Beta 5 of Sorcerer King. The last major public beta for its upcoming fantasy strategy/RPG game.
For those of you not familiar with Sorcerer King:
You are the sovereign of a civilization in the fantasy world known as Elemental. Unfortunately, the world has been largely conquered by the malevolent Sorcerer King who is now attempting to gain godhood by destroying the magical shards in which all magic in the world id derived from. The Sorcerer King is immensely powerful (far more powerful than the player) and you must carefully balance your empire’s growth with keeping the Sorcerer King’s immense forces largely unaware of your ultimate plan to defeat him and liberate (or oppress, depending on how you play the game) the lands.
Along the way you’ll want to ally with the various other factions who are struggling to stay free of the Sorcerer King’s influence, protect the shards, craft new equipment for your units, build up your cities and much more.
If you’ve ever wanted to play a 4X strategy game that has pretty serious role playing components, this is it. Since we’re also the publisher of Star Control, I could probably describe it closest as a fantasy Star Control style game.
It’s available on Steam early access right now: http://www.sorcererking.com/store
More Screenshots:
Drengin are somewhat bigger.
Greetings!
I'm on the plane and have some time to talk a little bit about Ashes. I've been getting a ton of questions about the game and I'm going to try to answer these questions in the clearest way I can. 
First, some house cleaning:
1. If there isn't a subedit on Ashes yet, could someone make it? The nature of this game is such that we really want to be able to talk to the community a lot prior to release.
2. We are instituting a new Founders system that we will apply retroactively to other games that have had founders programs (like GalCiv III). In essence, we will be giving Founders more exclusive stuff early on. That stuff may be made available later to everyone but we want people who supported us from the start to get first dibs on things.
Next, Founders info:
a. Re Supreme Commander & TA questions. Yes, Ashes is probably most similar to those games with one major difference - the maps themselves are broken up into regions. Thus, you have to control the region (ala Company of Heroes) and the contiguous regions back to your seed (Base) in order to receive the resources of that region.
b. Re scale. I've seen a lot of people talk about how many units are in other games with an accompanying screenshot. The difference here is that one of those big battles would just be one of potentially many battles going on across the world. The difference in actual units is an order of magnitude higher than anything that's previously been done.
c. Re Managing units. While each of the potentially tens of thousands of units can be commanded individually, that would be relatively insane to try. Instead, think of each individual as being a lego and being able to quickly and easily put together these legos into a single bigger unit which we call Meta units. The meta unit works together as if it's a single unit. You click on one, you have clicked on all of them and all their special abilities are available to use. They will automatically help each other (since they see themselves as part of a greater unit).
d. Meta units are not control groups. A control group might have multiple meta units in it. A meta unit can be 1 unit or it might be 3000 units depending on what the player wants to do.
Next, early debates on topics we can have:
a. There are 3 main resources players are fighting: Metal (for constructing stuff), Radioactives (for advanced units and researching), and Computronium. Comporting acts as the victory point ticker in this game. It's a real word and a real concept. But we hate the name. We are open to ideas on a different name. Computronium is the theoretical name of an idealized computing substance.
b. Map sizes. Our tiny map is about the size of the Bay Area in California. The largest map size is difficult to describe because it's so big. It takes a hour for a unit to travel across it. Based on who is reading this post, how long do you prefer your RTS games to last?
Spent some great time this afternoon talking to Niche Gamer regarding Ashes of the Singularity.
Here's their write up: