Empires Apart

[Asid]

Empires Apart Daily Update - March 31st

Hello folks,
I'm bringing you today a daily update on how things are going on our end. It's the easter weekend but we're not slowing down, so even without a patch today we're still working and we want to update you on what's coming:

PERFORMANCE
We're preparing an experimental build for tomorrow which will be available in a public beta branch. This build should bring a number of performance improvements and is particularly targeted to those who have good CPUs but are experiencing issues even on small maps/2 players. We're gonna expose some values you'll be able to tweaks in config files and see if the situation gets better. If the build proves to be stable we're gonna push it to the main branch early next week.

BALANCING
We're looking into the French light cavalry situation and we're considering patching it as soon as tomorrow. Let us know if there's any other area that you feel needs to be addressed.

COMMUNITY FEATURES
There is now a button to access leaderboards from the game and we're working to improve our discord server so it's easier to find matches and discuss the game over there. This should take us a couple of days as it's secondary to the development of the rest of the features.

Other things we're looking into are improvements to the AI, Quality of Life Improvements and solving the rare crashes we have.

Thank you for reading, I plan to keep posting updates every day. In the meantime we try to be active on Discord and over here answering as many questions as we can.

Cheers,
Gian Paolo

[Asid]

Experimental Performance Improvements Available
Empires Apart - DESTINYbit

Hello folks,
as promised today we are pushing to the Performance branch an experimental build with a first round of performance improvements. Keep in mind that this build could be unstable and should not be used to play Ranked matches.

For instructions on how to switch to the Performance branch click here.

We worked to greatly improve the performance particularly on large maps and with a lot of entities (eg. Winterwald), especially on the pathfinding. Please give us some feedback as to how this version is performing.

This is only the first batch as we have more performance improvements planned, including to the AI.

We also included a couple of settings that you can tweak in the INIs directed at those who have AMD processors or in general CPUs who by all means should be performing well but are struggling even in 1v1. Our intention is to work with some of you to find what the best solution is. If you had performance issues in the past with AMD processors or have experienced performance anomalies in 1v1 on a small map, please leave a comment below and we'll reach out to you tomorrow or in the near future.

Further instructions on how to use these settings or how to help us with logs will come tomorrow.

Thank you very much for your patience.

Happy easter,
Gian Paolo

[Asid]

Empires Apart v.1.0.4 is out!
Empires Apart - DESTINYbit

- Charge has been removed from the French Light Cavalry Line.
- Minor fixes.

This is the same version as the one that was in the BETA branch. If you are in the Beta branch we encourage you to Opt Out and go back to the default branch.

[Asid]

Matrix/Slitherine is streaming this today @16:00GMT

http://twitch.tv/slitherinegroup

[Asid]

Patch 1.1.3 is out - Performance AI Improvements
Empires Apart - DESTINYbit



Hello folks, during the past week we worked night and day to improve the game and address all the concerns. Today’s patch brings a huge improvement to performance and lots of improvements on AI. This is just the beginning as we’re gonna release even more improvements in the next days as well as the first wave of free content. The Empires Apart community is growing every day and we encourage you to join us on Discord here: https://discord.gg/bRDxPr7

•   Greatly improved the performance of the game particularly regarding the Pathfinding, unit management, large maps and AI.
This should result in a nice boost in performance in team games and large maps.
•   Changed the way we handled multiple threads to be CPU specific. This will hopefully mean that AMD users with good CPUs should now experience better performance.
•   Many improvements to the AI behaviour. Now the AI favours enemies that have nearby bases (of the bases it knows). Is better at defending against attacks and commits more when on the offensive. This is an ongoing process and we expect to make the AI even better in the upcoming patches.
•   Fixes to some issues with networking. This should result in less connectivity issues when trying to join games.
•   Fixed Saladin movement speed (now 370).
•   Fixed Arab’s Mangonel damage (now 40).
•   Fixed Yue Fei’s passive ability. Now correctly spawns full health.
•   Fixed some wrong voicelines on Trebuchets.
•   Fixed some wrong tooltips.
•   Fixed an issue where non-host players would get a wrong APM counter in the post-game stats.
•   Added a check for ownership when accessing multiplayer to hinder smurfing.

Notes:
•   Performance on the AI could be improved a lot further. This is a first optimization pass and we’re gonna keep working to improve things.
•   As performance get better we’re gonna move to stability improvements, particularly to address crashes and resync issues. On the latter, we’re already preparing a new patch which should address many issues.
•   We’re working night and day to make the game better. To interact with us, we encourage you to use Discord: https://discord.gg/bRDxPr7

[Asid]

Watch the Resonance22 Video


Empires Apart is a Real-Time Strategy game which has something for everyone. With 6 completely unique civilizations, each with a radically different playstyle, it has enough variety to just keep you playing.

In order to best showcase the variety of Empires Apart's civilizations we teamed up with a famous RTS player, Resonance22. Resonance started making some videos about the game's factions, displaying their unique mechanics and talking at length about their strengths & weaknesses as well as their heroes.

It is a great way to learn the basics of each civ, but also to learn some very useful tactics and tips from a real expert.







Since it was first launched, plenty of people picked up the challenge and started competing online to climb the Leaderboard... right now Khas is leading but with the knowledge contained in the videos that might be you!

Furthermore, we have been making a Wiki for the game with the help of the guys from Gamepedia! Visit it here and feel free to contribute by filling it with all sorts of information about the game. We need your help to complete the wiki, so if you feel like filling those pages, don't hesitate.

The Developers from DESTINYbit studio are hard at work but the results are evident, the game just keeps improving. Stay tuned, for we only just started. We have big plans for Empires Apart, and it'll be a fun ride for everyone involved.

[Asid]

Patch 1.1.6 is LIVE - Several AI Improvements, Input Lag Normalization & More

Hello folks, over the past two days we worked on refining the AI improvements that went live to the beta branch on Monday. The AI now is much better at attacking and picking its targets and overall should represent a big improvement from 1.1.4. We also normalized the input lag on multiplayer matches for the Host, eliminating host advantage. Gengis Khan received a nerf to slow down Mongol's Khan Rush. This is a temporary fix as mongols will receive some more changes soon. Don’t forget that you can find people to play with on Discord.

The Empires Apart community is growing every day and we encourage you to join us on Discord here: https://discord.gg/bRDxPr7

1.1.6 Patch Notes
•   Greatly improved the AI attack logic. This should fix indecisevness by the AI and units canceling their attacks.
•   Fixed an issue with villagers getting stuck building diagonal walls.
•   Fixed a bug where Pings wouldn’t work in certain game modes.
•   Fixed some issues with Merchants including an exploit with two adjacent markets.
•   Fixed a bug that would allow the creation of heroes on Assassination.
•   Fixed a potential desync with Zhuge Liang.

1.1.5 Patch Notes
•   Fixed an issue on Water Maps where the AI would get stuck in its build early on
•   Fixed some sources of the AI getting stuck.
•   Improved the AI build order.
•   Improved the AI target selection.
•   Several other improvements to the AI logic and build order.
•   Added a Cheating AI that gets extra resources.
•   Normalized the input delay between host and clients. Now everybody will experience the same delay.
•   Further increased the performance on the pathfinding.
•   Increased Gengis Khan cost to 500f 400g (from 300f 250g). Decreased Gengis Khan armor to 2/5 from 3/6.
Decreased Gengis Khan health to 160 from 200.
•   Fixed some issues on the pathfinding.
•   Fixed an issue with team selection in open lobbies.
•   Fixed some potential source of crashes.
•   Fixed several potential source of desyncs.
•   Several minor fixes.

[Asid]

1.1.7 Patch Notes

•   Improved the behavior late game of the AI. It’s less likely that the AI will get stuck lategame due to the lack of resources.
•   Fixed a possible exploit with Mangonels.
•   Fixed a freeze in spectator mode.

[Asid]

Patch 1.2.1 is LIVE in the BETA branch - Performance Improvements, lobby distance filter, camera speed increased

Hello folks, sorry this patch took so long but features started to accumulate and we required some extra bugfixing and testing. This build mainly brings fixes to 1.2.0 as well as a lot of improvements under the hood to performance, especially for the fog of war. The
Empires Apart community is growing every day and we encourage you to join us on Discord here: https://discord.gg/bRDxPr7

This build is currently available in the BETA branch of the game.

To learn how to access other branches, click here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/530630/discussions/0/1697169163410005491/

•   Severely improved the performance of the Fog of War.
•   Further increased performance with large amounts of units.
•   Slightly increased pathfinding performance.
•   Fixed a very rare pathfinding bug.
•   Fixed an issue from 1.2.0 with player color in Skirmish Mode.
•   Fixed an issue from 1.2.0 where a player would have 2 million resources when repairing.
•   Fixed an issue with dead bodies not disappearing.
•   Doubled camera max speed.
•   Added lobby distance filtering.

Note: there is a known issue with arab's heavy cav that may spawn low HP, it will be fixed for the patch rollout on main branch

[Asid]

Patch 1.2.2 is LIVE - New Map, Performance Improvements, Color Picking & more!



Hey folks,
today we are releasing 1.2.2 into the main branch of Steam. This should bring a number of performance updates as well as a new map, color picking and more. This patch has been live a few times, and for a few days, in the BETA branch of Steam so it should be now good to go. Please remember that the fastest way to reach us and find multiplayer matches is through Discord here: https://discord.gg/bRDxPr7

1.2.2 Patch Notes
•   Fixed an issue which would make units spawn with very low health.

1.2.1 Patch Notes
•   Severely improved the performance of the Fog of War.
•   Further increased performance with large amounts of units.
•   Slightly increased pathfinding performance.
•   Fixed a very rare pathfinding bug.
•   Fixed an issue from 1.2.0 with player color in Skirmish Mode.
•   Fixed an issue from 1.2.0 where a player would have 2 million resources when repairing.
•   Fixed an issue with dead bodies not disappearing.
•   Fixed some issues with assassination mode.
•   Doubled camera max speed.
•   Added lobby distance filtering.

1.2.0 Patch Notes
•   NEW MAP: Solitude. Currently enabled in Skirmish and Normals. We’re looking to make it available for Ranked soon so let us know what you think!
•   1 vs 1 has a slightly different spectator UI which is more readable and has larger icons.
•   Added color selection for Skirmish and Normals. Now every player will have a different color.
•   Fixed some potential crash sources.
•   Increased pathfinding performance.
•   General performance improvements on attributes.
•   Performance improvements on AI.
•   Fixed an issue where the AI could get stuck if it lost the majority of its villagers.
•   Fixed several potential desync and resync issues.

Thank you for the patience. Our focus is now set on pathfinding issues as well as new features and content.

[Asid]

Patch 1.3.1 is out - Pathfinding Performance Improvements
Empires Apart - DESTINYbit


Hello folks, for this patch we focused our efforts on performance and pathfinding. We fundamentally changed our pathfinding algorithm to address the issues it had on certain specific cases. On performance, we’re aggressively tackling every bottleneck and we’ve been able to improve the situation dramatically across the board. Even more performance improvements are on the horizon though, particularly to AI. We’re also working on an all new AI rewritten from the ground up to be smarter and more versatile. The Empires

Apart community is growing every day and we encourage you to join us on Discord here: https://discord.gg/bRDxPr7

•   Severely improved performance on Fog of War, large amount of entities, villagers and more.
•   Reworked Game Modes. This should prevent any issue with game end and victory conditions.
•   Minor improvements to AI.
•   Minor fixes.


v1.3.0

•   A brand new pathfinding algorithm has been introduced. This will work in conjunction with the existing pathfinding and will ensure that units can correctly find a route through long distances and around big obstacles (eg. The lake in Mare Nostrum). This should fix all the major pathfinding issues that were reported on Winterwald and Mare Nostrum.

•   Fixed an issue that would introduce an unnecessarily high amount of input delay, even on singleplayer.
•   Added “favourite player color” option in the game options.
•   Fixed several issues with Diplomacy and Assassination.
•   Fixed missing hotkey for capture Stance.
•   Fixed an issue with the healthbar of siege tents.
•   Fixed various potential issues with hotkeys.
•   Fixed various issues with merchants.
•   Fixed an issue with the speed of the Boar.
•   Fixed various potential issues with timers, victories and endgame conditions of Game Modes.
•   Slightly improved performance of units, buildings and resources.

Please note: There is a bug where in ranked matches the rank screen doesn't get displayed at the end of the match. Points are still being calculated and updated. We will fix this in a patch early next week.

[Asid]

Development update & what we're working on
4 July - DESTINYbit

Hello folks,
first of all, we'd like to apologize for missing some of the messages that have been posted here. We're hard at work on Empires Apart: development is still going strong and since 1.3.1 we have built quite a significant amount of improvements. Here's what we've been working on and what you can look forward to in the near future:

Crashes
This is obviously the number one concern of ours and we understand the frustration that crashes bring. We've been working hard for quite a while now with the help of Epic to find the source of our crashes. They're seemingly random and inconsistent, which makes them very hard to track down. This is our primary focus, we're making progress and we hope that the next patch will improve the situation.

Desyncs
It appears that a new source of Desync has arisen. We're investigating it and we hope to fix it in the next patch.

Performance
1.3.1 brought huge performance improvements to the game but there's a lot more coming. We worked a lot to improve on the performance of our next biggest bottleneck: the AI. Many areas of the AI have seen huge improvements in terms of performance and in the next patch, playing against multiple opponents will be easier. The general performance of the game is also constantly being worked on and there are some improvements coming on that front as well.

AI
We wanted to reveal this at a later date but I guess it's better to let the cat out of the bag. There's a new A.I. coming, codename "Agatha". Agatha has been built from the ground up to be more fun, more smart and to be capable to play all the current game modes and upcoming ones.
Agatha has tremendous variability in her builds, going for different strategies at different times, helps allies, responds to pings, trades, buys and sells resources at the market, can form alliances and much more. We're putting the final touches to Agatha and we won't be satisfied until it can comfortably, consistently beat the current AI. We might release Agatha in a beta state in the near future.

Multiplayer
We're working to make the unranked multiplayer experience more streamlined, so it's easier for everybody to find matches. There's some big improvements coming on this front that we can't talk about at this moment but do know that we're looking at ways to make the game more accessible and more streamlined on the multiplayer front.

New gamemodes
We have some new gamemodes coming. We don't want to announce anything yet but we're looking to add more "fun" modes to the game.

Minor features
We also have some minor features coming including, but not limited to:
•   Control groups are stored and retained through savegames and resyncs
•   We now display how many villagers are working on each resource.

Other minor issues
Various minor issues have been solved during the past few weeks including, but not limited to:
•   Issues with Merchants
•   Issues with Mongol settlers.
•   Missing Hotkeys
•   Cooldowns on some active abilities
•   Tower upgrades
•   Fog of War Issues
•   Visual bugs on villagers and units

Overall, there's a lot to look forward to in the next patch and beyond. We're working hard to make Empires Apart better and even if today I listed a lot of stuff that is coming, that is not all. We hope to share even more news about the future of Empires Apart soon. Stay tuned.

Thank you all,
Gian Paolo

[Asid]

Patch 1.4.0 is LIVE - Stability performance improvements many fixes
Empires Apart - DESTINYbit

Hello folks, for this patch we focused our efforts on stability and performance, particularly of the AI. We fixed tons of small bugs here and there and we’re laying the foundations for what’s coming in the future of Empires Apart: from a brand new AI to new

Gamemodes and more. The Empires Apart community is growing every day and we encourage you to join us on Discord here: https://discord.gg/bRDxPr7

•   Greatly improved stability. This means that in general far less Fatal Errors should pop up. We’re continuing our work to ensure that the game is more and more stable.
•   Solved a couple of potential desyncs.
•   Vastly improved performance of AI. As a result, singleplayer games should feel way smoother.
•   Improved the general performance of the game particularly of fog of war and projectiles.
•   Slightly improved the logic of the current AI.
•   Control Groups are now stored in savegames and will carry through a resync.
•   Added villager count for each resource.
•   Fixed various issues with Merchants.
•   Fixed an issue with the Mongol Settler where construction yards would disappear when placed in the grey Fog of War.
•   Fixed various issues with cooldowns on some Active Abilities.
•   Fixed some issues with Tower upgrades.
•   Fixed various issues with the Fog of War.
•   Fixed some visual bugs on villagers and units.
•   Fixed an issue with garrisoning on spawn.
•   Fixed some issues with missing hotkeys.
•   Fixed some issues with the spectator UI.
•   Minor fixes.

[Asid]

Patch 1.4.1 is LIVE - Stability improvements
Hello folks,

we just put out a patch that should further improve the stability of the game. This should mean less FATAL ERRORs. We ran games lasting several hours without crashes. Please let us know if you're still experiencing issues.

We're aware of a potential crash on Islands when playing vs the AI which we will fix with another patch very soon. In the meantime we hope to have improved the overall stability for everybody.

[Asid]

Empires Apart goes Free-to-Play!



There are some big news for all Empires Apart players: today Empires Apart goes Free-to-Play!

We are changing the format to make the game accessible for free to everyone. Anyone can go to Steam, download the game and play it at absolutely no cost. You will have access to all game modes and you'll be able to play with the Byzantines civilization.

What does it mean for all those who had bought the game? You are not going to lose anything, and you're getting more than the value of your money back. You will be considered a Founder and you'll get immediate access to all the original civilizations plus access to exclusive content in the future.

The other civilizations are being repackaged as DLCs. You will be able to play against them with the F2P version and even to try them briefly with the new test scenarios, but you will need to buy the DLCs if you intend to play as the Mongols, the Chinese, the Arabs, the French, the Aztecs and the Koreans!

If you would like to have more information on how the Free-to-Play system works please read the FAQ we've published.

Watch the trailer!




What, wait a seconds, did you say Koreans? Yes, there is a new playable civilization!

Now you will be able to buy the Korean Civilization Pack and lead the brand new faction in battle.

The Koreans are a ranged-focused civilization which can make use of the powerful Hwacha for devastating firepower. Their Nobles provide a unique mechanic, boosting the area around them and improving your economic development.


We have completely revamped the in-game menus, and brought in a massive number of improvements: new AI, a new map, and countless gameplay and UI improvements! We are also resetting the Ranking, so everyone gets a fair chance to start this new Ranked season on equal terms.

Last but not least, don’t forget to tune in for today’s developer stream live on

at 8.30 pm BST!

This is the start of a new exciting path for Empires Apart. We can’t wait to see you all in game!