This update introduces a flexible and powerful new offensive feature — the ability to choose a Patron god! Your Patron god gets customizable boosts to their stats and powers.
PATRON GODS:
Once you choose a god as your Patron, you’ll be able to boost some combination of their Health, their Strength, and the effect of their base powers.
You’re in charge of how your Patron god’s boosts are assigned. Will you bolster your attacks with a Super-Aphrodite that can charm the defending army? Lead the charge with an Ares whose Strength has been cranked up to godly new heights? Or rely on surgical strikes from the Long Shot of your new Patron Artemis?
There are so many possibilities, and we’re looking forward to seeing the strategies that all of you come up with!
ENVIRONMENT BOOSTS:
The Patron god feature represents a major boost to offense. To match that, we’ve bolstered the effect of Environments to help out on the defensive side.
Monument Boost:
Monument Powers now receive boosts from their home Environment! For example, a Hades Monument that stands in the Hades Environment will produce tougher, more numerous skeletons and deploy them at a substantially farther range.
This leads to some interesting choices in city design as these boosted Monuments can make a real difference in battle. This is particularly true if they’re well-protected!
In addition to the Power boost, the Environment will also provide a 20% increase to the Health of a Monument.
Health Boost for Temple and House:
Temples and Houses built in their home Environment now receive a 20% Health boost! For example, a Hera Temples and Hera Houses in the Hera Environment will receive a 20% boost to their Health, making them a bit sturdier than before.
NEW BUILDING LEVELS:
Temples now offer ten new upgrade levels! This will allow you to increase both the Health and the Aura effect of your favorite Temples.
We’ve also added ten new upgrade levels for Academies, Archery Ranges, and Spartan Academies! You’ll be able to field stronger armies to take on attacks led by the new Patron gods.
ASSIST POWER CHANGES:
We’ve made a number of changes to Assist Powers and their balance. In one case we’ve even changed an Assist Power entirely!
Awe to Charm:
We have retired Aphrodite’s “Awe” Assist Power and replaced it with a “Charm Units” Assist Power. The “Awe” Assist Power was one that never seemed to give us quite the gameplay experience that we hoped. We felt that it was time to try something new with her Assist Power!
Gods on the Field:
Attacking assisters may now only assist while gods are on the battlefield. This change should make it less advantageous to delay god deployment. In prior versions, you would see battles where assisters dealt a great deal of damage while gods remained in safety.
Attacking assisters will now only be able to do their work only after the gods are in play. This will help ensure that attacks are always led by the gods themselves.
Patron god Boost:
If you’re an attacking assister, the Assist Power of the attacker’s Patron god will receive a boost in effectiveness! For example, if you’re assisting an attacker who is using Hades as their Patron god, your Skeletons Assist Power will be more powerful than usual.
Environment Boost:
Similar to the above, if you’re a defending assister, the Assist Power of the defender city’s Environment will be boosted! For example, if you’re assisting a defender who is using the Aphrodite Environment, your new Charm Assist Power will enjoy a bonus.
Balance Changes:
The Heal and Zap Assist Powers have been fully rebalanced and made more consistent in this release.
Bugfixes:
We have also fixed a glitch where assist troops were not reliably recovering from Slow Time.
POWER CHANGES:
We’ve also made a number of balance changes and bug fixes to god powers.
Slow Time:
We’ve reduced the impact of Slow Time somewhat, with the top-level effect coming down to 74.5% (from 84.3%.) The power’s effect has been reduced at lower levels as well, but the changes are smaller at lower levels than at higher ones.
Water Blast:
We’ve also reduced the strength of Water Blast at the top levels by about 13%. There’s been a reduction at the lower levels of the power as well, but the change is smaller at the lower levels.
Ultimate Power Combo Changes:
There were a couple of cases where Ultimate Powers received sometimes surprising benefits from a god activating one of their primary Powers at the same time as the Ultimate. These combinations weren’t widely known and tended to be unintuitive to discover. This made the powers difficult to balance since the effects would be so different for players who used these combinations vs. those who did not.
The first change we’ve made is that Poseidon’s Water Blast power no longer boosts the Kraken’s damage. Previously, the Strength bonus of Water Blast was carrying over the Kraken for its full lifetime. This made a substantial difference in total damage output. Now Water Blast will make no difference in the Kraken’s power.
The second change is that Hera’s Absorbing Strike no longer increases the damage dealt by Wrath. Starting with this release, Wrath’s blast won’t deliver any extra damage based on the bonus of Absorbing Strike. However, Hera will still heal based on the damage that Wrath delivers while Absorbing Strike is active.
Bug Fixes:
Inspiration now boosts Apollo’s Sunstrike. Prior to this release, the Inspiration buff did not give Sunstrike its full boost.
Prior to this release, the Ares Battle Charge power would sometimes experience movement problems in very high-level Weekly Challenges that used sturdier buildings. We’ve now fixed that!
DAILY CHALLENGES:
We’ve updated Daily Challenges to make good use of the new defensive buildings that have come out in the last few releases! Daily Challenge maps now have Spartan Academies, Gorgon towers, and Cyclops towers mixed in.
We have also rebalanced the difficulty of all Daily Challenges to account for the defensive changes from this release as well as the addition of all these powerful new buildings.
Finally, we’ve added 3 more levels of Daily Challenges for those who are getting to the top levels!
OTHER GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
We’ve reduced the damage of Tritons by roughly 25%. They’ve been an imposing force on the battlefield since their debut. With the other Assisting changes that we have in this release, we felt that it was time to make an adjustment for them.
Spartans have gained some battlefield cunning in this release. They will now try to dodge aside if you deploy a god on top of them in the hopes of crushing them! They are currently the only troop type that has this ability.
We’ve also made some pathfinding improvements that will help some cases where gods could in certain situations get stuck on the corners of buildings.
UI CHANGES:
We’ve also made a number of UI enhancements. These include allowing all decorations to be flared, improving our unit information display for spawner buildings, improving the News screen, and many more changes and tweaks.