SpellForce: Conquest of Eo – Strengthening the Circle Update Live

Owned by Gravity, the team behind the recent RPG/TBS hybrid SpellForce: Conquest of Eo, brings us a new patch for their game. The most notable addition there is a major overhaul of the Autoresolve option that should now allow you to rely on the AI more when dealing with weaker foes.

Beyond that, the update introduces plenty of assorted improvements and bug fixes, adds the Leech Energy ability, reworks the Build Golem spell, strengthens the AI opponents on the harder difficulties, and more.

Here are the patch notes:

The latest patch makes the battle for Eo’s fate more challenging for experienced players, improving the Circle Mages’ armies and defenses on higher difficulties. It also improves auto-combat massively, taking into account a number of additional factors such as spells, resistances and skills as well as equipment. Players can focus on the battles that really count and do away with manually playing clear-cut victories to prevent unnecessary losses. Add to this over 40 improvements and bug fixes as well as a new Energy Leech skill that allows to leech life from fantastical creatures and Conquest of Eo has become even more fun to play!

Additions

• AUTORESOLVE 2.0 – The new formula accounts for most of the skills, promotions and abilities in game which makes it take into account supportive units and strong builds much better than before. Still does not play like a human…
• Added new Ability “Leech Energy” (Life leech vs Fantastic units). Can be found as an artifact, crafted (Glyph of Occultism) or gained from level up for certain units.

Improvements

• Watchtower and Inn are now spawned in Uram Gor
• Changed wishing well adventure to give one cool reward and diminishing returns after that
• Build Golem does not have universal upkeep anymore and does not count as summon, instead the upkeep depends on the created golem. Only newly built Golems are affected
• Added exception handling if settings file is corrupted to avoid black screens on startup and instead load the default settings as fallback
• Tweaked camera angle on world map (better taking mountains into account) and the camera in battles can now zoom in more closely
• Tweaked location and resource overlays to cause less occlusion
• Spell school dialogue condition displays number of required spells in that school (e.g. [Death 5])
• Faction tool tip now displays effects that are active in that faction’s domain

Balancing

• Antagonist Power Overhaul – Partially affects all difficulties (slight changes to army pools, fixed bugs that prevented final stack from attacking player) but mostly impacts hard and impossible difficulty (stronger antagonist tower and attack stacks, stronger final stack, additional battle enchantments for antagonists on those difficulties, increased attack wave intensity). Also circle mage tower battles have to be fought manually.
• Earthlore spell correctly considers ore rarity of region its being cast in. (before that it was basically 50/50 to get adamantinum)
• Shortened cast duration for Aether Beast skill cast
• Build Golem spell does not have universal upkeep anymore and does not count as summon, instead the upkeep depends on the created golem. Only newly built Golems are affected
• Kennels don’t block everyone else from getting Follower (checking against active promotions, not all)

Fixes

• Fixed issue where markers for how far you can go in a multi turn path where off by one.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the AI to freeze in battle when one of their units would rout
• Fixed Elixir of Subjugation item costing focus to use (unit-skill still costs focus)
• Undying units don’t get offered death defy in level up
• Fixed several occasions of Skills (mostly throw potions skills) not profiting from additional Ability-range (or wrongly from Missile-range)
• Parry Stance does not replace Guard Stance anymore
• Fixed Loss end nodes -> unchecked further engage or added new end node with unchecked further engage
• Fixed Wendigo not having the passive Corpse Consume heal
• Fixed selection cursor in Elynn’s Revive As Shaikan
• Fixed Flesh Colossus not displaying its On Death ability
• Fixed Death abilities of several units triggering twice
• Fixed infinite loop that appeared when two units with On Death abilities kill each other
• Fixed -% to willpower changes accumulating to below -100%, actually granting willpower for getting damage (masochistic spider queens)
• Fixed Purity Hollow Guards being in Hokan’s Forge
• Fixed toggle buttons not working correctly with gamepad
• Fixed a bug where a fight in an adventure had a higher stack power than the option said (the other case, lower power than anticipated, is still possible if the AI can’t spend all that budget)
• Fixed spawning adventures on the player’s instant castles; also added validator check and fixed for Isgrimm as well
• Fixed Metor VFX not playing correctly when off screen
• Fixed toggle buttons not working correctly with gamepad
• Fixed a bug where a fight in an adventure had a higher stack power than the option said (the other case, lower power than anticipated, is still possible if the AI can’t spend all that budget)
• Canceling fly spell during execution – abort spell is now blocked when busy.
• Fixed bug with moving location onto stack which builds a lodge
• Fixed component colors in tool tips
• Fixed a crash in combat that sometimes occurred when a unit with charge damage attacked an enemy from an adjacent hex
• Fixed a Rohen adventure where there could be a loop created by not destroying source location