Hey everyone,
A quick development update.
Some of these quality-of-life improvements and fixes have already been added through previous hotfixes, but I wanted to give everyone a brief rundown of what has changed since V0.800.
The main development focus remains the same as outlined in the V0.800 announcement, but alongside that work I've continued polishing existing systems, improving presentation and addressing issues reported by players.
Tournament Improvements
The Tournament scene has received a substantial visual polish pass.
Schools now have much more visible identity throughout the bracket, including their own gladiator representation, making it much easier to get a quick overview of who is actually competing.
Tournament cards now also include new animations as fighters progress through the bracket.
Tournament rewards have been reworked as well.
The champion now receives the standard Gold reward plus a random equipment item appropriate to the tournament's prestige level.
Rewards continue to scale as you progress into more prestigious tournaments.
The betting system has also been expanded.
Bets are no longer capped at 100 Gold. Higher-prestige tournaments now allow significantly larger wagers, meaning correctly betting on rival schools can remain genuinely profitable even into the mid and late game.
Battle Royale Improvements
The Battle Royale scene has also received a visual overhaul, with improved school presentation, clearer layouts and general scene polish.
Arena Crowds
Arena crowds have been greatly expanded to improve the atmosphere of larger events.
A Grand Tournament should no longer look like eight blokes happened to wander in after the pub closed.
Crowd sizes now vary depending on the importance of the event, with larger and more prestigious fights filling considerably more of the available seating.
Improved Wall Movement
Gladiators should also behave much better when pushed towards the edge of the arena.
Previously, fighters could become trapped against the wall and spend too much of the fight awkwardly staring at one another.
When a gladiator reaches the arena boundary, they will now remain there and recover energy until their opponent moves into range.
They can then roll forward and swap sides, helping combat remain much more dynamic and reducing prolonged wall fights.
Banner Themes
The banner you select for your Ludus now influences far more of the game's interface.
Your chosen colours are carried across numerous panels including:
Gladiator Details
Staff cards
Tournament cards
Various management panels
This is primarily a visual change, but it gives each Ludus considerably more identity and allows your chosen school colours to follow you throughout the game.
Improved Scouting
Scout quality has been significantly improved.
Barbarians still have the greatest chance of rolling exceptional potential, but the chances of finding higher-tier non-Barbarian recruits have been increased.
The goal is to keep Barbarians valuable without making the rest of the recruitment pool increasingly irrelevant as your Ludus progresses.
Smoother Enemy Scaling
Enemy scaling has been reworked.
Some players may have noticed that around 300 Prestige, enemy strength could increase rather abruptly.
The progression has now been smoothed out so enemy strength scales more naturally throughout the campaign while still reaching the intended difficulty at maximum Prestige.
Hardcore Mode
For 1.0, I intend to have multiple difficulty options allowing players to properly customise their experience.
I don't want to maintain several separate difficulty modes while the core game is still changing so frequently.
However, Gladiator Command now has a significant number of players who have been playing for months and know the systems extremely well.
So I've added something for them.
Hardcore Mode.
Hardcore Mode is unlocked by defeating Spartacus on Normal difficulty.
It is designed specifically for experienced players who already understand recruitment, training, economy, equipment, classes and combat preparation.
It is considerably more punishing and absolutely not intended as the normal way to learn the game.
You will need to understand essentially every major system.
That said:
It is 100% possible to complete.
Smaller Improvements & Fixes
Alongside the larger changes, there have been numerous smaller quality-of-life improvements, balance changes and bug fixes.
Some highlights include:
Retiarius can now unequip their tridents.
Carnifex will now properly use Shield Breaker against shielded opponents.
Fixed gladiators becoming stuck in Tournament assignments.
Fixed a crash caused by assigning a gladiator to an Arena fight and then selling them to another school.
Fixed an issue where certain final bosses with the Emperor's Chosen trait could be beheaded and simply continue fighting.
That last one was perhaps taking the whole refusing to die thing slightly tooooo far.
Various weapon reach adjustments.
Additional Battle Royale fixes and polish.
Numerous smaller UI improvements.
General quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes throughout the game.
The overall direction remains the same as outlined in the V0.800 announcement.
This isn't intended to be another enormous update post, but quite a lot has changed through the recent hotfixes and development builds, so I wanted to give everyone a proper overview.
As always, thank you for the bug reports, feedback and suggestions.
They genuinely help me find the places where the game can be improved.
Thanks everyone.
