atWar - release notes

After months of hard work, atWar is finally open to everyone. We have said our goodbyes to Afterwind, and are now looking steadily into the future. Some of the players are rather overly-nostalgic - but this is always unavoidable, unless we decide to halt all progress on the game. Personally, we are rather pleased with the result and are really excited about all the custom maps and scenarios popping up.

We'd like to specifically thank all the players who are patiently going along with the changes and offer their ideas and criticism without being overly-dramatic about it. We are here to continue making the game better, thanks for understanding this.

And here's the list of what's new and what's changed between Afterwind and atWar - if you notice something is missing, please tell us.


New name and URL
The game is now called atWar and the main address is atwar-game.com (afterwind.com and atwargame.com also work). Not everyone is fond of the new name, but the situation would've been identical if we were changing the name from "atWar" to "Afterwind" - it's just a matter of personal attachment, really. Colors and graphics have been updated both on the website and in the game.


Game interface and animation

Lobby got a facelift with the new open games list and the new maps list. They look more modern and show more information.

Toolbars and buttons, unit and city icons all became a bit bigger. This should help players with higher resolution and (upcoming) tablet support. Selecting a unit and attacking now has some extra animation and sounds. Battles now end in a spectacular boom with floating SP.

End game stats have been spiced up with the 3 neat images for victory, defeat and surrender. Also, the displayed stats have been changed to: Population casualties, Cities occupied, Units destroyed, Units built, Units lost, Income.

Medals have been reworked to accomodate unit roles, so they would still work in custom maps. In addition, medals and receiving a new rank now look a lot sexier.


Map/scenario editor

All the tools you need to create your own map, complete with fully customizable countries, cities and units. Upload a map background, draw borders, create countries, cities and units. Create presets and scenarios for you map.

Scenarios serve the same function as before, but you can apply them to custom maps as well. Also, presets, a limited version of a scenario, allow to create sets of countries and cities for maps. This system replaced the old rigid presets system.


Population casualties
City population now receives collateral damage when a city is attacked. Casualties depend on the scale of the battle and on the type of attacking units. Units now have a new stat: Collateral, which is added to regular attack damage and only affects civilians. The casualties are shown in the city menu, battle menu, in the end game stats and sometimes in the events menu (when the damage is particularly high). Population affects the city income and reinforcements. If the population drops to 50%, you will only be receiving half of the income and half of the reinforcements.


Game mechanics

All income is now calculated from cities only, there's no bonus from owning an entire country anymore. We decided that with the added population casualties the income system was getting too complicated, even for our own understanding.

We completely removed the ARB system that nobody was able to fully comprehend, and instead added critical hit chance. Critical hit chance can be 1-100%, which is the chance to deal additional damage - in addition to regular attack/defence roll, the unit deals it's maximum attack/defence damage. So, if your Tank (max attack 7) rolls 3, the critical hit would be 10 (3+7). Simple?

You now have an option to see the damage units deal in battles. If you want to fully understand battle mechanics, this will surely help. You can set 3 different battle speeds in your settings. There's still an option to have quick battles - with only casualties shown.

SP you receive from battles is now calculated with ranks taken into account. If your opponent's rank is a lot higher than yours, you will get a lot of extra SP, and the other way round. Neutral troops always have the rank of 0, so the further you get in your ranks, the less SP you will receive from fighting Neutrals. We hope this will help in preventing SP farming and discourage high-ranking players from harassing newbies.


Units roles

To allow the creation of custom units which are still attached to strategies and upgrades, we added unit roles. For example, Infantry is Ground Main Defence, Submarine is Naval Stealth, Spy plane is Air Support, etc. Strategies and upgrades now affect unit roles, as opposed to just individual units. So, if in your map you create a new unit and assign a role to it, it will still be affected. Each role has margins in which you can modify unit stats. In addition, there are Rare and Other roles, which don't have such limitations. Rare units can also be created and will only appear randomly when a city is conquered, the same way it works now.

Strategies and upgrades have been changed to affect unit roles instead of individual units. Tank General has been changed to a more generic Relentless Attack. Some additional upgrades have been added to unlock additional unit roles (none of them are used in the Default map though).


Elo rating
Duels now affect Elo rating instead of SP. We have retroactively calculated Elo for all previous duels.


Premium packs
There were some minor changes in Premium packs. Scenarios pack is now called 'Maps and Scenarios' and unlocks both. General has replaced Anti-Aircraft in the Exclusive weapons pack. Game options pack is now required to start games based on custom maps and scenarios. On the positive side, whole world games are no longer Premium-only.


Game settings

Voting for game settings change - new fair system that takes alliances into account

Casual games no longer can be changed to Quick games

Game settings panel now opens automatically if new settings have been proposed


Other

Chat is now collapsible.

Troop info box combines separate armies of the same player.

The turns are now just turns, all mentions of 'weeks' have been erased. This was done mostly to accomodate custom maps, but also to simplify things a bit.