Updated to version 1.0.5.6

1. Rebalanced AI buffs. Now AI players will be getting less units which should help with FPS issues.
2. Buffed Empire's Bosses. Replaced broken Boss 3 ( Inquisitor ) with Bard Boss.
3. Introducing new Enemies : Wraiths. They will start coming in pack of 5 after first boss's spawn and will respawn when killed every 60 seconds. They will also be receiving buffs every 4th wave. Watch your walls! These enemies will enjoy destroying them.

Yes its how I assume it started, but it was just too many units when I noticed it to make out exactly what was going on except for Colossus receiving gold heals and some(or many) Sentinels inside the solid blob of units. Judging by how fast treasury was drained for the AI it was probably a large amount of Sentinels.

Updated to version 1.0.5.1.

1. Corrected map's description to match actual gameplay changes.
2. Buffed Empire's Balista a bit. Should be better at punishing invaders.
3. Nerfed Emperor's armor significantly. He is still strong but now more manageable.

I see. I suppose AI was healing Colossus / Sentinels non-stop and causing the blockade. I'll buff Balista a bit more.

No, it was because of the amount of units. When I say uncountable I mean uncountable, it was a slide-show when I found them toying around over there.
Assume the ballista does less damage than what is required to kill a Colossus or higher level Sentinel in one shot? It was very hard to make out what it was targeting(especially since model and aim point doesn't match up properly), but I did not see anything dying around it and there was gold-spam going off rhythmically which I assume was to repair damage from the ballista.
This was with 3 master AI, 2 defenders and 1 standard if I recall correctly.

Naturally the balista that is guarding the passage for Empire units should be killing everyone out. Regarding FPS, it's known issue caused by Garbage Collector. Save / Load does solve this with minimal ''losses''.

As a heads up, be careful playing this vs master AI. It, or at least one themed, has unlimited gold and might end up blocking the doorway Empire units exit from. Ended up at single-digit FPS around wave 30 and quickly figured out why - Uncountable amount of Empire units on one side of the doorway and the Colossus plus unknown amount of Sentinels on the other side being spammed with gold.

I plan to introduce Difficulty Modes which will make Empire units weaker or stronger based on player's input. Currently WFTO doesn't support this feature completely.

Regarding Wave timers - after every 5 waves, the timer is increased by 10 seconds ( it starts with 60 seconds ). Boss Wave and Wave after boss have separate timer which is even longer and has bigger breathing window. I experimented with time values and figured that setting it even higher will simply drag the game over the 2.30 hours time cap, and as you know, the longer the game lasts the less stable it does become. Making timer smaller will make it even harder for both Human and AI players.

In other words, Difficulty Modes ( Modifiers ) will offer more flexible options in future. For now, I fear I can't alter timers due to very fragile map balance.

Played this with a friend, really fun concept and I hope to see more wave survival maps like this (I guess we can call the maptype "Siege"?).

Only massive, glaring issue is that there is barely any time between the waves. We also played Onslaught from the DK2 maps, which had small but dangerous waves, but you're able to destroy the spawn portals so it's not too challenging.

Any chance you could make a version that is a bit easier or with harder waves but more prep time?

Try switching some to second mode? That should warp some guys back. Also ramparts, shockwaves, lots of screechers should be able to assist you at defending those traps.

Do note that Chunder Wave is special one but also contains only 10 units each. Also most chunders are melee so you can kite that from range. Golden Chunders, Mandalf and Emperor are last waves and require player do everything possible to keep those busy / away for as long as possible. I'd recommend experimenting with various trap combination, also spam lighting and shockwave ( Incantation Shrine allows such thing ). Also try doing hit-and-run tactics using range units like screechers and restless spirits. There are many ways to deal with those guys, try experimenting with stuff.

I had over 10 Storm Vortexes set up at the chokepoint with Ramparts and buffed by a Garrison. They lasted about 5 seconds before the Empire units destroyed them.

I'll consider that.

For now, you could actually try to stun-lock them using Storm Vortex. There are bunch of other ways to deal with those guys but I'm not revealing this. :3

The last few waves make this impossible to win. The horde of lvl 10 golden chunders smashed right through all my defences and my entire massive level 10 army like it wasn't even there. I got suspicious, so before my last core shard was destroyed I used console commands to wall off my dungeon and spawned an army of several dozen level 10 vampires. I won that battle, but only just. Then Mandalf showed up, and killed all the vampires. I spawned several dozen more, who also died. This repeated until he eventually died having taken out hundreds of them. Then Emperor Lucius and his entourage proceeded to go through literally thousands of them, plus hundreds of titans, taking barely a scratch themselves, before I finally got bored and quit.

So yeah, you really need to debuff those last few waves quite a bit.

Up until that point though it was great. :)

This was a tremendous 7 days straight worth of work, directed at fixing everything that was broken or got broken because of the patch. The next update will hopefully be done when Difficulty Settings can be implemented and properly supported by WFTO Editor. For now, I strongly recommend trying this version, it contains all these changes which make it much better and more interesting.

Feedback is welcome, as always.

Note : Disabled certain Veins of Evil aspects for both Human players and AI as these were causing lots of in-game problems, including FPS drops. Those are Wormhole potion, Frost Weaver Potion and Outposts. To compensate this, added 2 Mana Artifacts at Incantation Shrines to ensure both Human Players and AI can unlock max 2k mana.

9. Corrected broken scripts which were supposed to provide buffs to Equlizer and Punishers. Those are now more flexible and working correctly. Also fixed lots of typos and minor errors.
10. Updated Empire Clean-up mechanism so it cleans up EVEN more of empire units when player is defeated.
11. Updated Victory / Defeat conditions once again. Now they all work correctly and as intended. 12. Losing the match now allows defeated players stay and watch the rest of the game. They can leave at any time they desire or wait until the match ends when all players are defeated. Also players leave a cute puddle of blood where their Core was present.

6. Adjusted and tweaked map layout to provide even more expansion space for both Human and AI players. This means more rooms can be build, as well as Core Shards being slightly easier to protect.
7. Added proper Shield effect to Dungeon Core, with core shards being anchors. Basically the way they should had being in proper Core Shards Mode.
8. Some visual restructuring inside Empire Base. This won't have any impact on gameplay though, just pure aestetics.

3. Rebalanced the requirements for unlocking Shrine Areas. These now unlock much sooner and require player simply hit the Wave number, rather than defeating Waves. Those are 10, 15, 20, 25. Also replaced Mana Shrine with Incantation shrine, which reduces mana cost of spells by 40% ( previous shrine was only giving extra 250 max mana ).
4. Added extra AI player buffs to ensure they can handle new Empire Wave Spawn mechanic. They are now doing much better and can even hit the last waves by themselves ( results may still vary though, based on personalities and some other random factors ).
5. Added new units to creature pool - Shamblers, Restless Spirits, Terrors and Screechers. Both Human Players and AI players can attract them now.

Updated to Version 1.0.5 ( skipped v1.0.4.9 and merged updates into huge one ).

Important : Reworked the way Empire units spawn due to critical bug caused by WFTO Editor ( who would had guessed huh? ) which could prevent spawning of next waves or cause extreme overflooding. Now waves have fixated delay between each other and no longer require to be killed in order to trigger the next one. Since this change was made, the corresponding things were rebalanced to match the new map wave spawn mechanic :

1. Rebalanced power and speed values of all boss waves and special waves. Their values were reduced by 50% or more.
2. Rebalanced Empire Ghost Punishers. They now start at level 1 when only 1 core shard was lost and get a reasonable buff when 2 core shards are lost. No more level 10 Empire Ghost Units coming at players.

I tried creatng a prison to convert some enemies, but had to buy it back due the ever escalating messages about it being overcrowed, even though it was completely empty

Updated to Version 1.0.4.8.

1. Adjusted Empire Clean-up mechanism to more reliable and user-friendly mode.
2. Added extra checks and measures for defeated human and AI players.
3. Added extra defeat condition and rebalanced existing ones to provide more correct ending.
4. Fixed a typo in Player 3's Core Shard count detection system. Now it won't get bugged out at 0 / 3 count.

I intend to keep map at this version until I get a chance to introduce difficulty settings. Once those become possible, I'll update map to 1.0.5. For now, this version works correctly and as intended.

There is a case with game where when in team of 1 human player with 3 AI team mates together someone dies, game ends for others. I believe in v1.0.4.7 this is resolved since I adjusted victory / defeat conditions a bit. Make sure you have the latest version ( you can check map version by clicking map description and scrolling to the bottom, map version is typed there ).

Just played this as a 4 player map with 3 AI. All 4 of us were on a team. One of the AI lost all their core shards and died. This ended the game. Is this intended? I played a different 2 player game where I was allied with the AI and it died but that didn't end the game. Seems like a bug.

Version v1.0.4.8 will come soon with even more reliable Empire ''clean-up'' mechanic.

Updated to v1.0.4.7

1. Adjusted the mechanic that kills Empire's units when player is defeated. It should more reliably kill remaining troops.

I delayed the ghost boss wave to 5 minutes. Technically they shouldn't be the 100%-defeat guarantee since they still can be killed if you do decent fortifications at second core. FYI, those guys don't have damage buff, meaning they do their intended damage. I may consider reducing their protection though if they still become too much to handle even now.

Yes, I had lost 1 core shard. Not sure if you'd still consider it balanced from the description I had below. Would almost seem like if you lose 1 core shard, it's guaranteed you're going to lose on the boss wave. Anyway, thanks for the responses and great map. I've enjoyed it a lot so far!

Updated to 1.0.4.6

1. Fixed defeat condition settings. This should prevent game from ending for everyone when someone is defeated in some cases ( especially in MP ).

Updated to 1.0.4.5.

1. Fixed broken unit scale values from 1.0.4. No more gigantic full-screen monsters clustering your view.
2. Fixed broken buff appliers to Punishers and Equalizer. These work correctly now.
3. Delayed Punisher wave to 300 seconds from 200. This means Ghost bosses will be attacking player upon the loss of 1 Core Shard every 5 minutes, giving player more time to recover.
4. Restructured Empire Spawn Area to prevent potential stuck-up of Empire Units or integrity issues of the Empire Castle.

The only thing I had to scrap is difficulty selection option, which will probably be my last update to this map ( apart from bug fixing when needed ) due to WFTO Editor not providing me the decent option. If this will be introduced, I'll add difficulty modes for people to choose from, meaning the strength and armor values of Empire's attackers will be defined by player on start. Till that, consider map's default difficulty as Normal one. Good luck and have fun.

Did you lose a Core Shard? There should be no ghost units on your lane if you haven't lost any.

Just loaded from a save point right before boss. This time, only a singular large ghost unit came out (looks like there was a bug with the other run?) but it's still very unbalanced. This singular ghost unit had an AOE skill that 1 shots all my units (even level 10 units). Wiped out my entire army in 5 strikes. This seems very unbalanced, how could anyone possible fight that?

So I made it to level 10 this time, and I really think it's unbalanced. The level 10 ghost units with 25k health each are basically unkillable. And you spawn like 10 of them. I think it would make more sense if it was just 1 super hard ghost unit and then 9 other regular level 10 units.

Version 1.0.4.1 shall soon be released with additional balance tweaks and fixing.

First unlocked area happens when you defeat lvl 10 wave ( Boss 1 ). Each next area is unlocked after lvl 20, 30, and 40. In other words - wave 7 unlocks nothing.

Bosses are broken? None of the locked areas are unlocking. I went through 7 waves and nothing unlocked.

6. Minor terrain adjustments. Now there's even more space for players and AI to build up.

5. Introduced new enemy from Empire - Equalizer. This unit will begin it's invasion after wave 11 and will be attacking all 4 players. It will respawn after 200 seconds when killed and has separate timer for each player, meaning each Equalizer spawns independently from another. Killing one will reward with nice bonuses each time. Equalizer's power will progressively grow, based on how many of him were killed by all players. Basically it's task / reward system to keep players more occupied between waves.

As always, good luck and any feedback is welcome.

Please unsubscribe from https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1376294461 and subscribe to this version because it's more up-to-date and more likely to receive a bug fix. The reason why I ended up with separate release rather than update of existing one is how AWESOME are WFTO editor and it's interaction with Steam Workshop. Guess this explains stuff.

Differences from version 1.0.3 :

1. Fixed missing / broken mutators.
2. Reworked Empire's Spawn Zone area to prevent some issues like units getting stuck.
3. Adjusted AI buffs so AI performs even better.
4. Increased timer of punishers to 300 seconds. Now these guys come much later ( they were already quite deadly ).