A very meaty update today! Let's break down some highlights:
- Treaty Patch balance iteration
- fix of an annoying unit sound issue that's been plaguing us since the original game
- UIx Ceylon & UIx Himalayas Upper added, Baja California rebalanced
- Diplomacy support in Scenarios amongst other Diplomacy enhancements
- improved NVIDIA support
- insane speedup of game launch through the ESOC Patch Launcher
- unprecedented ability to set up 12-player skirmish games
- important anti-cheat fixes for false positives and improved cheat detection
Sounds good? Read on to get all the details.
EP 6.0.1.0
changelog since EP 6.0.0.1
General
- Made further changes to prevent an integrated GPU from being used to run the game when a dedicated NVIDIA graphics card is available on the user machine instead.
ESOC Treaty Patch balance changes
- Infinite 17 Cherokee Riflemen shipment increased to 19.
- Macehualtin Heavy Infantry multiplier reverted to x2 from x2.5.
- Infinite 800c Aztec shipment increased to 1000c.
- Flaming Arrow range reduced from 32 to 31.
- Yabusame cost reverted from 80f/90c to RE 60f/150c.
- Infinite 2 Rockets shipment cost reduced from 600c to 200c.
- Removed Rocket negative multiplier vs Cavalry (revert to RE state).
- Reverted Yeomen shipment from +2 to +4 Longbowman range & LoS.
- Reverted Long-ranged Infantry HP card to RE state; no longer buffs Musketeers.
- Cuirassier hand attack increased from 26 to 28.
- 1 Great Bombard shipment coin cost removed.
ESOC Patch & ESOC Treaty Patch bug fixes
- Fixed a bug causing certain unit sounds to be heard across the whole game map, regardless of camera distance from the sound origin. The affected units/sounds were: Flamethrower (death), Flying Crow (death), Howdah (siege), Mansabdar Howdah (siege), Siege Elephant (attack), Mansabdar Siege Elephant (attack), Morutaru (attack), Shogun Tokugawa (attack), Mansabdar Flail Elephant (attack), Asian Fishing Boat (attack).
ESOC Patch map changes
- Reduced image quality of minimap thumbnails, significantly reducing patch download size.
- Recreated all minimap thumbnails of UIx maps, fixing an issue that would cause the sample spawn to be overly resource-rich.
- UIx ESOC Kamchatka minimap thumbnail now showcases the Summer spawn version of the map.
- UIx ESOC Fertile Crescent: the map will now spawn and place players correctly in 1v1 observer mode without observers.
- Added UIx version of Ceylon, removed old version.
- Added UIx version of Himalayas Upper, removed old version.
- UIx ESOC Baja California rebalanced (notes and explanations by @Garja):
- resized the map for all game types (-10s rush distance in 1v1)
Map was mistakenly big, compared to the rest. The reason for that was mostly due to the rectangular layout and because originally it seemed the right size in order to include water, cliffs, etc. Rush distance was a bit too long, especially for a map that isn't even meant to be a big map. This had implications on gameplay of course, and new size will probably have some too. Those implications are intended. - reshaped the coastline (notably less land behind TCs)
This is mostly for team mode but I guess also for 1v1. Basically, there was just too much space behind the TC. More water next to the TC makes it more of water map on one hand (always possible to sneak a dock almost behind TC), but also more of an aggressive map on the other. - changed the starting position of player for team and FFA
Players used to spawn too close in 2v2 and 3v3. Also to adapt to the changes in size. - tweaked forest amount/density
I actually don't know how much this will be noticeable, but basically, forests will be about 2 tiles closer to TC but also less dense (to reflect the nature of the map). Middle forests will be more numerous but, again, probably none will even notice. - -1 fish shoal per side
16 per side was a bit overkill already and with the smaller size, they just crowded the water too much - changed the number of treasures to be fixed (6 tier2 in 1v1)
Mostly because with 6 treasure is less likely that one side only gets garbage ones (used to be 4-6 random).
ESOC Patch Diplomacy
- Refactored diplomacy backend code and partially moved it to ESOC UHC Plugin, improving performance and Scenario interoperability. It is now possible to activate Diplomacy using a custom trigger in Scenarios, either by simply calling trActivateDiplomacyGadgetsESOC (RE-incompatible), or through a slightly more advanced trigger if including RE compatibility is desired (available in @EAGLEMUT's trigger pack).
- Diplomacy state changes are now announced to all players.
- Fixed visual issues on the Diplomacy UI window in games with more than 8 players.
- Diplomacy UI toggles now become disabled and display an error message in 12-player games, instead of causing a game crash upon usage.
- Merged the confusing "OK" and "Cancel" buttons into a singular "Close" button, instead of presenting two buttons with the same effect.
ESOC Patch Launcher
- All game versions launched through ESOC Patch Launcher now load up significantly faster than normal (sample 17 seconds -> 10 seconds).
- Check whether official game patcher service is available on launcher startup, only use ESOC-provided substitute game patcher service when official one isn't up (following up on the ESO login hotfix).
- Updated obsolete patch notes links to now lead to ESOC wiki.
- Fixed a visual issue on focused scrollbar elements.
- Implemented launcher options allowing to set up a singleplayer skirmish match with up to 12 players, including selectable teams for players 9-12. Affects all ESOC patches, as well as the official RE patch. Once you've set the desired options in ESOC Patch Launcher, simply launch the game, host a skirmish without changing the player count, and play. FFA is also supported; simply select Free-for-all when hosting the game room and any previously selected teams will be disregarded.
EP Anti-cheat
- Prevent false positives on calendar-related background applications.
- Prevent false positives on configuration files of other game versions not related to ESOC.
- Improved accuracy of detected command displayed in error message to user.
- Detect possible exploit involving unit transformation.
- Several improvements to detection of opening developer console.
Credits
- all minimap changes by @Buckethead
- UIx ESOC Baja California overhaul by @Garja
- @mandosrex for making me aware of the map-wide sound bug and how to fix it
- @mandosrex for sharing the game-launch speedup configuration
- @Kao for launcher scrollbar fix and help with implementing new launcher options
- @Thrar for improvements to patcher service and NVIDIA GPU handling
- @musketeer925 for advice and testing
Download
1. If you have a previous version installed, you can simply run the EP Launcher and auto-update should have you covered.
2. If you're installing for the first time, download the exe installer.