Black Hills1876

Additions

• A new look:
  • Dark leather, blackened steel and brass on every panel, button and menu, with a new title logo; frames keep their corners and repeat their edges, so they stay sharp at any size
  • Painted icons for every order, skill, building and resource
  • Weapon paintings on the back of every unit card
  • A loading screen with the Black Hills at dusk and a soldier marching along the bar
  • Lakota & Cheyenne versions of the icons that used to show Army soldiers
  • A gold glow around whatever you point at, and brighter golden icons
  • Each side's flag across its half of the Skirmish side picker
  • A yellow sweep over every skill and button while it reloads
• Online battles:
  • Host a battle, or join one with a four-letter code, an invite link or the Open games list (Refresh brings it up to date)
  • Up to three commanders a side, each place a player, the computer or closed, and every commander in a colour of their own
  • Four modes: Flag Control, Army Battle, Survival (together against the waves) and Deathmatch
  • Voice chat in the room and in battle: a speaker by each player's name shows who is talking or muted, a click on it mutes them, and M turns your mic off and on
  • Text chat in the room, and in battle with Enter (Shift and Enter for your team only); type "command" for a numbered list of calls to your allies, or its number to send one straight away
  • Signal Flare (Fire Arrow for the Lakota & Cheyenne, N): light up a spot on the field and the map that only your allies see
  • A dropped player has two minutes to come back, and a refresh puts you back in your battle
• Diplomacy:
  • Set each commander as Ally, Neutral or Enemy. Two commanders are at peace only when both call each other allies; neutrals are fired on only when you order it, enemies on sight
  • Send an ally 100 gold, supplies or horses with one click
  • Ask your allies for resources, infantry, cavalry or artillery, or call them to attack here, defend here, fall back or help me here, from the Diplomacy box or the battle chat; your allies hear it from the announcer, and a call marks the spot on their map
  • The players in the battle listed at the bottom right
• Story missions:
  • The Grattan fight: the rendezvous, the camp, the retreat and the siege, with Lt. Grattan under your command
  • Platte Ferry: march out of the fort, search the villages, take prisoners and bring ten back to the Prison
  • Survive battles on the U.S. route open with raiding parties and ambushes near your lines
  • Cut-scenes with captions and Skip, and recorded narration for the openings
  • Two narrated campaigns, 27 U.S. and 26 Native main missions, with 65 optional encounters
• Skills and building:
  • Every troop has a free skill (Q) and learns three more as it ranks up (E, T, Y)
  • Global skills by the minimap: a barrage (B), heal (J), quicker hands (K), reconnaissance (L) and the flare (N)
  • Conceal (C): men on foot who stay unseen for 10 seconds do double harm with their first shot
  • Civilian Volunteers and Camp Builders put up medical stations, barracks, outposts, palisades (long or short sections, straight or corner-ways) and raft bridges
  • Fortifications: in Flag Control any company on foot builds one on a flag, flying the flag at its foot; while men or a gun hold it the enemy cannot take the flag
  • Outposts and fortifications stand empty until you right-click them with up to 8 men on foot or one gun; their walls shelter whoever is inside
  • Barracks take up to 10 recruits in the queue and send them to a rally flag you place
  • Rafts and canoes for crossing rivers
  • Dragoons, Crow Scouts and Scouts get down from the saddle and mount again (G)
  • Either side can take over an abandoned gun of any kind
• Voices:
  • Regulars, Skirmish Infantry, Sharpshooters, Buffalo Soldier Infantry, Civilian Volunteers, Cavalry, Rifle Warriors and Bow Warriors answer when you select them, move them and send them in
  • An announcer for troops and buildings under attack, your own fallen companies, barrages (yours, the enemy's and your ally's), heals, quicker hands, scouting news, flares, and an ally under attack or asking for help
• Sounds:
  • The far-off sound of a battle under the music on every menu
  • Their own reports for the mortar, the 20-pounder Parrott and the Gatling (a burst fires at the pace of its sound)
  • Four more gunshots for rifles and carbines, a new explosion where shells land, and a distant boom when one of your guns fires off the screen
• Enemy styles in Skirmish: Mixed, Defensive, Aggressive, Sneaky or Random
• Allied and enemy commanders in Skirmish, and armies of up to 8 battalions of 10 companies
• Objectives open in the middle of the screen at the start, then tuck into a button by the compass that flashes when they change
• Red squares ripple out on the minimap where your troops are under attack
• A waving flag and a count of the men still standing over the company you click (Settings: when selected, always or off)
• Painted cards for every troop, with stats when you turn a card's corner
• Rename companies and battalions, and see the whole map once a battle is over
• 63 new props, stone bridges to cross, buttes and cliffs that block sight, and lanterns that glow at night
• Shells burst in the ground and leave craters
• Map editor: walls, gates and towers of both forts turn eight ways, corner-ways included
• A bar under Jammed shows how long a Gatling's crew needs to clear it, and two of a wheeled Gatling's crew push it on the march

Tweaks/Improvements

• Manpower is now Gold and Ammunition is now Supplies, with new icons; Horses stay
• One art style for the whole frontier: trees, rocks, lodges, settler houses and the fort redrawn to match the troops
• New numbers for every troop and gun, and 25% more health all round
• Gatling rounds do 25% more damage
• Every price 15% lower, then Army prices a further 10% lower and Lakota & Cheyenne prices 10% higher
• Each side starts with one company: Skirmish Infantry for the Army, Rifle Warriors for the Lakota & Cheyenne
• Easy, Normal and Hard change how well the computer plays, not its supplies, aim or numbers, and campaign enemies and Survival waves are the same size on every level
• Every troop moves 15% faster
• Troops pass through each other on the march and keep their spacing once they stop
• Cannons, Gatlings and mortars on a fort's towers fire all the way round, turn to their target on their own, set up in half the time and stand behind the parapet
• The army marches as one block, with the weakest companies at the back
• Soldiers fire only when standing still; double right-click to chase and charge
• Going prone takes a second, and prone men are 30% harder to see
• The computer hides, springs ambushes, goes prone under fire, rafts across rivers and lays siege to forts
• Online, every commander keeps their own stores, and a team's income is split between them
• Medical stations heal your allies' troops too; a barracks recruits only for the commander who built it
• Survival pays half as much gold
• Online names can be 21 letters long
• Placing a building shows the building itself, with the dotted ring at its foot
• Clicking an enemy shows its card at the top right
• The recruit card is a little smaller, so the longer queue fits
• Colour-blind mode can be switched on or off in the middle of a battle
• The compass sits in the corner of the map, its letters even inside the dial
• The bars along the top are solid colour
• Story kill objectives go to the last man
• Restart a battle or start a new campaign in one press
• Auto-resolve and the map size option are gone; every battle is fought on a large field
• Shells landing and walls coming down shake the view a pixel or two, only when they are on your screen

Bug fixes

• Diplomacy: if a commander still calls you an enemy, your troops fire back, even after you set them as an ally or neutral
• Online: the host can pick any game mode, not only Flag Control
• Online: a removed player's name leaves the room
• Online: fallen-man cards show only for your own companies
• Online: a team's second commander no longer sees troops greyed out when they have the supplies to pay for them
• Allied and extra commanders heal and refill at their own camps, and allied camps supply your flags
• Save and leave the field keeps a skirmish in Load Game, and loading one leaves your campaign alone
• Holding Escape no longer opens and shuts the pause menu
• Guns can man a fort's side walls
• Companies no longer start cut off at the map edge
• Upright phones: the top bar's buttons wrap so nothing hides under the sound button
• No battle sounds after a battle ends
• Voice chat: the Music slider no longer turns other players' voices down, and a voice the browser held back starts on your next click
• The announcer tells you about a flare only when an ally fires it, not when you do
• No more bright boxes behind text in the battle room, the map editor and the army screen, and the Raise prices are readable