Period: December 23, 2025 Total Commits: 4
Hey, here’s what we’ve been working on today. The big items are new fort siege maps, smarter bot behavior in Hoppers mode, and a UI fix for spawn indicators so placement is clearer. Nothing flashy, but it tightens up competitive flow and makes practice matches feel more intentional.
What’s New
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New fort siege maps
- We added a set of fort-focused siege layouts built around layered defenses and multiple approach vectors. Expect tighter choke points and more contested roads around key castles.
- The goal is to push team coordination: hold your main, probe neutrals, and avoid overextending on wide flanks.
- [screenshot: new fort siege layout under attack at c4c1646]
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Hoppers mode: bots now understand castle control
- Bots can now read who owns each castle (ally, enemy, neutral, and which one is the main). That lets them make better decisions about where to build and where to defend.
- We switched bot placement to be zone-based around controlled castles, so they don’t try to maze open terrain where mazes don’t make sense.
- [screenshot: updated tower placement grid near controlled castle at 21bd695]
What Got Fixed
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Spawn tile indicators in Hoppers mode
- Indicators now show on the actual roads near castles instead of empty standard spawn tiles. If you play Hoppers, you should see placement hints exactly where spawns will occur.
- This mostly cleans up confusion when swapping between standard maps and Hoppers. If you saw blank indicators before, that’s resolved.
- [screenshot: spawn indicators on castle road spawns in Hoppers at bce179e]
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Fort-siege map polish
- Multiple selection/polish passes on the fort-siege setup to get clicks, highlights, and interactions behaving consistently. Minor visual cleanup, nothing balance-related.
Under the Hood
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Dynamic spawns for Hoppers
- We now compute spawn areas from owned castles instead of relying on static map regions. This matches how Hoppers actually plays and keeps indicators and AI decisions aligned.
- Validation was reordered so the game mode gets checked before spawn areas. That prevents false errors when maps intentionally start with no static spawns in Hoppers.
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Zone-based bot placement (Hoppers)
- Bots build within a radius around the castles they control. This concentrates defenses where they matter and reduces weird edge placements.
- We also added simple threat detection so bots prioritize defending castles under pressure rather than spreading towers evenly.
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Maze planner disabled in Hoppers
- The standard maze logic doesn’t fit Hoppers’ road-and-castle structure, so we turned it off there. Zone placement is simpler and reacts better to shifting control.
Why these changes
- Hoppers plays differently: control flips, spawns move, and the front line drifts. We aligned the systems (UI, validation, bots) around that reality so what you see matches what actually happens.
- Fort siege maps are about clarity and pressure. The layouts push meaningful choices—commit to a hold, rotate to a neutral, or bait a counterpush. The maps are tuned for readable fights without removing flanking options.
Thanks for the reports on spawn indicators and the feedback around Hoppers flow. Keep the notes coming—seeing how you play these modes helps us tighten the loops.
[screenshot: mid-battle defense of a threatened castle, towers engaging on the approach at 21bd695]