As reported at InsideMacGames.com, Freeverse has promised a “Big Week” of software announcements. One is tempted to speculate that testing for HOMMV has been progressing rapidly and that an announcement on a release date is immanent. Perhaps a little Cider is adding to the Christmas cheer?

Whatever guesses we make about that, today’s announcement that the Legions arena expansion pack is being released as a cheap digital download is even more encouraging. Mac ports have a terrible history of supporting expansions within any reasonable amount of time, if at all (it took years to see all the CivIII expansions, for example, and the Sims expansions are delayed by months). I fancy that Freeverse’s endorsement of digital distribution at a very reasonable price could spell good things for potential HOMMV expansions getting ported, especially where Freeverse needs to maintain patch-parity anyway and/or where Cider makes patch and expansion pack updating a snap to convert.

Our pals at Celestial Heavens report with more info from Fabrice and Nival on upcoming additions to HOMMV. Speaking in interviews (with Age of Heroes) and on discussion forums (in Russian), the latest batch of promises somewhat contradicts earlier information. At least somethings never change, eh?

We can now expect the following:

• The map editor will come with the third patch, due mid-July, and will include two new map sizes: Small (72*72) and Huge (216*216). It will also offer campaign editing functionality.

• Eventually there will be an option to disable the camera flyby in towns (I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen).
• 10 new multiplayer maps will be released starting from the second patch. After these, Nival will start making new maps available gradually without any relation to patches.
• The second patch will include descriptions of creature abilities.
• Tweaks to the AI will be ongoing throughout the patching process.
• Duel mode “will be improved” — whatever that means.

All in all, it smells prety good to me. Regular patching and content updtaes are something usually reserved for MMOs but it certainly works just as well with HOMMV to keep the community interested, happy, and hungry for more. If Nival can actually meet the monthly schedules, HOMMV might manage to patch a path to a deserving score of 80-90% by the end of the summer.

The first patch has been released. The focus is almost entirely on bug fixes, with the only real addition some re-jigging of the CombatAI and a new “Easy” difficulty setting.

Here is the link and a description of the patch from Fabrice.

I had no problem installing the patch, though the Read Me recommends re-starting any saved maps since the patch can break games in progress (but not overall campaign threads). If you have a “very big map” that you are oly half-way through, you might want to hold-off installing the patch until you finish it. Nothing in the patch seems particularly critical to me.

I definitely don’t want to put the cart before the horse (especially if its an ammo cart, and the road is steep, and there are little children frolicking around, and I am uninsured) but some impressions are emerging about playing single-player open-ended maps without scripting, and the AI seems a little mixed. On a post at Quarter of Three, the gamer claims that by the time he had conquered 2/3rds of the map on the hard difficulty level,

(1) The AI doesn’t take resource mines in any serious way; (2) The AI doesnt Improve her Heroes very efficently (my heroes where at least twice as good); (3) The AI doesnt improve her Cities very well (Last city I conquered had only half of all buildings and my home city was fully improved (all buildings built)).

Similar sentiments and experiences are expressed in this Celestial Heavens thread. However in both instances there are a lot of unanswered questions about how the scenarios are being set-up, so it is merely anecdotal at this point. Another post on the official forums claims that the AI was competent on a large map with a number of human players on the heroic (highest) difficulty setting, but that the AI clearly had a material resource advantage from teh begining.

In an interesting development, Nival has already announced that a new patch will be out in around a week. All we know about this patch is that it will introduce an “easy” difficulty setting after complaints the scripted scenarios were too hard. The inclusion of a new AI level might indicate that the AI on the whole has undergone more work since the product went Gold Master (and hence pressed to disk) almost a month ago.