Expansion Pandora: Eclipse of Nashira Released

[SephiRok]

With Eclipse of Nashira, new dangers and opportunities enter the world of Pandora. A new faction shows its face, talking of peace and friendship while their spies operate behind enemy lines. Nothing is what it seems anymore, as agents conduct covert warfare of espionage and sabotage, inciting revolts and stealing technologies. At the same time, another alien species native to the planet has appeared, lurking in the shadows. In order to overcome this new alien menace, the different factions start to expand beyond the planet's landmass to generate more resources, opening up a new frontier.

As the World of Pandora is about to plummet into chaos by warfare, espionage and hostile alien species, it is up to you to lead your people and become the ruler of this promised world.



New Features

• Unleash full covert warfare with new Agent units: gather information, steal research, incite riots, and more.
• Live through the Eclipse of Nashira; a time when new species rise from the depths and espionage is stronger than ever
• Joining the competition for planetary dominance are The Ambassadors; a brand new faction specialized in diplomacy, intrigue and sabotage.
• Expand your empire beyond the coastlines: Amphibious Formers can build water improvements, harvest new aquatic flora and even raise landmasses.
• Deploy minefields from orbit to protect key positions and disrupt enemy supply lines.
• Enjoy new diplomacy options and a variety of other tweaks and improvements to existing mechanics.

Pandora: Eclipse of Nashira is available on the Slitherine store: http://www.slitherine.com/games/pandora ... of_nashira and Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/312380. Every purchase through the Slitherine store also receives a free Steam key (http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=173&t=49705).

See below for a full list of changes.

NOTE: Games saved without the expansion are not compatible with the expansion.

Version 1.5.0
Added:
* Added new faction focused on diplomacy, intrigue and sabotage: The Ambassadors.
* Added new Agent units that can perform city infiltration orders; Agents can be attacked by any player regardless of diplomatic status.
* Added new Eclipse of Nashira event commencing around turn 100 (standard pace) that introduces new alien life and increases Agent infiltration power.
* Added new infiltration advancements: Conversion Virus, Custodes.
* Added new infiltration device: Illusive Eluder.
* Added new anti-infiltration building: Panopticon Cities.
* Added new water territory features: Oil Field, Panspermia Reeds, Water Fungus, Aquatic Mexallon.
* Added new Amphibious Former unit that can build water improvements, terraform between water and land, and harvest bonus water resources.
* Added new Vulcan Mines operation that slows and damages any unit entering the deployed territory.
* Added new diplomacy options also utilized by the AI: demand peace offer to third party, demand sanctions against third party, demand war declaration on third party and privately denounce third party.
* Added missing voice overs for invasion reports.
* Added new menu screen cinematic.
* Added new menu/title music track.
* Added 4 new world music tracks.

Changed:
* The maximum gain from trading and research pacts was increased from 10% to 25%.
* Fungus now also exists in ocean and coast territories for more tactical depth in naval movement.
* Rivalries between certain factions now have a more pronounced diplomatic impact.
* Tweaked research tree for better distribution and more connections to increase flexibility.
* Various minor tweaks.

Version 1.5.1
Changed:
* Changed amount of players based on world size from 2, 4, 6, 6, 6 to 3, 5, 7, 7, 7.
* Changed Agent faction icons to not reveal who is the owner of the Agent.
* Halved city takeover migration.
* Language tweaks.

Fixed:
* Fixed Amphibious Former crash when using medium or low quality textures.
* Fixed diplomacy crash.
* Fixed incorrect diplomacy dialogue lines.
* Fixed sharing maps not establishing new contacts.
* Fixed automated Formers not building water improvements.
* Fixed eclipse infiltration attack bonus not being taken into account.
* Fixed auto unit cycle swapping to next idle unit before an infiltration order finishes.
* Fixed invasion cinematic playing even when cutscenes are disabled.

The release of the expansion also comes together with a patch to the base game, adding a Dutch translation and fixing outstanding issues.

Version 1.4.2
Added:
* Added Dutch translation thanks to dmantione.
* Added translators to credits.

Changed:
* Server now waits on clients for turn processing before executing unit and operation orders to reduce movement lag in late game.
* Increased (and made modifiable) the score impact of a technology's tier, which results in the AI producing units with better components.
* Minor score tweaks for certain technologies.
* Improved game browser with incompatible version warnings.

Fixed:
* Fixed no panel showing in the menu screen after loading a game from inside the world screen.
* Fixed allied victories not declaring all allies as winners.
* Fixed new game panel not using translated "Faction" string.

Download and apply the update by launching Pandora.

Full change log.

[Tac2i]

Bought the expansion straight away and then discovered it was a 1.8GB download. Wow! Since I'm on a limited Verizon Wireless account for my internet service, I had to go to my local Mc'Donalds for some free WiFi to download this puppy. Once I unzipped the file I discovered it contained a MAC and two Linux packackes as well as the Windows version. The Windows version was only 194MB. Can't you guys separate these install files? Basically I downloaded 1.6GB of stuff I didn't need. Bandwidth maybe plentiful but lets not unnecessarily use what is not needed.

Love the expansion by the way! Good job!

[Xilmi]

I agree. It would be much more logical to offer 4 seperate downloads instead of throwing everything into one file.

Much like this: http://stockfishchess.org/download/

[dmantione]

I think the point is to deliver you all ports... you might switch to Linux next year and want the Linux version. If they would not deliver you all ports they would have to keep the download servers up for a long time. Software and hardware is replaced one day and at some point they might not care anymore about keeping download servers for, say, an 8 year old game up and running.

Nevertheless, a lot could be done to reduce the download size. Of the 645 MB of the uncompressed game, about 30MB is platform specific. You download the other 615MB three times. Putting all platforms in a single zip file would result in 705MB uncompressed... seems reasonable to me.

[IainMcNeil]

We used to do it it separately with one build in each zip but people said they wanted to buy once and play on any format so we bundled them together. Unfortunately Bluesnap/Plimus does not allow multiple links for one product so we have to put them all together. We can't satisfy everyone and we felt this was the best option because most people don't have download issues. If Plimus change the way they handle downloads its definitely something we'll review.

There is no way to share the data between platforms as it would require users to do a lot of hand copying and be a potential tech support nightmare!