Jan 29, 2019
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - v1.2.1 Update
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - Alberto
We are releasing a new update for your favourite Warhammer 40,000 4x game!

This update adds new floating text to improve battlefield awareness. It also improves the readability of icons, rebalances problematic units and fixes several outstanding bugs.

You can find the changelog down below. As usual, please let us know your feedback on our forum.

Changelog:

### New
* Added floating text when a unit gains a trait, overwatches, infiltrates or causes resource gains.
* Added shadows to icons through dynamic glow rendering for improved readability.

### Balance
* Increased Hive Crone morale from 6 to 12.
* Increased Haruspex armor from 6 to 8.
* Increased Haruspex hitpoints from 20 to 30.
* Reduced Haruspex morale from 12 to 6.
* Fixed Carnifex Bio-Plasma missing Blast.
* Increased Carnifex Spine Banks damage from 1 to 2.
* Fixed Hive Tyrant, Tyranid Prime and Tervigon not gaining Acid Blood upgrade.
* Fixed Strikedown trait not working.
* Fixed Mushling Bloom not working for Orkoid Fungus that has not been planted by the player with the upgrade.
* Increased cost of Astra Militarum city edicts from 20 influence to 40.
* Smoke Screen now consumes action and movement.
* Moved Basilisk research from tier 4 to 5.
* Moved Leman Russ Battle Tank research from tier 5 to 6.
* Moved Imperial Bastion research from tier 5 to 4.
* Reduced Tomb Blade cost by 25%.
* Reduced Canoptek Scarab's Entropic Strike max damage from hitpoints from 2.4 to 1.2, bringing it in line with Gauss.

### General
* Improved bark triggers.
* Cities now no longer give Synapse Link on acquired tiles, but gain a synapse range of 2 when upgraded with Ripper Dispersion (tile acquisition radius upgrade).
* Don't show "Achievements disabled." message for standalone version.
* Improved font rendering: faster game start, lower memory requirements, faster rendering.
* Now requires OpenGL 4.0.
* Updated localization files.

### AI
* Improved Tyranid AI hero ability usage.

### Bug Fixes
* Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when a city is destroyed.
* Fixed a crash that would occur when a unit would gain a weapon upgrade in the same frame as its animation changes.
* Fixed a crash related to a Fortress of Redemption missile effect.
* Fixed active order cancelling when a unit is healed by a trait or ability. This fixes Necrons hold position until healed cancelling each turn.
* Fixed some abilties not playing sound effects.
* Fixed some items not playing sound effects.
* Fixed sound effect not playing when capturing an artefact.
* Fixed some barks never appearing.
* Fixed neutral Orkoid Fungus receiving free Mushling Bloom upgrade after a certain amount of turns.
* Fixed Psychneuein infesting attackers.
* Fixed Synapse Link trait showing multiple times.
* Fixed Tyrannofex research not requiring Brood Haunt research.
* Fixed trait "turn" not being localized.
* Fixed trait duration greater than 1 not being plural.
* Fixed effect for Malanthrope Grasping Tail.
* Fixed effect for Malanthrope Toxic Miasma.
* Fixed Malanthrope melee attack animation.
* Fixed effect for Jokaero Digital Weapon.
* Fixed effect for Combat Stimulant.
* Fixed effect for Forbidden Knowledge.
* Fixed Vaul Sentry attack animation.
* Fixed Rapid Rise not costing any influence.
* Fixed AttainMaxUnitLevel achievement being unlocked when capturing a unit that has no levels, e.g. an artefact.
* Fixed several typos.

### Modding
* Added \<action soundFirstActingMemberOnly="1"> and \<action voiceSoundFirstActingMemberOnly="1">.
* Added \<radius> modifier effect.
Jan 22, 2019
What the press says about the Tyranids...
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - Alberto
Last week we released the latest DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Gladius, Tyranids.

We are really glad to have read such favourable comments from players on Steam and on online forums. As usual your feedback is very important, so please let us know on our forum if you have suggestions or criticism.

The press also spoke at length of this new expansion.

PC Gamer felt it's a really good addition to the game, while Gamewatcher highly recommends it to any Gladius fan. 4X strategy site Explorminate awarded Gladius the title of 4X Game of the Year and also reviewed the Tyranids' unique mechanics in this video.

If you'd rather listen to a podcast, the guys at Three Moves Ahead ran an episode about the Tyranids just yesterday. If you belong to the francophone audience you might want to read Wargamer France's AAR while if you are an Italian native speaker don't miss the review from Tom's Hardware.

These are just a few of the magazines and online sites which reviewed this DLC. Which one did you like most?


https://store.steampowered.com/app/995860/Warhammer_40000_Gladius__Tyranids/
Jan 16, 2019
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius' Tyranids DLC adds a gruesome but fitting faction
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War

Unconventional 4X Warhammer 40,000: Gladius welcomed the ravenous tyranids to the war over the titular planet this week. Boy are they hungry. They eat and kill, and that’s about it. But maybe they’re misunderstood! I dove into the DLC to find out if the tyranids really deserve their bad reputation. 

Yes, they absolutely do, it turns out. Tyranids are bad news. They exist to consume and destroy and spread their species. I’ve been giving the Aliens comics another read this week, so this is all very familiar stuff, but it doesn’t make the tyranids any less nightmarish. 

I mean, just give this description of a tyranid building a read. 

Gladius probably doesn’t get enough credit for its flavour. There's great grimdark writing nestled away in the lore and mission text, and the tyranid stuff is especially good. And by good I mean nauseatingly gruesome. Beyond the writing and some of the unit abilities, it can be a bit conservative, however. Tom called it bland in his Warhammer 40,000: Gladius review, and while I have a more favourable opinion, it's often too straightforward. But it also makes some big changes to the 4X formula. 

Gladius’ hook is that it’s as much a hexy tactics game as it is a 4X. It’s all-out war, no diplomacy, and you’ll spend most of your time moving armies across the map while fighting hostile fauna and other factions. It’s very aggressive and most of the systems are subservient to kicking the crap out of everyone else on the planet.

Welcome to the buffet

This fits the tyranids perfectly. Like all the factions, though, the tyranids have their own way of doing things. Biomass is what they’re all about. Infesting a world and gobbling up all of its biomass is their whole deal, and that’s the key to their economy in Gladius. Loyalty, research and so on still play a role, but biomass is what allows the tyranids to build their horrible alien armies.  

While tyranids can erect buildings that generate biomass, it’s only in tiny amounts, so the better option is to just go straight to the source. Biomass can be stripped away from a tile leaving it a useless chunk of wasteland, so as the tyranids expand, they start to literally destroy the world. And, appropriately for a 40K game, it encourages you to constantly move forwards, devouring everything—or at least every tile with a respectable amount of biomass—in your path to fuel your hive. 

So, yeah, the tyranids clearly deserve their reputation, but there’s one exception! The tyranids are really into recycling. When a tyranid stops being useful, it can go into the reclamation pool and be turned back into biomass. It’s the circle of life, and ain’t it lovely?  

There are a lot of different kinds of tyranid waiting to be spawned, though accessing them all requires a lot of construction and research first. They have hit points, morale and special abilities, just like their counterparts in the other factions, but many of them also have a serious limitation: they need to be near a hero or they suffer various debuffs, including losing health every turn or reduced movement. Some, like the tough tyranid warriors, are able to go it alone, but most of the hive will need to stay near a hero.  

Separation anxiety

Unfortunately, I don’t think it really has enough of an impact on the game to justify how annoying it can be. Ostensibly, it encourages players to move their units in armies, with heroes leading them, but that’s what I do already. It makes exploration a bit trickier, but you can send off individual units for several turns with minimal risk. In battle, it just becomes fiddly as you try to move units closer to the hero—they’ve got to be within a few hexes—which isn’t easy to do when there’s only one unit to a hex and you’re commanding an army. Ultimately, I just end up taking the hit because building a large army and pushing it across the map is still the most effective strategy. 

Even though it already leans into the tactical stuff quite a lot, I do wish it came to the fore a bit more. Units get all these modifiers from terrain, morale, other units and abilities, but big armies overcome most obstacles. Positioning and smart unit composition seems like it should be important, and certainly you’ll conquer the map faster if you take that approach, but it’s not necessary and so is easy to overlook.  

Otherwise, the adaptation of tyranid mechanics and traits from the lore and tabletop game are pretty successfully implemented. The tyranids feel authentically 40K but also very comfortable in this war-ravaged 4X. 

The more of Gladius I play, the more convinced I am that diplomacy should stop being a 4X mainstay. We need a break from it. I think Gladius could be even bolder, and the loss of diplomacy has created surprisingly few problems. It's solved some, in fact. And with the tyranids, it makes more sense than ever to cut out all the faffing around and get straight to the main course. 

Jan 15, 2019
Daily Deal - Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War, 25% Off
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - Valve
Today's Deal: Save 25% on Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Thursday at 10AM Pacific Time
Jan 15, 2019
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius unleashes Tyranids in new DLC
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Warhammer’s Tyranids would be difficult to placate in a traditional 4X strategy game. They’d always be offering you bum deals for your biomass, sending heretical missionaries to spread the good word about biomass, claiming they saw your biomass first so it’s rightfully theirs, rivalling your tourism industry with such attractions as Biomass World and Eurobiomass, delivering notes sneering at your meagre biomass, and tainting your culture with television broadcasts like Biomass Hunt, Biomass Judy, and NCIS: Biomass.

Thankfully there is no diplomacy in the grim darkness of the far future, only war, so the Tyranid faction which hit Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics Of War today as DLC will simply devour you, your cities, and the soil beneath your feet as they amass biomass.

(more…)

Jan 15, 2019
Emperor preserve us! The Tyranids are here!
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - Alberto



War spares no one: Orks, Necrons, Astra Militarum, Adeptus Astartes. All are spilling blood. But no one expected this.

It started as a rumour: xeno test subjects escaping from an Adeptus Mechanicus research facility. Then it turned into something more sinister... word of something lurking in the remote corners of Gladius Prime, ever growing, driven by an insatiable hunger.

Now everything has changed: the Tyranids are here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM3E0fNUeNg

Tyranids is the new DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Gladius. Lead a brand new faction, the Tyranids, in their effort to conquer Gladius!

With new gameplay mechanics, new units, research tree and questline, the Tyranids are a unique addition to Warhammer 40,000: Gladius. Tyranids is available on PC and Linux. You can buy it by visiting its product page.

Tyranids is being released alongside a sizeable update to Warhammer 40,000: Gladius, which introduces a highly requested feature: Steam Achievements! You can read the full changelog here.

We will be streaming the new DLC live on our Twitch channel today at 6 pm GMT. Richard Yorke will be the Hive Mind: will he manage to consume his foes?

Last but not least: to celebrate the Tyranid invasion we will be discounting Warhammer 40,000: Gladius at 25% off for today, starting at 6 pm GMT! What are you waiting for?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/995860/Warhammer_40000_Gladius__Tyranids/
Jan 14, 2019
A look at the new Tyranid units
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - Alberto
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Tyranids is coming out tomorrow!

We know many of you cannot wait, but it's almost there. While you wait, why not have a look at the new Tyranid units?


Hormagaunts
Basic close combat infantry unit
Hormagaunts are vicious and extraordinarily single-minded predators that will pursue their victims without pause or respite. With powerful hind legs, Hormagaunts dart across the battlefield in a series of bounding leaps, ignoring injury and tiredness until they have run down their exhausted quarry and torn it apart with frenzied strikes of their scythe-like claws.




Termagants
Basic infantry unit
Termagants are agile and cunning creatures. They are amongst the smallest of the Hive Mind's warriors and were originally created to roam the arterial passages of bio-ships in search of intruders. In planetary invasions, Termagants scuttle forwards on four legs whilst unleashing torrents of fire from the anti-personnel bio-weaponry - commonly fleshborers - clutched in their clawed forelimbs.




Gargoyles
Jump infantry unit
A Tyranid attack is preceded by the beating of thousands of membranous wings as Gargoyle broods descend upon the foe, blotting the sun and spitting death from their fleshborers. Their winged manoeuvrability gives Gargoyles a distinct hunting advantage. Wherever Tyranids attack a planet, the defenders look fearfully to the skies, for they know that every sky-borne shadow could be a flock of Gargoyles about to attack.




Tyranid Warriors
Versatile synapse infantry unit
Tyranid Warriors are the most adaptable of all the Hive Mind's bioforms. They are creatures from the blackest of nightmares, unstoppable killing machines with pulsing ichor for blood, needle-sharp teeth and darkly gleaming eyes that reveal a terrible intelligence at work. A Tyranid Warrior stands twice the height of a man, its carapace protected by a thick chitin. One might expect such a creature to be slow in its actions, but a Tyranid Warrior is lithe, with reactions as swift as a whip.




Raveners
Fast beast unit bred for close combat
Raveners are voracious predators, their clawed and snake-like bodies driven onwards by an all-consuming hunger. Twisted musculature grants these beasts a terrifying turn of speed. Raveners can bound over small obstacles in an eye-blink, dart between larger obstructions and even slither through flooded marshland with bewildering swiftness. The power house within the Raveners' wiry forms allows them to burrow long distances beneath a world's surface, before emerging in a spray of earth right in front of an enemy position, claws eviscerating their ambushed prey whilst their thorax-mounted weapon symbiotes spit death.




Zoanthropes
Synapse infantry unit with devastating psychic abilities
Zoanthropes are created solely to harness the psychic potential of the Hive Mind, and their bodies are perfected towards such a function. If necessary, a Zoanthrope can be used to extend the range of the Hive Mind’s synaptic control, utilising the beast’s vast cerebral capacity to relay its instructions to lesser creatures. A Zoanthrope’s link to the synaptic web is such that, by flexing the merest part of its mind, it can rain incandescent power on the enemy, projecting destructive bolts of energy that boils through adamantium plate and disintegrates flesh with equal ease.




Lictor
Stealth infantry unit
The Lictor is a highly specialised development of the Tyranid Warrior bioform, specifically adapted to fill a scout role in the vanguard of the Tyranid advance. Lictors rove ahead of the main body of a swarm, seeking out pockets of resistance to be eradicated and native life forms to be absorbed. Able to move swiftly and without sound through even the densest terrain, and concealed by a chameleonic carapace that renders it all but invisible to the naked eye, a Lictor can remain hidden until it chooses to strike. It can wait motionless for days, unnoticed by its victims, an unseen herald of approaching disaster.




Malanthrope
Support unit that consumes tiles and founds new cities
Malanthropes are rarely seen Tyranid creatures. This is because they are not truly warrior organisms, and so are not usually encountered by a prey world’s defenders. Instead, these floating creatures follow behind the Tyranid attack; they are typically created only after a prey world’s protectors have been defeated and the swarm is in the process of devouring the planet’s biomass. On those few occasions that a survivor has seen a Malanthrope and somehow escaped, they have brought with them a tale of horror. They report seeing these giants drift across corpse-strewn battlefields, but unlike other Tyranids, which mindlessly devour everything in their way, Malanthropes seem to selectively search through the slain – as to what they are searching for, none can say.




Hive Crone
Synapse flyer unit that excels against airborn targets
The Hive Crone is a flying monstrosity used by the Tyranids to establish air superiority over prey worlds. It is a creature perfectly adapted to aerial combat, able to wrestle enemy aircraft out of the skies as proficiently as any daredevil pilot at the control of a sophisticated jet-fighter.




Haruspex
Monstrous creature unit with a grasping tongue
The Tyranid Haruspex is a ferocious beast created to consume biomass at a sickening pace. It is possessed of a rapacious appetite, driven by the need to sate an infinite hunger. Few foes are foolish enough to stand before a feeding Haruspex, for it can devour an entire platoon of soldiers in a matter of moments, shovelling victim after victim into its craw without ever slowing down. Any morsel that proves too large to be swallowed in one gulp is seized with the Haruspex’s gargantuan claws and ripped, crushed or battered apart with negligent ease.




Carnifex
Monstrous creature unit with devastating close combat capabilities
Carnifexes are living engines of destruction, towering monsters of unyielding armoured chitin and knotted alien musculature. They are one of the toughest and deadliest of all of a hive fleet’s warrior creatures, created to spearhead assaults in massed battles. Though the Hive Mind’s has since created larger warrior-organisms, few are the Carnifex’s equal in terms of size to strength, nor in terms of sheer destructive potential.




Trygon
Monstrous creature unit that can initiate subterranean assaults
The Trygon is a vast serpentine creature, so colossal that it towers over even the mighty Carnifex. It is a heavily armoured monster, covered from head to tail with a thick carapace of shifting plates. As the Trygon moves, these plates generate a potent bio-static charge that courses along the length of the beast’s body and wreathes its bladed forelimbs with crackling power. The Trygon can direct this energy as a lethal high-voltage discharge – unleashing pulsing arcs of lightning that leave its prey as little more than a charred pile of scorched bone.




Exocrine
Monstrous artillery unit
Exocrines are feared for their ability to deal death from afar. The most distinctive feature of an Exocrine is its dorsal bio-cannon, which emits a high-pitched hiss a second before firing, giving its prey just enough time to realise the danger they are in before searing plasma scours them into atoms.




Tyrannofex
Monstrous creature unit with long-range weaponry that annihilates evne the heaviest vehicles
There can be little doubt that the massive Tyrannofex exists purely for destruction – it is a monster created for the most apocalyptic and gruelling of battlegrounds. Striding ominously towards their prey, these alien giants deal death from afar, shattering enemy battle lines with merciless salvos of bio-weapons fire. The only way to stop the unrelenting slaughter is to slay the beast, but a Tyrannofex has the fortitude of a living battle fortress and is heedless of all but the heaviest enemy ordnance. Clad in ablative layers of chitinous armour, a Tyrannofex is as unyelding as any war engine built of steel and born of conventional technology.




Tyranid Prime
Fearsome synapse hero unit that boosts allied Tyranid WarriorsTyranid Primes are the apex of the Tyranid Warrior strain, faster, stronger and smarter than the other Warriors they lead to battle, who instinctively emulate their deadly skills. Armed with deadly boneswords and a deathspitter, the Tyranid Prime mows through enemies with horrendous speed and strength.




Hive Tyrant
Flying synapse hero unit with terrifying psychic powers
Hive Tyrants are the commanders of the Tyranid swarms and enact the Hive Mind's will on the field of battle. Though individuals display a wide variety of physical characteristics, all Hive Tyrants are fearsome hulking monsters that tower over even a Dreadnought. They are brutally strong, able to shatter ferrocrete with sickening ease. Every part of such a beast's body is perfectly created to kill, even the layers of chitinous plating that protect them. A Hive Tyrant is a formidable opponent at any distance, as deadly with ranged weapons as it is with boneswords or claw.




Tervigon
Synapse hero unit that spawns armies of Termagants
The Tervigon is a massive synapse creature whose towering carapace shields a swollen abdomen. Though possessed of a formidable array of bio-weapons, from monstrous claws that crush any prey that ventures too close, to banks of razor-tipped spines that can be fired a considerable distance, the Tervigon's true threat lies within... Every Tervigon serves as a living incubator, within whose bloating form dozens upon dozens of Termagants slumber in a state of near-life. The Tervigon can spawn its dormant broods at will, jolting their minds into wakefulness.




Broodhive
Allows units to tunnel from one Broodhive to another
Where the Tyranids arrive, the plants that constitute the Broodhive travel with them. Rapidly proliferating from seeds left by the Tyranid swarm as they pass, these plants burrow their giant hollow roots through soil, metal or stone, enabling Tyranids to pass undetected between areas.




https://store.steampowered.com/app/995860/Warhammer_40000_Gladius__Tyranids/
Jan 13, 2019
All-devouring Tyranid swarms arrive in Warhammer 40k: Gladius this week
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War

Every Warhammer fan’s favorite army of biological horrors is coming to Warhammer 40,000: Gladius—Relics of War this week, releasing on January 15th. Tyranids are a swarm of devouring monsters, and play like them, with unique mechanics catered to that theme. Tyranids will apparently build up and expand by stripping biomass from their enemies, their own units, and the environment itself. Tyranid cities will strip their surroundings bare of resources. It sounds like an interesting, mobile play style focused on sprawling and adapting to the situation rather than digging in and building up defenses. They also don’t use the same resources as others, using a flexible biomass pool to build up rather than food and ore.

Gladius is a 4X strategy game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. At release, our Tom Senior called it “a solidly made strategy game, but a bland one” where most of the races didn’t have too much to differentiate them from one another aside from unity variety. You can read his review here. We’ll see if the Tyranids’ new mechanics can shake that up—you can read a post from the game’s developers here for more details. 

You can find Warhammer 40,000: Gladius—Relics of War and its Tyranids expansion on Steam. I’m hoping the all-devouring swarm manages to chew a few words out of the game’s title. 

Jan 10, 2019
You asked for it...
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - Alberto
On Tuesday January 15th we will be releasing the new DLC, Tyranids.

The new expansion focuses on a brand new race with new gameplay mechanics, a range of new units, a new research tree and much more. We are looking forward to seeing how players will react to the addition of such a unique race.

Tyranids will be accompanied by a free update. It will contain many tweaks and improvements, but chief among them is something many players asked for.

Well, without further ado... Steam Achievements are coming to Warhammer 40,000: Gladius!

55 achievements have been added, covering unique goals for each of the five races. We can't wait to hear what you think of them.

What else is there to say? Tomorrow we will have a thorough look at Tyranids, live on Twitch! Tune in at 7 pm CET on our Twitch channel for our preview Stream. On Monday we will post a new article, detailing the new Tyranid units. And on Tuesday, Emperor preserve us, the Tyranids will invade!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/995860/Warhammer_40000_Gladius__Tyranids/
Jan 9, 2019
Tyranids preview stream live on Twitch!
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War - Alberto



We said this week we would show everything of the new DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Gladius, Tyranids.

We already spoke at length of the new gameplay mechanics yesterday, and we'll follow up every day with news about the new DLC.

Today we have very interesting news in store for you. We are going to stream the new expansion on Friday January 11th live on Twitch, for the first time ever!

Don't miss this exclusive first-look preview stream - Agrippa Maxentius will lead his very own Tyranid swarm. We'll see if he manages to conquer Gladius Prime at 7 pm CET, this Friday, on our Twitch channel.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/995860/Warhammer_40000_Gladius__Tyranids/
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