Update 3.9: Bomb card, sockets

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.09.0! This update makes the Bomb Card available to members, and adds an experimental sockets feature.

Bomb Card

The Bomb Card can now be used in general games by members!

The Bomb Card allows you to target an enemy or neutral territory and kill half of the armies on that territory. You can target any territory that’s adjacent to one of your own territories.

If the number of armies is odd, the remaining armies on the territory will round down. So targeting a territory with 5 armies will leave 2, and targeting a territory with 1 army will leave 0. The Bomb Card does not change the ownership of the territory, even when reducing it to 0. Bombs take place after deployments, but before attacks (and also before abandons/airlifts).

Since it kills half of the armies on a territory, it’s most effective when your opponent builds a single large stack of armies. Therefore, when your opponent has a Bomb Card, you should try to keep your armies into separate smaller stacks when possible to reduce its effectiveness. This can have a big impact on a game’s strategy!

If you’re a member, you can create games with the bomb card immediately!

Sockets (experimental)

WarLight now offers an experimental feature to speed up the refresh speed of games.

First, let’s review how games refresh today. While in a game, you can click the Menu button to reveal a Refresh button. Below this refresh button, there’s a green bar that fills up. Once it fills up, the button is silently clicked and your client asks the server if anything has changed in that game. Because of this, there can be a 5-20 second delay between when something happens in a game and when it appears in your browser (such as the game advancing to the next turn, someone chatting, or committing orders.)

In this update, we’ve added the ability to create a two-way link between your client and the server. Whenever something happens in a game, the server will actually tell your client about what happened, so it appears on your screen immediately. This completely eliminates the delay, and also eliminates the need to click the Refresh button manually.

To enable sockets, check the box on this page: https://www.warlight.net/ChangeSockets. Let me know if it works for you or not!