Shadows of Forbidden Gods
V0.11: Modding
As such, this version now introduces the full range of mods, letting enthusiastic members of the community contribute their own visions of apocalyptic darkness and Lovecraftian terror. Full C# modding allows them to write code to be run alongside the game's own, and add to nearly every part of the game. Already a number of gods are being play tested, from Uravlv's Living Void, to Wonderblundr's expansion of the Deep Ones, to the demonic Kishi from Doopliss and NPC's Ixthus (apologies if I missed anyone, the discord moves so fast and new gods are introduced so quickly it's hard to keep up).
Alongside this, further opening up of the game allows texture mods, and already on the Steam Workshop Scrdest has put an AI to good use, generating thematically appropriate art replacements for items which Shadows' usual collection of old paintings couldn't cover.
This is a very exciting time, and while this update might potentially be a bit bumpy, as we work out the last few unexpected issues with the modding process (hopefully nothing too major will come up), it will herald a new chapter for the game.
Sadly, the Insect God has been delayed. It will remain on the beta-branch for another version, waiting for some art assets and a bit more work and balancing before it's fully ready. Fear not, it's well on the way, and playable on the Steam beta-branch, if you want to risk more bugs than just the infested fungal monstrosities it introduces.
Holy Orders have also been improved a bit, with the first pass of a set of `Divine' Entities which humanity worships. Their trust in these creatures may or may not be well-placed, as you can occasionally sway them to your sides, if you pay attention to their desires. This feature too will hopefully be expanded in the next update, along with the finishing up of the Insect God. Normally I'd have delayed a bit more, but there were so many great mods in such a good state of completion, it felt rude to tell the modders to wait for me to be done with my bit before they could show their work to the general public.
In detail:
Gameplay:
-Victory is now calculated, in most cases, as percentages of population
-Ophanim's sap life only drains one temple's population, as opposed to all temples
-If you force a hero to retreat when attacking you, the default menace/profile gain is now lower
-The hunger is now a level 2 blood magic
-Heirophants' special abilities now cost 40 complexity, but add 50% of their intrigue to the progress per turn
-Rulers preference towards Deep One now increases or decreases the cult's maturation speed
-Theocracies won't join battles if they risk attacking other theocracies
-Your agents can cure madness in a location, if need be (not madness effects in locations, however)
-Holy Orders now worship minor divine entities, which have an agenda, and will reward/punish you for changing the world to fit their desires
-Sovereigns can now appoint 'national religions' which will force all their kingdom to adopt their Holy Order
-Your corrupted acolytes or agents from nation-state religions can preach to sovereigns to get them to like your Holy Order to a higher degree
-Your agents can 'undermine religion' in an infiltrated temple in a multi-faith nation to reduce the sovereign's liking for the temple's religion
Other:
-Mod loader added, to allow you to enable or disable mods and to re-order them if necessary
-Mods can now change parameter file
-Mods can add cultural naming schemes
-Map view for population added
-Game now checks for resolution issues more aggressively, and should avoid being in the wrong resolution in fullScreen mode, regardless of minimising and system resolution changes mid-game
-Dark tendril graphics now cover more of the face, to be more obvious in dark background situations
-You can now click on a unit's task on the left-hand-side to go to its destination, if it is performing a "go perform challenge" task or a "go to location" task
Bugfixes:
-Holy Orders can't be turned into Dark Empires
-Fixed graphical issue with orc warlords
-You can no longer perform 'unite the hordes' while either horde is at war
-Fixed Iastur's mechanics description
-Ghasts (and other uncontrollable evil units) can no longer be stolen from
-Witches covens can now turn into Deep One sanctums
-Organised dissent now properly ends on the death of the ruler
-Bugfixes to orc expansion behaviour in locations with ancient ruins
-Attempt at reducing the risk of clicks outside of the game causing undesired inputs
-Fixed bug with Iastur power gain not giving the 33% amount gained
-Lay low can no longer cause profile/menace to increase
-Acolytes will no longer consider curses such as Deep One or The Hunger as 'not a Holy Task'
-Typing into the map filter should no longer move or scale the map
-Fixed bug in insanity
V0.10 Hotfix
-Vampire AI was causing a null object exception occasionally if they were considering using 'well of shadows'
-Mid-Challenge event allowed you to pay gold you didn't have
V0.10 Hotfix
-Ultra-wide support restored, fixing a bug which caused the game to be unplayable due to a bug in the main game start screen
-Keybinding fixes, no longer crashes the game when opened
-Hero mages will have a reduced desire to attack your channellers when at high shadow
-Enshadowed heroes will have reduced motivation to restore corrupted Holy Orders
V0.10: Holy Orders and Art Update
Community member and serial modder Brad "Zer0Morph" Bolenbaugh has been updating the faces of the heroes and the rulers to reflect their level of enshadowment. This new style better reflects the existing art (used for the Dark Coronation event), and the enshadowment black bar is replaced with dark tendrils, to match how location infiltration is depicted. This new style lets the concept of humans becoming blind to the evil which is corrupting their world be seen more dramatically and uniquely.
Alongside this, new art for location effects, such as Mammon's influence or warding, has been added, which lets other icons appear alongside these effects on the map. This should increase the readability of the map. Work has also been done on the mid-challenge events to modernise them, giving them more balanced results, more diversity and more consistent art choices. This should be an ongoing project for the next few versions, if all goes well, increasing the game's flavour and gameplay variety.
Regarding the Holy Orders, these are international organisations, which can exist across the borders of human nations, and bring a wide variety of effects. They have temples, acolytes to spread their faith and can even choose prophets for themselves.
They mostly initially start allied to humanity, and the acolytes of the faith do something of benefit from humanity, which ranges from healing plagues to pre-emptively placing wards to warning of Deep One corruption to raising awareness of the Elder Gods themselves. If you can influence them, however, you can corrupt them from within and make your own dark religion, which has a host of different options to choose from to undermine humanity. Each God brings their own unique option for corrupting Holy Orders, and Ophanim starts with his own pet Holy Order to twist as he sees fit.
The prophecy system allows you to engage in mini-quests to get your agents possibly appointed as 'prophet' of a religion, gaining you major passive influence gain. Potentially the most extreme example of this is by getting The Baroness to convince a human religion that vampirism is a more reliable source of immortality than trusting in some unseen divine being, and turning them into a cult of blood drinking murderers.
Witches are also expanded, becoming a Holy Order in their own right, with a few unique tenets and some unique art. This makes them more flexible in gameplay terms, and expands on their lore, making them not just 'evil women living in the forest'. Just as you can corrupt a human Holy Order, there is a chance that humanity will try to redeem the witches, and make them into a force for good, working against you.
Work on Holy Orders is not quite finished, and more expansion, polish and possibly even additional mechanics can be expected in future updates. Just like gods are being updated as the game progresses, other mechanics can also be revisited and improved. On that note, the very first god, She Who Will Feast, has received a new power and rebalanced end-game, bringing her more inline with how she is meant to be played.
Patch notes in detail:
Gameplay:
-Holy Orders added
-Bribe Guards can't be stacked
-Possession now cancels the action the unit is taking when it ends
-The Cursed now fulfils her vow of vengeance if the target dies, even if she did not kill the individual
-The Cursed's vow of vengeance now also gives her paralysis trait a 5-turn disruption to the hero she attacked (if they survived), making her a better disruption hit-and-run unit
-Mammon's Give/Take has been removed, and replaced with a shadow market/smuggling pair, which allow you to siphon wealth off from an infiltrated city to another. This is designed to make Mammon require agents, and give heroes more ways to counter you
-Ghasts require more death modifier in a location (15% -> 25%), menace for creating ghasts increased 7 -> 10, shadow generation reduced by 20%
-Ghasts now properly recognise they can't enshadow an area with high wards
-Vampires are now necromancers and can create ghasts, feed heals them to full
-Monstrous armies, such as ravenous dead or the First Daughter, now motivate the creation of the grand army by the Chosen One and for weaker nations to join The Alliance
-Added "Organise Dissent" challenge, which adds a long lasting modifier which decreases security and increases unrest
-If orcs are disabled, adds the statistically equivalent 'bandit king' (no unique talents)
-Dark Coronation is now a command challenge
-Menace gained from armies driving back heroes increased from 5 to 20
-Bountiful harvest buffed: Does more, drains the locus less and AI heroes are far more enthusiastic about using it
-Heroes can now remove shadow from rulers if the ruler is below 50% enshadowment, using the drive back shadow challenge
-Shadow averaging: Rulers lose shadow when they cause their settlement to become enshadowed, and vice-versa, till they reach a near-equal degree of enshadowment
-Victory points now include population lost, replacing settlements lost
-Orc banners can now target other orc hordes for war
-Added "plague ships" challenge, which spreads plague along sea trade routes to the next port
-Quarantine effectiveness increased (requires plague > 140% for spread to occur)
-Orc hordes can now be unified together by a character holding two banners
-Mammon now increases minimum world panic, the same as other gods
-Ophanim doubt now less random, more consistent in its appearance, while still being based on the same factors
-Ophanim now works on a percentage based system, where the VP gained is a proportion to the population in Ophanim controlled nations
-If you colonise unclaimed areas, humanity will attempt to do the same to keep up
-Alliance locations now prevent infiltration from being attempted
-Ophanim faith now reduces security, to a max of -3
-She Who Will Feast now gains the ability to enshadow along trade routes using her new power "Serpent's Coils"
-Ophanim has his own Holy Order, with unique tenets
-Vinerva grants access to the "A Darker Nature" tenet in the witches, which allows them to increase the effects of her gifts
-She Who Will Feast grants access to the "Sect of the Serpent" tenet in Holy Orders, which transfers menace away from your agents to their acolytes and temples (can't drop below minimum)
-Iastur grants access to "Maddening Insights" tenet in Holy Orders, which causes rulers to go insane while mages research Arcane Secrets
-Mammon grants access to "Indulgences" tenet in Holy Orders, which causes rulers of the faith to transfer gold to your agents when in the same location
-She Who Will Feast now starts at 200HP, and grows only by 1HP/turn, down from 3/turn
-National colours will try to avoid duplicating each other, to improve map readability
-Map icons changed for: Ward, Devastation, Ophanim Faith, Ophanim Doubt and Mammon Influence. Surrounds the map location graphic, to allow a second icon to be displayed alongside them
-The Laughing Tome now drops if the current holder dies (including rulers)
Other:
-Wars now give AI reasons
-Issue where a national action might appear on the UI for a location with no nation is fixed
-Map view buttons in bottom right are now a collapsible list and give the currently assigned key
-The game now recalls map settings, such as size or orc presence
-The game now remembers its previous size if resized in windowed mode
-The magical arms race can be toggled off in the map options
-Military escorts from rulers can also be disabled
-Units now arrange themselves to avoid overlapping the place name if there are fewer than 4 in a location
-Added new game option for islands type map
-Various views in the scrollable right-hand side can be given filter text
-Non-guitar music disabled due to copyright hits
Bugfixes:
-The Cursed now properly applies defence reduction
-Volcanic Eruption range fixed
-Madess effects at locations can only occur once while the madness effect is active
-Vampires will no longer cast well of shadows on locations without enshadowable neighbours
-Medical Experiments now requires the appropriate amount of plague
-Heroes driven off by armies won't continue their attack
-Ophanim's 'Duality' trait will now flip states properly
-Confessor heroes won't drive themselves insane
-Names will be less likely to be repeated in people/houses
-Difficulty buttons fixed
-Sectarian violence, if it reduces population to zero, will now properly remove the settlement
-Armies will now engage agents properly
-Game will now check for resolution in full-screen mode more consistently, when minimising
-Heroes will now dismiss military escort knights if they are over their command limit (or other minions)
-Minions and items will now be lost if Iastur's Supplicant uses the 'favourite toy' trait
-Ghasts now automatically stop enshadowing if Ophanim Faith appears in their location
-Ruler's aversion to being executed by joining The Alliance increased to -450
-The game won't crash if the Conclave of Peace fixes a grudge against a House (from a Vendetta)
V0.9: Mammon
Mammon will be an ongoing project for the next few versions, as indeed will other gods, as the various new mechanics get balanced against each other, and as the UI gets polished up. Consequently, V0.9 introduced some new improvements to Iastur, and to madness in general, hopefully making them more capable of exciting emergent gameplay and game narrative. New UI views and some polish to existing UI should also help out with making sense of the game's world.
The Alliance also gains some new capabilities, helped out by the Chosen One. Conclaves are ways for the Chosen One to rally the international community, and grant powerful advantages to humanity, in its fight against you. Grudges can be settled, plagues cured and militaries rallied, if the conclave succeeds. Against this political threat, you can disrupt politically, or attack directly, assassinating key individuals or assaulting the Chosen One to force them to stop their task.
In detail:
Gameplay:
-Iastur's end game changed. Now has 'Waves of Madness' at the Elder Tomb, a channelled power which causes insanity with each successful cast
-Iastur can add arcane fortress to the Elder Tomb, but power regen can make this a difficult choice
-Iastur only regenerates power when the tome is in a human settlement now
-Iastur now regenerates power at 33% speed, rather than 0%, when the tome is not deployed
-Heroes can no longer harm Iastur's soul. The Chosen One and heroes both have their own assigned win-game quest at the Elder Tomb, which serve well enough now that magic channelling exists
-If the Laughing Tome is held too long by heroes it automatically drops and is re-usable, without harming Iastur (prevents heroes getting distracted while carrying it)
-'Political Gridlock' challenge can now be performed even if the current location is experiencing political gridlock, allowing infinite chaining
-Monarch now gains "Make an Example" unique challenge, allowing her to execute a noble to reduce unrest and political agitation
-Orc Buccaneer added, able to raid trade routes at sea. Requires an orc shipyard, and is designed to harvest gold to feed to orc hordes and command them in battle, with traits which reduce her risk of attack while at high-menace
-Trickster's minion, Mister Edgar, can now steal items if the Trickster retreats from combat (or if their opponent does), and can retreat during the 'flee' phase
-Heroes have an aversion to acting in locations where they would take damage from an army due to their high menace and profile
-Possession menace gain doubled, 10 -> 20
-Relatives of possessed characters have a chance to hate the blood mage performing the ritual
-Blood magic warlocks will start with one arcane secret
-Insanity expanded. Effects are now more complex, to improve emergent gameplay, and support Iastur and future sources insanity. (partially complete, ongoing beta-branch project)
-Heroes now won't try to get another manticore trophy after their first one
-The Baroness' 'Command of Vermin' trait now gives one vermin every fifth turn, rather than up to 3 at the start of combat
-Manticores now don't die if the location they are in is destroyed
-The Dark Empire and Ophanim Theocracies allow your agents to take/give to nobles freely, by setting the "rob treasury" challenge to a 0/0/1 menace/profile/complexity challenge
-The First Daughter now requires a standard challenge on a human soul, replacing previous event-based trigger system
-Human armies will attempt to avoid over-committing, by avoiding engaging enemies which are already under attack by sufficient other human armies
-Human armies will remain at base if enough of the nation's military has been deployed against a lesser foe, allowing some to remain as defensive reserves
-Human geomancy can now be performed by agents (nurture and bountiful harvest)
-Vinerva Choking Spores slowly decay over time
-Human nations will gain motivation to perform a 'war on threat' against a nearby nation which has high-menace points of interest in one or more of its settlements
-Human Armies will now target high-menace locations during raid on threat wars, if they are not from the Dark Empire or an Ophanim Theocracy
-Heroes won't consider guarding other heroes from nations they are at war with
-The Chosen One can now called 'conclaves' which allows various rulers and heroes to support a collective action, to gain humanity an advantage in the face of their common foe
-Agents can now remove bandits
-Agents can now fund outposts, of either the Dark Empire or another nation if their menace is low
-Holy Sites now have a chance to have catacombs beneath them, which will accumulate the death from neighbouring locations
-The Alliance will automatically start an outpost when it razes a location
-Infamous now requires 20 menace and profile to become available
-Human settlements falling should have better feedback as to why they fell, as well as adding better info to the ruler death message
-Arcane secrets can now be given a 'dangerous knowledge' feature, which will cause them to cause sanity damage to any hero using them
-The CO will far more aggressively seek to fulfil the prophecy towards the game's end
-Plague spread nerfed slightly, population loss reduced when <100%
-Orcs will be less enthusiastic about attacking armies far away, especially refugees
-Orcs can now plunder from human settlements. This will take some gold back and place it in a 'orc plunder' modifier for your agents to draw from (if infiltrated). Heroes can raid this plunder for their own gain
-Iastur's "Just a game" sanity damage goes from 7 to 14
-Mammon's armoured populace now generates seal-breaking points for Mammon while they fight and raze
-Humans who die under The Hunger can now be returned to life as a full Vampire, who will automatically spread shadow. Vampires feeding will often cause The Hunger in a hero or ruler, who might then one day also become a vampire
-'Access Cache' challenge now gives a description of the contents of the cache
-Ghasts' enshadow is now blocked by wards, and they will avoid trying to enshadow a warded location
-Iastur's "waves of madness" tomb challenge no longer affects Ghasts, Deep Ones and Orcs
-After the game is won/lost, the heroes can no longer perform the win the game quests, and the CO can gain shadow and menace
-Heroes with The Hunger will now have a bias towards avoiding feeding in high-shadow areas, unless their hunger is high
-Trickster unique abilities reduced in menace
-Plague growth speed now scales with difficulty
Other:
-The Mountain no longer has status effects on the map, to allow its unique art to be seen
-If you dismiss a message type, it will not show other messages of that same type which were generated in the same turn
-The game options screen now lets you return to the main menu
-Added 'House' map view
-Added 'Shadow' map view
-Added 'Ruler Shadow' map view
-Modifier view now alphabetically sorted
Bugfixes:
-Iastur's personality manipulation powers now work on rulers, as the tooltip said
-Fixed possession being usable on the Chosen One
-Fixed the "Fascination" location madness outcome to prevent it from giving infinite power
-The Chosen One won't have a motivation to attack heroes from the "at war" or "international relations" cause if their home is a dark empire or ophanim nation
-If The Alliance is turned into a Dark Empire it will cease to be The Alliance
-Fixed bug where two deep one cults could be created in the same location
-Orc upstarts now die if their society is destroyed
-Fixed bug where enshadowed rulers could order attacks on high-menace armies
-Fixed bug in which tasks were being considered 'claimed' by an agent who was off doing something else
-Fixed Portable Skeleton Item not being consumed
-Fixed issue with hero location for personal ability (such as Feed) being incorrectly set
More bugfixes & UI. V0.9, with Mammon, now on beta-branch
On the beta-branch, V0.9 makes its debut. It brings the Elder God Mammon, the spirit of greed, envy and decadence. As with any new god, it'll be fairly unbalanced and some mechanics may well need polishing/adding/removing, but that's what Early Access is for, and the beta-branch is the most early of early accesses.
Mammon revolves around dividing humanity, especially rulers, and exploiting these divisions. He specialises in causing wars, both civil and international, between those who have wealth, the decadent, and those who do not, the greedy. While under his influence, humanity's soul will be tested, as those who want try to take from those who have.
Ideally Mammon will be in beta for a month, before reaching the main branch. At that point, he can be rebalanced in a slower way as the other gods have.
On that subject, Iastur gets some changes, along with madness updates. Hopefully this will bring Iastur up to a finished level of polish, barring some balance changes when all mechanics are in.
Specific main branch changes (beta-branch to be discussed on the forums):
Gameplay:
-Rulers can no longer command the Chosen One to attack a target using a cavalry escort
-Desecrate challenges in holy sites can't be performed in Ophanim theocracies or dark empires
-The Laughing Tome will automatically drop when carried by a fully insane character
-The Laughing Tome will automatically drop when carried by a character who is neither a hero nor a ruler
-Changed wording on vengeance message when justified, with special case for non-humans killing a person a hero wanted dead
-Caches now disappear when emptied completely
UI:
-Added map view to see hero and ruler preferences
Bugfixes:
-Armies will no longer eternally try to burn down a Vinerva Manifestation with a high-menace heart in it
-Fixed bug in local actions with a dead/missing ruler
-Potentially fixed bug where an army was trying to raze a ruined settlement forever
-Fixed UI glitch with ruinous blade
-Fixed UI referring to trading between agents as robbing
-Abdicate now properly uses the DANGER tag, to make cowards more likely to give up their crown
-You no longer gain menace for driving back non-humans (such as orcs) using armies
-Humans will no longer guard non-humans
-Fixed description of 'novel strain'
Bugfixes and UI updates: Family trees and heartless fishmen
This update brings a prototype family tree view, which allows you to determine who's a grandchild of whom, at the very least. It also fixes a bug which had been previously introduced which caused the world to descend into unrest far too readily, due to rulers' gold evaporating. Ideally currency will be a bit more stable in this version.
With these fixes, Mammon can be moved back onto the workbench, for some final tweaks and updates before he goes on the beta-branch.
Changes in detail:
Gameplay:
-Hero units (and all non-commandable ones in general) now go first, then all commandable units, to make pursuit more predictable
-Orc Warlord's "commandeer ships" can now supply any horde's shipyards, not just his own
-The Baroness no longer can level up Death Magic as a starting trait
-Changed how the manticore trophy's exclusivity works (you can gain multiple, but all but one of the trophies carried by an agent will be 'disabled' as long as the agent has multiple trophies)
-Heroes can no longer recruit minions from the Dark Empire and Ophanim theocracies
-You can recruit Knights from the Dark Empire and Ophanim theocracies
-Vinerva's gift of nectar now expires over time
-Deep Ones will no longer mourn their dead
-Ophanim theocracies will rapdily increase their international relationship
-Ravenous dead will only go after locations with death magic >35, up from 20
-Harvester can now be ordered to follow a target unit
-The Chosen One won't be recreated after the game is won/lost
-Wars now last longer if they started further away
UI:
-Save games can contain spaces again
-Reworded The Cursed's trait to be a bit more informative
-Added an option to select if you want the game to zoom to an idle agent when you hit end turn
-Map now correctly applies a red filter to nations at war with the selected unit
-Introduced a somewhat work-in-progress family tree view
-Added temperature to the UI for locations
-Madness effects now better displayed in modifier viewer
-Rob hero restriction moved to the proper restriction part of the UI
Bugfixes:
-Added more checks to prevent nations from declaring war on non-existent nations (including those which join Alliance and thus lose independence)
-Deep Ones won't keep trying to start a cult in ruins
-Armies won't capture locations if they are turned into ruins on the same turn
-Societies which take ruins, under any condition, will release control of it
-Heroes won't consider their own disruption task when evaluating if to disrupt an agent
-Sibling relationships rechecked, due to some being missed
-Bug in which a person could be a ruler and a hero if they abdicated at the exact right time fixed (but potential for ruler-heroes remains open)
-Fixed issue whereby a Deep One could be a baroness
-Fixed a bug which was draining all ruler gold reserves over time, causing nations to decay into unrest
-Heroes won't use 'nurture' on hexes with habitability > 90%
-Fixed Vinerva's Choking Spores' description and requirements
-Renaming of warlord, hierophant and warlock now works normally
-Ogres are now always removed when performing 'recruit ogre' challenge
-Humans no longer retain control over ruins or Vinerva manifestations at the end of the turn
-Fixed an issue where a nation could declare war on itself if the Alliance formed under a sovereign with >50% shadow
-Heroes will no longer use orc banners to cause the orcs to attack their home
-The Chosen One can't be a mage
-Improved Alliance vs orc military AI a bit
-Fixed AI issue which may have caused unexpected hostility between armies of nations who were ostensibly at peace
Regular Bugfix and UI: Ghosts no longer die of old age
This particular patch introduces a feature I thought was technically impossible, full-map zoomout, which on testing previously had rendered the game unplayable. Thanks to some new implementation choices, it seems to be functional, and so is available to be enabled in the game options. Be aware, it may degrade framerates and potentially increase memory usage on some hardware.
Patch notes in detail:
Gameplay:
-Midchallenge events will no longer occur when performing: Lay low, lay low (non-human) or rest and resupply
-Orc Warlords can no longer recruit/dismiss their orc raiders when a unit is moving to attack them
-The Chosen One will never guard another hero
-Rob hero now has a 5 turn cooldown, to prevent spamming it to gain menace for Infamous trait abuse
UI:
-Fixed Minion screen incorrectly claiming you could have 4 minions
-Fixed certain agents and She Who Will Feast from causing graphical issues on other nearby units on the map screen
-Reverted nation map view, to restore readability. Other views unaffected
-You can now click on a modifier or subsettlement type in the modifier/subsettlement viewer to 'pin' it, allowing you to use the mouse to pan around the map to view their locations
-Locations now have their modifier strengths displayed numerically in the modifier viewer mask
-The UI gives a message when you gain a point of power
-The game can now be set to allow extreme zoom, allowing you to view the entire map at once. May degrade performance on certain machines, but seems stable as a rule
-Reaching max trait count no longer causes the game to be unable to progress
-Game now gives a breakdown of food sources when hovering over the food value in the location UI
-Added UI popout for armies's challenges and actions on left-hand side
-Agents with minions can now open the minion dismissal screen from the actions on the right-hand side
Bugfixes:
-Changed how gold is represented internally to remove some UI oddities (change from double to integer values)
-Fixed tooltip for 'root out doubters', increased effect to max 60% removed
-Save dialog no longer accepts special characters, which would produce an unreadable save file
-If the Courtier has two items from the same person, both won't be expended when performing a 'cause scandal' challenge
-Ghasts can no longer die of old age
Yet more updates and bugfixes
One core bugfix is to the save files, which should now be smaller (designed to be entirely compatible with existing saves). This will make saving and loading a bit faster, especially towards the end-game, and possible fix an out-of-memory bug.
Alongside the bugfixes are some UI changes. Map masks are changed a bit, including two new ones, one for finding traits (could allow more interesting trait behaviour now it's easier to find them) and one for trade routes (which do nothing right now, but will be critical for Mammon when he (it?) is added soon (hopefully he'll arrive on Steam's beta-branch around beginning of next month)).
More work needs doing on the UI, including ideally a family-tree view, a list of a society's nobles and useful details about them and some tidying-up, and this will form the remainder of this month's non-bug-related work.
Gameplay:
-Heroes motivation to redeem other heroes now is affected by their own shadow to a greater degree
-Increased the lethality of combat (reverting previous change made)
UI:
-Updated map masks to make them more functional (units and heroes now get highlighted) and allow more mask types
-Clicking the flag on a location or unit will pan to the capital (if any) and enable special map move highlighting that society's units and locations
-Expanded person view at a location has a go-to button to let you find heirs rapidly
-Challenges now update more frequently, eliminating issues where the challenge might not be visible until next turn
-Fixed issue with non-updating agent list when selecting a location
-If a character goes to full shadow in one turn the game will no longer also show the "character half-enshadowed" message
-Agents who have not been issued orders will block the 'End Turn' button/key the first time it is clicked. If re-clicked, they will perform a 'pass turn' action. This can also be set using the ENTER key (rebindable)
-Trade route map view set to 9 (rebindable). Trade routes at the moment do nothing, but the functionality is needed for Mammon and future mechanics
-Trait map view set to F1 (rebindable). Lets you find rulers or units who are mourning, exorcists, or just have bonuses to might
-Orcs now have place names for their settlements
Bugfixes:
-Changed some stuff internally to improve save/load performance
-Fixed difficulty description on main page for ultrawide monitors
-Fixed bug where Plague Doctor's 'New Outbreak' ability could be used in locations with plague
-Fixed volcano dealing damage to its caster
-Fixed volcano not being recognised as cause of death to nearby units if they drop to exactly 0HP
-Refugees can no longer be ordered into battle by human rulers
-Prevented issue whereby two agents could kill each other on the same turn
-Potion of Healing no longer allows you to come back from the dead in a glitched state
-Societies now can't be 'at war' with societies which have been eradicated
-Fixed (I believe?) a bug relating to anomalous behaviour of ogres (sharing HP and randomly disappearing)
-Fixed issue with second tutorial being unplayable by players with machines set to certain languages
-Updated tooltip for Malign Catch challenge and modifier to reflect previous changes
Bugfixes and UI improvements
I'm currently not sure about including the profile/menace minimums, they were tried ages back but I removed them because I thought it cluttered the already very busy UI too much. Maybe it's fine, though, and the benefit outweighs the cost.
In detail:
Gameplay:
-Human armies (of all nations including Ophanim and Dark Empire) now ignore refugees
UI:
-Added gold to location overview (treasury)
-Added XP to challenge overview
-Fixed mini challenge button placement to avoid unclickable regions of buttons appearing
-Hero finder no longer highlights your agents' home locations
Bugfixes:
-Ghasts no longer try to continue to enshadow locations if the settlement is destroyed
-Fix issue with failure to build tiny maps (8x8)
-Additional fixes to name gen
-Fixed issue with multiple 'descend' actions being available to agents with the call of the abyss
-Fixed one mechanism by which a dead society could create a human outpost
-Prevented heroes from bodyguarding heroes who are bodyguarding, to prevent chains of bodyguards or heroes guarding each other
-Fixed multiple duplicate socities from existing and appearing in international view
-Fixed abdication action not reducing political instability by enough
-Warlords can now spawn in any fortress, as the tooltip says, rather than the orc's capital fortress