Lore research has been substantially expanded with a discovery event being generated on every level increase in a particular lore.
Lore Discovery Types: Mastery progress, Mastery unlocks, Research project progress, free Research project initiation, resource caches, unit battle modifiers (offensive/defensive), recruitment cost modifiers, Ancient Evil information.
Custom Discoveries for many lores, to be expanded in the future. This means that lore research will yield discovery bonus related to the subject of that lore (Celestials, Demons, Ancient Evils, etc.).
Nomadic raiders will now also consider the power of army units when determining whether to launch a new raid, and not merely the army size.
Improved the generation of Knightly Orders to have better matching with generated cultures and races.
World settings regarding marauders and world "danger" level is now considered in additional relevant events.
Rebalanced some city building stat modifiers and resource output.
City building availability is now predicated on a wider variety of cultural and factional (city-owner) traits and attributes. Alignment in particular is now relevant.
New city building: Ancestral Shrine.
New city building: Tannery.
New city building: Leatherworkers' Guild.
New city building: Tailors' Guild.
Added generic Knight (Shadow/Chaos/Dragon) unit types, so that these are available for research, even when no chapter house or dynamically generated world org/faction exists for the Knights.
Improved the Plane name generation routines.
Substanstially expanded naming variety for Grim/Evil flavor characters, cultures and realms.
Dynamic unit generation now includes more weapons in the range of potential options.
New unit type: Tarrasque.
New unit type: Basilisks.
New unit type: Hungering Wisps.
Randomly generated special characters and notables for Celestials and Demons, which can be discovered via lore research. They are also tied to the existing world generation hooks and themes. These will be given additional agency and player opportunity for interaction (e.g. recruitment) in future updates. Similar notables will be added for other special races.
User Interface and Graphics:
Lore section added to the Wizard window making it easier to get a quick overview of lore progress, gained benefits/discoveries, and starting new lore research.
The middle mouse button can now be used to drag-pan the map.
Several entities (units, spells, etc.) now have a rarity attribute which will affect the display frames. The graphics are not final, and the rarities are in some cases related to power when they have not been categorized for actual rarity yet.
Wizard Templates can now be filtered according to whether they are custom or premade.
Wizard Templates are now ordered alphabetically.
Optimized the map free-text search.
The tutorial can now be permanently disabled from the settings window. Until re-enabled, it will no longer be launched on every new game start.
Map border thickness can now be configured from the settings window.
Shrines now have proper map graphics instead of a placeholder icon.
Ruins now have proper map graphics instead of a placeholder icon.
Selection prompts for sites, armies and units will now automatically include only the relevant type of entity when clicking on the map.
Reworked the selection of battle spells when a large number of spells are available. This should now be more intuitive.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where the random number generator was re-seeded during world generation, in some cases leading to unintended repetition during parts of the generation process.
Fixed several crash bugs related to interactions with some sites if they had no main culture (but could have).
Fixed a memory leak related to map sprites.
Fixed a display bug on the Projects tab of the Wizard window.
Fixed a bug with AI army pathing, which could cause them to get stuck.
Fixed a number of crash bugs related to character tasks and office assignments.
Fixed the strange results (and occasional crash) caused when trying to generate mercenaries from cultures with a very limited selection of unit types. In the very rare case that no unit types exist, wolves will be used as a fallback.
Fixed a bug in the resolution and generation of worker skill training options.
Fixed several bugs related to blocking and calculation of block values during battles.
Fixed a bug where pending recruitment was not correctly cancelled when the location was lost.
Fixed some goody hut display bugs and messy display text parts.
Fixed a number of bugs related to religious actions and sites.
Fixed a bug causing message windows to be un-closable.
Fixed a bug affecting the spell dropdown on the battle window.
Fixed a bug related to site construction which could causes crashes or sometimes a 'lock/freeze'.
Fixed a bug related to splitting armies.
Patch 0.9.141.1 Additions:
Fixed issue with display name for pops with Noble as primary trait
Changed the spell Endow Peerage to add Noble as a secondary trait instead of primary, making it possible to have Noble Warriors, Noble Merchants, etc.
Fixed Rivers not saving correctly when created in the Map Editor
Fixed some Research Projects reappearing as valid although already researched
Fixed some Research Projects showing as "unavailable due to requirements" when they were actually already researched
Added a helper graphics when creating rivers in the map editor, one highlighting the hex corner under the mouse and another showing the currently active river segment endpoint
Added logic that makes it extremely unlikely that characters with duplicate names (among major factions) are created during world generation
Fixed an issue where certain combination of character religion and shrine dedication options would result in automatic assignment of Mysticism
Fixed a crash bugs related to potential random events being discarded (internally)
Fixed a bug causing favored follower status to become "sticky" when one such follower died or left the faction.
Patch 0.9.141.2 Additions:
Fixed a crash bug relating to the creation of new sites
City temple buildings now display the deity/religion in paranthesis
City temple build options are now restricted to those accepted by the city culture. Any religion-class characters (regardless of faction) in the city also contribute to this list
Patch 0.9.141.3 Additions:
Fixed a world generation crash bug
Fixed a research-related crash bug
Added confirmation dialogs when constructing an outpost in a province that has a capital
Reduced the time required to upgrade an outpost to a fortress by 50% and added a small initial boost if the outpost had level 4+
Fixed an issue where high power scaling of event armies was also applied to army size
Fixed a bug causing hex condition spread random events to trigger far more rarely than intended
Fixed a bug where two special worker types (Skeleton Laborers and Demonic Wretches) did not have the correct identifier, and thus did not count towards intended limits
Fixed a bug causing some research chains to be blocked after unlocking the first step
Fixed an issue where marauder frequency and power settings did not apply to camp-based raiders
Camp-based raiders now leave behind a reasonable force of defenders, making the camps less vulnerable and the raiders less powerful (especially in the early game)
Added a random factor to when raids will be launched, which adds an average delay of 4 turns between each cycle
Patch 0.9.141.4 Additions:
Any resources acquired above the resource caps are now sold on the market (if possible), rather than discarded
Fixed a crash bug related to selecting Worship locations
Added a toggle for filtering Characters to include only those who are Idle
Patch 0.9.141.5 Additions:
Research project outliner items now show correctly calculated estimated expected progress rather than an estimated based on default values
Fixed an incorrect upper estimate display when scouting armies
Resources without a cap no longer show a very large maximum value
Elemental Lore discoveries regarding specific elements now have the correct display name string
Shield block values are now correctly displayed on unit equipment tooltips
Fixed a bug where out-of-action unit members being killed during battles would count as 2 kills for several purposes
Summoning/Raise recruitment now falls back to Binding cost/upkeep if the base cost/upkeep is empty
Binding recruitment now falls back to Summoning cost/upkeep if the base cost/upkeep is empty
Conversion assignments now terminate correctly rather than locking the character in place
The research project filter window now opens when the filter button is clicked
Game Update (0.9.139)
Mods
Unit types can now be modded by putting a unitTypes.xml file in the mod folder. This allows changing the stats, costs, and all other details of existing unit types. Ways to add new unit types and integrate them with other game mechanics will be added in future updates.
In the Mods window you can export a template uniTypes.xml file which has the current default data for all units.
It is recommended to only put the unit types you want to change in the unitTypes.xml file. Any unit types not in the file will be left unchanged. Not putting unchanged unitTypes in the file reduces the risk of stability issues due to undiscovered bugs.
The Mods window now has support for creating new mods via the UI (rather than solely through folder and file creation). There is also slightly improved error feedback.
When loading a game, any mod used for the game is shown in the summary panel. If the mod is present it will be loaded along with the game.
A toggle is a available to suppress the use of a mod when loading a game. This will load the game as if no mods had been used. Note that if you save the game after loading it this way, you cannot re-enable a mod.
When starting a new game, you can choose from the mods available on your system.
Integration with Steam Workshop (to more easily share mods) will be added soon. Hopefully in the next update.
Misc
Battles now have a "skip-to-end" button during manual resolution. This can be used at any point after deployment to have the AI take over and resolve the rest of the battle. The rounds will be shown in the log as usual, allowing the player to inspect the results before closing the window.
Search/filter functionality has been added to the Wizard research projects window. A number of toggles control what fields to free text search (name, mastery, etc.) One or more criteria can be chosen.
Units which are disbanded (not destroyed) can now return their members to recruitment pools in cases where one is available.
New unit types: Dire Hyenas, Gargantuan Wolves, Gargantuan Lizards, Gargantuan Spiders.
Research projects which are cancelled during the same turn as they were started will have their cost refunded.
Arcane Ward spells can now be cast during combat.
Search functionality has been added to the Military window. This allows text-based filtering based on unit names, abilities, tags, etc.
Passive Wizard Mastery progress with no focus assigned will now exclude masteries with level 0 (unlocked, but not mastered) and with level 10. This will avoid unlocked masteries, that the player is not interested in advancing, from "stealing" progress.
Bugs
Fixed an issue where armies that should be disbanded due to events or faction defeat, were lingering in various states of error.
Fixed an issue where units that were destroyed were immediately replenishing causing their strength to become positive and revert the unit destruction.
Divine interventions causing damage to armies were not working as intended. This has been fixed.
Game Update (0.9.138)
Features and Content:
New Character Assignment: Divine Offering. Uses a new UI to allow the player to specify the offering (resources and amounts). Deities value resources based on their domains. Diminishing returns are applied for offerings above a certain amount. There is still some balance work pending with this assignment, as it is currently a bit too easy to gain Favor for some deities.
New Character Assignment: Lead Worship. Requires a valid location and follower.
When calculating the desire for an office, the number of character attributes (class, traits and culture) with an impact has been expanded
When Training Workers the combined skill levels contributing to diminishing returns no longer include initial skill levels
Additional ways to unlock Worker Skill Training option have been added:
Engineering - Scholar Trainer (Level 3+ or from sufficiently advanced culture), Worker Construction 3+
Entertainment - Worker Domestic 3+
Prospecting - Worker Mining 3+
Smithing - Worker Artisanship 3+
Construction - Worker Labor 3+
Worker Training progress is now affected by the attitude of the workers (based on culture) towards the trainer, if any such exists. Examples: If Orcs hate Dwarves, a Dwarven trainer will require 250% of the normal time to train an Orcish Worker; if High Elves worship Celestials, a Celestial trainer will require 80% of the normal time to train a High Elven worker.
New Unit Weapon: Massive Cleaver
Added Piercing/Slashing traits to relevant Unit Weapons
Added new Unit Recruitment Mods: Elemental Infusion (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Oricalchum). Some of these affect weapons and some affect armor.
Increased the damage of Necrotite Weapons from +1 Dark to +2 Dark.
Added a Deities panel to the "Quest, Faction, Victory Conditions" window. Worship and offerings can be started from this window. Deity details (including a faction-relevant summary) can also be inspected from here.
Divine Favor implemented. Various activities contribute to gain and loss of Favor/Wroth. Factions can request a Boon if Favor is 10+. The chance of success is based on the Favor level. The possible boons granted are shown in the Deities panel. This is also where the player can request a boon.
Added two random events which increase or decrease relations between realms with diplomatic contacts due to various random, unforeseen occurences. This makes the relations slightly less static and predictable.
Shrines and (non-City) Temples can now be dedicated to a specific deity/religion.
Fortresses can now be renamed.
Cities now track if they were founded by refugee events. If additional refugee events occur while this city is a valid migration target, the option to found a new settlement will not be given unless the city has become very large. This cuts down on city-spam from refugees.
Map Filters are now saved/loaded when saving/loading a game
Added message text when multi-casting fails for one or more units
Unavailable Tower Expansions are now listed when building a new expansion, making it easier to see what is potentially available and/or why something is unavailable
Tower Expansion: Mystical Furnace is unlocked by Forging research in addition the existing ways to unlock it.
New Spell: Celestial Cynosure - Celestial battle spell dealing damage to all (non-Celestial) enemy units based on the number (and strength) of Celestial units on the caster side of the battle. Reserve units contribute only 25%.
New Spell: Ball Lightning - Air Battle spell dealing high Lightning damage to 4 individuals in target unit. Units wearing metal armor suffer additional hits and damage.
New Spell: Wind Warrior - Air unit buff which increases Movement, Melee Skill, Melee Shock and granting Ranged Attack Avoidance.
Logic has been implemented to handle the extent to which a Deity/Religion accepts and/or rejects followers with certain alignment/traits. This adds some variety and flavor, as some deities will be picky, some will be fine with having followers of all kinds and some will have a more balanced profile.
Several grids in the user interface can now be sorted by clicking a header. This will cycle through ascending, descending and no sorting.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug relating to cycling selection of multiple entities in the same hex
Fixed text bugs in the research project window
Fixed a number of memory leaks
Fixed a crash bug related to the creation of new settlements
Fixed a bug allowing factions to raze sites which should not be valid targets for this
Fixed an issue where unit numerical strength (from 0% to 100%) was in some cases mistakenly based on the default maximum for the unit type, and not the actual maximum of the particular unit. This caused a number of incorrect calculations for units resulting from the split of another unit into two (or more) smaller units.
Fixed a crash bug related to Planar Invasions
Fixed a bug allowing City attributes to reach very high values (or very low negative values). The range is now correctly constrained in all cases.
Fixed a bug where unit recruitment was not correctly cancelled when conquering a city from some types of faction
Fixed a bug where site visibility was not always correctly updated, making sites "invisible" to the player until the game was reloaded
Fixed a bug where some ressurection spells interacted with routed units in unintended ways
Fixed a number of bugs with the camp window - where buttons would go inactive or not update state as expected
Game Update (0.9.136)
Workers
Several new actions are available for worker units from within the Worker window, opened via the Economy window or by double-clicking a worker unit in the outliner.
Workers can now be Trained by followers, giving them new skills or increasing skill levels. The available skills depend on the type and traits of the selected follower, and the list is shown when selecting the trainer. The number of turns needed depends on the number of skills already possessed by the worker unit, increasing greatly if the combined skill level is higher than 5.
Some worker units can now be settled in a friendly City. This will convert the worker unit into a population unit, with attributes (race/culture/traits/type) based on the equivalent attributes of the original unit.
Workers can now be dismissed. This will disband them, removing their upkeep cost and any other unwanted effects from having the unit.
Workers can now gain skills through experience. There is a small chance each turn for this happen based on the number of existing skills, the unit has. If the unit has many skills the chance is extremely low. The specific skill gained or improved is based on the type of site, the worker unit is assigned to. If a character is leader of the site, the traits/class of this character will also affect the choice of skill.
Magic
Multicasting spells is now possible from a new tab on the Wizard/Magic window. This page displays a list of all units under your control, with a bit of additional information. You can select a spell of the relevant type, which units to target and then press a button to carry out the action (if you have enough mana). This saves a lot of the drudgery involved in using unit enchantments, and makes it less likely to forget a unit.
Rebalanced the resource amounts involved in the resource gathering Dark Pact quest.
Added a few Arcane battle spells to round out the selection for that mastery.
World Generation
The Encyclopedia now shows slightly more information for Planes and Deities, when relevant. For example, it is stated explicitly if a deity is also the ruler of its Plane of residence.
The race/culture adjective used when generating the short description of a character (e.g. 'High Elven', 'Trollblood Human', 'Silvertooth Halfling') will now include certain major characters traits, such as undeath, demonic corruption, etc. A Dark Elf raised as an undead will thus display as 'Undead Dark Elf'.
Deities and Planes matching based on Domains and Traits has been greatly improved, improving the consistency and flavor of random world/mythos generation. As always a random element is part of the process, so it is possible to see interesting/quirky/unexpected combinations, with a only a few being completely blocked from occuring. But many silly/weird combinations are now extremely unlikely.
When generating a Plane based on a specific Deity it will now have a much better fit with the domains of the Deity.
The power level of a Deity now greatly affects the chances involved when determining whether the Deity has residence, rulership, etc. of the assigned plane.
Increased the variety and depth of the Plane name generator.
A wider range of culture traits are now considered when generating the population type composition of Cities.
Added a new language/toponym template inspired on the medieval Low Countries.
Characters
When assigning a character as trainer during Recruitment/Summoning, it is now possible to toggle a "repeat" option. Using this will assign the character to the next unit in the queue, once the currently assigned unit is fully recruited. This avoids the micro-management of constantly reassigning a trainer, that you want to train multiple units in succession, or simply be permanently assigned to this role.
The Undead trait will now cause Character physical age (young/old/venerable/etc) to be disregarded for various mechanics.
A wider range of unit abilities now affect retreat/pursuit ability during battles.
New character traits added which allow characters to be treated as having a class type they do not have. Erudite => Scholar. Martial Training => Martial. Guileful => Rogue. The character is still treated as having the actual class type(s). For example a Fighter-Mage with Erudite will be treated as being having three types: Martial, Arcane and Scholar.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug causing sieges to have nonsensical target/estimate durations - either negative or very large numbers.
Fixed a bug involving sieges where the attacker is unable to progress (due to siege ability being too low compared to fortification level) causing crashes, strange siege durations and other unintended results.
Fixed a bug where some user interface elements had 'unresponsive' areas, where clicking them did not select/de-select as expected.
Fixed a number of crash bugs related to diplomacy.
Fixed several bugs involving 'Mysterious Sites' (ie goody huts). These were of varying severity, from typos to crashes to unintended/missing effects.
Fixed a number of dynamic text bugs during mythos generation.
Fixed a bug causing some event data to 'leak' between games played in the same session.
Game Update (0.9.135)
Sorry for the late update. The patch notes below cover most of the changes, but I will update them over the next few days as I iron out a few of the bugs I'm bound to have missed in the final round of testing.
There's more in-progress changes than I'd like in this update (also some not mentioned in the notes), but I really wanted the update out now, as it was way overdue and had some critical bug fixes. I will do my best to keep a better cadence for the next update.
For the next week or so I expect to release daily bug fix patches for this update. After that I will focus on UI for fortress upgrades, the new province control mechanics and making battles more fun. If all goes well that means an update out in two-three weeks time (after the stabilization week).
I know the new border graphics are not pretty, but they're still an improvement over not having any faction-specific color to the provinces at all - and I hope to improve them sooner rather than later into something at least passable. Then they will be upgraded to a proper aesthetic in a few months time (alongside rivers). That's the plan, at least.
Thanks to everyone who supplied invaluable feedback and bug reports, lately - and in the past. I know this build is probably a bit more messy than usual and might even be rather buggy pending a week of patches or so. However, I am confident the mess will be worth it and I'm really happy with where the province system is going.
Anyway, time to get some rest before the bug fixing frenzy. Looking forward to delivering more updates after that. It's a pleasure to work on this game, and I'm so grateful for the valuable feedback, ideas, support and constructive criticism coming from you all.
Battles
Rebalanced Battle Magic spellcraft. The increase in mana expenditure cap is cumulative, so researching higher levels would lead to very high caps. This has been toned down significantly (Minor from +10 to +5. Lesser from +20 to +10. Intermediate from +35 to +15. Greater from +50 to +15. Supreme from +100 to +20.)
A maximum of 1 spell can now be cast per Battle Turn. +2 if the battle is at the Wizard Tower. +1 if the army is led by Arcane-class General.
Battle retreat mechanics have gone through of combination of bug fixes and improvements. Unit stats and abilities now have a greater effect on the ability to flee/pursue during and after battles. These are essentially "under-the-hood" changes in battle engine.
Reserves can now rotate with retreating units without being restricted to the reinforcing the flanks only.
After retreating from a battle an army can now suffer losses from desertion, environmental factors, pursuers, etc. The stats and abilities of units on both sides affect whether this happens and to what extent. High mobility, toughness and discipline helps avoid losses. High mobility, scouting and courage helps during pursuit. The characters, if any, involved, will also affect the outcome.
Rebalanced damage values and attacking timings to make combat more decisive and avoid overly drawn-out battles.
Damage which is high, but not enough to cause death, can now cause incapacitation for some unit types. This is counted as a casualty during the battle, but not after - unless the battle is lost or the army retreats. Incapacitated individuals can also be healed (but not ressurected).
Right-clicking a unit element will now show detailed info on the unit.
World and Magic
Province control is now determined through ownership of the provincial capital. This is usually a city or fortress. Selecting any hex in a province will show the owner and capital in the lower-left info panel. Control changes immediately on the turn after capturing a capital.
Provinces without a capital can get one through the construction of an outpost and upgrading it into a fortress. This allows securing full control of unaligned/wilderness provinces.
Sites can now be built in a controlled province. This replaces the previous territorial control system. Outposts still have special mechanics, but are somewhat in a limbo between the two mechanics. This (outpost build mechanics) will be improved by an incremental game update in the near future.
Integrated the various 'special' character classes and races (demons, faeries, undead, celestials, etc.) so that they integrate with the culture and attitude system seamlessly.
Resource sites can now be converted. For now this is restricted to Quarries <=> Mines, but this will be expanded to cover other relevant transitions (e.g. Farms <=> Vineyards).
Resource sites can now be abandoned, making it possible to build something else in the hex.
Fortress sites can now have various upgrades. Currently there is no UI for players to actually make use of this. Non-player factions can use this to gain access to recruitment options and province-wide bonuses. UI will be added for this at the earliest opportunity as it is not intended as AI-only.
Expanded the city/place/region name generators with additional variety/flavor/depth for several culture templates.
Expanded the culture generators to have additional variety/flavor/depth when generating titles and dynamic unit types.
Insect Hives now grant additional resources to Fae Gardens (Ichor + Chitin).
Primordial Trees now grant additional resources to Fae Gardens (Lumber).
Rebalanced the output of Hunters Lodge sites to include additional resource types and have a higher output in most cases.
Fixed a number of economy engine bugs which resulted in incorrect price calculations. There is at least one bug remaining (which causes a price change loop out of sync with market supply/demand). I will try to fix it tomorrow (and delete this note).
A rework of the landmass and terrain generation is underway. It is currently a work-in-progress and not used in the regular game mode. It is however used in the Editor when generating a random landmass. The new generator has more consistent province sizes and can more easily be configured to generate various kinds of worlds. The arguments cannot be changed in the UI yet and as mentioned the system is not finished yet, so the generated landmasses will not feature rivers, and the biome-assignment has not been integrated with the new system yet. So explore if curious, but don't expect usable randomly generated maps in the editor with this patch (you can rollback via Steam if you need the old one for some reason). Once finished, the new and old world generators will be available for use. The old one will not be removed permanently.
New Earth spells: Boulderstorm, Stalagmite Ambush and Diamondskin. Two battle spells and a very strong unit enchantment.
Spells can now have an upkeep cost. Diamondskin is the first spell to utilize this.
Bug Fixes and UI
Improved the tool tips and guide text when selecting parties and/or followers for tasks flexible between a party and an individual.
Fixed a few tasks which should accept parties but didn't.
Rebalanced the smuggler event to be less extreme in the amount of gold lost.
Fixed a number of tribal events that were stopping abruptly with info or resolution after choosing an action.
Fixed a bug causing conversion tasks to sometimes target the wrong alignment and do nothing.
Fixed a bug causing music to not play.
Fixed a number of crash bugs during world generation.
Fixed a bug which would cause some save games to not load. This should be fixed retroactively (allowing those save to load with the latest version).
Fixed a bug which would cause some character injuries to not be applied.
Fixed a bug causing incorrect display of battle results during battles (wounded, dead, etc.) The unit cards were correct, and the post-battle report correct, but the log was incorrect.
Improved the labels on some buttons which were misleading in their purpose.
Improved tool tips when a map hex contains multiple selectables. The next selection to cycle to is shown, as is the presence of other selectables. As before, the lower part of the screen has an clickable icon for each selectable entity.
Province borders now have a colored tint corresponding to the owning faction (if any)
Improved the tool tips for conversion tasks and made invalid selection greyed out earlier in the task set-up process.
Game Update (0.9.134)
Two new Army assignments: Quartermaster and Champion. Similar to General and Scout Captain, these are optional, but provide a bonus to the army if filled. Note that these new roles are also available to garrison armies (the action to inspect them is shown when the relevant city/fortress is selected).
Army Quartermaster: Assigning a character to this role, will reduce the upkeep of units in the army based on the culture, class, traits and skills of the character.
Army Champion: A character assigned to this role has the option of joining a unit during battles. This will provide a bonus to the stats of the unit and allow the character to perform melee and/or ranged attacks during the battle. The exact nature of the bonus and the number/strength of the attacks are both determined by the culture, class, traits and skills of the Champion. There is a low, but not trivial, risk of suffering injuries during the battle. The risk is greater when fighting very dangerous enemies, such as large monsters - but these enemies are also where the Champion will do the most relative damage.
The Army window has been slightly reworked to fit the new assignments and a new text field summarizing Army stats and any special effects.
Minor Realms (e.g. the various city-states, petty kingdoms and similar) have been given a number of 'foreign policy'-style actions and events. These will trigger at semi-random intervals (ie the chance is essentially based on the time since the last event/action). The target faction is chosen based on diplomatic relations, proximity and relative strength. Chances for individual event/action types are weighted based on the culture of the Minor Realm and relations to the target.
Minor Realm Event: Smugglers/Scoundrels. Has a negative economic impact on the target faction.
Minor Realm Event: Request Gift. Target faction is given the opportuniy to gain improved relations by fulfilling a randomly generated resource/gold request.
Minor Realm Event: Offer Gift. Target faction is given a randomly generated amount of resources/gold.
Minor Realm Event: Offer Unit. Target faction is either given or offered to hire a relevant unit type from the minor realm.
Minor Realm Event: Offer Recruits. Target faction is either given or offered to hire a recruits from the minor realm. These are added to recruitment pool of the target faction, making it possible and/or less expensive to recruit relevant units.
Minor Realm Event: Offer Retainer. Target faction is either given or offered to hire a relevant randomly character.
Minor Realm Event: Request to Join War. Target faction is asked to join an on-going war. There may or may not be bribes involved. The impact of refusing/accepting depends on the existing diplomatic relations.
Minor Realm Event: Offer Trade. Target faction is given the option to make a trade for a fixed amount of resources/gold vs a fixed amount of resources/gold. This will usually, but not always, be at a price better than the market. The resouces involved are generated based on the economy and culture of the realm.
Minor Realm Event: Raiders. Marauders will spawn and seek to attack the target faction. These are not considered part of the minor realm, so can attack without the factions being at war. Similarly, anyone can attack the marauders without triggering a war with the minor realm.
Minor Realm Event: Share Maps. Unexplored territory will be revealed to the target faction.
Minor Realm Event: Share Arcane Knowledge. Will provide culture-relevant boosts to mastery progress or research projects.
Minor Realm Event: Refugees. Target faction is given a variety of options based on faction type. They can be given the opportunity to found a new city, be hired as workers or to join an existing city/camp - but some factions can also choose to enslave, sacrifice or turn them into undead minions. This depends on alignment, culture and traits.
Added a "History" section to the Details mode of the Diplomacy window. This will show events, battles, lost/gained territory, etc for the chosen non-player faction.
Diplomatic relations now have an element of "stickiness". When at the positive/negative limit, any changes in the relevant direction will instead cause stickiness, thus making it harder to move the relations away from the extreme position. This will make long-time allies less likely to quickly become antagonistic and long-time enemies more difficult to quickly sway to a positive opinion.
Added a Culture Traits section to the Mechanics section of the Encylopedia.
Greatly reduced the chance of events spawning from Dungeons which have been cleared.
Further increased the variety and depth of deity domains / pantheon composition.
If there are multiple units with the same name during a battle, they will given a roman numeral to distinguish them. This should make it easier to see what is going on during a battle. The decorated names are only active during the battle.
Reserves can now enter the battle by replacing a retreating unit or by replacing a unit at either end of the line. Previously they would always enter from left/right depending on the side.
Nerfed the effectiveness damage caused by skirmishers.
Units which are below maximum size (for example by being split into multiple units) suffer a effectiveness loss. This penalty is reduced by having high discipline, special abilities (Sentry, Pathfinder, Beasts) and/or by having an active scout captain.
Units can now have a maximum effectiveness during battles which is higher than the starting/base effectiveness (usually by 20%). This allows units affected by positive morale effects, spells, events, etc to fight with increased ability.
Tweaked the office desire logic to remove some unreasonably extreme impact of class type.
Fixed a bug related to unaligned/marauder armies getting stuck in a passive state.
Fixed a bug causing a specific transition between injury levels (for a character) to sometimes not occur as intended.
Fixed instances of missing color-coding in the battle log.
Fixed the sorting in the Load Game window to put recent games at the top.
The list of existing files in the Save Game window will no longer show files related to different campaigns.
The Save Game window now fills out a suggested file name to save some hassle when saving regularly.
Fixed a number of malfunctioning tooltips which were not appearing as intended.
Fixed a bug related to AI usage of reserves during battles.
Game Update (0.9.133)
Files are now grouped by 'game' in the load game window. This makes it much easier to find your save game if you have multiple saves per game. Saves from before this update are placed under 'unordered', before will be categorized correctly on re-saving. The data to retroactively fix save games is available, but for performance reasons this isn't done automatically. A button to resort old games may be added.
Export feature added to the Encyclopedia Window. This will save to a text file the Encyclopedia entries for the randomly generated world (cultures, deities, planes, organizations, etc.) and a copy of the intro pages shown when the game started.
A separate toggle for Inactive Armies has been added to the Outliner settings. This allows hiding armies that have been set to 'sleep' mode from the list. This helps keeps the list more readable in the mid to late game.
The 'Cancel Task' button is no longer hidden when unavailable on the Followers window. Instead it is disabled, and a tooltip describes why the Task cannot be cancelled.
New Illusion spell: See No Evil. Grants immunity to terror.
New Illusion spell: Misdirection. Cast on armies to give them a chance to arrive in the wrong hex when moving or simply remain stationary.
Improved generation of character names for increased variety.
Further improved army and neutral minor flags.
Anti-aliasing can now be disabled from the settings window. Full in-game configuration of display modes was intended to be in the patch, but this needs more testing and robustness before it is ready.
Fixed a bug where Generic Crafting and Diplomatic Gift Crafting counted as 'action taken' every turn, making it impossible to cancel the task or assign a new one.
Fixed a bug which made it possible to sneakily take almost full control of leaders from conquered cities that were allowed to remain in power. Task control for these characters has now been correctly limited in scope.
Fixed a bug causing nomad raiders to choose the wrong destination and return path in many cases.
Fixed several text formatting bugs causing garbled text and/or missing carriage-return/newline.
Fixed a number of bugs related to city unrest/squalor/wealth/production/traits being round incorrectly and thus not increasing/decreasing at the intended rate.
Game Update (0.9.132.2)
Characters now have opinions about each other in addition to being able to have various relationships (rival, friend, animosity, etc.)
Character Opinions are based on several factors such as personality, alignments, factions, certain relationships/events and more. The values and the contributing factors can be inspected from the Followers window.
World generation now has a wider variety of pantheons, mythos templates and deity domains. A slightly higher number of deities with a higher number of domains will also be generated, making for more interesting dynamic pantheons and cosmic forces.
Expanded the specialized culture/religion/race logic for the major non-standard races: demonic/faerie/celestial/elementals. This will improve any mechanics interacting with these concepts for characters/units/factions belonging to the mentioned races.
Added dynamic relationship events to character AI routines. This will allow friendship and rivalries to form. For now, the chances have been tuned low and the pool of considered characters restricted. This is to avoid performance issues and event spam. With future updates this will be tuned to more common, while not impacting performance too much.
Characters now have desire values for various offices and tasks. This can result in character discontent depending on the strength of the preferences and character personality traits. Worst case, this can cause characters to leave a faction.
Characters can now be Assigned Tasks directly from the follower window, opening up a window starting with categories and then drilling down to the specific available tasks.
Fixed Warding mastery not giving correct resistance bonuses in some cases.
Added Zombie Beasts unit type.
Added Zombie Critters unit type.
Research projects can spawn various quests. This is still a work-in-progress feature, so many of the quests may not function correctly or even be completeable. Research can still continue as normal, and the quests will made be fully functional as soon as possible.
Completing Research will now increase Mastery progress in most cases. The masteries affected depend on the nature of the project, and the amount of progress is a function of the current mastery level and the project power level. An expensive and difficult project will give more progress and be useful at higher levels, while more basic project will mostly affect low levels of mastery and have strong diminishing returns at higher levels of mastery.
Not being able to pay upkeep for characters will cause discontent, which can eventually make them leave.
During world generation the grouping of deities will consider aspects/alignment to improve the theme and consistency of groups.
Improved dynamic unit type generation with better variety and more naming templates.
Added a few UI tweaks to spell casting during battles to make it more user-friendly.
Fixed an update bug during battles where the magic section didn't update on all interactions.
When starting a new game a random Wizard template is now chosen as the initial selection.
Construct mechanics gained via Mastery progressions is now displayed in the relevant UI when inspecting Mastery types.
Ressurection spell no longer has an unimplemented effect and will actually ressurect casualties during battle.
Mass Ressurection spell no longer has an unimplemented effect and will actually ressurect many casualties during battle.
Fresh Meat: New Necromancy spell which buffs and heals a Zombie unit by consuming corpses from the battlefield (which makes them unavailable for ressurection).
Fixed a bug related to the Animated Weapons spell.
Deity/Religion and Alignment interaction logic implemented to improve available options for proselytization, the resolution of various events and general mechanics regarding characters and religion.
Deity group and relationship tracking improved to improve resolution of several cosmos/religion mechanics.
Assignment of characters to city/camp leadership is now impacted by culture and tribal mechanics. In some cases assigning a character with the wrong culture will now be blocked.
Improved dynamic text generation to better handle some aspects of grammar.
Added numerous new tooltips and expanded the breakdown/descriptions of many mechanics and calculations.
Fixed several crash/hang/savegame bugs.
Increased the variety of flag colors/symbols for minor realms.
Game Update (0.9.131)
General
New "Active Effects" tab in the Magic window. Allows you to get an overview of active spell effects and cancel them (if applicable).
Added a UI action to inspect the Garrison of a site.
Improved the map generator and the pseudo-simulation of tectonics used to create the geography. This should give better-looking coastlines and more pleasing/interesting continent shapes overall.
Ancient Evils of relevant types now also exist as a Deity/Religion entity.
Salt added as a resource.
Improved the allocation of specials to hexes during world generation to take additional climate and terrain factors into consideration.
Improved the AI power estimation routine. This includes the ability to separately consider melee, ranged and combined power levels to a greater degree than previously.
New Unit: Bears.
New Unit: Hungering Wisps. A slightly stronger version of Wisps with a vampiric attack.
New unit special ability: Stupid. This has the advantage of reduced impact of some psychological effects (positive and negative), but also a lack of ability to cope with several situation.
Streamlined and unified the Character travel logic used by various events, actions and tasks. The same logic is now always applied.
Site and Character Name generation improved with more variety.
Units now have Alignment tracked on an individual basis, allowing it to diverge from the Unit Type / Cultural default.
Battles
Improved the battle initiation UI. Instead of several "attack" buttons requiring mouse-over to see what army/site they affected, a single action button now opens a window with various options for initiating a battle.
Battle initiation now includes special actions in some cases.
Special Army Action: Plunder Outskirts. Can be used to plunder gold and spoils from cities without directly assaulting the defenders.
Special Army Action: Probing Attack. Somewhat risky way to gain more information on the composition an enemy army or garrison. An alternative to creating a one-unit army and suiciding to reveal the enemy during the battle resolution.
Added fatigue to battle resolution. This will impact some units and decrease their fighting capability and morale after extended active engagement in combat and/or use of ranged attacks.
Slightly reduced the impact of Effectiveness.
Reduced the default rate of Effectiveness loss during battles.
Expanded Skirmish mechanics to include ranged attacks and fatigue. Not having a sufficient Skirmish screen can cause an army to suffer much greater casualties from ranged attacks and fatigue/effectiveness loss from skirmishers during the initial phases of the battle.
Characters
Some characters now have an upkeep cost. Wizard traits and Clan/Tribal mechanics can modify this cost. The Trusted Retainers trait in particular has a potentially strong impact, reducing the cost by progressively more as the duration of service/employment increases.
Characters can now accumulate private wealth through various events and actions. They will be saving up the cash for the patch which adds ways for them to spend it.
Character item possession expanded to include more than the current "inventory" type items. For example, under certain circumstances artisans may create items for themselves rather than their faction.
Added a couple of new personality traits: Brave, Craven, Patient.
Added character traits to represent lack of free will and limited free will.
Artisans now have a "generic" craft item task (in addition to the "diplomatic gift" task) which will result in some gold, and sometimes an exceptional item. This is currently not exposed in the UI and only usable by the AI, but this will be fixed in an incremental update very soon.
Tribal Chief Prestige now affects character loot share (during plunder, pillage, etc.) High prestige increases the amount taken by characters, and negative prestige reduces it.
New character types: Strategist, Poet, Lout, Storyteller, Administrator. These will be generated/assigned according to cultural traits.
Improved the random character generator to take additional cultural characteristics into consideration and give more thematic results. Some hitherto extremely rare character types are now more common, and some of the overly common types have been reduced in frequency.
Spells
True Sight. Divination spell which will destroy illusionary unit and reveal enemy units.
Borrowed Sight: One randomly chosen unit in target army is affected by the Borrowed Sight effect for 7 turns. During this time the army containing this unit will grant vision and exploration. Level 3 Divination/Shadow.
Locate Mana Node: Has a 25% chance to reveal a Mana Node (including ones in unexplored territory). If another Wizard has more mana nodes than the caster, the chance is increased by 20% times the difference in number. When randomizing the node to be discovered, ones closer to the Wizard's territory have a higher chance to be chosen. Level 4 Divination/Arcane.
Scotosynthesis: Grants production bonuses to a farm, vineyard, fae garden or city. It must be located in a Darkened-affected hex. Can also be used on a unit with Slime, Plant or Fungus type. This will allow the unit to replenish in any hex with Darkened (regardless of supply lines, etc.), with a bonus depending on the level of the effect. Level 3 Darkness/Life/Enchantment.
Depravity spell has been split into three variants.
Lesser Depravity: Corresponds to the old Depravity spell (+1 Crime, +2 Decadence, -5 Unrest, 3 Turns).
Chaotic Creation: Create a random batch of resources. Level 2 Creation/Chaos spell.
Chimes of Harmony: Buff the discipline, courage and melee skill of a unit. Will disable the Frenzy ability if the unit has it. Level 3 Creation/Order spell.
Conjure Fortress: Conjure a Fortress out of nothing. Level 7 Creation/Earth/Artifice spell.
Ice Bridge: Now creates a 1-length road connecting two hexes bordering the same river (to represent the bridge).
Bug Fixes
Fixed a balance issue with dynamic market price calculations.
Fixed a bug related to the Paving the Way and Veins of Civilization spells. Certain temporary sites could be chosen as targets which was not intended.
Fixed a bug causing the battle log to omit many events and attacks.
Fixed a bug relating to Planar Portals.
Fixed a bug relating to Fortresses and incorrectly calculating siege duration.
Fixed a bug relating to the Festering Wounds effect being applied to the attacker (and not the target) in some cases.
Fixed several crash bugs.
Game Update (0.9.130.2)
A somewhat small update, as several in-development tasks are not complete yet. I expect an incremental patch will follow relatively soon with some other odds and ends. And hopefully the meatier tasks will be ready for the next update in a week or two.
Added an Introduction window when starting a new game. It explains some core game mechanics and information on the randomly generated game world (deities, cultures).
Expanded scouting mechanics to also cover site garrisons/defenders. A tooltip with details can be seen by hovering over the highlighted "Garrison: Yes" text in the context panel.
Added unique attrition/desertion mechanics for defeated/conquered minor factions. Their armies will begin dispersing if they fail to retake a city or fortress within a few turns, with some units being lost and others becoming mercenaries. The courage/discipline attributes determine the rate of desertion and chance of becoming mercenaries.
Expanded world generation to have a wider variety of deity/cosmos templates, including elemental-based pantheons and two/three competing deities/pantheons.
Improved deity/mythos/cosmos generation engine in several different ways, including naming, grouping, consistent theming of deities, tweaking domain allocations to have better coverage, reducing illogical overlap, and more.
Added a few more exotic polearms to the random culture-unit generator.
New units: lesser/normal/greater acid elementals.
New units: lesser/normal/greater magma elementals.
New units: lesser/normal/greater mercury elementals.
New units: lesser/normal/greater lightning elementals.
New units: Magmagors, monster bull/serpent hybrids with high armor and fire damage.
Tweaked the required research time for the core elemental unit types and a few other unit types.
Fixed a crash bug related to planar portals.
Fixed a bug relating to exploration tasks not being cancelled correctly when no longer valid.
Fixed a bug relating to resolution of tribal events/actions involving non-clan characters.
Fixed some missing faction flags not appearing correctly in the battle window.
Fixed the character AI wanting to explore already-cleared dungeons
Performance optimization of misc. battle calculations.
