Version 0.7 is now out, bringing the first pass of the magic mechanic. Magic is an optional mechanic, you can simply avoid recruiting any magical agents and hero mages will remain mostly low level and irrelevant. If you choose to engage with it, there are three schools, each mechanically quite distinct from one another, but in doing so you trigger a magical arms race in which hostile mages will try to learn to counter you.
I also recently did a game dev interview, discussing some of my thoughts about games. Read it here, if you're interested in my perspective on games in general and Shadows in particular:
https://sassygamers.com/game-dev-interview-bobby-two-hands/
Regarding magic, a core mechanic introduced is channelling. This involves a caster (either hero or agent) standing on a source of power to cast a powerful spell. The spell's power will depend on the power available in the location they are in, and the caster is vulnerable while casting. During a channelling, any mage on the planet can attack the channeller, by going to a geomantic locus (the source of geomantic power) and firing shards of obsidian across the sky towards the caster's location. To defend, the caster or an ally must create and maintain an arcane fortress, which will absorb incoming damage.
Casters can of course be physically attacked, so some changes to combat have been made. Heroes will attempt to guard key casters, such as the Chosen One or a mage trying to reforge the seals. These heroes must be killed before your agents can attack the caster directly. The order of combat has also been changed, so that minions' turns are resolved simultaneously, so the attacker's minions no longer have an advantage.
The aim for this is to allow multiple heroes and agents to be involved in both sides of the conflict, with the caster's allies keeping up physical and magical defences, while their enemies firing various magical projectiles or attacking them directly as a team.
Magic must also be researched, which often involves infiltrating libraries to gain access to their secrets, or performing magical research. Gold and time can fund research, at a library, but much darker avenues to knowledge exist. The Plague Doctor can conduct experiments on the plague victims to gain secrets for himself or his allies, and the souls of the dead can be exploited by any agent to see past the mortal world. A powerful mage is a considerable investment, and needs to be guarded against unnecessary risk, again an attempt at promoting team-work.
The three schools of magic (for this first update) are Geomancy, Death and Blood magic.
Geomancy allows the modification of the climate. The ultimate end-goal of this school for your agents is to freeze the entire world, reducing the temperature to the point where human life becomes impossible. It is also the school which human mages learn, allow them to defend against climate devastation by creating regions of high habitability. As the spell used to assault channellers at range, high level geomancers are also the counter to enemy mages. It is powered by geomantic loci, which are scattered across the maps in regions of high power, and it is at these places you can most easily create arcane fortresses to defend your casters. As well as freezing the world, it also allows you to devastate enemy city defences or cause volcanic eruptions.
Death Magic draws power from locations where there has been large amounts of death. Famines, plagues, war or volcanoes all create ready supplies of bodies and souls to exploit. It revolves around the creation of armies, minions or other allied creatures. Along with geomancy, it is also highly focused on channelling, and allows its own variant of arcane fortress. This school allows full zombie apocalypses, as armies of ravenous dead multiply by consuming death as they create it. It also has spells to create ghasts, which spread shadow automatically, or minions to defend your casters against both magical and physical attacks.
Blood Magic is the last school, and does not revolve around locations of power or channelling. Instead, blood magic involves items taken from individuals to allow very personal types of spells to be cast against them. It attacks heroes or rulers directly, or them and their families. It is more discrete than other magical mechanisms, so won't require your caster to create arcane fortresses, but will often create personal grudges, whereby individual heroes will stop and nothing to kill your caster for what they have done to them. Spells in this school allow you to interrupt heroes repeatedly to render them useless, to cripple entire families by reducing their XP gain, or to cause heroes and rulers to gain a hunger for human blood.
Alongside these, a new generic agent, the warlock, allows you to get started on any of these three schools, and The Survivor has become a level 2 Geomancer.
Ideally the magic system will receive a few more spells and improvements in the following updates, possibly even a full second update if the need seems to arise an sufficient cool ideas can be thought up.
Changes in detail are:
Gameplay:
-Magic added
-Iastur now has a new mid-game power which allows him to amplify a person's personality, so they act in extreme ways, if they are holding the tome
-Heroes now try to guard each other when performing major quests (primarily the Chosen One, but also mages casting 'Reforge the Seals')
-Improved 'tax nobles', increasing gold taken, increasing motivation, reducing agitation caused
-Heroes no longer reduce unrest in the Dark Empire
-Agent combat now resolves minion rows simultaneously. While agents and heroes act first, the minions act at the same time (so can possibly both kill one another). Intended to reduce attacker advantage, due to its extreme effect on combat
-Deep Ones now grow slower by default, but can be funded or empowered to increase their maturation speed. Menace gain from uninfiltrated neighbouring locations increased slightly
Other:
-Music expanded with new royalty-free music from pixabay
-Single click to select units and locations implemented
-Minion stats now present in their recruitment description
-Gold now visible in left-hand side
-Chosen One now always at the top of the hero view
-Added an alert as to which character is holding the Laughing Tome (if any are)
-Starting music now affected by music volume setting
-Many typoes and poor wording issues fixed
Bugfix:
-Ophanim can no longer take over the Alliance
-Fixed bug where Ophanim's Devastation removal ability failed to work
-Prevent commanders from leading both sides of a battle
-Prevent commanders from leading armies twice at the same time in edge cases