V0.10 has taken a bit more than the usual month between updates, but is finally here. This version brings Holy Orders, and a range of artistic updates. On the gameplay front, Holy Orders allow various human religious practices to be explored, manipulated or contended with. On the artistic front, freelancers and generous members of the community have contributed to making Shadows a more artistically complete and unified product.
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)