Version 0.2 is here, a little ahead of schedule (was planned to all be bundled up and released at the end of the month), due to community feedback.
IMPORTANTLY: This version will break saves, but a new steam branch has been created, allowing you to roll the game back to v0.1, to ensure no saved-game progress is lost.
This version's key feature is the messaging system. New messages are now present, giving far more information to the player. These messages improve the number of things you can click 'go to' on, to let you see where a particular ruler has gone insane, or which nation has fallen into civil war. To combat message spam, they can now be dismissed by type, allowing you to choose exactly which ones you want to see. A side-bar tab now saves all the turn's messages, so you can bring them back up, including the silenced ones, to put as much information in your hands as possible. Initial community feedback from the beta-branch where it was being tested was positive, and the recommendation was to make it public sooner rather than later, to help new players get a handle on the game world's status and behaviours.
A second, but still major change is that multi-army battles are now introduced, in their initial form. These allow arbitrary numbers of armies AND heroes/agents to come together to fight it out for the future of the world. Armies will naturally merge together if they are combatting the same foe, and agents and heroes can then join this battle a turn later to serve as commanders, adding their command stat to the strength of the attacking or defending armies. Alternatively, might-based heroes can skirmish on the sidelines, and attack either side, using their attack and minions to deal damage to the armies in battle.
This represents half of the planned army update pass. Multi-army battles are still intended to receive improvements, with the possible addition of 'battlefield effects', caused by heroes or agents alike. Fighting in the shadow would harm human armies ability to fight, as would a sudden snowstorm caused by a geomancer agent, but heroes will be similarly able to influence their side, and over-write your effects with those of their own.
All this then ties into Ophanim, the war-focused God, the next one intended to become playable in the near-ish future.
Bugfixes:
-Fixed hysterical tome message edge case
-Prevented the Elder Tomb from suffering from famine when the map starts
Gameplay:
-Armies can now drive back heroes, allowing She Who Will Feast to at least save the Elder Tomb the Chosen One, even if she cannot kill them directly
-Razing a settlement with a non-human army (such as She Who Will Feast) now gives menace to that army
-Lay low now no longer causes mid-challenge events
-Harvesters' howls reduce hero XP (can drop levels, inducing a stat loss)
-Only one wonder will appear on any map, randomly chosen
-Multiple armies can now participate in battles, which are now multi-turn engagements
-Agents and heroes can join battles (after a 1-turn challenge) to give advantage to their side (or cancel out opposing commanders' contributions)
-Wars now last 30 turns, up from 24
-Well of shadows now requires 10% enshadowment to be used
Other:
-Fixed UI raycast, to prevent elements registering hover-over when another UI is present
-Option to allow games to randomise initial seed after map gen, so the same map can be played using different outcomes
-Suppressed message types can be re-enabled from main options screen, and all messages viewed on the right, alongside threats and events (inc suppressed types)
-All UI messages updated, to have go-to buttons where at all possible, as well as be dismissable by types to avoid message spam
-Added a set of requested information pop-ups, tracking agent and hero actions (with a focus on shadow related challenges and quests)
-Fixed Temptation of Salvation icon
-Insane characters can no longer disrupt agents
-Fixed description of rob hero tooltip
-Reduced late-game save size by ~75%, speeding up saving and loading considerably