Version 13 is here, introducing Elves, a (usually) good-aligned minor race, as well as UI changes and new achievements.
The Elves are a proud people, often to their own detriment. They have an arrogance which you can exploit, driving them towards isolationism and contempt for humanity. Avoiding putting the elves at risk can lead to them ignoring the conflicts of the human world, favouring their own internal affairs.
Elven society is highly structured, and can be brittle under pressure. Their rulers depend on the Wayfinder hero to replace lost kings and queens, and the Wayfinder themselves must be appointed by the elven nation's sovereign. If both die, therefore, the elves find themselves in a political deadlock, and will spend years fixing this before they can take action once again on the world stage.
Despite this, they are a resilient and dangerous foe to your forces. They are immune to plague, and resist shadow by means of Elf Stones, which their Crystalsmith hero produces. These absorb shadow from their owner, and so protect elven society from enshadowment. They can be a point of weakeness, however, if properly exploited. The Crystralsmith employs Arcane Secrets to craft new stones, and if these have been turned dangerous by your agents the elf will be driven insane. They can also be corrupted, and start spreading shadow instead.
Along with elves, new events have been added, and new exploration opportunities for ruins. New things to do, see and explore will add to the game's lore, and give players more decisions to make as their agents go about their tasks.
This version also adds in another batch of Achievements, including unique endings.
The UI has also had some attention given (and more will be done in the coming months), most notably a set of icons at the top representing the messages received this turn (including those set to not show as full-screen messages). Various other quality of life changes have also been added, such as indicating progress in mid-challenge events, or a warning before an agent is moved during a long challenge which hopefully could save them from losing progress due to a misclick.
Changes in detail:
Gameplay:
-Elves added
-Insane heroes can now be corrupted
-Rulers on borders may now spawn with dislikes or likes for their neighbouring nations
-People with family members of different species are likely to be created with liking for that species
-Heirophants now can't cause extreme preferences
-Heroes are now motivated to disrupt people exploring high allure ruins
-Heroes can now wait for at the entrance for a ruin to become available
-Ruler stats affect modifier growth/disappearance and security. 50% of default per point in stat, so 100% at 2, 50% at 1 stat and 150% at 3
-Reduced probability of "mega-nations" appearing. Reduced war motivation, especially related to the "war on threat" national action, to compensate
-"Changeling" minion added to menagerie, lets you shift blame like the "misleading clues" ability, but in a less directed fashion
-Option to select whether minimum world panic is determined by the god, victory progress or for there to be no minimum
-Added a bunch more midchallenge events
-Added two new unique exploration dungeons
-Enshadow challenge can't be performed if Ward is higher than 50%
-If Unrest reaches 300%, you now have the option to use it to increase Devastation by 100
-Ruler action "descent into the deep" now affected by danger preference (cowards descend earlier) and unrest in location
-Changed the Smoker event to only increase profile and the Aniquity Seller event to increase menace by only 2 (from 4)
-Target Vespid Swarm power now forces all vespid armies to begin a move-to task immediately, regardless of current situation
-Armies now require a movement point to begin battle, and consume one when starting a battle, to avoid risk-free hit and run disrupting of enemy armies
-Armies cannot start razing a settlement while in battle
-New Wonder, "The Entrance". Teleports agents
Other:
-New UI at the top of the map shows icons for the messages, letting you see at a glance what happened this turn
-Grey borders added to the religion and house mask views, to better find dark-coloured religions and houses on the map
-Added button to redo challenge, if available
-Mod config no longer requires rebuild if nothing was changed
-If a midchallenge event occurs, which features one of your units performing a challenge, it indicates how far along that challenge is and progress per turn
-Clicking on an agent's portrait on the side roster now selects them but doesn't pan to them on the first click
-'Items on Sale' map mask added, to quickly find and go to desirable items
-Messages now have a national flag and nation's name, if they display a person, unit or location
-Slightly improved unit visibility in map masks
-When you 'go to' a unit/person/location in a message, all subsequent messages are dismissed (rather than pop up as you try to deal with the current message's information). The icons for dismissed messages will go red to indicate they still need attention
-If an order (change challenge, move or attack) is given to an agent which would cancel a challenge with more than 5 turns of progress, the game will request confirmation
-Scrolling elements such as save loading or Iastur's powers UI now highlight the selected item and change its text colour
-Updated location watched feature to also give a full screen message when the ruler begins an action
-Watched people or locations who are sovereigns or capitals now report the national actions starting for their society
Bugfixes:
-Ruins are now fully explored properly
-Fixed bug in which a location's infiltration could exceed 100%
-Deep One Sanctums now correctly handle the edge case of reach 300% with no settlements present
-Threats display should now be a bit more responsive to changes made during the player's turn
-Fixed tag issue in "appoint state religion"
-Fixed name issue for covens/temples in point-of-interest map view
-The Trickster's "Misleading Clues" can't be attempted with a ruler item (it would previously waste the challenge). Requirement text updated for clarity
-Fixed crash when a human settlement had no points of interest
-Cordyceps God can no longer turn armies into hives
-The Chosen One is cured of vampirism and deep one afflication automatically
-The Harvester's curses will no longer work on insect drones or other neutral evil creatures
-Fixed bug which crashed the game whenever orc raiders were attacked
-Fixed issue causing corrupted heroes to be affected by the hero level cap
-Fixed prophecy for "holy site" not working properly
-Fixed issue where good heroes would use evil challenges permitted by item
-Fixed display bug in Holy Orders, where they would display "+-" in front of a negative value
-Fixed bug where orcs would take over then delete a Vinerva Heart of the Forest
-Fixed critical bug where a bugged mod could render the game unable to start ever again
-Fixed bug preventing geomantic "assault channeller" from working if your agent was in the same location as their target
-Fixed bug where witches would fail to recognise their covens as neighbouring faiths for the "preach faith" challenge
-Fixed incorrect values in description of the Holy: Dark Worship challenge
-Fixed display bug for hero planning, where it looked like they were thinking of disrupting neutral units, like an orc upstart, but were in fact not able to
-Fixed AI bug where units didn't realise that an army was enshadowed, and therefore wouldn't block them despite their high menace and profile
-Rulers can no longer fund outposts after the outpost is completed
-Ruler escapes city event fixed to not work if the ruler was the one razing a city
-Holy Orders' "international view" now shows relation to witches properly
-Holy Orders with randomised tenets will no longer have the possibility of a permanently non-zero status for intransigent faith
-Reworded tooltip for Lay Low in non-human settlements
-It should no longer be possible for an agent to command two battles at once
-Fixed issue where occasionally a challenge's complexity could appear differently in two different UI locations
-Fixed description of "Raid Periphery" to mention complexity increasing with defences
-Fixed tooltip for Blasphemous Worship