What's new in 1.03
Gameplay and rules:
1) New "Release the Kraken" option for Theological Councils (when Heretics appear). You can now either reject the proposal, or Release the Kraken, which will prevent your population from immediate conversion to the Heretics, but it will unleash Heretic monsters around the Region. As this option is available for AI players too, get ready for some roaming Heretic monsters!
2) The Theological Councils now can occur also in Pagan regions (until now they used to happen only in regions of "proper players"). This slightly changes the dynamics of Pagans and Heretics, and makes Heretics a significantly stronger player (especially combined with the monsters appearing from "Release the Kraken")
3) Decreased randomness in battles (the results of battles are a bit less "wild")
4) Shrines and forts are now easier to destroy, it takes much fewer attacks to destroy upgraded shrines and fortifications (but their defensive strength had not been changed)
5) Monsters are a bit stronger
UX and controls:
1) Miracles panel now shows Power cost of the miracles and the turns left until the miracles are allowed again
2) The green border of Miracles, Dogmas and Knowledges buttons, which indicates if you actually can cast any miracle/enact dogma/choose new knowledge is now more noticeable
3) When placing a miracle, protected tiles are marked differently, to make it clear where the miracle will not have any impact
4) When you place mouse over the icons of the players, just below the mini-map, you will see quick info about the Players
5) On Production Screen when you choose recruitment of a new army, a detailed breakdown of recruitment speed in shown in the information on the left hand side of the screen
6) The last save game appears now on top of the save games list, so you do not need to search for it
7) An icon and name of the theocracy which owns an army/region/site is now shown in the mouse-over info box. This extra information can be switched on/off in a new setting in Options
8) New keyboard shortcuts:
"1" or ENTER - executes the next action, indicated by Action button (equals left click on Action button)
"2" - centers the map on the next action (equals left click on Action button)
Ctrl-F4 - immediately loads "_quicksave" game (which can be saved by F4)
Ctrl+SPACE - assigns "Stay" order to ALL units which are still waiting for orders
Ctrl+A - assigns "Auto production" to ALL regions which are waiting for production selection
I find the new "1"/ENTER and "2" shortcuts to be very useful for people who prefer to use keyboard - it really save a lot of time compared to always dragging the mouse to the Action button. Try it, it makes the game faster
Ctrl+SPACE and Ctrl+A might seem as too heavy handed, but these shortcuts can be useful in the very last stage of the game, when all you want to focus on is conquering somebody's Holy Land or some other specific task, and do not care about the rest anymore
Bug fixes:
1) The bug preventing "next hint" from being shown
2) The horrible bug which crashed the game when you wanted to access "History review" when you actually lost the game. Sorry for that one
3) The bug which prevented the End-of-turn when a monster didn't find a path (or had nowhere to go) and had to be disbanded
4) The bug which blocked Miracles/Dogmas/Knowledge buttons when you loaded a game while AI turns where in progress in your current game
5) Other small bug fixes
Help and hints:
1) Loyalty description added to "Dogmas" section of Help
2) Forced hints reminding you to use SHIFT and ALT keys to access important information
3) More information about how recruitment of Armies works and what determines the speed of recruitment in Units section of the Help
All in all, this version brings some useful UX improvements to make the game faster and important information accessible easier and a slightly reworked role of Heretics in the game, which should make them more powerful (and if you are smart you can take advantage of that to harm your enemies)