CHANGES AND ADDITIONS
- Added a new minor faction: the Eyeless Ones.
- Added new 10 side quests.
- Added Faction-related diplomatic interactions.
- Added loading tips.
- Added the Vaulters' outgame view.
- Added VFX to the unique quest weapons.
- Added more data to the save files, in order to allow parsing for league/stats database.
AI
- Allowed garrisons of AI empires to handle a siege on their own.
- Improved the battle targeting of AI units.
- Reduced the Dust and Food stresses, and increased the Industry stress for the AI empires.
- Increased the importance of Industry when the AI chooses a city spot for its next city.
- Added the use of the retrofit feature for the AI empires.
- Improved the way AI empires manage their Empire plan.
- Improved the way AI empires manage their construction queues.
- Changed the way AI empires manage their researches: must-have technologies begin with a low heuristic value but increase a lot at each completed research.
- Added an "after battle" analysis in order to adapt the unit designs of AI empires.
- Refactored the unit design system used by the AI empires.
- Improved the management of the "Slayer" abilities by the AI empires in their unit designs.
- Increased the weights of resources marketplace technology and the assimilation technology for the AI empires.
- Feedback have prerequisites to avoid strange messages from AI empires (for example: "We appreciate your peaceful behaviour" during a war).
- Open/Close Borders and Map Exchange/Embargo are now used by AI empires.
BALANCING
- Drakkens' Force status declarations increase their costs when they are used.
- Removed the constraints upon land mass from Large and Huge map sizes (issues with too many regions are handled another way by the World generator).
- Added Morale penalty (-1) to Ranged and Support units when there are enemies around.
- Decreased by 30% Damage and by 10% Attack values of Ranged units and heroes.
- Other unit tweaks: WW-Forest Spirit, BL-Infantry, BL-Ryder, AM-Battle Mage, RC-Berzerk, D-Drakkenling, Giant Ogre, Justicere, Ice Warg.
- Unit capacities: Dark Proof added to Ice Warg, Slightly increased BL-Ryder Life Drain, reduced a bit power of Fire Rain AoE for Witches.
- Hero default capacities: downgraded from Lv.3 to Lv.2 Industry and Damage boost capacities.
- Tweaked Luxury Effects: switched Emerald and Grassilk effects, changed Hydromiel effects for Hero Upkeep reduction, slightly reduced Dust Orchid effect.
- Increased the military technologies' weights of the 4th Era.
- Tweaked the cost of some custom faction traits.
- The "We are legion" faction trait requires the Conversion faction trait. Rage wizards technologies are now linked to a faction trait instead of the faction affinity.
- Added prerequisites on terrain tag water for the shipyard.
- Changed the descriptions of 4 Luxury Resources (according to their gameplay changes).
- Changed the position of the "Mindless Slaughter" technology (Necrophages quest reward, Era 4).
BATTLE
- Added an attack odds panel in battle.
- Added the possibility to swap the units' positions in battle deployment.
- Improved the battle targeting rules (decreased cases where units do nothing).
- Added the battle deployment zone size in the Registry file.
- The coloured area of the life bar is more visible in battle.
- The life bar in battle is removed when de-zooming.
- Reachable and attack tiles are now more visible in the Winter season.
- Improved the targeting highlight in battle.
- Clamped min and max Morale bonus from -6 to +6.
GUI
- The colour palette can now be selected as a game options of the User Interface tab; includes a colour-blind mode that can be edited through the palette.xml file.
- Added a custom tooltip on the terms' prices that explains what modifiers influence it, in the notification of diplomatic interactions.
- When a notification is about a warning or a compliment, the contract is displayed for clarification.
- Added the number of assimilated villages on each minor faction slot.
- The real number of available assimilation slots is now displayed in the Empire screen (was capped by the number of assimilable minor factions).
- Added tooltips on the "Army in battle" and "Army locked by other battle" icons.
- Added a section in the districts tooltips to explain how to level them up.
- Added the Battle Movement icon in the Unit battle tooltip.
- Display of the World Seed value in the bottom left corner of the Options screen.
- Sorted out the pillar faction trait (no arcana use when there are no pillars and set the right pillar price for Ardent Mage).
- Improved the large version of the spells' icons.
ITEMS
- Added Mastery Strategic Resource Cost Bonus system: the more you unlock item technologies, the more you get discounts on item strategic resource costs.
- Increased by 50% strategic cost of items (to improve strategic resources rarity and to partially compensate the new Mastery system that can potentially decrease by 60% the strategic resources costs of items).
- Increased by 20% Industry and Dust costs of items made of Iron or Dust.
MARKETPLACE
- Improved the stock management in the marketplace.
- Added a feature of auto-supply of stockpiles in the marketplace.
- Reduced a bit the impact of the level up of units on the marketplace.
- Changed the value of the Sellout Market Tax.
- Changed values of the marketplace reference prices of stockpiles and heroes.
UNITS AND HEROES
- Downgraded Industry Efficient and Damage Boost capacities (Hero default capacities).
- Unit instant heal can now be modded to choose the used resource.
- Renamed the "Low Damage" ability: now "Warrior Apprentice".
- Removed Low Damage (Warrior Apprentice) ability of Support units but reduced their base attack values.
- Sorted abilities to have Range ability on top of the abilities list.
IMPORTANT FIXES
- Fixed an issue where an assert can be raised by the Trade Routes system (some region was not correctly excluded).
- Fixed an issue where an assert can be raised when the Roving Clans lose their main city and have some roaming privateers.
- Fixed an issue where a crash can occur when displaying info about an annihilated army which was a privateer army.
- Fixed an issue where a crash can occur when loading a save where a unit is mistaken for a hero.
- Fixed an issue where an unskippable assert is received by the host during gameplay.
- Fixed an issue where a desync in MP games is caused by AI empires (when manipulating the construction queues).
- Fixed an issue where audio is muted and audio options have no functionality when booting the title without headset or speakers plugged in.
And we ran out of characters. :) For the complete release notes, please check the official forum.
Thank you and enjoy!
~Amplitude