Sound effects and overhauled recruitment pool mechanics are the highlights of this update. As noted below some of the changes made are relatively "high-risk", and if you encounter any problems which may have slipped past testing, please contact the support email or make a post, and I will try to get a hotfix out asap.
- Updated the Unity version used to improve performance and stability, but maintaining existing compatibility towards older OS'es and graphics cards. There is a risk of compatibility issues slipping past testing, but I will endeavour to resolve those asap if they happen.
- Sound Effects: Some actions, events and UI elements now have associated sound effects. More will follow.
- Encyclopedia entries are now alphabetically sorted in most cases
- Deities/religions are now sorted by power, then by name, in the Encyclopedia
- World settings for Magic now affect character trait generation/availability. In a world with pervasive magic many non-Arcane characters will have some kind of magical ability/trait - whereas a world with very rare magic will have true magic restricted to very few, and almost exclusively Arcane-type, characters.
- Improved various dynamic text generation involving adjective and singular forms of races and cultures.
- Demon characters now have a specialized demon race, rather being treated as having no race.
- New subrace concept, which is a way to represent variants of a race who have significant difference in traits, but for many purposes are treated as the same race. This could be something as extreme as tiny pixies and large satyrs as subraces of the Faerie, or more subtle such as Hill and Mountain variants of a Dwarven races. This new concept is not yet implemented across all existing races/templates.
- New Demon subrace: Incubus. A default character type for this subrace has also been added, as a jack-of-all-trades Rogue/Martial/Arcane class.
- New Demon subrace: Imps. This covers the existing Imp character type and unit types.
- Improved adherence to World settings for race/culture variety and templating. In some cases this reduces the chance and frequency of completely randomly generated races. In other cases it adds additional non-templated generation of cultures. In general the races and cultures should be a much better match for the selected settings, and with more internal depth for the individual settings.
- Greatly improved the Fungoid, Crystalfolk, Demi-Satyr (renamed to Deuadai)
- Some cultures now disdain armor, despite having the technology needed to create it, due to either physical limitations or cultural traits. This is reflected in the unit types generated for such a culture.
- The culture traits Master Smiths and Master Miners now impact the quality of metal armor for generated unit types.
- Increased the starting number and variety of follower characters for Wizards.
- Fixed a bug where some culture templates were incorrectly limited in the range of possible technology levels.
- Improved several of the language templates used for name and toponym generation with more depth, variety and better elimination of awkward and implausible random results.
- Added several new Incubus and Succubus unit types. Research options have not yet been added.
- New unit types: Lesser Phoenixes, Phoenixes and Greater Phoenixes. Research to unlock these have increasing requirements as the power level increases.
- New unit types: Lesser Shadowflame Phoenixes, Shadowflame Phoenixes and Greater Shadowflame Phoenixes. These are Phoenixes with combined Fire and Dark damage, with some variation to the stats, abilities and attacks compared to the "standard" Phoenixes.
- New unit types: Lesser Spellfire Phoenixes, Spellfire Phoenixes and Greater Spellfire Phoenixes. These are Phoenixes with combined Fire and Arcane damage, with some variation to the stats, abilities and attacks compared to the "standard" Phoenixes.
- Rebalanced the army casualty replenishment mechanics to make it less possible to immediately replenish losses caused by spells and events.
- Improved the consolidation of races and cultures during world generation greatly reducing the risk of confusing duplicates occuring.
- Unified the mechanics for raising Undead from battlefields, so that post-battle necromancy and various spells/abilities have the same results and options for the same battlefield.
- New recruitment mechanics for Wizards. The recruitment pools are no longer pseudo-resources, but represent the number of troops which be recruited before suffering increased recruitment/upkeep costs. A temporary component also exists, which allows various events and actions to provide an extraordinary increase of this limit, at the downside of time and casualties depleting this value. The base pool size is based on the same mechanics as previously (cities, fortresses, characters, traits, etc.). Any sigificant changes to the value are applied "softly" over several turns.
- Mercenaries are exempt from the recruitment pool mechanics, which makes them a (possibly costly) alternative for Wizards who have stretched the available recruitment pools to, or beyond, their limits.
- Added more tooltips to the recruitment/military UI to allow inspection of various mechanics. This is especially useful for seeing the effect of various effects/traits on recruitment/upkeep costs.
- New unit type: Voidlings. Provides an early game unit for Darkness-mastery wizards.
- New unit type: Lesser Nether Shades. Provides an early game unit for Death-mastery wizards.
- New unit type: Blood Beasts. Provides an early game unit for Blood-mastery wizards.
- Wisps are now available at Arcane 1, to provide additional early game unit choices across wizard types.
- The Wizard AI is now better at not recruiting more units than it has economy to support.
Hotfix (0.9.126.1)
- Fixed an issue where a window/dialog would be stuck in an "unshowable" state until another window/dialog had been opened.
- Fixed a few issues with the Outpost => Fortresss upgrade action: The ordering of workers/overseer now follows the usual convention; the required level of Construction is now 1+ as intended; the map no longer requires a reload/refresh to reflect the upgrade on completion.