It is finally time for an update! As you may have noticed, it has been a bit longer than usual since the last update. In the future, if another long update cycle cannot be avoided, we will try hard to provide a design diary or similar, to keep the community involvement at the high level which is the reason for having an Early Access.
Speaking of design diary, one should be forthcoming in the next couple of days, with information on the first playable Warlord, highlighting some of the key features, technical and design challenges, etc. If there is a delay (due to unexpected bugs, etc.), there will be a forum post declaring it, and not a "full" announcement, to minimize the notification spam.
As was mentioned last time, translation work is a priority. However, as an indie developer, resources are limited, and this is a time and resource heavy area, so progress will seem slow at times. This update cycle work was done on tackling some technical issues related to handling language-specific tool tips. This went well, and a few tool tips were translated to verify the functionality. There is still work left to be done on handling dynamic text translation - and then the actual body of work getting everything translated.
While the work on getting the first playable Warlord into the game progressed, a number of bug fixes, new spells and misc. features/improvements were done in parallel. Full patch notes can be found below.
- New resource site: Fae Gardens. These produce Faerie Dust, Herbs, and if the hex has a Spices special, Spices. Wizards with the Faerie racial trait can build them without research. Other Wizards need to research the ability as a Spellcraft project requiring Life 2 and Enchantment 2.
- Implemented the Berserker Rage battle spell. It confers Frenzy, +4 Courage, -4 Discipline, +1 Toughness, +1 Melee Shock for 4 seconds. Target must not have be Mindless or Unfeeling. On expiry the target takes (25% of unit size) hits for 2 true damage .
- The Hurricane spell can now be used during battles, where it will deal 4 damage to all members of flying units not engaged with a non-flying unit (limited flyers only damage if not stationary) and ground them for 10 seconds.
- The proselytize action will now ask which religion to proselytize and filter available followers accordingly. This will be skipped if only one choice is available.
- Workers for hire are now generated with a wider variety of skills. Before a "basic" worker for the relevant culture was always generated. Now there is a chance for different skillsets, with the randomziation affected by cultural traits and tech level.
- New Worker skill: Herbalism. This gives +1 Herb resource per skill level when the Workers are assigned to Farms/Logging Camp/Hunters Lodge/Fae Gardens.
- The font on the Game Settings Window improved to be more crisp and readable, especially in the drop down sections.
- Espionage and Search related assignments will now include invalid characters with an explanation of why they are unavailable.
- Added Ronin character type, relevant for cultures with the Bushido trait. This type can sometimes be generated as a dungeon boss.
- Samurai are no longer generated as dungeon bosses.
- Added a cheat action for disabling the battle mana cap.
- Cheat actions now have a separate "page" in the action hieararchy.
- Added 'C' as keyboard shortcut for casting the currently selected spell during battles.
- Added 'Ctrl+1-9' as keyboard shortcut for casting the first 9 spells in the dropdown during battles.
- Added a tooltip to the cast spell button during battles, displaying spell info (and a keyboard shortcut hint).
- Added tooltips to the custom game setting drop downs (world size/age, race/culture, magic, wilderness, etc.).
- Cultures with (fantasy) Slavic flavor will now have unique village, city and castle names, and not use the default language.
- Added additional variety to Elvish flavor character and place names.
- Fixed locations sometimes saving incorrectly for characters.
- Fixed some battle log lines having incorrect time stamps.
- Fixed unit damage vulnerability modifiers not saving correctly.
- Fixed a bug where Worker skills at level 0 were in some places treated as being -1, leading to very strange results in some calculations.
- Fixed a bug where the AI would often refuse to build on Geyser specials. In some cases considering such hexes would cause a crash.
- Fixed Fimbul Winter events not being saved, causing the event to not be processed after exiting and loading a game (with on-going events).
- Fixed the description of Vigor: Rain of Blood to show the actual effects.
- Fixed an issue where several option lists failed to register mouse clicks not directly on the option text, making them annoying to interact with.
- Fixed a bug causing battle tooltips to sometimes not update or update very slowly.
- Fixed a bug causing units to start battles with a facing out of sync between the simulation and state tracking. In some cases, this caused erratic movement/wheeling and failure to engage enemies.
- Fixed city building modifiers to Squalor and Unrest not showing in tool tips in the City Window. This is not retroactively fixed for already constructed buildings in existing save games.
- Fixed city building modifiers to Squalor and Unrest working slightly incorrectly if applied while the stat was at the upper or lower limit, and the building is later destroyed or upgraded.
- Fixed a bug where "Hide" filters for the Military Window were not being applied correctly when loading a game.
- Fixed a bug where some input fields were difficult to select/focus/edit.
- Fixed organization and secret society cells not being saved correctly.
- Fixed the (decadence related) secret society cell creation event treating knightly orders as cults.
- Added (German/Spanish/French) translations for top bar button tool tips.