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.

OTHER FIXES

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Fixed an issue where consuming multiple cadaver stockpiles in the same turn does not count towards the completion of the "Battlefield Buffet" achievement.
• Fixed an issue where the "Float Like a Butterfly" achievement is not unlocked after completing its objective; undamaged ally unit count was used instead of enemy unit count.
• Fixed an issue where the "Float like a Butterfly" achievement will be unlocked after a combat draw or if the opposing army retreats from battle.
• Fixed an issue where the "Corridors of Power" achievement is not unlocked by completing its objective; City food was used instead of influence.
• Fixed an issue where the "Cage Match" achievement is not unlocked for clients, as victory achievements were only unlocked on the server side.
• Fixed an issue where the difficulty level achievements are unlocked in multiplayer sessions without AI opponents.

AI

• Fixed an issue where AI cities do not sometimes unlock units.
• Fixed an issue where researching the "Hospitality den" technology does not have a high priority for the AI.
• Fixed an issue where researching the "Diplomat's manse" technology does not have a high priority for the AI.
• Fixed an issue where AI empires have a low priority in researching army size techs.
• Fixed an issue where AI empires have a low priority in researching the "Mercenary corps" technology.
• Fixed an issue where the AI attitude for the "Open Borders" proposal during "Cold war" cannot be affected by the player through bribes.
• Fixed an issue where AI empire can get Halloween hero through a quest before the first winter.
• Fixed an issue where AI empires try to spawn armies from garrisons too far away.
• Fixed an issue with the Treaty AI decision (forbid impossible terms).
• Fixed an issue where Roaming armies can spawn on city boroughs and city centres.

DIPLOMACY

• Fixed an issue where the contract terms bar "modification highlight" will display a false information.
• Fixed an issue where the cost of diplomatic interactions doesn't scale appropriately.
• Fixed an issue where the influence cost of diplomatic interactions is not significant.
• Fixed an issue that occurred when requesting "Market ban removal" during "Cold War", no contract terms could be added to the negotiation.
• Fixed an issue where no timer is displayed for the "Relation State Change Chaos" effect triggered whenever switching to various relation states (War, Cold War, Alliance, and Peace).
• Fixed an issue where the compliment/warning declarations are always displayed as having a negative effect cost modifier for treaties.
• Fixed an issue where the "recent status change" influence cost modifier can be displayed as having a positive effect for players.
• Fixed an issue where the Drakken can keep every other faction at peace/alliance due to the low cost of force peace/alliance after they are cancelled.

EMPIRE AND CITIES

• Fixed an issue that occurred when building a Harbour, the surrounding districts were not improved.
• Fixed an issue where villages do not allow health regeneration.
• Fixed an issue where villages do not allow action point regeneration.
• Fixed an issue where the Player can keep playing a custom faction with trait points that exceed the authorised limit.
• Fixed an issue where the Pacify action pacifies villages already converted.
• Fixed an issue where the "Landscapist" custom faction trait doesn't give the approval bonus, unless the specific anomaly already gives an approval bonus.
• Fixed an issue where the battlezone preview is inconsistent with the actual battle zone.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes no effects are added during a winter season.

GUI

• Fixed an issue where a battle notification is received without an effective battle due to the use of the retreat by the AI empire.
• Fixed an issue where the Hero upkeep is not counted as upkeep in the tooltips.
• Fixed an issue where a "Missing GuiElement" error occurs sometimes when meeting another empire for the first time.
• Fixed an issue where already assimilated minor factions are selected by default in the assimilation screen when trying to assimilate a second minor faction.
• Fixed an issue where the XP per turn indicator displays false information on units which have the "Fast learner" capacity.
• Fixed an issue where the user is not informed about the multi-targeting system or its controls.
• Fixed an issue where the user is not informed that he/she cannot move his/her army while 2 other Empires are battling next to his/her army.
• Fixed an issue where the city screen is not properly opened when selecting a city, in city notifications (construction ended, idle, starving) while on a different screen (technology, empire).
• Fixed an issue where the tooltip of the Slavery hero capacity effect is coming from "converted villages", instead of "capacity".
• Fixed an issue where the colour of the Number of Pacified Village value and icon in the Minor Faction Choice panel is incorrect.
• Fixed an issue where the list of converted villages overlaps with the city list for custom factions that have the "Conversion" trait.
• Fixed an issue where tooltips of the Cultist districts provide misleading information regarding the level.
• Fixed an issue with the Unleashed Potential icon in battle.

MARKETPLACE

• Fixed an issue where the exclusive hero duration is not updated properly when playing on fast gamespeed.
• Fixed an issue where the demand of every item in the market resets after every turn in multiplayer.

MULTIPLAYER

• Fixed an issue where the game remains stuck in the End Turn phase if a user quits or is disconnected while a battle notification is open.
• Fixed an issue where players can have different army names when playing with a host having a different language.
• Fixed an issue where players can have different hero names when playing with a host having a different language.

QUESTS

• Fixed an issue where the quest marker for the "Manual labour" quest is not removed from the adventure map after the quest is completed.
• Fixed an issue where, through specific quests, using Parley or Attack with a god ray converted village is impossible, making potentially some quests impossible to be triggered or completed.
• Fixed an issue where the chapter 6 of the Drakken main quest can not fail.
• Fixed an issue where the "Initiatic Travel" quest cannot be completed.
• Fixed an issue where the turn cooldown timer is not functional for the "A history lesson" quest.
• Fixed an issue where the Roving Clans alternative Chapter 5 "An unfortunate option" cannot be completed if users load the session during the second step.
• Fixed an issue where Ruins and Village quests can be triggered during the tutorial if they don't have a specific pre-requisite mentioned in each of these quests.
• Fixed an issue where quests can offer rewards already offered by other quests in progress.
• Fixed an issue where the Cultists chapter 3 completion notification appears after chapter 4 new chapter notification.

RESEARCH

• Fixed an issue where the "We are legion" technology does not work.
• Fixed several issues with the pre-requisites on Cultist technologies and expansion disapproval reduction technologies.
• Fixed several text issues.

UNITS AND HEROES

• Fixed an issue where units in converted villages can sometimes disappear when loading a save.
• Fixed an issue where the spawn of a minor faction unit in a converted village can cause an exploit.
• Fixed an issue where, at the end of turn, some XP modifiers can be applied twice.
• Fixed an issue where the Broken Lords do not take damage when their regeneration is under 0.
• Fixed an issue where units with "Fast learner" gain 50% more experience per turn.
• Fixed an issue where the Slavery ability doesn't take into account the converted villages.
• Fixed an issue where the retrofit cost is not correctly checked.
• Fixed an issue where the Ceratan are always healing each other instead attacking their enemies.

WORLD GENERATION

• Fixed an issue where the "No ocean" setting generates Pangea maps when specific settings are used.
• Fixed an issue where no luxury resources are generated on sessions with the "World difficulty" set to Easy and the map size to Tiny.