Mechanics and Units

• World and Battle Movement has been separated into two separate stats for Units. This makes balancing the stat easier and it allows for units that are slow on the battlefield but not almost useless in a non-Garrison army. I have reviewed all units and adjusted the new stats, but I'm expecting to adjust further according to player feedback and my own findings with this new system.
• The Supply Depot and Forced March movement modifiers are now integrated into the effect system, making them less glitchy, and more visible in the relevant parts of the UI.
• Mana Nodes with garrisons can no longer be Bound or Drained without defeating the garrison.
• Most of the City stat modifiers applied during Leader interactions on conquest are now cleared when a subsequent conquest is resolved (and re-applied or not, depending on the outcome of new interaction).
• Reworked numerous 'baked modifiers' to City stats - mostly Unrest and Squalor. These would previously change the value permanently and without trackable source. They are now stat modifiers with durations and visibility in tool tips.
• City Pop role drift is now locked to max. 1 pop per turn to reduce jitter and role change spam.
• Spells cast during battles now count for purposes of Mastery Progress.
• New Unit Types: Greater Blood Beasts, Blood Abominations, Stormlings.
• Barghasts, Djinni and Efreeti are now unlocked through Mastery Progress rather than requiring a research project.
• Reduced the upkeep cost for most Demon unit types and buffed several of the unreasonably weak ones.
• Significantly reduced the resource cost of many research projects.
• Massively reduced the cost of the 'Mark' line of unit recruitment options. This goes for recruitment and upkeep modifiers both.
• Garrison army units no longer get an upkeep reduction if they have moved during the turn. This removes the ability to 'garrison-hop' as an unintended way to reduce unit upkeep.
• Increased Garrison upkeep reduction from 10% to 20% for Gold (Food is unchanged at 20%)
• Dedicated Garrison: New recruitment modifier. Max 2 per site. Unit will dedicated garrison of the chosen recruitment site. While garrisoned at this site the Food/Gold upkeep is reduced by 50%/75% respectively. If away from the site, the unit has increased Gold upkeep of +50%.

• Independent Nomad AI and raid mechanics have been streamlined and improved. This includes the battle decision and raid movement logic on the AI side. On the mechanics side, the logic for raising new units, raid frequency, raid targets and raid sizes, has been changed. The game settings regarding marauders (frequency/power) will now have a greater impact on all of these.
• AI rivals will now declare war when attacking Player sites and/or armies. Previously the AI assumed the player would do so (as this happens for AI vs AI interactions). Apart from annoying many players, this could lead to odd situations where the AI forgot about the war if they player didn't declare it.
• Wizard AI now prioritizes units with low movement and (relative) upkeep for garrison duty and units with high movement for warfare/exploration.
• Wizard AI now considers resource site opportunities prioritized by the value of expected resource output and no longer tries to spread construction evenly across provinces.
• Wizard AI is now capable of using unit recruitment options.

• Siege engines and towers can now be destroyed by defenders during a protracted siege. The chance is based on the number and power of defending units. Sappers, flyers and fire units contribute additional ability.
• Siege durations involving a random element (ie Siege Engines) now show the estimated duration as a range.
• The max number of Siege Towers is now limited by the number of sieging units.

• Several events, notifications and entities have been given new icons replacing the prior generic ones.
• Army (Unit) Transfer Window: Now has tool tips for units and three different sorting options.
• The Select Character or Party prompt mode for the Followers window now has a context-specific 'selection' button label. Ie if a character with no party is selected the button will say 'Select Character' - if a character with a party is selected the button will say 'Select Party'.
• Recruitment Window: Now displays unit size.
• Improved the 'Plea for Help' prompt to have tool tips and Go To links for the relevant armies/sites.
• All resurrection and rebirth effects now modify the 'recent losses' value preventing multiple same-turn applications of such effects from resurrecting more than the number of fallen
• Recruitment (unit) options are now sorted by state and name.
• Fixed a research panel refund amount display bug.
• Fixed a bug where 'Create Army' would act weirdly when used on 1-unit garrisons.
• Fixed a recruitment options not having any relevant upkeep modifier applied (during preview or after recruitment).
• Fixed a bug where invalid recruitment options could be selected when recruiting multiple units in sequence.
• Fixed a bug with the Arcane Denial spell.
• Fixed a bug where retreating armies would not reveal adjacent fog of war hexes.
• Fixed a bug where estimated Siege duration was incorrectly calculated.
• Fixed a bug where armies would keep a Siege target after retreating to another hex. This allowed the faction to contribute to a Siege as a 3rd party and/or at a distance.
• Fixed a bug where the AI would mobilize armies to lift a siege and then just halt adjacent to the target hex.
• Fixed a bug where a Beacon of Elemental Water targeting criteria was inverted.
• Fixed a bug where some notifications were not created as intended.
• Fixed numerous bugs and inconsistencies with Character Task validation.
• Fixed a number of bugs with the Party/Character selection logic that allowed selection of invalid parties if they were partially valid.