This update took longer than I expected or wanted, but now it's finally here. I had originally intended for the next update to be a upgrade of the Unity engine version and some pending graphical improvements. However, due to the delay in bringing you this update, I want to put out at least one, maybe two, smaller updates on the heels of this one, before doing anything with even a small risk of delay. There is a decent backlog of QoL improvements and misc. requests that I will want to make sure are done in the not too distant future. I realize the updates have been sparse these last months, but there are things happening that should help me pick up the pace a little. I don't want to over-promise, but hopefully the next few weeks will feature game updates that show what I'm talking about. If things pan out as I hope they will, it should increase my development bandwidth a fair bit. Either way, I will keep you all informed on the forums.

• Overhauled character aging mechanics, allowing characters to die from old age and be affected by random events that force them to rest for a number of turns as they age.
• Added three game settings that allow players to control character aging: character life span, character age impact, and character age variation. These settings can be changed at the start of the game.
• Existing games will have the new character aging mechanics disabled, but for new games, the default settings are longer life spans, low impact, and normal variability.
• Adjusted recruitment costs of characters to account for their age, with older characters receiving a low to moderate discount on their base cost.
• Increased the chances of older characters starting with additional levels. Note that this makes them more expensive to recruit.
• Added a detailed battle log for attacks that provides in-depth information on stats and calculations concerning to-hit chance, to-wound, crit, fend, dodge, resistance, armor, armor penetration, secondary damage types, and more. It also tracks individual unit members for hit, wounded, and killed status.
• Access the detailed battle log information via the right-click context menu on a unit in the battle window.
• Hopebringer (Celestial spell, level 3): targets a non-Civic character, giving them the Influential trait, and treats them as a Civic class type in addition to their existing types.
• Lesser Longevity (Life spell, level 3): increases the expected lifespan of a non-Undead, non-Celestial, non-Demonic, non-Vampiric, non-Immortal Follower. The spell will have a reduced or no effect if the character already has a long expected lifespan.
• Greater Longevity (Life spell, level 7): greatly increases the expected lifespan of a non-Undead, non-Celestial, non-Demonic, non-Vampiric, non-Immortal Follower. The spell will have a reduced or no effect if the character already has a very long expected lifespan.
• Scion of Shadow (Shadow spell, level 4): the target character gains the Guileful and Stealthy traits, and Guileful characters are treated as having the Civic class type in addition to their existing class types. If only one trait can be gained due to existing traits or class type, the character is still a valid target and will gain the single trait. Also added a new button to set the dominant deity of a plane in the Mythos Editor.
• Added "Grant Character Trait: Strong" and "Remove Character Trait: Sickly" as possible favor rewards for the Strength domain when being granted Divine Boons.
• Added validation checks to ensure that a plane is selected before adding a new trait, and that at least one deity is assigned to a plane before setting the dominant deity.
• Display the currently ongoing construction project in the City Window.
• Implemented validation checks to ensure that at least one deity is assigned to a plane before setting the dominant deity.
• Added a display for the ongoing construction project in the City Window.
• Added the ability to cancel the ongoing construction project directly from the City Window.
• Added a display for free mana available for unit upkeep in the wizard info window. This shows the amount of free mana available for unit upkeep, as well as the amount of free mana currently being used for upkeep.
• Stoneskin and Diamondskin spells can no longer be cast on units with the "Metal" tag, in addition to the existing constraints of the "Elemental", "Spectral", and "Earth" tags.
• Iron Skin spell can no longer be cast on units with the "Metal" tag, in addition to the existing constraints of the "Elemental", "Spectral", "Air", and "Earth" tags.
• Implemented a new game setting that allows players to specify the number of rounds resolved in legacy battle resolution per step. This setting can be modified via the settings dialog, accessed via the in-game main menu.
• Added Siege Mechanics to the Encyclopedia window under the Mechanics group, providing a breakdown of the game mechanics involved in Siege resolution.
• Added Unit Mechanics to the Encyclopedia window under the Mechanics group, providing a breakdown of unit stats and their impact on gameplay.
• Added a check to the loading process to address an issue where starting Lore levels with bonuses were not being properly applied during game loading for older versions of the game.
• Improved handling of movement costs for armies with units possessing shore-only abilities.
• Building names now display " (under construction)" when appropriate in the Building List View.
• Grid-based battles are now enabled by default when installing the game. An update soon will probably feature a somewhat annoying prompt to switch to grid-based battles for existing players, as it was unintentionally made the non-default options for a while, and many players thus never discovered it.
• Fixed numerous (calculation-related) battle resolution bugs and issues.
• Fixed a bug in the Military Window that caused an incorrect tooltip to be displayed when the player attempted to recruit a unit that was not recruitable at the currently selected site. The tooltip now correctly displays the reason why the unit cannot be recruited, and also informs the player how many other sites have the unit available for recruitment.
• Fixed a bug that occurred when using Add Planar Trait in the Mythos Editor.
• Fixed a bug where removing a Deity in the Mythos Editor would not properly remove it from all internal data structures, which could potentially cause data corruption.
• Fixed a bug where army movement was incorrectly blocked when passing a fortress.
• Fixed a bug in the Blood Portal spell where the ownership of the new follower summoned by the spell was not set correctly.
• Fixed a bug where wizard template customization/cloning could result in a crash.