Wow an actual patch, almost makes it worth the broken mods.
Art
- Updated arena spectator characters. They are now normal agents instead of meshes and they have new animations.
Yes, thank you for removing the PS1 Nightmare NPCs from before
Spectators now:
Audio
- Added missing voiceovers for Aserai, Khuzait and Sturgia.
Yes this is much better. With the various accents you get a real impression you're talking to someone from a different region/culture. I'd say from my quick warping across the map the accents all seem appropriate.
Now if the NPCs can just evolve beyond being cardboard cutouts and really respond to events around them!
UI
Changes
- Party Screen Troop Sorting:
- Players can now sort both rosters in the party screen by troop Type, Name, Count and Tier.
- The last selected sort type is remembered and applied on every party screen initialisation.
- By default, heroes are grouped together at the top of the roster.
- This change also includes a troop-type rundown added to the party screen. Players now can see how many Infantry, Archers, Cavalry and Horse Archers they have at a glance.
You finally did it! Not sure why it took almost 3 years, but thank you.
- Implemented a Fog of War feature for heroes:
- Players now need to meet heroes to unlock some of their critical information.
- Skills, traits, family, and owned settlements information are hidden until you meet that hero.
- This change affects tooltips, portraits and information shown in the encyclopaedia.
Interesting, guess this forces the player to interact with world a little more. Good step in the right direction if you ask me, but I'm guessing a lot of people won't like this.
Battles and Sieges
- Fixed preview issues with square and circle formations.
- Improvements to prevent troops from falling from castle walls due to overcrowding when teleporting during the Order of Battle phase.
- Logic was added to make nearby formations take control of siege weapons in the event that they are closer than the reinforcements from the initial formation.
- Fixed an issue with large formations that caused siege attacker AI to hesitate when deciding to attack enemies or control the walls.
- Implemented the sally out ambush mission. Players can now initiate this mission to destroy the besieger AI's siege engines.
Lots of good stuff here. Really hope wall spawning is at an end. I look forward to trying ambush mission and seeing improved square/circle formations.
Character Development System
- Added a new settlement near Lageta named "The Retreat" in which the player can approach a new NPC "The Hermit" and decide to retire from their current campaign either moving on with one of their heirs or concluding their journey completely.
- Added a new window where players can see their progress through their campaign at the end of it, presenting many stats such as their kill count, play time, number of troops recruited etc. Players can reach this window; when their clan is destroyed, they decide to retire or when they complete the main storyline.
Yay retirement! Don't have to wait for main character to die. Now if we could just get actual tutoring, you might be able to run a consistent campaign (though not sure why you'd need to).
Though I didn't see Retreat at first glance... is it like a hideout?
Clan and Party
- Alley mechanics have been redesigned and reimplemented. From now on, players will be able to claim alleys after they clear one. They can do so by assigning a clan member who has suitable traits and roguery skills.
- Player-owned alleys will provide gold and bandit troops for the player but also generate some crime rating.
- Alleys will be attacked by neighbouring gang leaders, and players will have to respond to those attacks in order to keep the alley.
Very good, can actually play a proper rogue character now.
Armies
- The village raid system has been reworked. Instead of rewarding just through the inventory and recruitment pool of the village, village raids now primarily rely on the amount of hearth damage done to the village during the raid.
- Rewards come in three categories - Denar which makes a small part of the loot, various everyday goods and the main production of the village.
- The combined value of the loot is usually higher than f.e. attacking caravans but the weight can be rather high - especially while raiding villages that produce low-value but a high volume of goods like hardwood and grain. We wanted to increase the viability of raiding but if done for commercial gain we want players to return to towns to sell loot off. This way, players can either raid a village, maybe two, and leave the front lines to make money, or choose to go on a raiding spree for strategic reasons and forgo the income.
- Recovery time for villages has also increased.
- Forcing supplies and recruits are now also based on village hearths.
- After being forced to give supplies or recruits a village will generate less loot through raiding for a while as villagers are alert.
- If a raid is completed successfully, it does not give a disorganised state anymore. You only become disorganised when you leave mid-raid.
Very nice, hopefully this makes raiding profitable, instead of something you just do to cripple your enemies economy.
"Less talking, more raiding!"
Kingdoms and Diplomacy
- Fixed an issue that allowed minor factions to join a kingdom that it should always be at war with (by design).
Always thought this was silly, so this means the select minor factions will always be at war then?
- Wanderer life cycle was changed. Players can now find at least 1 of each wanderer type in the world at all times.
What is a "type"? While I'd say I saw more wanderers at start of game, there was certainly not one of every name type. For example: Spicevendor and several others were missing for me. Battania and Sturgia literally only had 2 Heroes.
Quests & Issues
- Village needs grain issue/quest fixes & changes.
- The issue now only appears in villages whose type is "Wheat Farm".
- Issue frequency changed to rare from common.
- Relation penalty added with other notables in the issue village if the quest fails.
Needs Grain Quest is kinda bad. Basically charity mission and you get far too little relationship gain with Notable to make it worth doing. Especially at higher clan tiers where they want several hundred units of grain. Not worth +1 to 2 relationship LOL
Other
- Rebalanced some shoulder armour pieces and weapons used in single-player tournaments.
Basically you nerfed shoulder pieces. Which is good IMO since they provided way too much armor if you ask me. Going to have interesting effects on unit balance though.
Audio
- Fixed problems with water collision sounds.
Ah that one seaside Empire Town may not be so awful now, good.
- Polearms (including javelins) with a length of 1.2 meters or less, no longer make mounts rear.
Eh I hope you make Pila throwable again, cause now totally useless for Empire.
Good patch, wish all of them were this substantial. If you're going break everyone's mods at least make it worthwhile eh?