Released 5/3/2012
Features:
+ Added the Braided Belt (craftable accessory that increases defense, especially cutting defense)
+ Added the Black Market improvement (empire only, reduces rush costs, increase gold and unrest slightly)
+ Added the Bear Pelt loot
Bugs:
+ Fixed an issue causing Shrink to be applied incorrectly when cast on groups
+ Firestorm doesnt destroy cities anymore
+ Fixed a crash caused by using the Tame ability when there was only one unit in the enemy army
+ Fixed an issue where research would be displayed as taking -2 billion turns if the player hadnt founded a city yet
+ Fixed a bug that caused a unit to get an additional action after casting haste
+ Fixed a bug allowing the impulsive init bonus to remain through a casting time (ie: the 1 turn fireball bug)
+ Fixed an issue when casting syphon strength on a group that drops their attack to 0
+ Fixed bug where some city training modifying enchantments (like Aura of Might) would reapply their effects each time the game was loaded
+ Fixed bug where spell range was being ignored in AutoResolve battles.
+ Fixed bug where tactical HP Regen was not happening in AutoResolve battles.
+ Fixed bug where some city training modifying enchantments (like Aura of Might) would reapply their effects each time the game was loaded
+ Fixed an issue causing mage staves and occasionally arrows to shoot in from the side of the screen
Balance:
+ Wage costs reduced (Labor to Wage ratio decreased from 1% to 0.5%)
+ Rebalanced unit design trait costs (generally up)
+ Rebalanced magic item accessories (generally the training cost goes down, but the crystal cost goes up)
+ Masterwork Chain Shirt: Metal cost increased from 2 to 3
+ Kite Shield: 2 to 3
+ Champion's Cuirass: 3 to 4
+ Light Plate Cuirass: 2 to 3
+ Belt of Speed: Initiative increased 1 to 2
+ Shadow Warg: Cutting attack decreased from 14 to 8, HP reduced from 5 to 4, moves reduced from 4 to 3, Attack per level increased from 1 to 2.
+ Brute ability no longer gives an accuracy bonus
+ Heart of Morian trophy no longer gives a constitution bonus
+ Rebalanced all healing items (they generally heal more)
+ Reduced the damage on the Firestorm spell
+ Mace moved from Blacksmithing to Weaponsmith
+ Reduced Hit Points per level from 4 to 3
+ Brilliant reduced to +10% experience and +2 spell mastery per level instead of +25% and +3
+ Increased the Wealth amount from 150 to 200
+ Reduced accuracy per level from 3 to 2
+ Reduced base champion accuracy from 80 to 75
+ Increased the xp needed at high levels slightly
+ Rebalanced all items/abilities that give dodge
+ Plaguestalker lairs cant be within 6 tiles of a starting location (was causing some first turn AI or human player losses)
+ More monster get immune to counterattack
+ Reduced shields defense and dodge slightly
+ Removed the maintenance from the Fort and Castle
+ Reduced the dodge bonus on the Band of Agility, Dancing Boots, Cloak of Shadows and the Cloak of the Night
+ Evade gives +5 to dodge (+2 per air shard) instead of +10 to dodge (+5 per air shard)
+ Fixed an issue keeping the Amarian Blood ability from working
+ Wilding Camps and Darkling camps spawn groups of darklings/wildings instead of single ones
Cosmetic:
+ Modified the animation manager so that even when the animation speed is increased in tactical battles, the idle speed remains normal
+ New Zone of Control graphics
+ Updated the display on spell mastery and spell resist functions to account for the new per level numbers
AI:
+ Fixed AI bug where it didn't count pioneers if they were in an army. This resulted in a lot of extra pioneers being made
+ Updated AI to more effectively evaluate hits world situation when choosing its next tech to research
+ Fixed a bug where the AI units would never leave a city in some cases
+ AI more aggressive about defending cities
+ Took advantages of multithreaded AI to have the AI do much deeper calculations of threats (i.e. radius of 32 from a city for instance) if those tiles are known by the AI
+ Removed old AI limiter of not allowing it to train units if it thought it had 2X the military might of its enemies (this was to save on RAM that we have since addressed).
+ Fixed AI bug where it would abort building a high end unit if its enemy military was deemed weak (where weak was less powerful than it which, as we know, is not a good indicator). This was originally put in to save RAM.
+ Improved AI evaluation algorithm for choosing units.
+ AI is now aware of slave class units
+ AI will sometimes raze enemy cities
+ Weapon preferences set on the sovereigns (so AI Irane will prefer bows, Markin prefers hammers, Verga prefers axes, etc)
+ Fixed AI bug that caused guardian units to not attack cities in certain circumstances
+ Updated rally point code to prevent AI from sending units to rally points next to enemy cities (that had been captured)
+ Fixed path finding bug that prevented AI units from moving (or being able to get to goodie huts)
+ Fixed path finding bug that caused player units to sometimes take odd paths
+ The AI is less likely to declare war on weaker players in the early game on easier difficulty levels
+ AI does a much better job of equiping its sovereign and champions
+ AI less aggressive in declaring war early game
+ Fixed AI bug that caused guardian units no to attack cities in certain circumstances
+ Updated rally point code to prevent AI from sending units to rally points next to enemy cities (that had been captured)
+ Fixed path finding bug that prevented AI units from moving (or being able to get to goodie huts)
+ Fixed path finding bug that caused player units to sometimes take odd paths
+ Fixed AI bug that caused guardian units no to attack cities in certain circumstances
+ Updated rally point code to prevent AI from sending units to rally points next to enemy cities (that had been captured)
+ Fixed path finding bug that prevented AI units from moving (or being able to get to goodie huts)
+ Fixed path finding bug that caused player units to sometimes take odd paths