Skill changes
Some skills received some love, to make the game more balanced and lord types more relevant.
– Soldier discipline now adds 7 soldiers instead of 2. The training difficulty has increased from 1 to 3 however.
– Military ranks adds 6 soldiers, needs “Soldier discipline” trained at level 5 and “Charisma” level 3, and it is a difficulty 4 skill
– Military encampment adds only 5 soldiers instead of 10, needs “Military ranks” trained at level 5 and “Charisma” at level 5. It is a difficulty level 5 skill.
– Brotherhood of Blood and Brotherhood of Steel skills now only give a maximum of 10% increase in unit HP and Damage respectively, per level.
– Iron armaments drills, Leather armor drills and Swiftness drills now only apply to soldiers wearing the respective body armor type. For more information, see armor specialization wiki page.
Weapons cost changes
The weapons and armor costs have been changed because all high end items required a bit of everything to build. The item costs are now more specialized, depending on item type and tech level.
Experience changes
The experience gain system has been changed, with human enemies giving much more experience, because of their generally higher stats.
The experience is no longer influenced by the strength of the deployed forces. The player can deploy the entire army without affecting the experience output.
An experience minimum limit was added. If an attacked army does not give enough experience to reach the minimum limit, the attacking army does not receive any experience at all. The transition is made with a decreasing penalty until a full limit is reached, after witch the experience is not penalized at all. Both these limits are influenced by the current lord skills and are introduced to eliminate, or mitigate, the hybrid lords with skills from all 3 trees trained. Also, because of this limit, having a lord fully trained in all 3 skill types will be next to impossible, so choose well. For more information, see the wiki at experience
Plunder changes
The plunder produced by monsters was reduced a factor of 2.
The plunder produced by human soldiers was substantially increased. The output depends on the equipment of the soldier, but the values have increased, in most cases, even 5 times.
Plunder is now however consumed by the houses, so make sure you have enough. Houses will first use the plunder in a castle warehouse, after which they will consume from the city hall and if no plunder is present in either the warehouse or the city hall then they will consume for the plunder stored inside the house itself. They will not take plunder from other buildings. Not having any plunder to consume at all is not an issue, and the house will still produce gold. Gold produced by the house was increased overall and takes into consideration the amount of plunder consumed each turn combined with the amount of plunder stored. For more information, check the house wiki page.
Added army stances
The armies can now be passive (default), agressive or hidden. Also, the army gains a short invulnerability time when logging in or when teleporting through a portal. See more on the lord stance wiki page.
Resource changes
The resources required to construct a building have been greatly increased, especially the stone.
Since the early weapons and armor do not require the mid and late resource types (coal, copper, iron, gems) anymore, the output of those resource types from quests has been substantially decreased, or completely eliminated. Other resource drops have of course been increased, and the overall resource value on those quests remains unchanged.
Quest changes
2 new quests were added on the Knight map.
“Secure the area” is a quest that gives resource rewards instead of upgrading gear.
“Improve magic” is a quest that gives special spell scrolls that cannot be obtained from other sources.
All quests on the Knight island can now scale based on a special item that is also received as reward. Higher level variants contain more enemies but give substantially greater rewards, and also generate maps with mush more resources to pickup.
New spell variants
Variants for the “Smite” and “Quick step” spells were introduced. These spells, even if influenced by the spell power, do not consume it. Because they do not use spell power, a unit can now cast multiple spells in the same turn. “Charged smite”, which is the “free” version of the “Smite” spell does the same damage as its basic version. The ability to cast it several times in the same turn however makes it very powerful since, under special circumstances, it can decimate an enemy army right from the start. The “Brilliant quick step” spell can be used to basically improve the speed of all your troops by casting it multiple times, once on each group.
The spells can be stored as usual in the mage tower, next to their basic versions.
Summon portal changes
Summon portal can no longer be cast from inside a quest map on one of the Bloodbath islands.
Also, summon portal cannot be cast at all from a Knight island if the player owning the castle is not you. If nobody owns the castle, then the summon portal works as before.
Portal changes
It is no longer possible to open a portal directly to islands where you have an army on. You must own a castle on the island or use a random portal. This makes getting to a particular knight island more difficult then before.
Dagger weapon changes
The dagger price was increased substantially and the weapon has been buffed.
Based on the type of armor and how many pieces a soldier has, a dagger soldier can receive up to 100% armor penetration and 85% change to do triple damage. This makes dagger soldiers lethal weapons.
The speed of dagger soldiers has however decreased. That turns the daggers more into defensive units, providing cover for other units.
This is just a step further in the direction the dagger soldier is heading for, which is a tactical asassination weapon, made to eliminate isolated enemy troops.
Quality of life changes
The starter town buildings are now more closer together and the terrain general aspect has been improved. It looks a bit better.
Clicking on a building (either on the 3d view or the icons on the left side) will now open the details page of that building directly. To see the menu that was previously visible by left clicking, you need to right click on the building.
When sending goods from the city hall to a building, the dialogue now contains a textfield to manually enter the value, which is pre-selected and the player can just type in directly the desired amount to transfer. The slider still works as before.
The “to” textfield in the soldier transfer window is now pre-selected.
The quick details window now stays open for enemies on the map, and the player can move the mouse over the individual troop components to see the equipment and/or weapon types of the troops. To close it, hit the small close button or the “Esc” key on the keyboard. This quick info is available for player owned troops in the army and castle details panel in the map view also.
The movement animation speed for all human soldiers was generally increased, to match the unit speed. Besides that, there is a battle animation speed control added on the battle view, and can be opened by clicking on the very small button on the top right side of the 3d battle view. At the moment, the maximum factor for the animation speed increase is 5 but it will be changed in a future version to something more reasonable (smaller).