All these things are currently done for the villain update, but keep in mind that a lot of them only affect the initial world generation process for now.

This information was collected from Toady's weekly devlogs and from the Future of the Fortress thread.

Villains:

>People can become villainous or corrupt based on how much they value things like cunning, power and greed

>Villians form networks of subordinate agents and compromised position holders through intimidation, asserting rank, blackmail, flattery, exploiting religious sympathies, promising to take revenge on an enemy, and direct bribery

>Success depends on various factors, for example bribery works better on greedy or indebted people, flattery on people who trust you, intimidation on people who fear you

>Which of these strategies they go for depends on their skill (intrigue, judge of intent) and their information on the target

>Villainous plots include: embezzling funds, sabotage (destroying funds of people or entities), stealing artifacts, framing, corrupt imprisonment, kidnapping, assassination, instigating wars between civs and coups to obtain positions of power

>Kidnappings can lead to ransoms, long time imprisonment and, depending on cruelty and civ ethics of the villain, even murder, torture or the sale of the prisoner

>Personal prisoners may escape, but the chance for success depends on the location where they are kept (it's harder to escape from the dungeon of a tower)

>Basic crime/ corruption (embezzling funds) and punishment (prison sentence, exile, execution) in world gen. Law enforcement keeps track of evidence they've collected from witnesses, interrogation and surveillance.

Necromancers/ Supernatural Villains:

>Necromancer towers can be improved to increase their zombie cap. Zombies resurrected beyond the cap are turned into wilderness population that is able to roam and attack player forts and adventurers.

>This process can turn world tiles evil. Emanating outward visibly from the tower tile by tile.

>Necromancers can infiltrate site graves and catacombs to sneak out some zombies

>Necromancers can lead invasions on outlaying villages and their market towns

>Necromancers and vampires have the ability to use their secrets and their blood respectively to entice people to join their villainous schemes. Grateful and dutiful villains actually carry through and share their power when an asset proves themselves useful, but others never fulfill their promise.

>Necromancers (and death affiliated demons) can now raise a new type of intelligent undead from historical graves and battlefields. They are under the control of the summoner and work for them as lieutenants, but can retain much of their old identity. They can have magical powers like being able to temporarily blind people, raise a thick fog or propel people away from them.

>Necromancers and demons can now summon larger nightmarish beings. They last for a short time and can't be called often, but they are trouble.

>Certain necromancers and certain demons can magically experiment on or otherwise corruptly transform the citizens and livestock of cities that they capture. This leads to a variety of humanoids and quadrupeds and others (like little failed experiment winged blobs), some of which can escape into the wilderness and perhaps even rarely reintegrate into society (and thereby possibly become playable in adv mode and available as fort travelers and migrants.) Collections of citizens can also be amalgamated into monstrous giants. The creature description includes the conditions under which the creature first appeared, and their creature name often includes the name of the necromancer or demon (e.g. humanoids called Tura's hands).

>Certain demons can now spread evilness on the world map from their place of residence. The properties of the evil areas are related to the spheres of the demon. This evilness can fade away over time if its origin has disappeared. There is a raw tag for this for modding. (The tag requires the creature to be civ ruler and be affiliated with any of the spheres below.)

>The new evil region subtypes are: Death, blight (kills vegetation), disease, deformity (spreads evil creature populations and wormy eyeball grass, etc) and nightmares (has bogeymen).

>Bogeymen have been restricted to only 10% of primordial evil regions and to the evil regions around nightmare demons, which will make them a lot more rare. They also have been given new powers as compensation.

>The map layout of necromancer towers has been improved.

Religion:

>Religion rework: Belief of site populations is now tracked. Prophets can arise in sites that are associated with a deity and found organised religions, applying their personal moral values to them. Prophets/ priests and religious infrastructure can spread the religion, often along trade routes. A religion can have multiple temple cities and one holy city.

>Religious tension: persecution, riots, religious grievances, grudges, acts of revenge. Persecuted followers suffer from expropriation, banishment and murder (possibly as human sacrifise to the gods). Preachers can preach for tensions to abate or to incite violence.

>Profaning a temple will now only result in a curse if it belongs to a deity that is worshipped by the profaner

>Shrines: They are now distributed throughout sites based on their historical prevalence, with the dominant religions claiming e.g. large plots, while the minor religions might just have a single altar on a single curbside. They might come with altars and divination dice.

>Added dice for divinations with face sets (images, words, numerals or dots) and sides according to their shape (platonic or 'long die' prisms), and certain divination practices working with combinations of dice, and the ability to roll either one die or all the dice you are holding. Divinations can be done once a week. A bad divination die roll may give you a temporary curse, like transforming you into a snowy owl for a week, a good one might give you a reward "Item? Pet? Healing?".

General:

>World gen hist figs and entities now have "accounts", storing their wealth and leverage, which they can use to buy or upgrade equipment and real estate or pay for upkeep costs.

>More generated civ noble positions (keeper of the seals, cup bearer, etc)

>New non-civ entities with their own positions, assets and infrastructure: organised religions, corporations, guilds, mercenary companies

>Mercenary companies can be religious, can be dedicated to certain weapons, can be soldiers, assassins or jack of all trades, can give tactical bonus to battles via scouts

>New city buildings like shrines, warehouses, counting houses, guildhalls, towers

>New sites: monasteries, bandit/ mercenary forts, return of castles

>More depth added to relationships with values like love/hate, loyalty, trust, respect, fear

>Added infidelity, love-triangles, unrequited love, divorce, etc. Children can now be born outside of marriage.

>Friendships and rivalries are now generated during worldgen (through childhood, war, competitions)

>New ways for population, rulers and infrastructure to influence each other during world gen (portion of dwarves in a city causing the construction of dwarven shrines, dwarven shrines having the ability to convert humans to dwarven religions, etc)

>Civilisations can form alliances to fight against dangerous threats (like necromancers or goblins) together

>World gen dwarves can breach the underworld and spawn a new goblin-demon civ

>Thieves can disturb mummies in world gen by stealing artifacts, which can cause the mummy to become a site conquering villain.

>Aquifers now have variable water flow speeds depending on the area. Most aquifers now only flood water with 1/500th the speed that they used to. The old-style aquifers are still in the game, but only make up about 5% of the total and are clearly marked on embark and in the site finder.

>New magic abilities: change the weather/create fog (complicates ranged weapon use), propel enemies (this effect applies a force, so smaller enemies fly several tiles, while an elephant might not be affected at all), summon creatures temporarily

>All new magic powers are raw editable for modding and there are new tags to make polymorph-type abilities more versatile. There will probably be examples in the interaction examples folder.

Fort mode:

>Villainous agents can infiltrate your fortress, convince citizens to join their cause and steal artifacts

>New witness reports and ability to have anyone be interrogated by your sherrif

>Counterintelligence screen

>Temples can be assigned to organised religions instead of just specific gods and the value of their furniture/engravings/etc. is now calculated and displayed with a name (shrine/ temple/ etc.)

>You can assign priests, that can give various types of sermons and console worshippers that are stressed out

>Religious citizens can petition the construction of a temple and priesthood. Breaking your promise will cause negative moods

>Reaching a threshold of 10 and 25 working citizens skilled in a particular labor will make them petition the construction or improvement of a guild hall for their labor type/ labor category

>Skill demonstrations are held inside guild halls for their respective crafts, similar to military barracks. These can also satisfy needs

>Undead sieges can bring along the necromancer's experiment creatures and undead lieutenants

Adventure mode:

>Ridable mounts and pets in adventure mode

>You are able to change the riding speed, jump from the mount, lead the mount behind you or use the mount as a pack animal. Party members will also mount up on their own animals when you do

>Adventure mode starting party customization, including the ability to chose their religion and profession backgrounds.

>You can select your home town manually now, and it gives a little summary of the population. If you have multiple party members, then you can start in any one of their home towns. Party members can come from different civilisations.

>Adventure mode starting equipment and pet customization, including the ability to choose equipment quality level

>Press "tab" to control other characters of your starting party

>Turn based mode that automatically swaps you between your adventure mode party's characters or a selected subset of them, giving you full control over all their actions

>You can pet animals

>Necromancers can pet and ride their raised zombie animals

>Adventure log 'intrigue' tab. Stores evidence and is divided into actors, organizations and plots. The organisation view is graphically visualised like a conspiracy board and gets filled in as you gather information.

>Interrogation-like dialog, using social skills and the new relationship values and other additions to the conversation system

>Asking too many questions might give the player negative attention from villains

>While talking, you are able to pick tones/tactics, like intimidation, persuasion, flattery, which works similar to aimed attacks. Which tactic works best depends on the target's relationship with you, their personality and their skills. A little preview window tells you what to expect from a given question+tactic pair, based on how good you are at judging character. For example, using intimidation tactics to break someone's composure is one way to make them answer your interrogation questions.

>You can give religious sermons

Legends mode:

>Changes to legends mode and the structure of historical events

>Exposed decision-making factors of historical figures to legends mode

Delayed features until post-steam release:

>Player villainy

>Better adventure mode investigations

>Yelling commands in adventure mode

>Villain fort takover

>New household positions/titles in fort mode

>Merchant and mercenary companies in fort mode

>Improvement of vampire cults

>Ghost lieutenants for necromancers that can be banished, using their name.

>A lot more villainous plot types during play