We've been working very hard to get our beloved strategy game, Elemental up to its potential.

Version 1.1, which we've been working on for the past two months, is an important step in that direction.

We said we are committed to doing what it takes to make Elemental into the preeminent turn-based fantasy strategy game for the PC. Version 1.1 of Elemental: War of Magic is only the beginning.

We will begin work on the next update (for January) as soon as v1.1 is released.

We will be giving away the first expansion pack to anyone who buys Elemental: War of Magic before the end of the year.

While we collectively have a long laundry list of things we still want to do. We feel confident that most users who played v1.0 will be pleased with v1.1.

Below is a change log between v1.09 and v1.1. v1.1 is expected to be released later today (EST).

CHANGES TO IMPROVEMENTS/CITIES:

+ Beacon of Hope kingdom improvement added (+1 prestige, 1 per faction).

+ Added ability to clear forests adjacent to your cities which costs 25 gildar and provides 2 materials.

+ Improvements now extend influence.

+ Tower of Dominion imperial improvement added (+1 prestige, 1 per faction).

+ Tower of Essence kingdom improvement added (+2 mana, city size 3, city has to have a shard).

+ Tower of Doom empire improvement added (+2 mana, city size 3, city has to have a shard).

+ City hubs now automatically produce some prestige per turn equal to 1 - (0.1 * number of non-capital cities), with a min prestige production of 0.2 per turn. This is to make population more critical (since it won't grow as quickly).

Kingdom

Beacon of Hope- +1 prestige Fortress- +1 prestige, 1 per city, city level 5 Pub- +1.5 prestige, 1 per city, city level 3 Inn- +1 prestige, 1 per city, city level 2 Theater- +2 prestige, 1 per city, city level 4 Palace- +2 prestige, 1 per faction, city level 4 Great Arena- +4 prestige, +25% prestige in all cities, 1 per game, city level 5

Empire

Tower of Dominion- +1 prestige Imperial Throne- +2 prestige, 1 per faction, city level 4 Statue of Kir-Tion- +25% prestige in all cities, 1 per game, city level 2 Monument- +0.5 prestige, unlimited, city level 2

+ City levels changed from 25/100/400/1250 to 15/50/250/750.

+ City ZoC's adjusted:

City level 1: 1-3 (was 1-3) City level 2: 3-5 (was 3-5) City level 3: 5-7 (was 5-8) City level 4: 7-9 (was 12-15) City level 5: 9-12 (was 15-18)

+ City Level Gildar bonuses reduced from +10% per level to +5% per level.

+ Changed the Kingdom Smelter improvement to be one per city.

+ Added a Smelter improvement for the Empire to give them a way to boost metal production.

+ Villa Improvement added (replaces apartments), +60 pop, -1 food.

+ Houses moved up to the Economics tech.

+ Slums food cost reduced from 4 to 2 (to make slums efficient, if not pleasant to live in).

+ Slums moved back from the Proper Living to Majesty tech.

+ Gold Mines now require Harvesting tech to use

+ Lost Libraries now require Lore Recovery to use

+ Ancient Temples now require Arcane research to use

+ Inns can now be built by level 2 cities without a prerequisite.

+ Increased Shard Shrines from 1 mana/turn to 2 mana/turn.

+ The Empire can now build crystal mines.

+ The Imperial Throne reduces maintenance costs in the city it is built in by 50%.

+ Added the Garden improvement (Kingdom only).

+ Added the Skath Pit improvement (empire only).

+ Empire War Council improvement correctly requires Armies instead of the Tools of War tech now.

+ Added a tech requirement to the Empire Arcane temples.

+ Hedge Walls/Wooden Walls city level requirement reduced from 3 to 0.

+ Forts and castles city level requirement reduced from 4 to 3.

+ Added the Library improvement. Studies upgrade to libraries when a city reaches level 3 and the player has civics. Libraries provide 2 knowledge per turn. (Fallen version added called the Master Archivist).

+ Town Hall changed from +25% gildar production to -25% city maintenance and moved from city level 4 to 3.

+ Fixed Empire city bonuses set equal to the kingdom cities of the same level.

CHANGES TO TECHS:

+ Renamed "Quests" to "Lore Recovery". Ancient Lore renamed to "Greater Lore"

+ Moved Shard Harvesting/Shard Domination to later in the tech tree.

+ Empire tech Refined Weaponry requires Dread Weapons now (instead of Offense).

+ Empire tech Refined Armor requires Master Armor now (instead of General Armor).

+ Removed the Empire Indoctronation tech.

+ Removed the Enchantment, Combat and Summoning spellbooks from the Empire Advanced spellbooks tech.

+ Added the Book of Summoning tech to the Empire tech tree.

+ Removed the Refined Essence Use tech from the Empire tech tree.

+ Removed the Essence Transference tech from the Empire tech tree.

+ Added the Master Spellbooks tech to the Empire tech tree.

+ Arcane Experiments Empire tech now requires Shard Harvesting.

+ Arcane Armor Empire tech now requires Arcane Experiments.

+ Arcane Weapons Empire tech now requires Arcane Armor (with the huge advantage of moving the Sword of Wrath to a late game tech instead of being a 2nd tier tech).

+ Removed the Life spellbook tech (all kingdom players already start with the Life spellbook).

+ Added the ability to spawn crystals to the Empire tech Keepers of Avarice.

+ Modified crystal spawns from techs so they are within 12 of the player’s capital instead of 20.

+ Modified mine spawns from techs so they are within 12 of the player’s capital instead of 20.

+ Modified food spawns from techs so they are within 12 of the player’s capital instead of 20.

+ Added an additional food spawn to the food spawns from techs (bees and an orchard instead of just bees).

+ Archery is now in the equipment line and required for ranged weapons (previously it was possible to learn ranged weapons and have access to bows but be unable to build archery ranges so you couldnt build archers).

+ Logistics and City Defense tech order reversed (previously you got the command post to build groups early but couldn't build it because it required a rank 3 city).

+ Adjusted %'s techs show up when researching (it’s all 100% now, open to balance).

CHANGES TO UNIT TYPES:

+ Added a 1 available specialist cost to all the default and base unit types for the core factions and race types, so that training a unit will tie up one in the population, and the amount that is tied up scales with the grouping type (so a party of 4 ties up 4 population, etc.).

+ New Ability Bonuses for Great Defender and Immobilized (when immobilized a unit can’t move).

+ New "Guardian Ward" unittype added.

+ Balanced the Sentinel starting units.

+ Balanced children. Children's stats will be based more on the parents and children won't get free defense, attack, etc.

+ Kingdom Peasants now have a 5 constitution (like empire peasants).

+ Kingdom catapults are no longer available for Empire.

+ Removed spell immunity from Darklings.

CHANGES TO SPELLS/MAGIC:

+ All spells now use global mana.

+ Sovereigns produce +2 Global Mana per turn.

+ Added ability to specify a minimum stat score that a spellcaster needs to cast a spell to a spell def. Sovereigns ignore the min stat and can always cast spells they have access to.

+ Spells with durations will now be canceled on end-of-battle (note that tactical enchantment spells w/o duration will still be permanent).

+ Air Spells will be properly affected by an Air Shard and the Caster’s Intelligence.

+ Imbue Champion now immediately available, takes 1 mana per turn.

+ New Paintings hooked up for appropriate Spells.

+ Spells cast on / removed from a city will now update their HUDs to properly reflect stat changes.

+ Added an IsResistable tag to spells, will be used for magic resistance.

+ Players start with more generalized spellbooks (terraforming, enchantment, combat, mobility). Elemental and advanced spellbooks are unlocked through the tech tree.

+ Terraforming spellbook:

Raise Land- water into land and land into hill Lower Land- mountain into hill, hill into land Revive Land- tile becomes grassland Desecrate Land- tile becomes forsaken Erosion- erode Cliffside into beach Create Mountain- raise land into a mountain Destroy Land- lower land to water

+ Enchantment spellbook:

Nature's Bounty- settlement gets +1 food Alchemy- settlement gets +1 gildar Invisible Workers- settlement gets +1 materials Inspiration- settlement gives +1 tech Call to Arms- automatically completes training the unit in target settlements queue Enchanted Hammers- reduces the build time of improvements in the target city by 25% Greater Alchemy- settlement gets +3 gildar Guardian Ward- provides a powerful city defender that can’t leave the city.

+ Mobility spellbook:

Blink- teleport unit to an empty tile in tactical combat. Return- teleport to the capital city. Teleport- teleport to any friendly tile Mobility- target unit gets +1 movement Haste- target unit gets combat speed +1 Greater Mobility- target unit gets +2 movement Escape- entire army escapes from tactical combat Greater Haste- +1 combat speed of the army in tactical combat Call of the Titans- all the players units that aren’t in cities are teleported to the selected tile

+ Combat spellbook:

Arcane Weapon- target unit gets +5 to attack Arcane Arrow- deals ½ the casters Int in damage to target Guardian Aura- targets dodge rating is doubled Spell Blast- targets units within 1 radius receive 1/3 the casters Int in damage Berzerk- target units defense is moved to attack for battle Spell Immunity- target unit is immune to spells Touch of Entropy- target unit takes 30 damage Blood Rage- unit gains HP and strength for all damage dealt

+ Earth spellbook:

Pull of the Earth- combat speed is halved for 3 turns Stone Skin- target unit gets +10 defense Tremor- immobilizes an army in your ZoC for a turn. Rock Slide- target tile blocks, unit in tile knocked back and loses 1 turn Summon Earth Elemental- summons an earth elemental Earthquake- destroys random improvements and resets the training and build queues of nearby cities

+ Air spellbook:

Evade- target unit gets +1 to dodge Eyes of the Eagle- fog of war revealed for a 6 radius around the caster Bottled Gale- target unit is knocked back 2 tiles Storm- random enemy hit by a lightning bolt for 5-8 damage Greater Evasion- target unit get +2 to dodge Tornado- randomly disperses an army across several tiles and immobilizes them for a turn

+ Fire spellbook:

Burning Hands- target unit takes 8 damage (range 1) Pillar of Flame- Strategic spell that damages an enemy army in your ZoC. Flame Dart- target unit takes 5 damage Fire Ball- target unit takes 8 damage + 4 per fire shard Fire Storm- area with radius 1 takes 10 damage + 5 per fire shard Inferno- strategic spell that fills a tile with fire, damaging any that pass through it. Curgen's Inferno- causes a volcano to explode and destroy target city

+ Water spellbook:

Grip of Winter- target has a 25% chance of losing its next turn Blizzard- damage to units within 2 tiles Summon Ice Elemental- Summons an Ice elemental. Slow- reduces the movement of an enemy army in your ZoC to 1 per turn. Greater Grip of Winter- freezes all enemy units, giving them a 50% chance of losing their next turn

+ Life spellbook:

Summon Familiar- summons a familiar Heal- heals target unit by 6hp Regeneration- target unit hals +2 hp per turn (in and out of combat) and +3 con Fertility- target settlement gets +1 prestige Glyph of Life- target units hp increased by 20 Death Ward- imbued hero will be saved if they fall in battle (as a sovereign is)

+ Summon spellbook:

Summon Imp- summons an imp Nature's Ally- summons natures ally Demonic Ally- summons a lesser demon. Summoners Boon- Strengths all your summons. Pariden's Return- summons Pariden to fight for one battle

+ Death spellbook:

Summon Spy- Summons a spy Blindness- target unit gets -50% to accuracy Wither- reduces the strength and constitution of target unit Contagion- all enemies take damage per turn Sacrifice- target city you control loses 100 citizens and provides 50 mana (or .5 mana per citizen if population is less than 100).

+ Mastery spellbook:

Spell of Making- wins the game.

+ Removed the range requirement from some strategic spells (easier for human and AI players).

+ Casting a spell now uses all the units remaining action points (so units can only cast 1 spell per turn).

+ Learning Spell Ranks takes more time.

+ Learning Spells takes less time.

+ Imbue Champion now costs 25 mana to cast.

+ When you access the spellbook from the kingdom report window (either through the tabs on the side, the shortcut in the actions area when nothing is selected, or from the little icon by the spell research status bar in the main tray wnd), it now sets the local player's sovereign as the caster, so that the spells can be cast without needing to expressly select a spellcaster on the main map

CHANGES TO BATTLES:

+ In tactical battles you can now click on units outside of your attack range in order to set an attack destination unit.

+ Cities now use modifier instances (from Spells) for factoring in DefendingUnitBonuses

+ Quick battles now prevent popups until after the battle is over so that you can see what is happening

+ When a sovereign gets killed in non-hostile territory, instead of spending essence to retreat, they now spend half of their mana and are then immobilized in the city they retreat to for 5 turns.

+ Increased the speed of tactical animations, particuarly with archers and mounted units.

+ Hovering over enemy units in tactical will give you your hit odds and damage ranges.

+ Adjusted weapon damage on weapons with combat speed bonuses to make them more in line with other weapons of their tier (with multipliers).

GFX/UI CHANGES:

+ Trade equipment screen now only allows champions, not units. It was confusing that the screen allowed you to give equipment to trained units, but they could do nothing with it, since only champions can equip stuff. The downside is you cannot give your trained units potions and other consumable stuff via this screen anymore.

+ Trade equipment screen now supports drag-and-dropping of entries to trade

+ Trade equipment screen now supports double-clicking of entries, which behaves the same as selecting the entry and hitting the trade button.

+ Can now just high light entries on the trade equipment screen to refresh the context area and see what an item provides, previously you had to select something for that area to update.

+ Asking for the player's population (and the population display in the UI) now shows just the population of the player's cities, and no longer counts units on the map. This way the population can represent the "resource" that player has to manipulate and spend on training units and building improvements, and keeps us from having to have recruited units use available specialists, which when traded or killed would just decrement the specialists and total population simultaneously (e.g. 10/10 would to go 9/9)

+ Main Game Window changes:

- Kingdom and Turn button now have labels.

- Equip button is back, with a label instead of just a shield icon. It's for when you have a unit selected, otherwise it’s hidden.

- Turn counter has been moved from upper right area, to the new upper left area.

- On the vitals tab when a unit is selected, the 4th displayed stat is now CurHP/MaxHP instead of combat speed.

- Implemented Faction Power Wnd, which is a little dockable window that displays the Power Rating of each player in a game. It is always shown at the start of a game. You can toggle it on/off via a button in the upper right of the main game window. List is sorted by power rating, in descending order. Only shows players that the local player has met. When they meet a new faction, the list is refilled and re-sorted by faction power, so it's always up to date.

+ Added displays of income tax to the kingdom report window and the lorebook info for cities.

+ Moved the hotkey strings from the entry text of the unit actions into the tooltip for an action, when that action can be performed.

+ Shortened the display name of some of the unit actions, so that they don't clip in the unit actions entries.

+ Made the status bars in the city context (showing training and building progress) transparent, so that the button that takes up the whole back of them now can be clicked through the status bars still.

+ Added a unit action type to open the spellbook for casting a spell.

+ "Disable Particle Effects" option now works in tactical battles.

+ AI is moving dialog now only shows in MP.

+ Added a new Build List. Added short text info about why an improvement can't be built to the improvement entries themselves. Added any placement limits on improvements (e.g. one per city, or world wonder) to the notes section for the highlighted improvement's stats. Cleaned up some behavior, like disabling and highlighting, adding more info for demolition, and what stats to show when opening the thing the first time, and got rid of some hardcoded badness for adding notes for specific improvement types.

+ Vitals tab for caravans and wild improvements now hides the level icon next to the status bar that is used for unit vitals.

+ Made it so that when either a construction project or unit completes training, it checks if the city is idle (ie. not training anything else and not building anything else). If so, and it's the local player, they are warned with a popup that the city is idle. The camera now only scrolls to that location, if you select BUILD or TRAIN. So if you hit close to dismiss the dialog, the camera will not have moved from whatever it was you were doing elsewhere.

+ If you load a custom map, either in SP or MP, on the world setup window, it will change the world name to match the display name of the map you selected. You can still change it if you'd like though.

+ The train unit screen now shows the faction's available specialist count at the top instead of the total population of the city the popup was opened from.

+ Disabled "pedestrian LOD override" in tile editor (Makes it easier for our artists and modders to place pedestrians in tile designs).

+ Cleaned up the info cards for caravans, fixing bugs in resizing that kept lots of information from showing up, adding a line saying what city the caravan belongs to, and adding resizing code to ensure that the trade route's resource bonus shows up correctly at the bottom of the info card.

+ Added home and trade city info to the vitals tab for caravans, since this is something people have said they wanted to know.

+ Info cards pop up for improvements in demolish mode now, so the user knows what they are mousing over.

+ Hooked up "M" as the hotkey for the cast spell unit action, added strings to let the user know about that in the new actions context.

+ Tactical screen now supports the "Disable Outlines" option.

+ Reset Quality and Quantity when you bring the training window back up.

+ Clicking on any global resource entry is a shortcut to bring up the city list.

+ Changed all the unit stat displays to show stats as integers, always rounded up to the nearest integer, and to use the same breakdown tooltip to see where the numbers are coming from.

+ In some screens, added descriptions for the stats as the tooltip when mousing over the name or icon of a stat, such as on the level up window, lorebook window, and unit design window (when the user might want to know what their changes are doing to the units)

+ Created a new tooltip breakdown that shows the contributions each member of an army is making to an accumulated stat value, like for the army vitals context when an army is selected on the main screen, to replace the confusing breakdown of only battle bonuses used before

+ All functions and UI now grab the full stat value for a unit, instead of just the value without any geographic bonuses from the terrain they were on or whatever. Also made all stat functions return the full value by default, instead of the partial value (which was the default before).

+ Enabled tooltips in the lorebook stat entries, so that breakdowns and stat descriptions can be shown.

+ Fixed bug where some trade info for cities weren't initializing their caravan IDs, so that if the trade info was cleared (from one of the cities getting destroyed), it picked an essentially random unit to disband for the caravan of the trade route being destroyed along with the city (aka: Kwilas memorial sovereign caravan assassination bug).

+ New tooltips for the resources in the global resource area of main game window.

+ If per turn amount of a global resource is negative, the number text will be red

+ Terrain Window no longer shows up by default.

+ Added a mana maintenance window (so you can see where all your mana is going and dispel any enchantments easily if you don't want to pay the maintenance cost anymore).

+ Clicking on a player’s entry in the Faction Power window opens diplomacy with that player.

+ UI now shows units that can't be built because buildings are required and lists the needed building (so you can see that you need an archery range to build those archers).

+ When you hover over the build button for a resource you don’t have the right tech for, it will now tell you exactly what tech you need.

CHANGES TO ITEMS:

+ Fixed bug where the AI was designing units with equipment that their model type did not support, caused the larger fallen races, like trogs and quendar, too use female armor that was too small for them (aka: the cross dressing quendar bug).

+ Fixed quest "Alzor's Armor" to actually give you armor of that name, rather than some similarly (but not exactly) named armor.

+ Fixed bug that caused fallen to not have access to the Soldiers cloak.

+ Changed "potion of lesser essence" to "Potion of Intelligence" and it now increases drinker's intelligence by 1.

+ Fixed some minor issues from the new tech trees and finish first balance pass of weapons and armor.

+ Bows reduced from:

Crude Bow: Attack 6, Accuracy -2, Range 8 Cedar Shortbow: Attack 15, Accuracy -2, Range 8 Cedar Longbow: Attack 23, Accuracy -2, Range 8

New stats:

Crude Bow: Attack 4, Accuracy -2, Range 6 Cedar Shortbow: Attack 12, Range 8 Cedar Longbow: Attack 15, Range 10

+ Added in some late game magical equipment that you can buy in the shops:

- Cloak of Thwarting : +5 dodge - Sword of Wrath : 60 attack +6 accuracy +1 combat speed -5 constitution - Arielle's Shield: 5 armor +15 hp - Shield of the Sovereign: 5 armor +5 magic resist - Yithril Bow: 18 attack +2 combat speed +10 accuracy

+ Balanced sovereign starting weapons and armor.

+ Removed Leather armor Shirt, Chain mail shirt and scale mail shirt.

+ Changed store prices of huge portions of armor items and weapons to more accurately reflect the cost to train with that item, this should make it more balanced price wise but probably will not be perfect.

+ Adjusted cost during sovereign creation of gear (boots and cloth armor).

CHANGES TO STATS/ABILITIES:

+ Changed stat calculations for prestige bonus (from charisma), dodge, accuracy, attack, defense, and max HP.

Strength- Modifies damage Dexterity- Modifies dodge Constitution- Modifies hit points Intelligence- Modifies spell resistance, boosts some spells, required for Champions to cast some spells Charisma- Sovereigns Charisma modifies Champion recruit costs. Champions and the Sovereign give a prestige boost to the city they are in.

Attack (which is damage) = Weapon Attack + ((Strength - 10)/2) Defense (which is damage absorb) = Armor Defense Accuracy = 15 + (Level * 3) Dodge = Dexterity / 2 Hit Points = 10 + ( (Constitution / 5) * (2 * Level) ) Spell Resistance = Intelligence / 2 Prestige Boost in City = Charisma / 5

+ Added a Magic Resist stat to units.

+ Made essence a hidden and non-upgradeable stat, so that it should be gone from all the UI and act only as an under-the-hood mark of being a spellcaster

+ Marked some stats as non-upgradeable, and gave them 0 points per level up point. Core stats (strength, intelligence, dexterity, charisma, and constitution) should now all default to 10, be upgradeable, and get 1 point per level up point.

+ Units now get 3 points when they level up.

+ Removed wisdom from the list of core stats.

+ Removed Morale.

+ Changed Intimidating and Cowardly Sovereign talents/weaknesses to affect spell resistance of the sovereign’s army.

+ Changed Natural Leader to Tactician and Cruel to Reckless, and they now affect Dodge of the sovereign’s army.

+ Added a new Sovereign talent, Attunement, which increases the mana the sovereign provides by 2/turn.

+ Assigned the Attunement talent to Procipinee.

+ Royalty talent reduced from +100% to prestige to +10%.

+ Removed the Road Warriors ability from Umber (it didn't do anything).

MISC:

+ Players always have a choice of a breakthrough whenever they reach a new tech level.

+ Quests now save/load their 'Subject Unit' (this fixes the Sarog's Egg quest, along with any others that use the subject unit when saving/loading).

+ In SP, popups now prevent units from moving until the popup is closed, and the WaitingForUserResponse flag gets unset immediately after kicking out of the loop, to prevent stuck turns

+ Trade routes set up by caravans now provide 10% bonuses to gildar production in the two cities they connect. Upgrading the roads now provides a 20%, 30%, and 40% bonus for the 4 road levels defined in RoadLevelDefs.xml. Made trade route length and wagons not affect the bonus anymore.

+ There is now the concept of a game year, which starts at 159 A.C.. There are 4 seasons in a game year. A turn is a season. Game year and season are now displayed in the upper left hand corner of the main game wnd, instead of turn num.

+ Creature balance, new stats for all creatures in CoreMonsterUnitTypes.xml.

+ New diplomatic conditions: - You killed my kid -5 to diplomacy - You're wiping others out -2 - Seriously, you're out of control -5 - Early game +1 - Not very strong +1 - Focusing on other enemies +1

+ Redesign of the CombatRating calculation to give a more accurate reflection of a unit or army's effective combat strength.

+ All factions given a starting tech:

Kingdom of Altar- Exploration Kingdom of Capitar- Trading Kingdom of Gilden- Civics Kingdom of Tarath- Training Kingdom of Pariden- Arcane Research Empire of Yithril- Tools of War Empire of Umber- Reunion Empire of Magnar- Mapping Empire of Resoln- Lore Mastery Empire of Kraxis- Proper Living

+ Number of monsters spawned now based on world difficulty level.

+ All players start the game with 5 materials.

+ Diplomacy dialog text changes based on who they are talking to

+ Close borders now has a -2 weight (was -1)

+ Different ideology now has a -5 weight (was -1) since AIs were getting a bit too buddy buddy with each other.

+ Minor race cities updated to not exude influence, which improves calculation time and lets you walk up to them.

+ Balanced goodie huts that were spawning weapons/armor that was now too good for their spawn rating.

+ You won't receive three popups for caravan attacks anymore (one saying your being attacked, another where you are forced to select auto-resolve combat and a third saying the caravan was destroyed). Instead you only receive one popup saying that the caravan was destroyed.

+ Adjusted the hp modifiers at high difficulties.

Challenging- AI Creatures *1.25, AI Sovereign *1.5 (was *1 and *1) Hard- AI Creatures *1.5, AI Sovereign *2 (was *1 and *1.5) Extreme- AI Creatures *2, AI Sovereign *3 (was *2 and *3) Ridiculous- AI Creatures *3, AI Sovereign *5 (was *5 and *10)

+ Caravans now produce +10%/+15%/+20%/+25% gildar instead of +10%/+20%/+30%/+40%.

+ Added the ability to resist the tangled web skill.

+ Removed the tangled web skill from one of the spiders that should not have had it.

+ Changed one of the spiders that spawns in a level 3 spider quest to be one without tangled web to avoid stun locks.

+ GetBattleRank() no longer recalcs strength and defense because those functions are done during CalcBattleRank which should speed up end of turn performance.

AI:

+ The AI is now multi-threaded (so it can spend its time contemplating your doom while you are doing other things).

+ Intelligent monsters tend to band together with other types of monsters.

+ Intelligent monsters will actively target weaker units (or cities) – beware.

+ Intelligent monsters will run away from tougher units.

+ Pioneers update their paths to avoid accidentally attacking other settlements.

+ AI more intelligently evaluates the value of an area of land.

+ AI somewhat better at choosing which unit to build in a city.

+ Monsters more intelligent regarding selecting victims.

+ Monsters are more aggressive.

+ More Monsters are spawned early on.

+ Pioneer behavior is more intelligent in selecting area.

+ AI more effective at defending cities.

+ AI more effective at reinforincing cities that are under threat.

+ AI equipment purchasing fixed

+ AI players don't treat monsters with the same level of concern as factions.

+ AI will back off on building improvements if they're losing money.

+ AI is smarter at choosing what improvement to build.

+ AI smarter about using pioneers (AI won't build parties of pioneers).

+ AI will become more aggressive as the game progresses.

+ AI more aggressive about acquiring goodie huts.

+ AI better at valuing trade offers.

+ AI intelligently casts strategic spells.

+ AI prioritization of what to build has been improved.

+ Difficulty levels balanced for updated AI.

+ Monster spawning now balanced for new world difficulty settings.

+ Monsters spawn more gradually at the start of a game.

+ Monsters are less likely to attack cities.

+ AI is more likely to build command posts (and therefor be able to build groups of units).

FIXES:

+ Fixed various crashes, memory errors, and hangs

+ Fixed exploit where you could still use the shortcut key (x) to raze a city, even if you don't yet have the tech that grants you the ability to Raze.

+ Fixed a bug where unit wouldn’t drop treasure after tactical battles unless auto resolve was used.

+ Fixed bug when teleporting units in an army: teleporting the leader would move the army, but teleporting using a sub unit would not but it would use its mana anyway, this has now been fixed so that if you use a sub unit to teleport, the whole army is teleported.

+ Fixed a bug where the AI spellcasters would cast spells that they hadn't learned yet, caused problem that we saw where the AI sovereigns would have stone giants, minions, basically many summons early in the game

+ Fixed bug where looking at spells you haven't learned yet in the spellbook wnd when your faction wasn't creating any spell points per turn would cause it to display a nonsense number for turns to learn, now just says "Will Not Learn"

+ Fixed an autoselection bug in tactical battles such that if a local unit is already selected a new unit is not chosen at the start of the local player's turn.

+ Spell effects should now spawn at an appropriate tile offset for units not at the center of their tiles.

+ Tactical window now caches unit IDs to avoid mysterious unit deaths after a battle.

+ Fixed a bug where absorbed damage was not detected properly.

+ Fixed a bug that caused double battle report text.

+ Fixed a bug where defending units had incorrect damage done in battle reports.

+ Fixed bug where the pass turn action in tactical was allowed only when stuff was animating, instead of the other way around, making it not do anything most of the time

+ Fixed bug where entries couldn't be dragged onto a listbox that doesn't already have at least one entry

+ Fixed bug where the AI would sometimes overwrite the description of unit types depending on what they were doing, which caused units of the same type owned by the player to lose their descriptions and show something that wasn't applicable to them

+ Fixed bug where turns to learn a new spell level wasn't being displayed in the spellbook window when selected

+ Fixed bug where after equipping a mount like a horse or warg, if you went to Edit Info Card screen the cloth poses would be incorrect

+ Fixed particle effects not working in tile editor

+ Fixed bugs in tile design shadow generation. Now when you save a tile design in the tile editor, its shadow will generate properly, and it will update in the editor window so it shows the new shadow

+ Fixed bug where icons on cloth map were being rendered over top of unit markers

+ Fixed "flickering" decals bug (If there is no texture or the texture is not loaded, the decal is not rendered).

+ Fixed bug where the actions entries and the item entries in the unit vitals tab had their pictures sized differently, causing them to look mismatched

+ Fixed beam effects not working

+ Fixed bug where decals would flicker and the wrong decals would show up for objects in tactical battle after multiple battles

+ Fixed bug where the valid demolish cursor did not show up when mousing over an improvement that could be demolished in demolish mode

+ Fixed bug where the train unit queue wasn't being shown in the context area when the train unit wnd was open, so that you couldn't see the state of the queue while adding to it

+ Fixed bug where the first time the city right context wnd was unhidden on starting/loading a game, clicking the train unit button or build button didn't do anything because the new data was getting cleared out by on start new game code

+ Fixed bug where the resource breakdown for a certain resource in a city would sometimes not match what was actually being produced because the city hub and improvements under construction were often being ignored in the breakdown; now all improvements in a city are looked at no matter what, the improvements themselves are smart enough to tell the lorebook what modifiers they apply or not based on if they have finished construction

+ Fixed bug where images in the conversation window did not scale properly

+ Fixed bug where Edit Info Card screen would display the unit type's name rather than the unit's name

+ Fixed bug where global resource area would not always resize correctly.

+ Fixed bug where destroyed units would still get counted in a player's resource production for the duration of the turn before the player actually removed them from their unit list

+ Fixed bug where caravans still had the Guard action available when they started trading, which could cancel their directive to travel along their trade route

+ Fixed bug where two caravans on the same road (but going in opposite directions) were applying their effects on the road separately instead of together, causing it to not take a shorter time for a road to grow levels by having two caravans on it versus one

+ Fixed problem where roads between cities, where one of the cities got destroyed, were not being deleted and removed from the world now that they were no longer needed

+ Fixed an issue where animals won't attack cities (looks like combat will start but then it ends without combat).

+ Fixed a crash when clicking on the game concepts or walkthru entries in the Hiergamenon.

+ You can no longer drink some quest items (like the magic flute).

+ When a city is conquered enchantments on the city are canceled.

+ Dead players no longer show up in the faction window.

+ Fixed bug where tech category was always reset to Civilization after loading a save game.

+ Fixed bug where ZOC was not accurate after loading a game because the city tiles didn’t recalculate their values after loading.

+ Fixed an issue with combat damage for spells, ranged damage and special attacks like crushing blow.

+ Fixed an issue with gold being given out from combat (too much was being given).

+ Fixed a bug where tactical battle maps would not render props after multiple battles.

+ Fixed mounted archer animations.

+ Fixed bug that allowed you to talk to yourself, NPC player, or creatures if you select the unit and hit the Talk button (for NPCs and creatures, this would crash if you then tried to trade with them).

+ Fixed a bug where NPCs that spawn as an army weren't creating their subunits as champions.

+ Fixed an issue that forced a player to pay all costs for improvement upgrades when a city upgraded (often running the player out of a resource and leaving empty holes in the city).

+ Fixed a crash when clicking train on a level 3 city (with low resources).

+ Wolves won't talk to you anymore (I might actually miss this bug).

+ Fixed Cloth map only mode (https://forums.elementalgame.com/400772).

+ Fixed defense boost of improvements that boost defense to their proper values.

+ Fixed a bug with quest data being lost during save/reload causing crashes or weird quest behavior.

+ Fixed an issue with the Great Mill materials cost.

+ Fixed an issue that caused stuck turns in tactical combat if an AI sovereign or champion had a bow.

+ Fixed a bug that could keep players from being able to load maps in the map editor.

+ Fixed a bug where tribute wasn't being deducted from the players treasury.

+ Death Worship faction bonus now correctly gives +10% to hit points

+ Fixed an issue that was keeping Wargs from spawning.

+ Fixed an issue that could cause combat text to not be displayed.

+ Fixed an issue that could wipe out your population if your city leveled up while relying on housing from a Refugee Camp.

+ Token of the Sand Golem now correctly summons Sand Golems (instead of normal golems).

+ Crazy stat creatures (like the 45 con wolf) from the campaign won’t spawn in the main game anymore.

+ Fixed the Azur Armor quest.

+ AI Difficulty levels properly saving out (but only if explicitly set by the player, otherwise they are derrived from the world difficulty).

+ Quest Trackers will now find units by ID instead of Index (fixes "non-sovereign heroes can't complete quests" random buginess).

+ Fixed a bug with the cloth icon for the university improvement.

+ Fixed a bug with the construction tile design of the Abbey of Izil.

+ Fixed the Empire Academy improvement to properly give tech research (instead of gold).

+ Fixed bug from https://forums.elementalgame.com/401682, where when asking to recruit a group of NPCs, they would ask only for the gold their leader requires for recruitment, but then deduct all the units' recruitment costs, sometimes causing players to go into the red.

+ The leader of an NPC group will now include the cost of all the subunits in the cost told the player, and subunit costs are included in checks to see if the player can actually recruit them

+ Fixed bug where the recruitment cost of NPC group leaders double-counted the cost of subunits by including them in their battle rank calculation; also manifested itself in the diplomacy wnd as NPCs being more valuable if they happened to be leading an army, even though they didn't bring the army along when traded

+ Fixed a "String Not Found" when displaying the season and year a sovereign or their spouse was born in the dynasty wnd, caused by the turn number -> date code not being able to handle turns before the first turn of a game (and sovereigns and NPCs are listed as being born some years before the start of the game)

+ Fixed bug where dynasty kids were showing their grown-up portraits in the dynasty wnd while they were still babies; dynasty members will now straight return baby pictures as the crest of any child, instead of try to keep the unit type from overwriting its portrait

+ Fixed bug where arranging a marriage with one of your daughters who was leading an army would cause her subunits to all be stacked separately on the same tile when she got traded over, instead of forming an army under a new leader

+ Fixed various display bugs, and possibly multiplayer bugs, when trading NPC units stationed in a city or part of an army by having the champions automatically get moved to the capital city of their new owner (or in an army with the sovereign if they have no city) like arranging marriages already does

+ Fixed bug where you could not click on the same faction in the faction power wnd twice in a row to talk to them, because the entry thought it was still selected and would not receive the message to start talking to that civ's leader

+ Fixed an issue which defaulted all spells/abilities to be resistable (they should default to not being resistable unless specified in the XML).

+ Fixed some tech requirements on fallen armor (different parts of the same suit unlocked on different techs).

+ Fixed the issue where gildar modifiers weren't getting applied to the tax rate (so merchants, markets, etc were useless in most cities).

+ Fixed an issue where faction ability bonuses were being reapplied with every reload.

+ Fixed an issue with Magnar's inefficient trait (it was giving a construction bonus instead of a penalty).

+ Fixed an issue with teleport that caused them to walk back to their previous destination.

+ Fixed bug where the creatures, NPC, and minor race AIs were being set to "Novice" instead of the world difficulty

+ Fixed bug where every major AI faction had its difficulty set to the world difficulty, and overriding it in the choose opponent screen didn't actually override it in the data.

+ Fixed an issue where units can be immune to all damage (show as resisting damage).

+ Traveling Boots are available for all unit models.

+ Fixed an issue that was keeping higher level creatures from spawning.

+ Fixed bug where the players graph that shows up in the bottom right context area (when nothing is selected), would be out-dated if a player died, showing values from the turn before they died and not being updated to show that they now have 0 population, etc..

+ Fixed bug with Kingdom Report showing dead players in 2 places. The first was in relations section of the kingdom report for a player, lists dead players. The second was that every player had a kingdom report page even if dead.

+ Fixed a problem in the Empire Domination techs that kept anyone from researching beyond Curgens Journal (because the Lost Bounty was incorrectly tagged as an Adventure tech).

+ Fixed Sentinel's combat speed.

+ Fixed a possible bug where unit armies would kill their subunits when the leader died.

+ Fixed a bug where the tag marking special abilities wasn't saved out properly.

+ Fixed bug caused by going into the options menu from cloth map mode.

+ Fixed a bug where escaped units would take place in auto resolve battles when tactical battles get auto resolved.

+ Fixed a mousewheel scrolling bug for some mice.

+ Fixed an issue that could wipe out your population if your city leveled up while relying on housing from a Refugee Camp.

+ Fixed an issue that could allow world wonders to be rebuilt if destroyed.

+ Fixed bug where outposts with no population themselves, but in a faction that had some population available for training, would still not allow the player to train a unit until the city had some population

+ Fixed bug where rationing wasn't actually reducing the production of resources in a city unless that city already had some multiplier on its production, and fixed the disparities between the lorebook breakdown of resource storage in cities under rationing that was caused by this