• The Phoenix Court UI now changes seasons once every three turns, up from once every turn. This allows it to integrate perfectly with our new Seasons and Holidays mod!

The Phoenix Court's political system already simulated some of the goals and strengths of each of the Ten Kingdoms. This update goes further, allowing your rivals to react to you more realistically. It also adds many new Intrigue dilemmas, support for Elven Colonies, a Grandeur rebalance, and much more.

Now the political simulation grows deeper, as the Kingdoms learn to act against those who oppose them at Court.

• Adds an "Insult" system, allowing other Kingdoms to notice when you act against them, and making them inclined to retaliate
  
• Going to war against another High Elf Kingdom, usurping their Seats at Court, or choosing political dilemma options that displease them can cause an Insult
  
• Insulted Kingdoms are more likely to usurp your Seats at Court, but they balance this against their own self-interest; they will not blindly target only you if they have better options
  
• AI-controlled Kingdoms can Insult each other, too
  
• The player faction can feel Insulted when AI offends them, too. Choose whether to seize the advantage and steal their seats right back, or turn the other cheek to normalize relations
  
• Nagarythe's new factional bonus is that they ALWAYS act as if they had been Insulted. As hardened practitioners of realpolitik, they are politically ruthless. However, this means Nagarythe does not feel offended if you treat them the same way in kind. It's all in the game...

• More than doubled the number of Intrigue events, adding numerous lore-rich dilemmas for your Kingdom to resolve
  
• Dilemmas are coded intelligently to avoid triggering nonsensically (for instance, Saphery will not be asked to step in to resolve a dispute involving Saphery).
  
• Added new official art to illustrate some of these events
  
• Added some new Courtier followers, gained only by Intrigue events

• Claiming every single Seat and Throne now grants a court victory event, allowing you to choose between loyalty to the Phoenix King, and a more ambitious option that will change the status quo.
  
• Like most events in this mod, text and effects for court victory were rewritten over a dozen times to be unique to each faction, leading to almost 30 possible endings, each with its own several-paragraph event text.
  
• This feature is functional, but the mechanical effects it grants are relatively basic; more features will come later.

A focus has been made on making the Court more strategic. Thrones are somewhat harder to purchase at random, but cheaper now than they were before if you are doing well at meeting that Kingdom's listed goals.

• Perhaps the best source of political Grandeur before late game, now, is the Allied Outpost buildings you can construct from alliances with other High Elves
  
• A strategy of alliance and vassalage can now compete with more ruthless strategies of direct competition
  
• Almost every Grandeur source has been tweaked and balanced. Early game should go a little more smoothly while slightly reducing snowballing
  
• Landmarks that resemble an Elven Court now help you spend Grandeur when you have excessive amounts: when your Grandeur hits a certain level, their effect will be empowered, and begin costing Grandeur. Baseline effects slightly weakened for balance.
  
• All Grandeur for killing prisoners is increased
  
• Increased Intrigue-to-Grandeur exchange ratio from 2:1 to 3:1 (may shut it off entirely in the future. If your ratio is still 2:1, make sure to hit the Reset to Default Value button in MCT)
  
• Tier 3 seats reduced from 350 to 300 Grandeur.
  
• Grandeur and Seat discounts granted by lower-level buildings start much closer to their maximum value, to help with early game drought without increasing snowballing
  
• Seat discounts are buffed to compete a bit better with Grandeur-per-turn
  
• Owning Seats increases the cost of Seats, to help both player and AI when they are far behind. The same separately applies to Thrones
  
• Factional political bonuses are slightly stronger

• Continued to expand the consequences of pleasing or offending other High Elf Kingdoms
  
• Some dilemmas now may also please or offend non-High Elf races
  
• Killing Dark Elven or Slaaneshi prisoners grants extra Grandeur
  
• Killing High Elf prisoners actually COSTS a point of Grandeur, whereas sparing them gives Grandeur

• Finished (for now...) integrating the Elven Colonies (Citadel of Dusk, LCCP's Guardians of Calith, etc) into the Phoenix Court
  
• Elven Colonies have a significant disadvantage at Court, and no Throne, but they are fully playable and have their own strengths and a lot of custom flavor text for events

• Elven Colony factions can now be confederated diplomatically, as intended (since they cannot be confederated through the Court)
  
• When claiming the Throne of an already defeated elven Kingdom, you will now gain the Legendary Lord of that Kingdom in your recruitment pool, as intended

Known Issues

• Intrigue dilemmas spawn slightly more frequently, but are still unreasonably uncommon. This seems to be a vanilla issue, investigating fixes.

• Applied fix to correct script break when playing without IEE

• Elven Colonies can now participate in the Phoenix Court. Colonies include Tor Elasor and Citadel of Dusk, as well as modded colonies added in the LCCP mod for Immortal Empires Expanded.
  
• Elven Colonies are much weaker politically than the Ten Kingdoms, providing a Phoenix Court Hard Mode. When played, they will still end up strong at Court, but AI will only occasionally manage to win a seat.

• Additional Grandeur integration

• The player is no longer awarded items after losing the Seat that grants them
  
• Resolved many High Elf factions not receiving their Intrigue dilemmas as intended
  
• Properly applied Tiranoc's faction bonus

• The "Dragons" chain of buildings now requires you to unlock the Awakening the Ancient Ones technology first before it grants Grandeur. Lore-wise, the Dragons building's political influence had been imaginable but not self-explanatory, so this provides a clear rationale while capturing the feeling the technology's title suggests
  
• Increased Grandeur gain from Ritual of Asuryan from 3 to 4 to provide a tiny amount of help in early game where you have few other sources of Grandeur
  
• Small text display fix, a few number tweaks
  
• Included the Harbingers from Alshua's Ellyrion in the Tower effects in a way that matches the vanilla heroes

Initial release!