• Armies always have four reinforcement positions, and related bonuses have been replaced with other effects.
  
• Enabled cities to build one additional dock for every 10 population, and adjusted industry costs and bonuses to account for multiple docks.
  
• Randomized targets for capture/raze city faction quests, to reduce situations where an allied city is chosen as the target.
  
• Removed the level cap for units, and reduced stat gain per level by half.
  
• Smoother attack scaling for Titanium, Glassteel, and Dust weapons.
  
• Most of the early FIDS improvements can be built in multiple cities.
  
• Added the Team Islands scenario, allowing teams to spawn together.
  
• Difficulty overhaul, with direct FIDSI modifiers that scale over time.
  
• Peace, alliance, and diplomatic contact are available at game start.
  
• City trade/raze requirements adjusted to support custom factions.
  
• Legendary deeds are pre-selected to reduce faction bias.
  
• Winter only becomes permanent when set to Anarchic.
  
• Advancement requires twelve technologies per age.
  
• Automatically suppress desync warnings.

Changes to units and abilities are a work in progress. The plan is to add something unique for each faction, starting with quality of life improvements and buffs to some of the weaker/under-utilized units.

• Settlers, Setsekes, and cities gain a slight increase to vision range, and now have increased vision height to see up hills and cliffs.
  
• Masterminds gain long ranged attacks and a new Mind Blast ability (damage morale by one point per attack). This helps to offset their low mobility and weak stats, and should give the Morgawr a fighting chance against land attacks.
  
• Agache Shamans were extremely weak, so their base attack, damage, and hit points were doubled. They should now have a role as well rounded support units, with overall average stats.
  
• Wild Walker units gain camouflage, and their heroes gain long ranged attacks to match the Dekari Rangers.
  
• Assassins gain the stun ability instead of minor faction slayer, to match their description and make them viable later in the game.
  
• Forgotten Heroes gain the fast, acrobat, and stun abilities to match the Assassins.
  
• Forgotten often suffered from bad starts due to science-heavy terrain, so they gain +1 industry on terrain with science to help mitigate the problem.
  
• Holy Resource grants 100% production in all seasons instead of 200% in winter. In most games this will provide a higher and more consistent overall bonus.
  
• Broken Lords often suffered from bad starts due to food-heavy terrain, so they gain +1 dust on terrain with food to help mitigate the problem.
  
• Proliferator: increased base HP to 104, and the parasite ability is now shared with the squad. This should greatly reduce the need for micromanagement.
  
• Battleborn now have built in movement trinkets based on Era. Since they can't be upgraded in-game, this helps keep them from falling behind.
  
• Fungal Bloom Regen provides 5% of its effect during combat. This helps offset the fragile defenses of Mykara units, but only if enough blooms can be maintained to make it effective.
  
• Stronger transport ships, and faster naval units in general. Transports are still no match for dedicated naval units, but this gives them a fighting chance when faced with a few stray vessels.
  
• Urkans gain xp/turn equal to garrison size, similar to heroes. This helps them stay competitive when used peacefully.
  
• Urkans gain the Free Counter ability. This partly offsets some of the ELCP nerfs to Urkans.

Changes to traits are a work in progress, and will modify trait effects only. Trait costs will never be altered, so custom factions will remain compatible with vanilla.

• CutsBothWays: increased the amount collected from 8% to 25%, since the original bonus just wasn't worth the points.
  
• FastEpimorphosis: increased regeneration from 5% to 10%, to keep it from being eclipsed by other regeneration bonuses.
  
• LivingTowns: bonus remains active during winter, to keep this trait competitive with other industry bonuses.
  
• WallsOfFaith: affects all cities, to make it a viable choice for custom factions.
  
• WellConnected: added a 15% diplomacy cost reduction, since everyone already starts with diplomatic contact.