Nothing too exciting for this one, as much of it is optimizing what I had before. A side effect of that was also making it easier for users of the mod to modify values of the spell tree system.


Building Changes
-Guilds and Temples no longer increase their max member limit based on the level of the structure. This function has been replaced with researching Expanded Living Quarters.
-All Help Signs have been moved into the Options attachment of their structure.

Hero Changes
Attribute Changes
-Artifice no longer increases sight range, attack range for ranged heroes, or casting range.
*Heroes eventually reach a hard ceiling on the benefits of increased Sight Range, causing them to actively be detrimental towards them and bringing down Cast and Attack range with it. With Sight Range, the hero compiles more enemies within their sight and increases their likelihood of fleeing and tremendously increasing their process load as they compile objects based on a multiplier to their sight range. With Attack and Cast range, heroes end up firing spells and attacks that could well exceed their sight range, causing buggy behavior (even if the area is not shrouded in a fog of war) so must naturally be less than their Sight Range anyway.

Regeneration Changes
-Doubled the cycle time for regeneration to tick and halved the threshold to regain a point of health/mana.'
*Essentially slowed down the regeneration update from 200 milliseconds to 400 milliseconds, as the fast update times might contribute to late game slowdowns.

Henchmen Changes
City Guard
-Guards now have the same UI window has heroes, and display their intents with specificity if applicable.
*If the Guard is attacking an enemy, his intent will specify what he is attacking.

New Henchman: Archer
-Can be recruited at a Guardhouse.
-Acts as a ranged support henchman for the City Guards.
*Has equal stats to the Royal Archer, but does not have abilities.

Research Changes
-Research options can now have requirements that need to be fulfilled before they become available to research.
-Research options that are stuck as Unavailable despite having requirements fulfilled can be dismissed to unstuck their status.
*Haven't run into a case where Researches became stuck like this since adjusting the code, but this is here just in case there is a flaw somewhere that I've yet to catch.

Research Expanded Living Quarters now requires the guild to be at its maximum level. Guilds without levels have this Research immediately available.
*I remain uncertain if this kind of research is something to add to Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes.

Research Barracks now requires a Level 2 Guardhouse and Recruitment Quarters
Research Recruit Additional Guard now requires a Barracks

New Guardhouse Research
Research Recruit Additional Archer: Recruits an additional Archer to this Guardhouse
Research Recruit Additional Archer requires a Barracks

Spell Changes
-Spells are divided into categories in a Hero's Spell list. Categories include the Spell Tree if applicable, a General spell list, and an Item spell list.
-Spell casting functionality optimized to be more dynamic.
-Spells are sorted into their category in the Spell tab for heroes and organized in a way that is easier to view.
-Spell values for the Fire Tree and all future spell trees are sorted into a separate list in the mod files to allow for easier access to editing their values.
*The optimization renders 6000+ lines of code obsolete. This number would have been exponentially greater were any additional spell trees added before this improvement.

Mod File Changes
-Files containing the code for the mod are no longer in single massive master lists and are now broken down and sorted into multiple files/folders to ease navigating the code.
*Might be helpful for anyone wanting to take a look at the files for a better understanding of the changes made.


The focus from here on out is to get everything ready for release on October. One last thing I hope to be able to put in before the mod releases is an expansion to Freestyle mode. Specifically I aim to allow the player to select as many Special Events as they want as well as adding in additional events. The additional events will draw from Southern quests in the campaign that will likely be no longer compatible with the next release of the mod, as the weight of importance of the Magic Bazaar means that this will likely end up being an Expansion only mod from 0.20 on out. So with that being the case, I'd like to recreate the quests in the form of Special Events, so that quests like 'Free the Slaves' and 'A Deal with the Demon' can be played in Freestyle mode, with whatever other Special Events they want along with it.