A new patch, a new set of stuff from me. The first thing I want to talk about is the new units that you will find. Obviously they are a significant change from what we had prior to now. Essentially the core units of each faction have been broken into three tiers: Light, Heavy, and Armored. The Light units represent the standard soldier of a Han/Three Kingdoms era army. The base Light soldier wears a simple leather vest and, in the case of swordsmen and spearmen, a wooden shield. They also have two upgrades, Reinforced Leather Lamellar and Iron Lamellar. Unlike previous to this patch, these units actually have their equipment and armor change when upgraded. The same goes for the next tier, the Heavy Units. Unlike the Light units before them, the Heavy units represent a more professional force of soldiers with extensively crafted arms and armor. From first glance, you can see that not only do they have iron scale cuirasses, but they also have arm and upper-leg protection as well as helmets. These units only have one upgrade, which is from Iron Lamellar to Steel Lamellar. At the steel upgrade you will see that the armor color turns almost black, and the construction of the torso armor changes from scales to plates. Heavy Cavalry upgraded to steel will even have some armor on the top of their thighs. And although I mentioned Armored units, they are not currently in-game at the moment. They probably won't be finished for a few more weeks and we didn't want to delay Patch 8 any longer. The Armored units will be, as you probably guessed, thoroughly armored in Heavy Steel armor from head to toe... well, not toe, more like knees.
ThatOtherGuy is currently working on them and, I must say, he is doing some damn fine work. I know you will all love them when they are completed. And the last thing I want to discuss, in regard to units, is the unit cards and UI pics. We are in the process of creating unit cards and UI pics for all of the new units, so the ones you see right now are simply placeholders from the old units that were replaced.
Although there are some minor issues with the script (which is fixed and will be included in a Hotfix in a couple days), if you have played as either the Cao Clan, Sun Clan, Yuan Clan, or Ba-Shu, you may have noticed that their starting characters have been reduced slightly. If you have captured some specific settlements with those factions, you might have also noticed that you will get a character or two that join your faction. If you constantly get a CTD after taking a settlement, as opposed to getting new characters, that is the script issue that will be in the Hotfix. Other changes with factions have been an increase in starting armies which, combined with the reduction of starting characters, will hopefully alleviate the issue of a bunch of generals clumping together into the same stack and all being killed. It will still happen, and there is absolutely no way to change that, but we can lessen how often it happens.
If you haven't given +rep to
Gigantus yet, please do so, because he is the mad scientist behind all of the excellent scripting going on. One such script has to do with controlling the Han Emperor, being Imperial Guardian, and Usurpation to become Emperor yourself. As the in-game event states, you need to take Chang An to control the Emperor, thus becoming Imperial Guardian. From there, as you increase the size of your realm, you will eventually be given the opportunity to either support or usurp the Han. Supporting will allow you to become Prime Minister, while Usurping will allow you to become Emperor. Also, even if you don't control the Han Emperor, you can "self declare" yourself King, and later Emperor, by holding a large number of settlements. That is just a general overview of the process, as it is a bit more complex than that, but I hope this gives a little better insight into how it works.
The last thing I'll discuss is some new ancillaries. While in my last update I talked about the new "Governor" ancillaries, there are also "Minister" ancillaries for when your faction leader becomes Emperor. These Ministers include the Grand Master of Ceremonies, Privy Treasurer, Superintendent of the Household, Commandant of Justice, Commandant of the Guards, and Grand Minister of Agriculture. Each has their own unique ancillary, bonuses, and description, as well as unique requirements for acquisition. There was also a general overhaul of the ancillaries that were already in the mod. I went through all of them and was surprised by the amount of incorrect bonuses listed or obsolete (RTW leftover) bonuses for many of the ancillaries. Every ancillary, except for many of the admiral ancillaries, should now have a complete description of just what that ancillary does.
There was a lot more that went into this patch and what I discussed was only a small select portion of it.