Talk:News and Announcements/@comment-5395153-20130110191324/@comment-5395153-20130216154215

1.03.25 Beta 2 is on its way, stay tuned :). I've got some big(ish) plans set for it, the gist of which is listed below:
 * Rebalanced Dwarves (particularly Dwarf Infantry).
 * Fixed King Khalid and Lord Bane being producable before keep level 5 (think this may have been a 1.03.24 bug).
 * Rebalanced army setup points for some units including the Minotaur King and Flame Cannon.
 * Rebalanced Dark Dwarves (a lot of the research now has keep level requirements)
 * Rebalanced Fey (a lot of the research now has keep level requirements and keep upgrades bar level 5 have increased in cost)
 * A couple of researches in the Barbarian Race have increased in cost (Income and Spear of Ankh)
 * Shifted a couple of vulnerabilities around such as the Eagle's new vulnerability to electrical and Wasp's new vulnerability to fire.
 * Some slight cost rebalancing of units such as the Ancient Treant, Iron Golem, Dark Archer and Gladewarden (the latter two also got a vulnerability to piercing).
 * Researches such as Dwarven Brew, Bowmaster and No Pain! got a cost boost.
 * New Ssrathi access to Basilisks at the Hatchery currently for 100 Gold, 100 Stone as a balanced potential new Stone resource based win condition.
 * Some building priorities have been changed so the AI actually build them (althought still needs playtesting because the AI still may not build buildings such as Hovels, Supply Depots and more importantly Mortars. However, got Totems built much more often). All Keeps have a lower priority so the AI doesn't waste as much resources by spamming level 5 keeps (don't know if I can stop the Empire from doing it though as their level 5 keeps produce 3 military units so the Empire AI may still spam level 5 keeps :.
 * Fixed some speech file errors such as the Unicorn and Squire (they both now have an additional Order and Selection sound) and fixed the Archon's voice so all of his sounds will now be lower pitch rather than just some :)
 * The Knight Squire and Empire Archer have pretty much been swapped around in looks and stats (included were some stat, cost and build time changes to reflect the changes). New concept of the Knight Squire being less skilled but tougher than an Empire Archer.
 * Rebalanced the Knight race (many costs have been slightly shifted over to metal in the attempt to make them more different to Empire unit costs but also to help them out a little bit with Knight production). Archons got a slight cost decrease and the Daemon (produced by the Daemon race) got a cost increase. All the Crusade researches have been changed in cost a lot (it used to be a win condition in 1.03, but since the level up changes where units don't gain HP on level up any more they were insanely overcosted). The cost of the crusade research tree goes up exponentially.
 * Help text info update and fix - the help info box at the top of the screen will list whether a unit has got Poison, Disease, Fear, Terror, Chaos or Awe (for example, units such as the Blackguard and Harpy had Poison even though the help box didn't say that they did). Also, the strength and range of the effect is listed for each case (not sure about the Wolfrider's disease upgrade or the strength of poison arrows but I gave them a guess).
 * New items that may help to balance out the item drops and provide more interesting selections

Currently, the following still requires more playtesting:
 * The Pixie's comparison to the Leprechaun (vulnerabilities etc).
 * The new 1.03.25 Beta 2 Ghoul concept of a 'Warrior Zombie' with 5 armour, 0 resistance, resistant to all physical and vulnerable to all elemental.
 * Whether the AI will even consider building Hovels, Supply Depots or Mortars

Known Bugs/Issues:
 * AI may not build Supply Depots, Hovels or Mortars
 * Empire AI is likely to spam level 5 keeps
 * AI send one unit at a time to attack the player's base (particularly annoying with tier 1 fliers)
 * Many spells and spell spheres are unbalanced (particularly Rune and Chaos magic)
 * Some skills are unbalanced (such as the Life Rune skill compared to the Forest Rune skill)
 * Some Hero Classes are not very usable (such as Thief, Archmage, Daemonslayer, Elementalist etc)
 * The racial damage skills either need to handle 3 races each or be changed into something else on the skill tree
 * Wyverns aren't included in the Dragonmaster skill (are Faerie Dragons?)
 * Gnolls may be a little bit pointless at the moment for the Minotaurs
 * Empire and The Swarm (and possibly some of the Elven races too) have extreme trouble defending against Dark Dwarves and possibly the Undead in the early game due to lack of access to any reasonable non-piercing weaponry at this time.

Changes that may occur:
 * Increase resource cost of Keep upgrades to help stop keep upgrade spamming and to help prolong each phase of the game
 * Remove the ability for all non-hero units to convert, integrate those units back into a normal production roster (for example Dwarf Lords being producable at Armouries) and allow the hero to be resurrected at the HQ building of each race for a certain amount of all resources depending upon the amount of times that hero's already died.
 * Remove all slayer abilities from all skill trees and replace them with either other skills or new skills.
 * Certain balancing features and changes to classes, units, spells and skills as seen in the changelist found in the link below.
 * Either put catapult damage back up to 60 and half damage they do to units or remove splash damage.
 * An increase in build time and cost to all Advanced and Elite units in the game to make them feel right amongst the lesser units - help stop them from being affordable and spammable.

Check out the current changelist (and potential changes that may occur) for the new patch here (it's updated every now and then).