I've been concentrating on trying to improve the challenge in the game, without making it unduly hard for new players. In discussion with various extremely helpful players I've been making a number of tweaks. Let me know what you think on the Steam message boards.

Perfecting balance remains a WIP, and I remain open to suggestions. It really feels a lot improved in just one week thanks to your help.

Look out for the useful middle button scroll function in the barracks now as well - makes it super fast to scroll quickly through prospects!

All changes affect save games unless otherwise stated.

Gameplay and Balancing

• Player characters will now develop slightly slower (does not affect existing saves).
• Player character wages will now be cheaper (will affect current saves but only on PC contract extension).
• All fighter training gains are now capped at 5 (instead of 10 as it was before) and getting more than 4/5 points gained in a week is now unusual.
• To counter the fact that lower div fighters are often pathetically weak and unskilled, which can lead to long armour chipping contests at the beginning of the game, I have reduced armour coverage by 20 in div5, 15 in div4, 10 in div3 and 5 in div2. The in-game rationale is cheaper armour for cheaper divisions.
• To match the new armour rationale, I have reduced armour repair costs by 20% in div5 and so to match the cheaper and reduced coverage.
• Improved AI hiring / extension / firing decision making to hopefully improve AI squads in higher leagues.
• Rogues now need to do at least 3 flesh damage to cause the extra bleeding effects, so completely trivial cuts will no longer have such an impact.
• Slightly reduced base damage for Pommel from 4 to 3.
• Gave a variable but roughly 25% boost to fighters defending against a ShoulderBarge / Trip / Tangle so those special moves are now harder to pull off. They were overpowered and the in game rationale is that they should be difficult things to achieve.

UI and Quality of Life

• Added mouse wheel scroll functionality to the barracks. Scrolling middle button now scrolls through the fighters.
• Added a toggle just about the battle report area to fix on ‘basic’ or ‘detailed’ view so you can watch it come out line by line in detailed view if you want to.
• Made the negative injury effect numbers in the barracks much brighter for better readability.
• Gave the attribute font in barracks a little outline to stand out for better readability.
• Optimised autosaves so that loading into battle should be significantly faster for those playing in seasons 2/3+.

Fixes and improvements

• Prevented fighters from acting after they have had their position forcibly swapped by an adjacent fighter, and likewise prevented anyone targeting them from following through on any attack. This not only prevents bugs but makes sense in-game: the fighter is physically pull aside by their moving team mate, yanking them out of trouble but leaving them unable to act for the rest of the turn (unless they got in a move before being swapped).
• Fighter contracts can now be extended where salary budget is greater than the difference between the old salary cost and the new (used to have to be able to cover the entire new salary rather than just the difference). So this makes it easier to extend existing contracts within budget.
• Prevented kills in play-offs from registering towards the league table, sometimes changing team position after season close and causing gremlins.
• Activated ‘Destroyer’, ‘Conqueror’ and ‘Punching Bag’ achievements. If you are 2-3 seasons in these might trigger immediately.
• Fixed exclamation mark icon not disappearing when opposing fighter died / yielded.
• Fixed a ‘&’ that should’ve been a ‘%’ in 4th level perk descriptions.
• Fallen and disarmed fighters can no longer work out a combination move.
• Fixed a bug displaying incorrect contract extension amounts on page 2 of the barracks.
• Fixed new gender option not sticking after selection in new game.
• Prevented player changing card front in mid battle sequence – was causing some minor bugs.
• Fixed a bug making player rogues marginally more effectively at bleeding opponents than enemy rogues.