I found source of my confusion with Area of Influence. Most of my beta games was with Kingdom of Pariden - and it have intrinsic ability "Influential", that must increase AoI by one square. Well, it worked no more. Pariden have exactly the same AoI as any other fraction. And I can assure you that it worked up to Golden version.

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It is not Pariden - it is "Influential" at whole. Just now I played with Magnar with the same bonus - and with the same results. No results, I mean.