It’s been 6 days since Beta 2-A.  Here’s what’s new in this week’s beta:

* Gameplay *

Overview:
This is a major beta update to Elemental.  Beta 1 was a concept test. Beta 2 was an engine/multiplayer workout. Now, beta 3, we get into THE GAME. 

Major new elements:

• The Empires are enabled
• The Fallen races are now enabled
• ALL technology trees are enabled
• Diplomacy is enabled
• Magic System overhauled
• Head’s up Display is in (HUD). Can be toggled on or off (U key or from the UI).
• Players can create their own custom factions (And later play against them).
• All map sizes are available (right now, it’s drawing from a very limited number of seeds, however but enough to keep people busy a week or two).

Caveats:
Not everything is perfect in Elemental land though.  First off, because of the sheer magnitude of changes, this build will be pretty buggy. It should be a lot more fun but it’ll probably take us a few days to nail down the various new crashes we introduced during the merge process. There’s a lot of balancing that needs to be done now that these systems are meeting. There’s a lot of systems that are only partially implemented.  We expect to have most of these ironed out by the end of next week.

Change Log:

*Gameplay*

+ All tech trees are now enabled for both Kingdoms and Empires
+ When a unit levels up, the essence stat isn't offered for upgrade unless the unit already has some essence
+ When selecting which quest to use for random quests placed in the map editor, CMapSaver now uses the quest’s trigger chance to weight which quest gets chosen. When not specified, the trigger chance for a quest defaults to 100.
+ New Resource: Bone Ogre Village. Imperial factions can recruit ogres if they add them to their cities.
+ New tiny map that makes use of the new random creature, random goodie hut editor features.
+ Fixes to threads to ensure that they are fully loaded prior to game starting.
+ General optimization of game loading to get the game loading faster, particularly on multi-core machines
+ Re-enabled negotiation
+ Made changes to MapSaver so that quests, goodie huts, creatures, and NPCs of the lowest spawn rating are spawned at the start of the game.
+ Tweak to health recover if own zone of control.  In future: Healing rates should be data driven, not hard coded in the engine.
+ AI definitions for how to deal with other players is now data driven
+ Fallen tiles tweaked to be smaller
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Barter House
+ Imperial Improvement Added: War Council
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Consular's Palace
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Curgen's Exchange
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Kir-Tion's Monument
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Imperial Farm
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Fallen Fire Shrine
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Fallen Fortress
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Hovel
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Lore Shop
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Monument
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Basic Outpost
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Sage Ministry
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Sion Temple
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Skath Pit
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Tower of Sorcery
+ Imperial Improvement Added: Ministry of War
+ Resource: Wild Scath Pit
+ Royal Achievement Added: War College
+ Quests updated so that they'll use the appropriate tile (i.e. no more going to a horrific looking dungeon to be asked to escort some guy)
+ Added player ability A_UnitStat_Essence, an ability that provides a multiplier to the essence stat of all units belonging to a player
+ Renamed Imbue Champion spell to Imbue Hero, transfers 1 essence to the target of the spell
+ Added player ability A_ManaRegeneration helper functions, units now use this ability score of their owner as their base mana regen, commented out the mana regen unit stat
+ Can add <ProductionRequirement> to a unit type the same as a GameItemType, and when training a unit, if they have any production requirements in their unit type, they override the requirements of the equipment they are wearing
+ In the diplomacy screen, if a player has none of a given resource to trade, there won't be an entry for it in the trade list
+ When making a new sovereign in the create sovereign screen, the essence stat of the new unit type is set to the intelligence stat chosen by the user
+ Eliminated Techs:
- Shard Domination
- Water Shard Mastery
- Fire  Mastery
- Earth Mastery
- Air  Mastery
- Water Mastery
- These techs led to improvements that gave specialized magic resources which was just too convoluted
+ Eliminated corresponding Improvements
+ Added Tech: Shard Mastery
+ Shard Harvesting Tech now required to Harvest Shards
+ Shard Shrines now provide a 20% boost to Essence of any unit that has Essence
+ New Technology: Shard Mastery.
+ New Improvement: Shrine of Essence, requires a shard in the city, increases essence by another 25%.
+ gave Brilliance spell an Air Shard requirement of 1, and a cooldown of 5 turns.
+ added a modifier to Dungeon Master's Guild, so that it will unlock the dungeon master unit type for whatever city it is build in
+ added a modifier to Assassin's Guild, so that it will unlock the Assassin unit type for whatever city it is build in
+ added a modifier to Thieve's Guild, so that it will unlock the burglar unit type for whatever city it is build in
+ Removed Animal Herding Kingdom Tech
+ Removed Arcane Analysis Kingdom Tech
+ Updated descriptions for most Kingdom Techs to include 'one sentence flavor text, one sentence function text.'
+ Added Duration of Potion Effect to Description text
+ Added a base Combat Speed of 1 to all NPC's (Was causing issues in Tactical Battles)
+ Renamed Burglar and Dungeon Keeper to Thief and Dungeon Master, respectively, for consistency
+ Updated description text to include description of their special ability
+ Added Special Building Type tag to Guild improvements
+ Fixed erroneous prereq tech for Theatre
+ Fixed erroneous prereq tech for Shard Shrines
+ Lowered negative point costs for Sovereign weaknesses
+ Created Archivist research talent that produces 1 research point per turn
+ Created new action Found Kingdom/Empire that only sovereigns can perform, and only once
- Does the same thing that build city did before
+ The old build city action is now unlocked by the pioneer's pack (and no one can do it automatically), and building a city consumes the unit that performed the action
+ Can now specify which environments need to have revive/desecrate land called on for a given faction using the <NonBuildableEnvironmentType> in xml
- Set up the core major factions (and new factions in the customize faction screen) to have their non-buildable environment type be the "opposite" of their environment type, or grasslands for empire and dead for kingdom, so now revive land only needs to be cast on the "opposite" environment
+ Can now place minor factions in the map editor. You have the option of specifying which minor faction (of which there are currently three in the game) you want at a given point, or you can place a random minor faction, which will be randomly selected when the map is loaded into the main game. Currently, you can only have one of each minor faction on the map, so if you place multiple of the same one in the editor, it will only create the first. Random minor factions are selected from a list of those that have not yet been placed.
+ CQuestManager::SpawnQuestLocations( ) now places quests that are randomly-selected, and uses their preferred quest location, rather than placing a generic quest location that randomly selects a quest when it is cleared. The quests that are randomly-selected are at or below the current quest spawn rating. Note that this function is unrelated to the quest locations that are placed in the map editor; this generates additional quest locations when the player founds their first city, or when a “SpawnQuestLocations” game modifier is applied.
+  Changed citybuilding to require all cities to be contiguous - no more outlying resource hoards (must be done with pioneers now).
+ Most spells no longer require a shard to cast.
+ If a spell cooldown is set to have a -1 cooldown time, once it is cast, it can't be cast by that unit anymore, and before casting the spell a warning pops up for the local player notifying them that this is the only time they can cast it with that unit
+ Added <TraderUnitType> tag to race type/faction config, specifies the on-foot trader to use for when a caravan starts a short route, so that it isn't hardcoded anymore
+ Hooked up the existing race types and faction configs to have a pioneer and peasant as a starting unit, and gave them a trader, though because of the lack of a trog peasant and pioneer, the trog races are still using the kingdom ones
+ Fixed up Death Worshipping Ability
+ Created Trader's Bag for Trader
+ Made black widow spider weaker
+ Updated Tech Tree to reflect Tech changes
+ Attached Traders kit to Trader so that he would have a bag to carry
+ Created Guardian, Enforcer, and Sion units for Fallen
+ Added Fallen Tech prereqs to basic weapons
+ Created Fallen Horse and Wagon for trading
+ Hooked up tactical Icons for/replaced temp kingdom with temp fallen tactical icons for: Skathling Pit, Monument, and Barter House, War Council, Harbor, Archery Range,  Temple of Influence, Temple of Fortitude, Temple of the Sentinel, Temple of Passion, Temple of Vengeance, Temple of Haste, Temple of Swiftness, Temple of Defense, Temple of Defiance, Dungeon Master's Guild, Assassin's Guild, Thieves Guild, Lore Shop
+ Removed temple of the Enchanter, Temple of the Pyromancer, Temple of the Frost Lord, Temple of the Whirlwind, Temple of the Earth Lord
+ Hooked up tactical Icons for/replaced temp kingdom with temp fallen tactical icons for: War Ministry, Imperial Mint, Curgen's Exchange, Sage Minstry, Statue of Kir-Tion, Consular's Palace, Sion Temple
+ Hooked up Guardians, Enforcers, and Sions to War Ministry, Enforcer's Enclave, and Sion Temple
+ Hooked up tactical Icons for Labor Pit, Archivist
+ Hooked up tactical Icons for/replaced temp kingdom with temp fallen tactical icons for: Sty Block, Shanty
+ Hooked up tactical icons for Monastery, Temple of Influence, Temple of Fortitude, Temple of the Sentinel, Temple of Passion, Temple of Vengeance, Temple of Haste, Temple of Swiftness, Temple of Defense, Temple of Defiance
+ Fixed Provides tag for Monastery, Thieves Guild, and Assassins Guild
+ Fixed up description text for various improvements to match game modifiers
+ Fixed Mana regeneration tag for Tower of Magi to provide 2 Mana Regen to all units (Unable to give 50% bonus to all units through data at this time)
+ Fixed Provides tag for War College
+ Added Sacrificial Altar improvement
+ Added Fallen Research Medallions to Fallen TechCategory
+ Updated descriptions for most Kingdom Techs to include 'one sentence flavor text, one sentence function text.'
+ Removed Refined Recruiting Old Tech
+ Created Magician Hut Kingdom Tech that increments spawn rating
+ Created Deathworshipping Tech
+ Hooked up Caravans to Exchanges_Empire
+ Moved Warrior_Castes_Empire, Zealots_Empire, and Shocks_Empire down in the XML for consistency in the 'Track Structure'
+ Founding a kingdom/empire or building a city now plays some kind of spell effect, even if the land doesn't need to be revived for the city to be built there
+ Diplomatic capital and money can be used in treaty negotiations
+ Trade and economic treaties are worth to each player 10x however much gold/research points they will get per-turn from the treaty, which is then modified further by relations for negotiations with the AI players
+ Non-aggression pacts, alliances, and peace treaties are worth the power rating of the player the buyer is negotiating with, also modified by relations for the AI
+ Raise land can only change a tile up to hills, and lower land can only lower down to land
+ Gave Ceresa a fire spellbook
+ Gave Magnar III an air spellbook
+ Gave Verga a fire spellbook
+ Gave Kul-Al-Kulan an air spellbook
+ AIs now assign roles for their designed units. w00t.
+ AI Designs their own pioneers, builds them, and intelligently (ahem) sends them out to found new cities.
+ NPCs will start making observations about how weak you are.
+ Moved Pioneer Kit into main equipment
+ Increased the spawn level of party NPCs
+ Tweaked default LOD to show more at greater zoom out.
+ Optimization of game loading for faster load times
+ More Seed Maps
+ Sovereigns can found kingdoms and Empires
+ Added support for game modifiers:
<GameModifier InternalName="ProtectUnit">
     <ModType>Unit</ModType>
     <Attribute>ProtectFromSpells</Attribute>
     <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
    </GameModifier>
<GameModifier InternalName="ProtectCity">
     <ModType>City</ModType>
     <Attribute>ProtectFromSpells</Attribute>
     <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
    </GameModifier>
City or Unit modifiers with "ProtectFromSpells" attributes grant protection from offensive spells, causing the tile target of any offensive spell to be invalid if a protected city or unit is within the radius of that spell's effects
+ Added handling for <SpellTargetType>EnemyCity</SpellTargetType> in a spell def xml, this targeting type wasn't being handled in the spellcasting code before
+ NPCs now observe if your cities are poorly defended
+ Adjustments to the cost of the Pioneer Kit
+ Monster Goodie huts that are part of a quest are not allowed to be goodie huts
+ Adjustments to spawn rating for party based NPCs
+ Spell books adjusted to conform to design document closer (still needs more work)
+ New Spell: Arcane Armor
+ Minor spells no longer require a shard to cast.
+ New Spell: Arcande Weaponry
+ Removed technology "Economics"
+ Balance pass on unit grouping costs
+ Hid Tutors and Lore Masters until we can balance them.
+ Fixed typo in WoodSpear1
+ Added hotkey for Found Kingdom to their tooltip
+ Added "Provides" for Guardians
+ Renamed Lumber Yard to Lumber Mill. Makes note that it requires an old growth forest.
+ Fixed bug where you could not select quality of troops in the train window screen
+ Modified the CalcBattleRank function..again
+ You can make a spell use an enchantment slot by having its modifiers either have a duration > 0, or by setting <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>.  Fixed a bug where unit modifiers that were marked as per-turn weren't storing the modifier effects in a place where they could be cancelled.
+ Non-stackable unit target spells won't allow stacking anymore.  Arcane armor not showing up in the enchantment slot fixed by the fix mentioned above, having per-turn modifiers stored in the unit
+ The cases of spells that could only be cast on yourself were caused by these spells having a range of 0, just the tile the caster is on.  Setting the <Range> tag to -1 fixed these examples and allowed them to be cast on other units, but I changed the default range of a spell def to -1 so that now spells will default to infinite range unless a different range is specified in the xml, instead of defaulting to 0
+ Every unit target spell has a specifier <UnitAppSpecifier>, which dictates if it is applied to all the units at a tile (ApplyToAll) or just the first (ApplyToFirst).  This value defaults to ApplyToAll for all spell defs, but I changed it to default to ApplyToFirst since that seems to be the default behavior being called for here.  Unless specified otherwise now, a unit spell will only be applied to a single unit at the target tile.
+ Janusk the Scribe is now in the game.
+ Janusk will offer to join players (this will eventually be a game option)
+ If Janusk joins you, he will, occasionally, offer advice.
+ 3 more seed maps
+ Conversation system hooked up for Janusk
+ Added saving and loading of the list of enchantments kept by the caster
+ Modified how saving/loading of spell targets and elemental game modifier instances works, so that when loading enchantments, the enchantment info kept by the caster has valid pointers to the targets and the effect instances so that they can be updated and cancelled, regardless of how much of the world has been loaded when the enchantment list is loaded.

* Bug Fixes *

+ Added an equip idle to the mounted animation pack for units, fixes bug where mounted units would T-pose in the create sovereign screen and the equipment screen
+ Added critical sections around the code accessing the static list of all the unit types in the game in CUnitType, should prevent crashes on startup that I was sporadically getting from xml loading trying to add to the list while it was being used somewhere else, and theoretically any place in the game where a unit type was being added/removed
+ Fixed a bug with the starting points code that was causing the game to ignore locations assigned to specific players in the map editor, causing it to generate new random points.
+ FindUnitTypeByName: returns NULL if name passed in is NULL (prevents crash)
+ SpawnNPCs: checks returned unit type pointer to prevent crash
+ Fixed bug with disappearing improvements when zooming in/out
+ Fixed rare crash in portrait generator (if it is not initialized or no cut scene window was created)
+ Fixed crash in city wall code where if there was no environment type it would crash
- Now, if environment type is not found, default world lighting is used
+ Fixed bug where if you kept setting a new destination before your unit finished moving, it could keep moving indefinitely.
+ Fixed bug where improvement gfx were disappearing after they finished construction (they would reappear after the next improvement was built or you zoomed out then in)
+ Fixed bugs with city building, such as AI units never having to cast revive/desecrate land and take the essence/mana hit, and generally cleaned up the code to found kingdoms/cities
+ Moved essence cost for building a city on certain environment to the revive/desecrate land spells, instead of as a separate override cost in the elemental defs xml
+ Fixed a bug where unit types designed with mounts as default equipment weren't using the animation pack specified in the mount item type
+ Fixed some crashes when updating or destroying an enchantment on a friendly city
+ Fixed bug where double clicking on the spell information entries would cast the spell
+ Fixed a loading bug in treaty defs that messed up some of their string info on load
+ Added critical sections to TileDesign_XMLBuffer code that was operating on the vector outside of critical section
+ Added critical section blocks around PropModelTypes vector

* UI *
+ NEW HUD SYSTEM: Cities have an easy to read floating graphical display over their hub, displaying ownership, resources, and other important data.
- On by default, the hud can be disabled by toggling the FLAG button in the upper right corner.
+ Added unit types, treaties, unit grouping types, unit quality types, and unit actions to the list of "Unlocks" entries in the research wnd when mousing over a possible breakthrough, which despite having tech prereqs, weren't showing up in that list
+ Added a "favorites" list of spells to each player's spellbook manager, will be able to be filled up/removed from from the new spellbook popup wnd, and will be used for filling the unit spell context wnd
+ Added an "open spellbook" entry to the front of the unit spell context wnd, right now opens the spellbook wnd inside the kingdom wnd, but will pop it up separately pending some screen changes
+ Fixed annoying issue where, if you sent your sovereign into a battle, they were defeated, and went back to their city, they would stay selected in the context windows despite them not being selected on the map, and trying to select nothing wouldn't work because of desync between what the main UI thought was selected and what the main map thought.  Now the sovereign is completely deselected before flying off to their nearest city
+  You may now click on different cities in the empire tree while the build window is up and the build window will stay up and update to the new city.
+ Loading Game screen now displays a Bink movie in the background
+ Hooked up the "New Faction" button in the empire list
+ Changed calls to UnhideCustomizeFactionWnd to set the faction allegiance boolean
+ Disabled the "Number of opponents" slider
+ Modified the "Back" button click to deal with updates to the UnhideCustomizeFactionWnd function
+ Added an equip idle animation to the horse mount animation pack, so that the horse doesn't stand still in equipment screens
+ Basically re-did the entire "Breakthrough" window to match the ResearchSubWnd
- Fixed the scrolling issue in the Breakthrough listgrid
- Modified how the color for entries was selected with SetLikelihoodData
- Modified how all of the data was being set with the new functions in Player.cpp
- Added list types CBreakthroughUnlockedTextEntry and CBreakthroughUnlockedHeaderEntry cases
+  New Quantity and Quality labels make things clearer.
+  All icons for all groups and quantities always appear, but appear "ghosted" until the tech is researched.
+  Mousing over a unit in the train unit window will now bring up that unit's infocard.
+ Modified the "EntryDoubleClicked" function to handle casting the spell if on the popup screen
+ Added entries for "Cast Spell", "Add to favorites" and "Revome from favorites" to the listgrid
+ Hooked up a nicer amount-picking popup for adding/removing resources from trade offers in the diplomacy wnd
- Popup has an edit field to let the user type in a value now, and handles decrementing better
+ Hooked up found kingdom/empire icons
+  Changed the city tile display to no longer display red "bad" tiles, since they were displaying inconsistently.
+ Only set the FactionColor and Metal color (the rest are set from the faction color)
+ The spellbook now has 4 rows again
+ The research sub wnd now displays the correct tech categories for fallen
+ The spellbook will refresh each time you unhide it, to ensure it is always updated
+ Stone Skin: Switched out SNOWFALL effect for one that dosent loop (Make a temp Stone Skin effect)
+ Unit Spell List: Spell Entries use a small version (1/2 size) when there are more than 5 entries
+ Unit Enchantment List: Entries use a small entry when there are more than 5 entries
+  Build entry window now has notes in a smaller font, giving the player much more information about what the improvement does.  Also changed some strings in the improvements.xml files to fit the text area better.
+ context wnd of main game wnd will now update properly between turns.
+ Clicking on the Foreign Relations button of KingdomWnd will now warn you with a dialog if you don't know anyone yet.
+ Instead of letting people choose all their colors so their ZOC could be blue and their buildings could be green and their roofs be tangerine, now there is an all encompassing “Faction Color” that customized factions use. All of the faction color attributes will then be set in a scheme that matches their chosen color (I used grayscale and sepia… If it looks ugly to other people it’s easy to change).

* Engine *

+ PARTICLE EFFECTS ARE NOW AFFECTED BY LOD IN MAIN MAP
- To help performance, particle effects are set to LOD out the ELEMENTAL_LOD_MID level
+ UNIT SHADOWS FIXED
- Unit shadows now appear on the ground below the unit instead of hovering between the unit’s ankles and knees
+ ATTACK ANIMATIONS
- Fixed bug where champions would play the wrong weapon on-hit particle effect using a particle effect node
- Weapon on-hit particle effect node is now animated to move if involved in a death flyback animation
- Tactical Units now play a regular death animation if a death flyback animation is missing
+ NO SCALING OPTION RE-WORKED
- Removed “No Scaling” option from the Unit Scale spinner
- Added “Scale Units when Zooming” check box
- This allows you to choose a unit scale then disable/enable the scale on zoom
+ Memory Clean-up: Portrait generator clears the scene when done so it does not hold onto any extra character nodes while waiting to generate another portrait
+ Tactical Battle View Window now uses the new "update culled out nodes" feature of the scene class to update the animations of characters even when they are off-screen
+ In main map quick battles, if the combat rating diff between attacker and defender is 10 or more, the "kill shot" animation is played for the attacker
- This applies when the "death fly back" occurs and looks pretty cool
+ Lowered the priority of the load core xml threads to BELOW_NORMAL to improve performance of main thread on lower-end machines
+ Fixed bug that prevented horse armor from using the horse's skeleton data
+ Fixed characters showing in t-pose for a single frame when first displayed

What’s next:

Multiplayer was disabled for Beta 3 and will continue to be disabled until Beta 4.  Beta 3A will enable tactical battles.

Stardock has a four day weekend (starting tomorrow) so we’ll be off for the 4th of July weekend and be back on Tuesday.

We are opening up Beta 3 to new users. However, users who have some problem with their order or what have you will have to wait until Tuesday for resolution (if this is an issue, wait until Tuesday). I still highly recommend against joining the beta unless you’re seriously interested in beta TESTING a piece of software whose objective is to become a great game.

BETA 3 should be live in the next few hours.