Improvements:
- You can use hotkeys to select combat actions and activities during the "Lull" phase. You can press Ctrl at any time to highlight the available hotkeys.
- Combat Tutorial: the first time you enter the melee phase of a fight, you will see a detailed tutorial. It is automatically disabled when closed, but can be reactivated in the Options dialogue.
- Shared kills: when an enemy has suffered any kind of successful attack from both you and an ally (resisted Feints and Shield attacks do not count as successful), it won't matter who landed the killing blow: the kill is always counted as *shared*. All bonuses and points are halved (and rounded up, where necessary). This makes combat with allies feel more cooperative, as the "race" for the killing blow was admittedly frustrating.
- There's a new Help in the Character screen.
Kills missed because of a sudden rotation have been reported as annoying by several players. For this reason, two measures have been implemented:
- An alert will appear three rounds before a rotation happens.
- In addition to the above, if you reduce an opponent's health to less than half its full value when you are rotated, you will receive half the bonuses for a kill (rounded up). The opponent will also figure in your list of vanquished enemies with the prefix *Wounded*.
The only circumstance in which this does not apply is if a companion helped in the fight. In other words, a vanquished entry that is both *Shared* and *Wounded* won't count, as that would be way too cheap (it's a very rare scenario anyway.).
Changes:
- The Help shown during foraging missions should be more informative.
- The minimum amount of settlements appearing has been increased by 1, while the Intellect influence on the time spent to gather supplies and the Awareness influence on the collected amount of supplies have been halved. With these changes, the overall difficulty shouldn't change for expert player, but it should be more accessible to new players.
- It is now rarer to skip two or more combat rounds in a row (i.e. the Quickness check is much easier to pass after the first failure).
- The militiamen in the very first fight have "Content" Morale instead of "High". This should make the battle a little easier.
- The Shield Skill check used in the "safe" option when assaulting the walls of New Carthage is now easier than before.
- The frontal assault during the second battle lasts two rotations instead of three.
- In the alternative route of the same battle, the Fatigue penalty for failing the Endurance check during the flanking maneuver has been reduced.
- The Morale penalty you receive for failing to understand what's going on at Ilipa has been reduced.
- The loss of Morale after wounds is now constant rather than random.
- The "bandits" random event won't trigger unless you have a Rank or your Sword and Shield Skills are both at least 35.