Cavalry no longer jitter back and forth when attacking. They brake into melee against standing enemies, and match pace behind fleeing ones to cut them down mid-chase
Your army starts the battle ready to fight: units engage enemies that come into range instead of standing passively until ordered. Shield walls still hold fast
Formation moves no longer secretly change your units' behaviour. A unit told to hold position keeps holding after you move it, an aggressive one stays aggressive
Order markers now show your units' stance: green for aggressive, steel blue for holding. Mixed groups show both, dot by dot, in the formation preview
Deployment
The deploy panel is now a compact sidebar on the left with unit portraits, live counts and full stat tooltips, so it no longer covers the battlefield or the HUD
Units can no longer be deployed into the sea on coastal maps, or placed outside the deployment zone with formation drags, right-click moves or shield wall placement. Invalid placements show red and are refused
Fully deployed unit types clear off the panel so you can see what is left to place
Scrolling the deploy panel no longer zooms the camera
Recruiting
The town Recruit screen is rebuilt in the marketplace style: available recruits on the left, your warband on the right, prices front and centre
Stage your hires, review the silver and party size costs in the sticky header, then Confirm or Reset the whole batch
Fixes
Fixed a big lag spike when taking all loot or prisoners after a large battle
Fixed the pause button doing nothing after leaving a settlement, and pause now stops a marching army just like spacebar
Fixed the days-of-food readout not updating when buying food in a marketplace
Fixed the silver readout going stale after ransoming prisoners
Potentially fixed unit portraits sometimes rendering as flat red silhouettes on the prisoner screen
Captive portraits now use a neutral colour instead of enemy red
Battering ram crews and other large units reach gates reliably
Interface
Overworld speed buttons are labelled x1, x2, x3 and show their hotkeys in a tooltip
The destination marker on the overworld is bigger and easier to spot