The Wu Xing attributes were reworked to fit in more kind of scenarios,

• Authority increases income from all sources when administrator. Satisfaction when minister and retinue units morale.
  
• Cunning increases income from commerce when administrator. Trade Influence when minister and retinue units ammunition. (Although be very careful, ammo granted is now only 25% extra at 200 instead of 100% extra)
  
• Expertise increases income from industry when administrator. Building costs when minister and personnal melee evasion. (Now caps at 60 instead of 80)
  
• Instrinct increases public order when administrator. Gives a recruitment cost discount when minister and personnal increase melee damage
  
• Resolve increases income from peasantry when administrator. Food production when minister and personnal health (SEM health pool in Romance, the amount of bodyguards in Records, unchanged)

For folks that played with 190 Expanded overhaul, nothing much has changed but it can’t hurt to place down the basics of how the economy is thoughtout. And I do apologize for not thinking about writing this before the release.

• Firstly there is no more population cap on cities, this is a return to TW3K Alpha initial design where you built cities as a set of accomodations for the people living in it, after all that’s the only logical reason as to why the city tier cost food instead of the actual population.
  So to represent this, cities now provide public order per tier - starting at tier 3 - equivalent to the public order you’d lose at the population threshold. (said population threshold being the Vanilla value of population cap).
  
  
• The City tier is doubly important as level buildings is gated behind city tiers, for a quick rundown :
  
  • Most Han “supportive” buildings (which are buildings with upkeep and modifiers) are locked behind tiers 1/3/4/6/7, on the other hand Han “income” buildings are locked behind tiers 1/3/5/7/9. There are some notable exceptions like the Han palace line, the prestige line actually goes 2/4/6/8/10 and the anti-corruption line goes 6/7/9 after branching off at tier 3.
    
  • On the other hand Yellow turbans rely on lower city tiers as their buildings go 1/1/4/4/6 for requirements. This is left from an old design of mine where the bandits actually used Yellow Turbans buildings (maybe that’ll get implemented down the line) but overall, this allows for Turbans to focus more on throwing peasants at the Han rather than building stuff.
    
  • Finally Nanmans follow the 1/3/4/6/7 pattern for their buildings.
  
  
• Now onto how to build your provinces :
  What we wanted to change compared to Vanilla was allowing the AI builds to simply be “more effective” versus the ruthless efficiency that can be sought on by players. Which meant nerfing the Inn/Tax Collector/State Workshop flat income buildings strategy in favour of buffing the Minor settlement income and trying to promote an approach where you focus mostly on the income source promoted by your minor settlements.
  We tried allowing more synergies between income types to take place (such as the livestock market providing both peasantry and commerce flat income or the new Labour line providing a bit of peasantry income modifier) and overall tried to make the more underwhelming buildings come to life.
  
  
• One final key thing to learn or relearn is fighting corruption. In Vanilla the best option is basically spamming the Mint line of the State Workshop. This is not an option anymore (it was in the initial version of the overhaul but not anymore) : if you want to fight corruption you need to actively invest in the Law line of the Palace building.

A lot of changes are happening here, some more important than others.

• “Reach” has now been nerfed so it only gives +10% Movement range when commanding instead of 25%. The Yellow Turban counterpart “Expedience” has also been reduced from 10% to 5% to army.
  
• “Flexibility” has also been nerfed so the redeployment cost reduction is now -15% instead of -25%. (This is to prevent capping it too easily)
  
• Next is “Zeal”, now changed so it doesn’t give that huge chunk of melee attack rate (40% !) to the character, instead providing 10% melee attack rate to the army if the character is leading – essentially, Zeal is the melee mirror of Precision now. To balance the loss of attack rate, all characters will gain attack rate per level capping at 30% extra attack rate at rank 10. This allows a design where duelist characters without Zeal (say Champions) aren’t as penalized by lacking it.
  
• This also meant tweaking the YTR ability “Inner Fire” a bit (Attack Rate bonus down from 25 >>> 10. Now grants Hit Rate +10)
  
• To finish up with abilities for now : “Oathsworn” and “Friends” are now gaining back their Melee Evasion bonus as it’s not really a problem anymore.

• Formations acquisition has been rebalanced.
  Formations are now split between Commanders & Strategists. Now, while all formations are eventually unlocked by both these classes, the order will vary depending on the class.
  Strategists will unlock formations such as Spear Wall (2), Wedge (3), Pike Wall (4) and Hollowed Square (5) first before picking up Shield Wall & Diamond (6) and then Turtle and Circle (7).
  Inversely Commanders will unlock Shield Wall (2), Diamond (3), Circle (4), Turtle (5) first and then pick up Spear Wall & Wedge (6) and finally Pike Wall & Hollowed Square (7).
  Also, as an added bonus Commanders don’t need to command anymore to grant formations.
  
  
  
• All character melee weapons damage value have been looked at and went through a patch of balancing to even things out a bit, too many weapons were just outright terrible compared to other weapons and it was a problem for diversity sake. The idea is that faster attacking weapons have lower DPS than slower attacking ones (as melee evasion will matter for the slower attacking ones), on the other hand a weapon such as the Single-Edged Sword will have amongst the best DPS for fighting against low armour targets but the Single Handed Axe will definitely do better against high armour targets.
  
  
• Character levels are now very important for unit recruitment as it’s one of the only deciding factors on whether or not you can recruit a unit as units unlocks have been completely removed out of the tech tree.
  To give a concrete exemple : in Vanilla a Champion can recruit Spear Guards, but they require a technology to recruit Peasant Band, Spear Warriors, Ji Infantry and Heavy Ji Infantry. And they require rank 6 to recruit Heavy Spear Guards
  In the overhaul, a Champion can recruit Spear Warriors from the get-go, they require rank 3 to recruit Spear Guards and they require rank 6 for Heavy Spear Guards. You’ll notice there was no mention of the Peasant Band and the Ji units but that’s because those units were moved into the “shared units” pool that characters of any class can recruit. (Again, locked by certain levels, Ji Infantry requires rank 3 and Heavy Ji Infantry requires rank 6)
  Dragon units are available to all characters at rank 7. And Imperial units are available to all characters of a faction that reached Imperial status at rank 8. Important note, the replenishment penalty of Imperial units has been removed and the Protector of Heaven and Defenders of the Earth have left the Han service for the Bandits/YTR exclusively.
  For faction unique units, they are either available at rank 1, rank 2 or rank 5 (this creates a scenario where say, as Liu Bei, you can recruit Yi Archers before regular Archers, giving you an extra incentive to recruit those)
  Finally about artillery, Multiple Bolt Crossbow are now available to both Commanders & Strategists at rank 3. Juggernaut & Trebuchet are only unlocked by Strategists at rank 6.
  
  
  
• The XP curve of generals has been quite increased, so it’s not as easy leveling up anymore, further modifications were done for the XP gains (kills are worth more XP, and so are kills made by the retinue units), experience gained by doing assignement job or holding a ministerial position would get reduced at certain thresholds, and are now increased at said thresholds.
  Some big XP change are related to the duels, in Vanilla you have no incentive in accepting a duel offered to you as the XP granted is minimal versus the XP you gain by proposing the duel. This was changed so the target of the duel will always gain more XP than the proposer, values are as follow (Vanilla values >> Overhaul values) :
  Proposer winner : 2500 >> 2000
  Proposer loser : 100 >> 500
  Target winner : 100 >> 3000
  Target loser : 100 >> 1500
  
  

As alluded in the previous categories, the technology tree for Han & YT now do not unlock any units, likewise, all buildings are now only tied to the required ressources and/or main settlement level.
The tech tree is now only a supportive tool for you to get buffs that support your campaign playstyle, we had to rework a lot of techs and we cannot really give a fully detailed explanation, however to try to keep it short.

• Wood still focuses on increasing Peasantry income, Food (be it from farming or fishing) and Population. It can also now increases reserve capacity of all settlements (allowing for slightly more siege duration), and increase garrison replenishement rate and faction support if you want to play aggressive.
  
  
• Metal focuses on commercial and industrial incomes for the most part but also features techs to support your growing kingdom such as construction cost and time discounts.
  
  
• Water has a lot going for it, from character buffs to trade, cultural or commercial income boosts, a bit of trade influence, spies and diplomatic buffs.
  
  
• Fire still heavily supports the military, on top of the existing additional armies slots and campaign movement range and other discounts on redeployment and recruitment costs, it now includes more retinue upkeep discounts. Be forwarned tho : the replenishment is now gone. If you want extra replenishment for your troops, use your assignements wisely and/or grow your population !
  
  
• Finally Earth is about getting more administrators, assignements, increasing public order, gaining extra prestige and fighting against corruption… unless you decide to embrace said corruption to power up your realm.

Final point for the Yellow Turbans exclusively, the "Pardon Old-Regime Supporters" tech (that Gong Du starts with) now unlocks all formations for YTR units.

• All factions now have 2500 base income
  
  
• Adjustement were done on post-battle loot so it's not as high as before. Currently only the value of the commander was reduced from x1 to x0.3
  
  
• Characters will now generate in the player faction, they will appear as characters you can recruit with “missing information” (such as missing their career bonus or traits) as those will roll after you recruit them – they will also generate one level higher than shown in the court, so if some random guy shows up at level 0, that’s normal, he will be level 1 once recruited.
  This is primarily to ease the gameplay for Yellow Turbans/Nanman players who wouldn’t get characters in their courts once they were the last faction remaining of their subculture. But it'll also help bandits have an easier access to character with bandit backgrounds.
  
  
• Night battles have been nerfed a bit to follow the other CA nerfs to Morale debuffs/buffs, going from -15 to -7. The attacker also now suffers from a stamina penalty from not letting their troop rest before attacking.
  Additionally, now both sides suffer from a x0.75 penalty to spotting (instead of no penalty for the attacker and x0.5 for the defender)
  
  
• The value of soldiers “lost” when swapping a unit for another one has been increased from 15% to 60%. Note : this means a reduction of 60% of all entities that are part of a unit that are tracked separately, which means a unit with 160 men will go to 64 men after the swap instead of the logical 65. (Because that unit is actually composed of 144 entities > 58 after the swap AND 16 standard bearers > 6 after the swap so 64 in total)
  
  
• It now takes 2 turns instead of 1 for a character to be able to be redeployed after being disbanded.
  
  
• Retinue redeployment cost multiplier has been decreased from 1 to 0,8.
  
  
• Diplomatic penalties for being a strategic threat have been increased at the higher tier (going -5/-10/-20/-30 instead of -5/-10/-15/-20)

Salary for characters has been tweaked in order to allow hoarding more characters and for easier assignement of titles. But this comes as a double edge sword, as family members now require salary.

• Court Nobles: 150 --> 50
  
• Governor: 250 --> 125
  
• Minister: 350 --> 225
  
• Family Members: 0 --> 25
  
• Family Governor: 250 --> 100
  
• Family Minister: 350 --> 200

Several adjustments have been made to court positions, characters traits will now provide extra small bonuses/maluses when in the council positions (such as extra morale or charge bonus).

Administrators/Underlings/Local Leaders were tweaked so they now do not automatically provide an army slot, you instead get them when your administrator is high ranked (Rank 7). Vanilla values for income from all sources vs Corruption reduction have been swapped.
Income from all sources 15% (Vanilla) >> 30% (Overhaul)
Corruption reduction 30% (Vanilla) >> 15% (Overhaul)

The curve of death has been toned down as the chance was doing huge spiking between 60 and 70 year old jumping from 0% to 15% and now it goes much more progressively – in this case 0 to 5%.

In Vanilla, opinions disagreements (from traits & career) are weighted higher than opinions agreements. Now the disagreements/agreements are weighted equally.

• Ambush Stance now requires 50% movement to get into instead of 25%.. It also reduces reinforcement range by 50%. This won't kill the "ambush trick" because armies in ZoC are "revealed" when the battle is initiated (and that removes ambush stance then, so the army has regular reinforcement range - it's wacky but that's how TW works)
  
• Encamp Stance has had a variety of tweaks in 2.1, notably an army in Encamp stance now provides +10 supplies to every owned army in the region when in enemy territory (It does not however provide any supplies when in your own territory). It also now grants replenishment in foreign territory (of 6% which can only be increased by the faction council action) as well as increasing replenishment in your own territory by 2% (which is equal to being garrisoned)[/list]

Bonuses for satisfaction / diplomacy have been swapped around : So you now go from -20 Satisfaction and -10 Diplomatic relationship at the lowest Imperial Favour to +20 Satisfaction and +10 Diplomatic relationship at the higher Imperial Favour.


Imperial Favour is now gained from settlement Reserve count (not the max value, the current value). So if you have a few commanderies with high Reserves (from Granary/Military buildings/Gates) you should have a good stream of IF for yourself.

Be very mindful of your population in your provinces as if a province falls to less than a certain threshold of population (10000 or 10K for short) it’s income will simply stop being provided. So take this into account when you loot a settlement. (Note : In the near future the plan is to have this be applied to counties rather than province)

Back in the initial release of the overhaul the population amount provided a base income (as it does for the Nanman), however we’ve found out that it simply made managing the economy too easy especially when coumpounded with the big buffs that peasantry income received. So it was removed in this iteration.

Is now relevant.

The debuffs of faction support are now very severe, having low faction support will damage your economy, food, population, public order, replenishment and militia morale as well as increasing local recruitment cost. (Vanilla it would just impact public order and your base economy for the most part)

If you’re having issues with faction support, don’t hesitate to garrison as being in a settlement will help reassure the people.

There was several changes made to tax rates effects.

For all factions : The multipliers for the tax values were changed, from 80/90/100/110/120 to 70/85/100/115/130

For most factions (Han/YT/Nanman) : Faction support will now drop on higher tax options. One big change on top of the faction support dropping on higher tax levels is that taxation now applies a public order debuff at basically all levels (Normal tax rate will reduce your public order by -6 !)

For the bandits : The effects were reworked a tiny bit, minimal taxes focus on buffing the morale of regular units (but sacrifice hero/general morale and satisfaction to do so) however that also means you’re paying them more and paying your characters less. Maximal taxes do the opposite, all heroes get a morale bonus whilst their units get a morale debuff and you pay more for your characters and less for your units.

Han factions now receive various debuffs for the price of being able to pick which progression path they can take. The idea is to discourage overly investing too many points early in one of the prestige category in particular.

Armies : Reduces Trade Income
Assignements : Increases character salary.
Administrators : Increases desire for higher office.
Spies : Reduces relations with Han factions.
Trade : Increases unit upkeep.

Restoring the Han was always the best choice in vanilla which was a bit boring. Now both choices come with their own set of consequences :

• Restoring will create a power-vacuum of sorts in your faction, people will seek to get promoted to higher position and some folks will take advantage of the situation to line their pockets, increasing the corruption for the time the court sorts itself out. To compensate you still gain good bonuses to diplomatic relations, public order and a bit of faction support.
  
• Usurping means you still get a debuff to public order (albeit less severe than in Vanilla) and a heavy diplomatic penalty (more severe than in Vanilla), but the characters in your court will be content with your choice and this will allow for more military minded bonuses : extra replenishment and huge discount of upkeep as you push to military victory.

Small adjustments over the Banditry Income : Share Spoils still gives the maximum banditry modifier of +200% but it’s now a separate modifier which doesn’t stack and just overrides other multipliers. (see it as a “max” value for banditry mod specifically). This way you can’t stack armies with Share Spoils in a province to increase your income, but you can still get techs and buildings that increase it when you have no armies around.

Bandits technologies now contribute to their prestige. You now unlock (mostly – there are exceptions) unlimited units from the technologies that come from various places, cultures and warlords. To counterbalance these two aspects, technologies now take (very) much longer to unlock.
However the bonus for holding a piece of territory in a commandery is now much higher as well.
Overall, if you want a particular bonus or unit, try expanding your holdings in that direction. This is hoping that it gives a bit of variety and small flavours to the different bandit factions.

• AI has received some tweaks to its behaviour : consider it to play slightly differently. Do not expect the AI to play better.
  
• We now display the bonus vs Cavalry and Infantry for all units.
  
• In order to harmonize cavalry speed across the board, all cavalry units now use the same speed values as the hero/general mounts.
  Light Cavalry 95 >> 97
  Medium Cavalry 75 >> 86
  Heavy Cavalry 62 >> 80
  Very Heavy Cavalry (Cataphracts) 58 >> 75
  
• Armour values were tweaked a tiny bit for more differentiation for the different leather armour types (which slotted 25 and 26 in Vanilla)
  Heavy Leather Armour 26 >> 32
  Partial Iron Armour 32 >> 38
  
• Nanman Slinger and Wuling Nanman Slinger ammo pool got reduced. (It’s not like you’d ever use all the ammo anyways)
  
• Projectile weapons from the Nanman aren’t laser-guided anymore (fixed the Calibration Area), the Sling has has its range increased to 200 to offset the ammo/calibration area nerfs. (This is in line with the range of slingers in other CA titles where they usually get the same or a bit more range than regular bows)
  
• Nearly all weapons (melee/projectiles) that benefitted from a bonus vs cavalry bonus now also benefit from a bonus vs large bonus. (aka also effective against Elephants)
  
• The Jian weapon now has the same attack rate as the Dao.
  
• Multiple Bolt Crossbow projectiles number reduced from 5 to 3 (as displayed on the machine). The unit got some adjustments on their damage (now lethal on hit for the base variant of the shot), angle of fire and the ignition effectiveness of their flaming variant. All in all, they should be easier to use but still under the Trebuchet effectiveness-wise.
  
• Imperial Palace Crossbowmen are now using the same HP template as other elite ranged units instead of melee units HP template.
  
• Earth Cavalry were changed across the board to sport better melee evasion (around +10 on average), the Militia Sabre Cavalry and Sabre cavalry also had their armour values fixed.
  
• The Elite Yellow Turban Earth cavalry units (Jaizi Raiders and Virtuous Noblemen) were changed to be standard cavalry unit sizes - upkeep and recruitment costs tweaked accordingly.
  
• Arm of the Supreme Peace damage base/AP values have been swapped. (Old) 74/25 >> (New) 25/74
  
• All units using a 2-Handed Ji weapon were rebalanced to have more melee evasion (around +20 on average) and a lot more charge (around +40 on average) to try an solidify them in an all rounder role that can both be used defensively in a Pike Wall or offensively.
  
• Spear Guards now use the regular 1 Handed spear again (instead of the militia version)
  
• Bows have been buffed back : the regular Siyah Longbow now has 250 range. Bows damage got increased back : bows gained back half the AP damage they lost in the 1,7 patch, the other half was transferred to base damage. (Exemple : Militia Bow had 22/12 damage in 1.6. It had 22/12 damage in 1.7. It now has 25/9 damage in the Overhaul)
  
• Experience bonuses for ranged units have been changed to be in line with melee units : reload rate was severly decreased (to have the same growth as melee attack rate) and accuracy was increased instead.

There were some tweaks done to the AI, albeit it’s a bit too early to tell if it’s actually better than what CA did – for now just consider it’s different. The goal was to see slightly better army compositions, slightly better skill acquisition and AI expansion/aggressiveness.

This section may be short but be forewarned that the AI will most likely behave differently than what you're used to.

As stated in the comments I adjusted a lot of systems here and there and didn't quite keep track. I do apologize.

• Adjustements on Cao Cao schemes power. (some up, some down)
  
• Adjustements on some faction council actions (some down, most untouched)
  
• Adjustements on Liu Xie (nerfed skill tree & starts low level)
  
• Additional tweaks on the BAI. AI will now be much more willing to attack with its cavalry and the AI will also actively use damaging abilities in duels.
  
• Additional tweaks on the CAI. Esp. on how the AI build their provinces. This is new for me so I expect hiccups, do give me feedback if something that shouldn't happen happens.
  
• Further adjustements on the Han tech tree. (Green/Red branches strengthened)
  
• Adjustements on the gains of Military supplies - low levels of reserves provide a lot less supplies than before (6 -> 1). AI had to get some cheats (+15 in their own territory) to offset that unfortunately as some AIs turned extremely passive with this...
  
• Adjustements on the Bandit Loot mechanics which just felt clunky to interact with. Every level of loot has benefits/downsides. (ie : High Loot means higher morale & cheaper unit upkeep)
  
• Building rebalance tweaks : to name a few Marketplace to provide Trade Agreement modifier. Corruption reduction buildings nerfed. Imperial Cities now provide 8 building slots instead of 6
  
• Tweaks to most character skills. Income ones streamlined, combat related ones rebalanced. (Generally down but some have seen massive improvements)
  
• Ambush chance reduced on most terrains. (nerf)
  
• Ambush stance AP cost from 75% to 50% (buff)
  
• Adjustements on all "northern nomadic" units. They now sport lower infantry count (same HP pool however) but 25% extra cavalry units. This is considered offset by Northern Courage. May your enemies quake listening to the sound of your hooves.
  
• Juggernauts were changed from being a Flamethrower to being a Flame Canon (unhistorical for being unhistorical...). Excellent at breaking down walls but less so against reguilar Infantry. This is mostly because the AI has no idea on how to use/fight against Juggernauts properly. Trebuchets lost their AoE damage on the flaming shot.

- Vassals at Duke instead of Marquis
- Fix for the Yellow Scourge whilst I figure out how potential calculations work exactly.
- No more grudge from confederation. (5% -> 0%)
- Buffs to release fondness (25 -> 100%) and nerf to employ fondness (100% -> 50%)
- Added a small debuff to artillery upkeep for the AI (didn't check if it worked properly but should be)
- MoH units added to the base YTR as well.
- Fixes to the nerfs to council options. (as I had to change the incidents AND the script) - hopefully

I have been under the weather for most of the last few months, as much as I did some stuff I did not keep track. (Because I don't really keep track to begin when I'm doing better lmao).

Some of the changes which I believe need to be highlighted are :

- Imperial Favour is now more of something that settles in the middle. You automatically gain IF when you're low and lose IF when you're high. Which means that completing missions is actually pretty important. If you want a "steady" supply of IF points you have to build up your Reserves levels.

- Yuan Shao had some tweaks done to his mechanic so it's a bit more "balanced" overall, I still think it's very good but it's just a bit more tame.

- Cao Cao schemes were rebalanced as well with some of the worse ones getting buffs whilst some of the more obnoxious ones got nerfs.

- Yuan Shu got a small rework whilst we figure out how he should play, you need to spend a lot less legitimacy to recruit generals and essentially you have to pick on how you kinda want to play him : building palaces will get you legitimacy now, but if you get a lot of legitimacy you'll eventually enter into a sort of Realm Divide phase as you will push up very quickly to emperor status but will essentially get a huge debuff to your diplomacy.
Finding the right time to make your intentions bare is henceforth vital.

- Qiang unit users Han Sui & Ma Teng are now locked out of Militia units. Instead they can recruit Qiang Warriors, Polearms, Archers and Marauders at rank 1.

- Some tweaks were done to some of the minor bundles, like the happy/unhappy court. An happy court means it's generally tougher to spy on you and/or turncoat characters whilst an unhappy court will make it a lot easier. We're still monitoring how this plays out.

- Assignments had a bit of rebalance going on, and they are going to go through more because I feel that frankly I've left a lot of them quite underpowered. Essentially, I'm looking at the situation.