M2 Progress Report — Doctrines, Heroes, Combat, and Victory

The simulation engine is deep into M2, and the M2 gap analysis came back clean: every gap the design docs flagged against the implementation was closed out. The doctrine trees, the hero system, federation and vassalage, the ley-line network, the faith-crisis chain, the Law/Chaos combine-style table and the AI’s personality profiles are all in place. Recent progress:

Combat — Dice-based combat resolution with per-unit attack/defense dice profiles. Full modifier chain: morale, endurance, terrain defense, flanking, shield-wall, sanctified territory, and prestige bonuses. Counter-matrix for unit class matchups. Auto-attack system (3 modes: None, OneTarget, AnyEnemy) wired into the tick loop.

Formations & Terrain — Eleven formation types (Standard, Line, Column, Wedge, Hold, Phalanx, ShieldWall, CavalryCharge, Skirmish, SiegeColumn, Ambush) now apply distinct combat and movement modifiers, with a counter-matrix between the six core formations. Terrain movement costs use CUnitMovement.terrain_multiplier for per-unit biome penalties.

Doctrines — All six trees with five tiers each and capstone effects. Hybrid (2-archetype) combos functional. Cross-doctrine capstones implemented, and so are the three-way hybrids, the meta-doctrine capstone and the Law/Chaos combine-style table.

Heroes & Victory — Recruitment, artifacts, leveling, hero-specific abilities (rally, auras, healing, espionage and diplomatic picks). Six victory paths functional — conquest, economy, science, faith, diplomacy and team power.

Magic & Faith — All five domains carry spells — Arcane, Divine, Nature, Chaos and Necromantic, 36 of them — and the AI casts across all of them with personality-gated spell selection and ritual deliberation. The faith-crisis escalation chain has landed.

Presentation — 3D terrain (extruded hexes, scatter props, snow caps, water depth). Unit/city sprite swap with billboarding. 63 audio files with crossfading music/ambient. Minimap with click-to-navigate. Fog-of-war filtering. Marketing landing page live with email signup.

The engine has 40+ systems, 50+ components, and an expanding test suite.