Wow, those are some steep goods costs! With the decay factor included, I'm unable to reach the S2 and S3 goods requirements without building another manufactory for each. S1 seems to be doable with just a single building still, which is ironic because not only does it have the lowest output due to being the smallest, it's also the one getting upgraded this chapter. Interesting and costly move!
Really like that every single squad size research is optional in this chapter. In fact, it seems like there are numerous optional researches including for some of the settlement buildings (or at least, they aren't linked to anything after them). Some of these optional researches even have incredibly low costs.
Interesting to see armories getting an upgrade again when they just received one in Constructs. The last time armories got back-to-back upgrades was with Fairies/Orcs. A welcome addition for me, since the improved barracks and mercenary camp will definitely be cutting training times to the point where I'll need a larger training size to prevent going idle overnight.
I knew this was coming with the next chapter anyway, but I'm really happy that we're finally getting the last 3 unit promotions. Should be enough to effectively retire my barracks in most cases since all of the mercenary camp units are really good.
Nice to see the faucet turned up just a bit on giving us more expansions, but it's not by much - was there really only one province expansion added? That doesn't seem like much, but if it becomes a regular thing to add more with each new chapter this may smooth itself out over time.
Finally, the wonders. After the excellent offerings from Constructs, these are a bit of a let-down for me. The Vortex will be great for chapters AFTER this one, but until then there isn't really any point to having it; we're done with research by the time we're allowed to build it. Having a benefit later on down the line is fine, but it should come with an immediate benefit as well especially since it's such a late-game building. Additionally, the Wellspring sounds like a worse version of the Golden Abyss. The GA is smaller (and thus cheaper to level), and additionally produces a significant amount of coins on its own. However, it does work somewhat in reverse to the Wellspring where it gets worse with each residence you have, while the Wellspring gets better. Unfortunately, the trend lately has been to move away from having residences in the city so I believe many players will be skipping this one as well. Considering that both Wonders here only have a single bonus when we've previously been given two, I worry that the developers may be running out of ideas for what bonuses to provide and ultimately making the late-game Wonders weaker than even the first ones a new player is able to build.