WarNTaxes 5.0 — The Big Release

Everything new since 4.0.1

This is the largest update WarNTaxes has ever shipped. Between the small 4.0.1 bugfix and this release the mod grew from a tax-and-raid addon into a full conquest, espionage and colony-management overhaul for MineColonies servers — and got a stability/performance pass to make it run on busy multiplayer worlds.

If you're upgrading from 4.0.x, here's the short version of what changed.

⚔️ Siege SMP — a whole conquest layer

War is no longer just "declare and win". Colonies now matter strategically.

• Capital vs. outpost colonies. Your first colony is your Primary (capital) — it can be besieged and taxed, but its ownership can't be permanently taken (unless the server enables it). Every other colony is a Secondary (outpost) that can be conquered outright.
• Real sieges. Lay siege to an enemy colony, lock its attackers out of its chests and villagers, and break through to claim the spoils.
• Multiplayer sieges. Several players can besiege the same colony at once and split the treasury spoils. A minimum-attacker setting can force players to band together.
• Victory objectives (optional). Plant the Banner (hold a captured banner inside enemy borders) and Demolish the Town Hall (blow it up with siege weaponry) give sieges a real, visible win condition with boss bars and attacker call-outs.
• Vassalize instead of seize. Win a war and you can turn the loser into a tribute-paying vassal — taking a one-time cut of their treasury and wallet — while they keep playing.
• Allies & call-to-arms. Defenders can rally allies, who get a clickable notification to join the fight.

🧨 Siege damage that doesn't ruin your map

• Block-breaking by hand is disabled during a war — only explosives destroy structures.
• All war explosion damage is recorded and fully restored when the war ends, chests and signs intact. Siege warfare no longer permanently scars the world.
• The damage ledger survives server restarts.
• Explosion't integration: its regeneration is paused during a conflict and resumes after.

🕵️ Espionage — full spy expansion

• Spies now travel to their target (time based on distance) before arriving.
• Intel is gathered progressively in three tiers — basic info, then guards/treasury, then the full roster and leadership.
• Detected spies flee instead of dying instantly; they only escape once they clear the border.
• Recall spies mid-mission, review completed intel for up to an hour, and receive reports as an in-game written book (Shadow Network format).
• JourneyMap waypoints for active missions when JourneyMap is installed.

🏰 Colony occupation (post-war)

• Winning a war no longer instantly steals a colony. The loser enters an occupation phase.
• The occupier siphons a share of the colony's taxes for a configurable window (default 7 days).
• The original owner keeps playing and can fight back before ownership ever transfers.
• Occupation state persists across restarts.

🎲 Random events system

• 16 dynamic events (positive, negative and choice) triggered by your colony's real conditions — happiness, buildings, citizens, tax policy.
• Several events use deep MineColonies integration: labor strikes actually stop workers, plagues infect citizens, royal feasts fill everyone's bellies — and everything is restored when the event ends.
• Events feed into both your tax income and the standard MineColonies happiness UI.
• Individual events can be toggled on/off.

💾 War & data persistence

• Active wars now survive restarts and crashes — saved on shutdown, restored on startup.
• Expired wars are cleaned up; wars still in the join phase are promoted correctly.
• Across the mod, data files (tax, raids, events, sieges, factions, spies, upgrades) now use crash-safe saves and tolerate a corrupt file on load instead of bricking your world.

💰 Economy, taxes & balance

• Guard Tower income reworked — the bonus now starts at your first tower and scales smoothly.
• Hard 30% tax floor so penalties can never zero out a colony.
• Tax cap raised to 10,000; debt limit enabled.
• War Chest drain heavily rebalanced — a full chest now lasts ~4 hours instead of ~50 minutes.
• War/raid penalties, extortion, bribes, factions and infrastructure costs all rebalanced.
• Negative random events made less punishing for healthier long-term play.

🛠️ Stability, performance & compatibility

• Updated to the latest MineColonies 1.20.1 stack (1.1.1237) and a verified coherent set of dependencies — and made compatible with the new MineColonies ownership API.
• Cross-version building API shim — works on both older and newer MineColonies builds without separate downloads.
• Server-stability pass for big worlds: removed per-cycle disk thrash, moved heavy saves off the main thread, throttled background scans, and added early-outs to the busiest event handlers.
• Internal timers replaced with a server-thread-safe scheduler to eliminate concurrency bugs.

🐛 Major fixes since 4.0.1

• Critical: fixed world corruption when claiming/using a town hall. The old auto-abandonment system could write a bad owner mid-load and brick worlds. Automatic owner/permission rewrites are now off by default (EnableColonyAbandonmentSystem), and a self-healing migration repairs worlds already damaged by older versions.
• Fixed claimed tax coins vanishing into an unavailable/misconfigured shop economy — taxes are now refunded on any failure and never silently lost. Added SDMCurrencyName for custom currencies.
• Money-loss audit fixes: paying off debt you can't fully afford no longer eats your coins; offline spy rewards are delivered on login; paid upgrades survive crashes; duel wagers are real; team friendly-fire protection actually works.
• Fixed the GUARDS_ATTACK server crash, the lectern-book overwrite bug, militia that wouldn't fight, an unbreakable siege banner, double victory payouts, and commands disappearing after /reload.