Rebuilt interface
I rebuilt a lot of the mid match UI. The layout is cleaner, and there’s less stuff getting in the way while you’re actually playing. Plus, settings!
Better mobile support
I made a bunch of changes to touch controls, layouts, and map interaction. You should now be able to drag around the map, place population, and use the menus on a phone or tablet without constantly fighting the interface. Works best in portrait mode, and still not totally stable.
World mode — 7-day campaigns
There’s now a 2.56 million tile 7-day mode called World, alongside Skirmish, Conquest, War, and Empire. It uses much larger maps and gives players enough time for some genuinely huge empires and long-running wars to develop.
Biomes
Maps now have different biomes with their own terrain and resource rules. Oases, for example, have better odds for coins.
Better terrain generation
I cleaned up a bunch of the map generation rules for mountains, water, obstacles, and relics. Fixed some issues where relics could get deleted by terrain features.
Shared lobby chat
All live sessions now share the same lobby chat. Someone playing Skirmish and someone playing World will still be talking in the same place.
More flags and name customization
There are more flag pieces and cosmetic options, and supporters can choose custom username colors, animated flag highlight, and everyone can customize the "wall" color of their tall cells.
Abandon capital
You can now abandon your capital and start over if you get completely boxed in or end up with a terrible spawn.
There’s a limit on how often you can do it in each session, so it’s meant as an escape hatch rather than a free reroll button.
Mining and the Gold / Diamond Store
You can now prospect mountains, rivers, and lakes for gold and diamonds.
Those resources can be spent during the current campaign:
Everything bought this way only lasts for that campaign, but it's yours to keep even if you respawn. I may give some penalty later, but you won't lose everything.
Surround gold/diamonds on 4 sides and put as much population over the limit as you can to get the maximum yield.
Achievements
There’s now a full achievement system with bronze, silver, gold, and platinum tiers.
Achievements have unlock notifications, a career panel, and badges that show up in chat, player lists, and leaderboards.
I also changed the platinum medal appearance to a cooler blue-white metal because the old version looked too much like silver.
Settings
There’s now a proper settings window for:
Relic indicators can be turned on and off separately instead of having one setting for everything.
Better placement tooltips
Placement previews now give more useful information about costs, combat results, and multipliers before you click.
Clearer population labels
Population numbers should be easier to read across the different terrain and biome backgrounds.
Line of fire
Ranged and cluster attacks can no longer fire through trees, boulders, mountains, and other solid terrain.
Splash and cluster captures
Only the tile you directly attack with melee can now be captured.
Splash and cluster damage can still reduce a tile to 0 population or cause it to become unclaimed, but they can’t capture a bunch of surrounding territory for you at once.
Capitals reduced to 0 population by splash damage remain owned. Non-capital tiles destroyed by ranged damage become unclaimed.
Capital adjacency bonuses
The placement bonus around capitals has changed:
Fully supported tiles can still reach ×8.
Previously the entire 3×3 area around the capital was treated more evenly. The bonus is now actually centered around the capital.
Isolation and Forage
Isolation relics and Forage upgrades now affect both parts of disconnected-population decay: the percentage lost and the maximum amount that can disappear in a single tick.
This means the buffs actually matter on very large disconnected stacks now.
Isolation can make a stack survive roughly twice as long, and combining it with Forage can slow things down considerably further.
Bot coin cascades
Bots now have a limit on how many coins they can collect during a cascade.
They should no longer occasionally vacuum up an entire field of coins in one go.
Late-match spectator lock
Longer campaigns now stop new players from joining near the very end:
World: final 24 hours
Empire: final 1 hour
War: final 10 minutes
Conquest: no lock
Skirmish: no lock
During this period, new players will see Spectate only in the lobby.
Anyone who was already participating can keep playing normally. This mainly prevents someone from spawning a brand-new human empire right before a long campaign ends.
Better end-of-match results
I fixed several problems with the results screen.
It should now:
Correctly show Victory or Defeated
Use the actual final scores instead of accidentally showing data from the next map
Stay up for the full intermission
Be harder to accidentally dismiss or cover by spam-clicking and opening other UI
Owned relic waypoints
Relics you control now get map markers even if you don’t have Relic Sense.
You can click the marker, or its off-screen arrow, to move the camera directly to it.
Capital markers and each individual relic type can be enabled or disabled separately in Settings.
Fixes and smaller changes
The 30-second session-ending warning now uses an ascending pulse instead of sounding like the defeat fanfare.
Achievement unlocks should persist more reliably between the main hub and World sessions.
Achievement notifications and badge colors should now match properly everywhere.
Signing in during an active session should reconnect you to your real empire instead of occasionally leaving you stuck on a guest start.
The highest-population-on-one-tile leaderboard now counts capital population peaks correctly.
More small improvements to population label readability and placement feedback across different biomes.
That’s the bulk of this update. Pick whatever mode fits how long you want to play, and try not to let somebody else take the Relic of Power.
