Hey everyone,
The march to 24 leaders continues!
Circle Empires 2 launched with 12 unique leaders, and we've already added 4 more. Over the coming weeks, we're introducing 8 brand-new leaders, revealing 2 every week! That means by the end of this rollout, you'll have 24 leaders to choose from, each bringing their own strengths and weaknesses to the battlefield.
This week, it's time to meet Electra Eelshock and Celestria the Crowned.
Electra commands the brand-new Eel faction, a force that thrives on electricity, pathfinding, and devastating late-game power.
Their electric weapons are particularly effective against armored enemies, while the eels themselves move comfortably across both land and water. Anyone foolish enough to attack them in melee gets an unpleasant surprise in the form of an electric shock.
As your army grows, you'll unlock some truly terrifying ranged units. Ball Lightning slowly drifts across the battlefield, frying anything too slow to escape, while Giant Thunder calls enormous bolts of lightning down from the skies. To support them, the faction also introduces heavily armored Beetle mounts, alongside new economic buildings like the City Hall, Forester, and Fishery. Their biggest weakness is a lack of early ranged options, which they offset with the new Tower Shield, capable of blocking most incoming projectiles.
Celestria commands the new Celestial faction, whose unique "justice" weapons deal the same percentage of damage to every enemy. They're exceptionally strong against powerful units but far less effective against large swarms.
Celestials make up for that with enormous health pools, made even tougher by Celestria's passive bonus that grants all your units and buildings an extra 25% health.
They're also masters of generating wealth. Gold Prospectors create new gold deposits over time, Gold Refineries increase the value of every delivery, and efficient workers help fund the faction's premium units. That extra gold can be spent on elusive Unicorns, agile mounts with a high chance to dodge attacks while granting double experience to their riders.
This update also introduces leader-specific win streak leaderboards.
Every leader now tracks your highest conquered difficulty and your ongoing win streak at that level. Each leader has their own leaderboard, rewarding players who can keep the longest streak alive in Full Conquest, both solo and co-op.
We've also reworked the difficulty system: Instead of six large jumps in challenge, the game now offers significantly more difficulty levels with much smoother progression between them. Climbing the ladder should feel far more natural, while veteran players will find numerous new steps beyond what the old Nightmare and Impossible were throwing at you.
The chance for downed enemies to join Patric has increased from 7% to an insane 50% due to Patric's recent revelations: he realized that if he didn't have to fully heal everyone who joins, he could afford a lot more followers! Nethier the Necromancer is now the voice of zombies, skeletons and ghosts. Isaac the Insightful is now vampire-focused.
Steam achievements have been added for winning with each leader, including all the old leaders. Many of the difficulty levels have an achievement now as well! As always, we've also included a wide range of balance changes, fixes, and UI improvements. Be sure to check the full patch notes on the Steam Discussions board for every detail.
With six more leaders still waiting to be revealed, we're only getting started.
See you among the circles!