Build 26358820

1 November 2026

This is a big one. Battles, hero abilities, orders and map events have all been redrawn in light, the main menu has new Options, Achievements and Profile windows, and the battle screen now gives you a clearer preview before a fight and a fuller report after it. On top of that there's a long list of performance improvements and fixes. Thank you to everyone playing the open beta. Plenty of what's below came from your feedback.

Highlights

• Battles in a new light. The two armies' bars now trade bolts of light, and the strength of each army shows in every hit.
• A clearer battle preview and a full battle report. See every unit, bonus and counter before you fight, and exactly what happened after.
• Every hero ability redrawn, and you can now see the abilities AI players cast.
• Banners wave in the breeze across the whole map.
• New Options, Achievements and Profile windows in the main menu.
• Smoother, faster play. Less loading mid-game, less memory, fewer stutters.

Battles

The battle screen

• The armies fight in light. The sides take turns: light gathers along an army's bar into its front, a bolt flies across and strikes the enemy bar in a burst of sparks, and the piece it destroys breaks off and falls away.
• Army strength shows. A strong army hits hard and keeps hitting hard. A weakening army's shots take smaller and smaller pieces. The bars still end on the battle's actual result.
• The winner's moment. When the last shot lands, the winning bar is swept with light and its frame glows gold. A destroyed army's bar goes out in embers.
• The bars have a new look, the crossed swords glow gold and flare with each shot, and the map behind the battle screen darkens toward the edges.
• Battles take a little longer to watch (up to 8 seconds), so there's a new way to skip them. See below.

Skip button

• A Skip button for the battle animation. While the bars fight, a Skip button sits under them, with a reminder that Space skips too. Clicking anywhere or pressing Esc still works, and the Victory or Defeat screen still follows.
• Resolve Battle has moved under the bars, into the same spot as Skip. It's now one button that starts the battle and then lets you skip it. The battle screen's buttons also match the look of the bottom panel's.

Battle preview

• A clearer preview. Before a battle, a banner names it, and each side lists its units and every bonus it fights with, each with its icon: heroes, technologies, territory bonuses, veterancy, Captains and the Keep. Units that are strong or weak against the enemy get an Advantage or Disadvantage tag. Long lists scroll with the mouse wheel.
• Hover over an Advantage or Disadvantage tag to see why: which enemy units it counters or is countered by, and how much that's worth.
• Who's stronger is no longer given away. Both armies' bars now start full and the strengths aren't shown before the battle. Read the units and bonuses and judge for yourself. The fight reveals it, and the battle report gives both numbers.

Battle report

• A new battle report. After a battle, the report tells you what happened to the territory (captured, held or lost) and shows your army as a table of units fought, lost and survived. It also lists everything else the battle did: a Keep or Castle destroyed or held, each building destroyed or captured, heroes slain, and the experience your surviving units gained, including who reached a new level.
• The report shows both armies' strengths.
• Long reports scroll with the mouse wheel.
• The report for a territory you lost, opened from its map notice, shows the same details.

On the Map

Banners

• Banners wave in the breeze. Every banner's cloth now sways and ripples in a constant breeze while its pole stays still. Banners lean slightly downwind together, and a marching banner keeps waving as it moves from one territory to the next.
• The selected banner gives off motes of green light, matching the selection ring.
• Allied banners no longer crowd together. When an ally's army shares a territory with yours, each banner now stands clearly apart, still inside the territory.

Orders and selection

• New selection ring. A selected army or building is ringed in green light, with soft rings pulsing outward from it.
• New order arrows. Orders are drawn as paths of light flowing toward their target, coloured like their cards in the Action Queue: red for an attack, blue for a move into your own land, green for reinforcing an ally. Your allies' orders show in the same colours, dimmer.
• Arrows curve slightly, so two orders between the same territories in opposite directions no longer hide each other. They also stop before the target's banner instead of covering it, and they grow and shrink with the zoom.
• Targets marked. With an army selected, the territories it's ordered to are marked with a ring in the order's colour. An attack's ring also has crosshair marks, so you can tell an attack from a move by its shape as well as its colour.
• An order cancelled by the army limit now fizzles out in grey.

Production and construction

• Production shines. Barracks training troops and Keeps or Castles training a hero now cast slowly turning rays of light in your colour, in place of the old star. As before, only you and your allies see them.
• Construction raises dust. Plots being built on are wrapped in rolling clouds of dust, so you can see at a glance what's going up, yours and everyone else's.
• Castle upgrades show too. A Keep being upgraded to a Castle shows the same dust, sparkling with gold, and finishes in a burst of gold light.

Events

• New turn banner. Each turn opens with the nation's name in gold in a carved bronze frame over a darkened map. Very long nation names now fit on screen, split evenly over two lines.
• New battle markers. Battles to resolve show crossed swords over red light, with motes spiralling in. Battles another player resolves are grey. Allies arriving together (simultaneous turns) are marked in green. Markers grow and shrink with the zoom, and so does the area you can click.
• Too many armies after an alliance arrival is now marked with an amber ring around the army.

Heroes

• Every hero ability has new effects. Abilities are now drawn as light: shock rings and flares where a blow lands, rays behind a Keep, light running around a territory's borders, comets arcing from one territory to another. Each ability keeps its own colour (gold for Levy, blue for Decisive Strike, purple for Regicide) so you can tell them apart at a glance.
• You can see the AI's abilities. Abilities cast by computer players used to show nothing. They now play the same effects as anyone else's.
• Passive auras glow. Selecting Seledra, Vearen, Darius or Regnus lights the outline of the territories their Defiance, Haste or Safe Haven covers, with fireflies rising inside.
• Embargo smoulders. While players are embargoed, embers drift up over all their land.
• Vow of Silence sweeps a crimson curtain across the screen, and the silence then hangs over the map as a deep red vignette that keeps the middle of the map readable.
• Master Negotiator's green glow now shows only to the player who cast it.
• Erec Silvyr's Ruthless Ingenuity shows as blue light rising over the Technology Tree, and it stays on the panel while the sidebar slides.
• Smoother casting. Levy, Aggressive Diplomacy, Master Negotiator and especially Extort Populace no longer make the game stutter while their effects play.

Main Menu

• A new Options window. Options now opens in a larger window with Display, Gameplay and Audio tabs, so every setting is in view without scrolling, and each one has a short line explaining what it does. Switches, arrows and sliders replace the old boxes, and sliders show their value as you drag. Settings that depend on another one (Scroll From, Tooltip Delay) stay in place and dim while they don't apply. The window shows how many changes you haven't applied yet. Press Enter to apply or Esc to cancel.
• A new Achievements window. Every achievement is now a medal on one wall, grouped by category. The ones you've earned shine in colour; the rest wait in grey with a padlock, and those you're working towards show your progress. The top shows how many you've earned, the one you're closest to and your latest. Filter by category or just start typing to search. Hover over a medal to read it, or click to keep it in view with its description, when you earned it (or your progress) and its reward.
• A new Profile. Your profile is now a player card: your portrait, name and title, your level with the experience needed for the next one, your wins in Custom and Multiplayer games, and the achievements you've earned. Every title and portrait is in view to choose from. Hover over a locked one to see which achievement unlocks it. View takes you to your achievements and back without losing your unsaved choices.

Tutorial and Campaign

• Clearer tutorial guidance. Whatever the tutorial asks you to click now glows gold: the plot to build on, the Barracks to open, the Farm and Swordsman buttons, Select All, End Turn and the Technology tab. The territory to attack is outlined in gold light. Two steps used to ask for a click with nothing on screen showing where.
• It tells you what's locked. Clicking something the tutorial or a campaign mission hasn't unlocked yet (attacking the wrong territory, a greyed-out building, End Turn too early) now shows a short message instead of doing nothing. These messages no longer hide behind the speech board either.
• Smoother campaign cutscenes. Camera pans and zooms over the campaign's paintings no longer stutter or wobble. The whole picture now moves together smoothly.
• Crossfades keep their brightness. The picture no longer dims while one painting fades into the next.
• Pictures stay in frame. A few cutscene views that ran past the edge of their painting no longer squash it.

Performance

• Battles open without a hitch. The battle screen no longer reloads its pictures every time a battle opens, and the Victory and Defeat splash runs more smoothly.
• The Technology tab opens instantly. Its icons are now prepared on the loading screen instead of the first time you open the tab.
• The Tutorial and Mission 2 start straight away. Their cloud cover is now prepared during the loading screen, and much faster, so there's no more pause after you press a key to start.
• Quicker game starts. Custom and multiplayer games load the map picture once instead of two or three times, and a second game in the same session no longer reloads all the sounds.
• Returning to the main menu is quicker. Coming back from a game or another screen no longer reloads the menu's pictures each time.
• The game uses less memory, in the main menu, during play and in multiplayer matches.
• The Players window no longer slows the game down while it's open.

Fixes

• The game no longer hangs on a battle after you win. If the last enemy territory fell in the same turn as a battle you still had to fight (for example, the enemy's last army marching out to meet yours), the game declared victory but the battle couldn't be opened, so the game stayed stuck on the map. You can now fight that battle, and the victory screen follows.
• Domination is won at 45 territories again. On the Avareon map a Domination victory needed 46 territories, one more than the "Domination (45+)" setting promises. It now takes 45, as stated. Azincournean Highlands is unchanged (44 of its 55 territories).
• Zooming out with the mouse wheel no longer jumps straight to the furthest view. If you had never changed Zoom Speed, a single notch out zoomed all the way out. Zoom Speed now starts at a sensible value, and an out-of-range saved value is reset.
• Win rates in your profile no longer go above 100%. Older profiles could show more wins than games played.
• The mouse wheel no longer zooms the map behind an open battle window.
• The crossed swords on the battle screen no longer jump when you click Resolve.
• A building's selection ring no longer drifts away from it when zoomed in.
• In the tutorial, the steps that ask you to select your Keep now let you select it.
• In the tutorial, the map's quick training buttons no longer respond to clicks while they're hidden.
• Changing the resolution during a game no longer leaves banners, their click areas or order arrows away from their territory.
• Changing the resolution during a game no longer leaves the production glow where a building used to be.

As always, please report anything that looks off on the Steam forums. Thanks for playing!