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Beta 13.3
Heirs, and the Years after Vienna
- Heirs who died before they could reign die in their year, and the heir history had takes their place: Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1751 (his son George is heir), Prussia's Prince Augustus William in 1758, Louis XV's Dauphin in 1765 (Louis Auguste is Dauphin), and Peter the Great's son Alexei in 1718
- After the Congress of Vienna, in a 1805 or 1812 game played on: the Holy Alliance of the Tsar, the Emperor and the King of Prussia, Napoleon's death on Saint Helena and the Greek rising in 1821, the French march into Spain for Ferdinand VII in 1823, and Louis XVIII's death in 1824, Charles X after him
- A start set to be played on past its peace says in its opening card what history has next (the Grand Vizier before Vienna, Silesia, the Revolution's wars...)
Beta 13.2
History Goes On Past the Peace
- History goes on past the peace: a game played on past its start's peace runs into the wars the next start opens with, in their year, and you are asked which side your crown takes; then that start's own years follow. From 1672 into the Siege of Vienna, from 1683 into the Great Northern War and the Spanish Succession, from 1700 into the Quadruple Alliance's war over Sicily, from 1733 into Frederick's march on Silesia and the War of the Austrian Succession, from 1778 into the Turkish war of 1787 and the Bastille, and from 1788 into the Revolution's wars. And a 1756 game goes on to Corsica sold to France and Catherine's Turkish war in 1768, Kagul and Chesma, a 1792 game to the war renewed over Malta in 1803 and the Emperor crowned in Notre-Dame in 1804. The Field Manual's History tab shows the start your game goes on into after your own, with where you stand
- A sovereign crowned when history's reign ends comes with the consort history gave: Maria Theresa with Francis Stephen of Lorraine, Frederick the Great with Elisabeth Christine, Bernadotte with Désirée Clary
- Breslau, Silesia's town, the Emperor's in the starts before 1740, and Prussia's by the Peace of Breslau when a game goes on into Frederick's war; and Ajaccio, Corsica's town, French in every start from 1778 on
- The autosave waits for a quiet moment, never more than two seconds, rather than adding a tenth of a second to the end of the turn; and it is made at once if the page is hidden or closed first
Beta 13.1
Reigns as They Ended, and Winter Quarters
- Reigns end as history had them, in every start and on through the longer games: the Emperors Leopold, Joseph and Charles VI, Queen Anne and the Georges, the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great and Catherine I, the Sultans deposed by their army, Charles XII before Fredriksten, Gustav III at the masked ball, Gustav IV Adolf deposed and Bernadotte crowned, each in the year and season it happened; and the heir history had is crowned (Philip V in Spain in 1700, the Elector of Hanover in 1714), whatever children the game gave the old sovereign. A sovereign whose reign ended later in history no longer dies of old age before it, and your own crown is never deposed by it
- 1700, after Utrecht: the Grand Dauphin dies, Louis XIV in 1715 and the Duke of Orléans governs for the boy Louis XV; Prince Eugene's Turkish war, Belgrade taken in 1717 and kept by the Peace of Passarowitz; and the peaces of the north, at Stockholm, Frederiksborg and Nystad
- Belgrade where it stood: the Turk's in 1700 and again from the Peace of Belgrade in 1739, the Emperor's in the 1718 and 1733 starts and given back in 1739; and Azov the Turk's in 1672
- 1718: Spain holds Sardinia, taken the year before, and gives Cagliari up to Victor Amadeus by the Treaty of The Hague
- Winter quarters: a rival army no longer sets out in winter for a town where the snow lies, far from its own towns, and waits for spring or takes what it can on open ground; and a regiment in a town of its own heals a point more each winter turn
- No Great Blizzard in Seville or Naples: it comes only to a crown where the snow lies over most of its towns
- Smoother on desktops: when a season comes before its sheet is drawn, the old sheet stands at full size while the new one is finished aside, and the turn no longer stops for it; and the autosave's picture is made off the main thread
- On a phone a nation's name on its card breaks between words (Austrian Netherlands)
- The idle-towns and research reminders and the ambitions card wait while the update log, an event or a choice from history is open, and come after it, instead of opening over it
Beta 13.0
The Seasons as They Fall, and History's Long Wars
- Winter snows where it snows: the lowland white from Sweden, Finland and the Baltic lands across Poland to Russia and the Ukraine, while Britain, France, the Low Countries, Denmark and the Norway shore stay open by the sea; and the mountains white wherever they stand, the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Dinaric Alps, Balkans and Caucasus, the Highlands only on their tops. Spring and autumn keep the snow on the higher mountains and in the Russian north-east, summer on the high Alps and the Caucasus, and the far north lies under it the year round
- Snow only where it lies: in winter a town's roofs, the trees, the hills and a regiment's coats are white only where the sheet has snow, and the snow falls over the view only there; Seville and Naples stay green. And the winter's march and cold are felt only where the snow lies: there a regiment moves a step less and, outside its own lands, loses men, while an army in Spain or Italy campaigns on through the winter, as they did (food falls by half everywhere)
- Where no snow lies the fishing boats stay out through the winter; and on unknown lands too the mountains are white in winter wherever they stand, and the snow, the cold and the boats follow the sheet as on the map of Europe. The rival crowns bring a regiment wearing away in the snow home to a town before the cold takes it
- The winter ice holds the ships as well as the sheet: from the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland to the White Sea no ship sails into it, and one caught there when winter comes lies frozen in till spring (the regiments aboard may still go ashore over the ice). The Atlantic, the North Sea and the Norway coast stay open, as the Gulf Stream keeps them, and are no longer drawn frozen
- History's wars last as they did: a war history declares sets the two courts against each other, so two crowns that were friends no longer make it up the next season, and a peace it makes ends the enmity
- 1805: the Finnish War. Sweden holds Åbo and Finland; in 1808 Russia, the Emperor's ally since Tilsit, falls on her to force her into the blockade, and by the Peace of Fredrikshamn in 1809 Finland and Åbo are Russian (yours to choose if you play Russia or Sweden). In 1812 Åbo is Russia's from the start
- 1805: the Sultan, urged on by the French, declares war on Russia at the end of 1806, until the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812; in 1807 France and Spain march on Portugal, and Spain and Portugal make peace when Spain rises; and in 1814, if the Allies are still at war with him, the Emperor gives up the throne for Elba
- 1814, in the 1805 and 1812 starts: by the Treaty of Kiel Denmark, beaten with France, gives Norway up to Sweden
- Reval, Swedish Estonia's town, in the 1672, 1683 and 1700 starts, and surrendering to Peter the Great with Riga in 1710; from 1718 on, Riga is Russia's Baltic port in every start (and Reval in 1718)
- The Black Sea coast as it was held: Azov the Turk's until Peter takes it in 1696, given back on the Pruth in 1711 and Russia's again at Niš in 1739; Kaffa and the Crimea the Sultan's until Catherine annexes them in 1783; Kherson and Odessa Russian from their founding; Bucharest and Jassy, Wallachia's and Moldavia's, the Sultan's; and Bergen and Trondheim, Norway's, the King of Denmark's
- Smoother on phones and tablets: the new season's sheet is drawn a little at a time over the next few frames, the old one standing meanwhile, so the end of a turn no longer stops for it (a quarter of a second or more on a phone); the new season is on the map a moment later
- Smoother on desktops: the next season's sheet, and the sheet again after a wood is felled or a town raised, are drawn aside a few milliseconds at a time and put in place when done, so the map no longer stops for a moment while you look at it
- Faster from afar: the whole of Europe seen at once draws about five times faster, and the middle zooms nearly twice as fast, on phones too
- The sea ice drawn as it lies: a floe's edge fades into the open water, and the waves fade out under it
- No emoji on the map: a camp's fire, a fortified regiment's shield, the builder's hammers and every unit, work and herd symbol drawn on the sheet are the engraved icons the panels use
Beta 12.9
Europe as It Stood, and a Snowy North
- The north lies under snow, drawn as it lies: deepest on the high fells and on the slopes turned from the sun, broken into drifts and bare patches at its edge, white where the light falls and blue-grey in shadow, the fir woods dark with snow caught in their crowns. It comes down to the Baltic in winter, and the Gulf of Bothnia and the White Sea freeze, fast ice along the shore and floes beyond. Wind-drifts are scored across the open snow, and no grass shows through it. On unknown lands the top of the sheet is snowy the same way
- 1805 as it stood: the Duchy of Warsaw (made at Tilsit in 1807) is no longer in the 1805 start, and Belgium (French since 1795) in neither 1805 nor 1812. Warsaw is Prussia's town in 1805, Brussels is France's, Mack's Austrians hold Ulm (France's first aim, which was not on the map before), and Kassel, Marburg and Hanau belong to the Elector of Hesse-Kassel until Jérôme Bonaparte's Westphalia takes them in 1807 (in 1812 that kingdom holds Magdeburg and Halle too). Nassau and the Swiss Confederation have their real heads, Duke Frederick Augustus and the Landammann Glutz-Ruchti. In 1812 the Kingdom of Holland, annexed in 1810, is gone too, and Amsterdam is France's. The Emperor gives Prussia Hanover in 1806 for her neutrality, and at Tilsit in 1807 Prussia can make peace too, giving up Warsaw to the King of Saxony's new Duchy of Warsaw and Hanover again. Saxony is an electorate until the Peace of Posen makes its Elector King Frederick Augustus I, and Bavaria's Elector is crowned Maximilian I Joseph in 1806. After Austerlitz Austria makes peace at Pressburg, giving up Venice and Ulm, and after Wagram at Schönbrunn, giving up Kraków (the Emperor's in 1805). Naples falls to the French in 1806 and Joseph Bonaparte is its king, then Murat from 1808. In 1810 King Louis gives up his crown and Holland is annexed to France.
- 1756: Peter III, six months on the throne, is deposed for Catherine II. 1792: Poland is partitioned in 1793 and 1795 and is gone, Danzig, Posen and Warsaw Prussia's, Kraków Austria's and Vilna Russia's, and Campo Formio gives France the Netherlands
- Towns change hands as history had them: Maastricht to Louis XIV in 1673 and back at Nijmegen, Buda and Belgrade to the Emperor, Riga to Peter in 1710 and Stettin to Prussia in 1713, Königsberg Russian from 1758 until Peter III gives it back, Prague the Bavarian's from 1741 to 1742, Leipzig Prussia's from Pirna to Hubertusburg, the partitions of Poland, the Netherlands to France at Campo Formio, Venice and Ulm at Pressburg, Warsaw and Hanover at Tilsit, Kraków at Schönbrunn. A treaty's terms hold even where the two crowns made their own peace first
- 1700: England is England until the Acts of Union in 1707, and Brandenburg becomes Prussia when the Elector crowns himself King in Prussia at Königsberg in 1701. Before 1806 Nassau is Nassau, not yet a duchy
- 1718: the Emperor's Naples, which Spain means to win back, is in the war even with the usual twelve rivals
- More of the year's own heads where there were no kings: the Grand Pensionary Heinsius in 1700, van der Heim in 1740 (until the Dutch make William IV of Orange stadtholder of them all in 1747), the Regent Anne of Hanover, Hanover's Elector who is also King of Great Britain, the Viceroy Eugène in Italy, and the governors of Milan, Naples and the Netherlands. An opening that names a head by his office reads properly: "William I, the Elector, reigns in Kassel". Flagships and generals go by the names of their year too: the San Felipe el Real at Cape Passaro, the Dauphin Royal in 1792, Wellington an earl in 1812
- Towns go by the names of the day: Buda, not Budapest; Pressburg, Brünn, Olmütz, Agram, Laibach, Vilna, Posen, Adrianople and Angora. No St. Petersburg before 1703, so in 1672, 1683 and 1700 the Tsar holds Kiev and Novgorod, and Riga is Sweden's. Buda is the Turk's until the Imperial army storms it in 1686 (and in 1788 Laudon's Belgrade is the Emperor's until Sistova gives it back), Brandenburg holds neither Stettin (Sweden's until 1713) nor Breslau (the Emperor's until Frederick takes it). Every crown begins with towns that were its own that year: Nuremberg and Augsburg are Bavaria's only from 1806, Geneva Swiss only from 1815, Erfurt and Halle never Saxon, Liège never the Netherlands', the Duchy of Milan no more than Milan (and no crown at all from 1714 to 1796, when it was the Emperor's), and Murat's Naples does not have Sicily. And the towns the year's wars were fought over are on the map in the right hands: Stettin Sweden's until 1713, Belgrade the Turk's, Lille and Strasbourg France's in 1792, Danzig and Vilna Poland's, Venice the Emperor's and Hanover French-occupied in 1805, Vilna, Smolensk and Riga on the road to Moscow in 1812. A town is set down only where it stood, never pushed onto another's ground under the wrong name. Hanover is among the usual twelve rivals in 1756, and the Austrian Netherlands in 1792. The aims that name Buda and Adrianople find them now
- The courts of their age: before the Revolution the great houses are the old courts' (Condé and Noailles in France, Golitsyn and Naryshkin in Russia, Stuart before 1714), not the Emperor's marshals, and characters are named for the noble families of their lands rather than for Blücher, Ney or Kutuzov. The map of Europe in 1680 has England and Brandenburg, Alexander Farnese in Brussels and Ernest Augustus in Hanover
- Faster: the map's trees, firs and hills are drawn from little kept pictures rather than stroke by stroke (they take well under half the time to lay down on a new season's sheet), and the realms' boundaries are laid on a realm at a time rather than hex by hex, so a crowded map scrolls and zooms more smoothly. The lie of the land is worked out about a fifth faster when a game begins, and a laptop with a touch screen no longer redraws the whole sheet at every end of turn
Beta 12.8
Eight New Starts, Ships That Carry Armies, and Peace at a Price
- A fifth historical start, 1683: the Siege of Vienna. The Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa and his army are camped before Vienna, and the Emperor, John Sobieski's Poland, Bavaria and Saxony stand together against the Turk; in the west Louis XIV is at war with Spain for the Reunions. Leopold I, Mehmed IV, Louis XIV, Charles II of England, Sophia regent for the young Peter and the Great Elector on their thrones, with their consorts and heirs
- History as it went: the relief of Vienna, the Truce of Ratisbon, the Edict of Nantes revoked and the Huguenots taken in by Brandenburg, Buda and Mohács, Russia in the Holy League, the Glorious Revolution and the Nine Years' War, Fleurus, Slankamen, La Hogue, Azov, Augustus the Strong elected in Poland, Zenta and the Peace of Ryswick, and the score counted at the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699
- A sixth start, 1792: the Revolution. Louis XVI's France at war with Austria and Prussia, Brunswick's army on the march, Catherine the Great, George III and the young Francis II on their thrones. Valmy and Jemappes; the King's trial (as France you decide whether the Republic is proclaimed, and the crown is called the French Republic from then on); the First Coalition, the Terror and Thermidor, the end of Poland, the Peace of Basel and the Batavian Republic, General Bonaparte in Italy, Campo Formio, the Nile, the Second Coalition, Brumaire, Marengo, and the score counted at the Peace of Amiens in 1802
- New achievements: The Kahlenberg (win a game begun in 1683) and Valmy (win a game begun in 1792)
- The historical starts are listed in order of their years, from 1683 to 1805
- A crown fighting beside you under a war alliance no longer declares war on you while your common enemy is still in the field
- Fix: in a 1756 game the Empress Elizabeth dies in 1762 even if Russia is no longer at war with Prussia, and Peter III is crowned
- The annals use the names of the day too: Poland-Lithuania and Hanover declare war, not the Duchy of Warsaw and Westphalia
- The end of a historical game names the winner by its name of the day (Poland-Lithuania, not the Duchy of Warsaw), and the annals read naturally: taken from the Ottoman Empire, peace made with the Dutch Republic
- Fix: in a historical start the crowned heads of the year no longer die of old age before the peace (Catherine the Great could die in 1793); those who died in those years die when they did
- When you attack, the game waits for the attack to play out (the charge or the volley, the smoke, and any who fall) before it picks your next regiment or takes another order; End Turn waits for it too
- In a historical start the first orders name the town your crown fought for that year: Take Breslau from Prussia, Take Vienna from Austria
- The Field Manual's History tab puts your own start first, dims the years gone by and marks where you stand
- Ships carry regiments: march a regiment to the coast beside a ship of yours and right-click the ship, and it goes aboard (a frigate or a ship of the line carries two, a galleon three). The ship sails with them, a roundel on it shows how many, and right-clicking the coast beside it puts them ashore one at a time (on a phone, tap the ship and then the coast). If the ship is sunk, they go down with her
- A seventh start, 1812: the Road to Moscow. The Emperor and Marshal Davout with the Grande Armée on the Niemen, Austria, Prussia, Warsaw, Saxony, Bavaria and Naples marching with France against Russia, Britain, Spain and Portugal. Smolensk, Borodino and Salamanca; Moscow burns and the winter retreat; Prussia and Austria change sides (as either of them you choose), Sweden comes in, Vitoria and Leipzig; the Allies in Paris and Louis XVIII; the score counted at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, or in 1820. A new achievement, The Road to Moscow
- In an 1812 game played on past the Congress, the Emperor comes back from Elba for the Hundred Days, and Waterloo follows
- A regiment, settler or worker beside a ship of yours with room has a Go aboard button in its panel
- An eighth start, 1672: the Disaster Year. Louis XIV, England and the Bishop of Münster fall on the Dutch Republic under Johan de Witt, with the Great Elector the Dutch Republic's only friend, and the Sultan marching on Poland. The Water Line, the murder of the de Witts and William of Orange, the alliance of The Hague, Khotyn and Sobieski's election, the Treaty of Westminster, Sweden's invasion of Brandenburg and Fehrbellin, Turenne killed at Sasbach, the Scanian War, and the score counted at the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678. Spain is governed by the Queen Mother as regent until Charles II comes of age. A new achievement, The Water Line
- The other crowns use their ships to carry regiments too: a ship fetches a regiment waiting on the coast, sails it to the shore nearest its target and lands it
- A ship's panel lists the regiments aboard, and Land first chooses which goes ashore next; the Empire panel lists them too, aboard their ship
- The hex tooltip says when land is out of sight (shown as last seen, washed dim), and names its owner and any regiment's crown by the name of the day
- When a peace history made involves your crown, it is offered to you to make or refuse: Breslau and Dresden in 1740, Ryswick in 1683, Basel and Campo Formio in 1792, Westminster and Nijmegen in 1672
- Playing Sweden in 1700, Denmark sues for peace at Travendal and Saxony at Altranstädt, as they did (offered to you to accept)
- In 1805, if France or Russia is yours, the raft at Tilsit is offered to you in 1807
- More of history's peaces are offered to you when your crown is a party: Ratisbon, Żurawno, Åbo, Lunéville, the Russian peace of 1801 and Amiens
- In 1756, playing Russia, the Empress Elizabeth dies in 1762 and Peter III's peace with Prussia is yours to make; playing Sweden, Prussia offers the Peace of Hamburg
- In 1805, when the war history made comes to your crown it is put to you: Prussia's in 1806, Spain's rising in 1808, Austria's in 1809, Russia's in 1812 and the Sixth Coalition in 1813
- Every war history made is put to you when the crown that went to war is yours: the coalition against Prussia and the Family Compact in 1756, the Second Silesian War in 1740, the Holy League in 1683, the First and Second Coalitions and San Ildefonso in 1792, The Hague, Sweden's invasion of Brandenburg and the Scanian War in 1672
- With a regiment chosen, the ships beside it with room are ringed in sea-blue ink, and Go aboard is the first of its orders; with a loaded ship chosen, the coast where its regiments can land is ringed
- The first turn no longer opens with Idle Towns and No Research cards over the start's own: the First orders list asks for both
- Disbanding a ship with regiments aboard is refused until they are put ashore (they were lost with her, without a word)
- Sink a foe's transport where you can see it and you hear how many regiments went down with her
- Go aboard is on the round order buttons under the map as well, and on the B key
- On a phone the view brings a chosen unit or town up near the top of the map, above its panel (now a little shorter), instead of to the middle where the panel hid it
- On a phone the ship texts say tap, not right-click
- On a phone the unit buttons go without their keyboard letters
- On a phone the tips and the Field Manual speak of taps and panel buttons, not right-clicks and keys, and the Kingdoms panel is no longer covered by the ambition plaque
- The idle towns and research reminders wait until a start's opening card is read, instead of opening under it
- On the end screen, war declarations and event cards a crown's name is written in light ink beside a dot of its colour (a dark blue or red name could hardly be read), and event cards use the name of the day
- Three events of another age are of this one now: the Nobles' Remonstrance (was Magna Carta Demands), Emigrants at the Border (was a nomadic tribe) and A Baron Swears Fealty (was a chieftain)
- A ship is not fortified: she lies at anchor, and weighs anchor again
- Peace for a town: at war, with your regiments at the gates of one of their towns, the Kingdoms panel lets you ask for it as the price of peace. They give it up only when they are losing; their garrison marches home
- And the other way: a crown well ahead of you in arms, its regiments at one of your towns, may offer peace if you cede it. Cede it, or refuse and fight on
- Between the other crowns too: one beaten in the field buys its peace with the town the victor stands before, and you hear of it if you know them both
- Treaties that promise a town now give it: the Peace of Breslau hands Breslau to Prussia, the Truce of Ratisbon Strasbourg to France, if the other side holds it
- Seek peace and Peace for a town say how they are likely to be taken: likely, even odds, doubtful or unlikely
- Pacts say their odds too, on hovering: likely, even odds, doubtful, or that they think too little of you
- Demanding tribute says its odds on hovering, as peace and pacts do
- And so does a proposal of marriage
- Options: Dim land out of sight. Turn it off and the land you have charted but can't see now is drawn plain, without the brown wash (rival regiments there stay hidden all the same)
- Hovering a ship tells who is aboard yours, and how many regiments a rival's carries; the tooltip no longer reads 'Man of_war'
- A ninth start, 1733: the Polish Succession. Louis XV goes to war for his father-in-law Stanisław, elected King of Poland, with Spain and Sardinia; Austria, Russia and Saxony put up Augustus of Saxony instead. Danzig falls, Don Carlos takes Naples and is crowned there, the Peace of Vienna sends Stanisław to Lorraine and Milan back to the Emperor, Russia and then Austria go to war with the Turk, and the score is counted at the Peace of Belgrade in 1739. With its achievement, Bitonto
- In the Kingdoms panel a crown in a war alliance with you is marked Allied, not just At peace
- 1805: Holland begins as the Batavian Republic under its Grand Pensionary, Schimmelpenninck, and is made a kingdom for Louis Bonaparte in 1806, as Nassau is made a duchy; a regent, governor or Grand Pensionary governs rather than reigns in the opening card
- Saved games show the year they stand at and the start they were begun in, and the crown by the name of the day
- History's cards wait their turn: two put to you at once are shown one after the other (the second used to replace the first, and was lost)
- Crowns declaring war in the same turn are named together on one card, instead of each card replacing the last
- A loaded ship right-clicked onto a far coast sails for the sea beside it, ready to put her regiments ashore there; go-to notices name the regiment
- A tenth start, 1788: the eve of the Revolution. Catherine the Great and the Emperor Joseph are at war with the Turk, Gustav III's Sweden has fallen on Russia, and France, bankrupt, has called the Estates-General. The Bastille falls, the Dauphin, the Sultan, the King of Spain and the Emperor die and are succeeded, Suvorov wins at Rymnik and Izmail and Gustav at Svensksund, and the peaces of Värälä, Sistova and Jassy follow; the score is counted at Jassy in 1792. With its achievement, Rymnik
- 1788, as France: in 1789 the National Assembly is put to you. Accept it and France takes the law of Constitution; call in the regiments and the mob storms the Bastille
- Resume Last Game names the crown and the year of the game it resumes
- An eleventh start, 1778: the American war comes to Europe. France is at war with Britain for the rebel colonies, Spain and the Dutch follow, and in Germany Frederick the Great's last war, with Austria over the Bavarian succession, ends at Teschen. Maria Theresa dies and Joseph II rules alone, Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, Rodney wins at the Saintes, and the score is counted at the Peace of Versailles in 1783. With its achievement, The Saintes
- The Historical Starts list is laid out in two columns on a wide screen
- Ships can auto-explore (X), charting the coasts and seas on their own
- The other crowns' fleets put to sea in war: their warships are no longer the last to be given orders nor kept back as a reserve, and with no enemy ship at hand they sail, round the capes, to lie off your nearest port and blockade it
- In the historical starts every town on the sea begins with a port beside it, to trade and fish from, and to be blockaded
- A blockaded harbour is ringed in dashed red ink on the map
- A twelfth start, 1718: the Quadruple Alliance. Philip V's Spain has landed in Sicily, and the Emperor, Britain, France and the Dutch go to war against it; Byng sinks the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro. In the north Charles XII falls before Fredriksten and Ulrika Eleonora is queen; the treaties of Stockholm, The Hague and Frederiksborg follow, and the score is counted at the Peace of Nystad in 1721. With its achievement, Cape Passaro
- On the map of Europe the crowns to choose from go by the names of the year chosen, each with its ruler (the Dutch Republic, William V of Orange, in 1778)
- A defeat on the score says where your crown placed
- Capitals on the map of Europe keep their own names: Madrid, not Toledo, when the city stands a hex off its true place
- The House of Savoy sits at Turin as King of Sardinia or of Sicily, and Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy at Milan; no Italian crown has Rome, which was the Pope's
- 1718: Victor Amadeus holds Sicily, and Spain's landing is at war with him; at the Treaty of The Hague Sicily goes to the Emperor and Savoy has Sardinia (yours to accept or refuse if Savoy is your crown)
- A town handed over by treaty never rises to go back to the crown that signed it away, and minds the change less than a conquest
- On the map of Europe a crown's far provinces are uneasy for being far, not in revolt
- Barbarians are brigands now: brigand bands, mounted brigands and brigand captains, brigand camps, and a Pact Against Brigands
- The crowns to choose from fit on a phone's screen
- From 1718 to 1792 Milan is the Emperor's, as it was from Utrecht until Bonaparte came (but in 1733, when the King of Sardinia has just taken it)
- The Bishopric of Münster sits at Münster in 1672 (it was at Kassel), and the Electorate of Hanover at Hanover
Beta 12.7
1700 to 1805: Four Starts, Kings and Heirs
- A new start, 1805: the Coalition (under Start when you set up a game). The map of Europe in the year of Austerlitz, charted to its edges: the great crowns come first, every crown begins with the learning, the towns, the armies and the fleets of the age, and the Third Coalition (Britain, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Naples) is already at war with France and her allies, while Prussia, Saxony, Denmark and the Porte stand apart. Choose your side by choosing your crown
- A second start, 1756: the Seven Years' War. Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, the Empress Elizabeth, Louis XV and George II on their thrones; Prussia and Britain against France, Austria and Saxony, with Russia and Sweden coming in in 1757, Spain and Portugal in 1762, and in 1762 the death of the Empress Elizabeth that saved Frederick. The score is counted at the Peace of Paris in 1763
- A third start, 1700: two wars at once. In the west the Spanish Succession, the Grand Alliance of Britain, Austria and the Dutch (with Marlborough and Prince Eugene) against Louis XIV and the Bourbon king of Spain; in the north Charles XII of Sweden against Peter the Great, Denmark and Saxony. Travendal in 1700, Queen Anne in 1702, Altranstädt in 1706, Poltava in 1709, and the score counted at the Peace of Utrecht in 1714
- A fourth start, 1740: the Austrian Succession. Frederick seizes Silesia from the young Maria Theresa, France, Bavaria, Spain and Saxony fall on her and Britain and the Dutch stand by her; Mollwitz, the Peace of Breslau, the Second Silesian War, Fontenoy and Hohenfriedberg, and the score counted at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748
- In 1740 games the Guards put Elizabeth on the throne of Russia in 1741
- And in 1741 Sweden goes to war with Russia, the Hats' War, until the Peace of Åbo in 1743
- Historical Starts on the title screen: the four years laid out, each opening the setup with its year, the map of Europe and its leading crown chosen
- Choosing a historical start sets the game up for it: the map of Europe, and a dozen crowns about you unless you choose fewer
- In a historical start the first orders ask you to take a town from your enemies rather than found one, and the turn counter counts down to the peace; your victories list the year and the start they were won from
- In 1700, 1740 and 1756 the crowns bear the names of their own day, on the map and in the Kingdoms panel: the Dutch Republic, the Electorate of Saxony, Poland-Lithuania, Hanover, the Spanish or Austrian Netherlands
- A new game on the map of Europe begins with the crowned heads of 1680: Louis XIV, Charles II of England, Leopold I, the Great Elector, Charles XI, John III Sobieski and the rest, with their consorts and heirs, and the Dutch Republic and the Electorate of Saxony under their own names
- In 1756 games, from 1758 Britain pays Prussia a subsidy of 12 gold a turn while the two stand together, as by the Anglo-Prussian Convention
- In 1805 the crowns are ruled by the men of the age: Napoleon, George III, Francis II, Alexander I, Frederick William III and the rest, with their consorts and something of their tempers
- In 1805 the greatest armies are greatest: France begins with the Grande Armée and Marshal Davout, Russia with its numbers and Cossacks, Austria with more whitecoats; and a general can be given a name like a regiment
- The flagships of the year of Trafalgar sail under their own names: HMS Victory, the Bucentaure and the Santísima Trinidad
- Trafalgar: in an 1805 game where neither Britain, France nor Spain is yours, Nelson destroys the French and Spanish fleets in the autumn of 1805
- Blenheim: in a 1700 game where none of France, Bavaria, Britain or Austria is yours, Marlborough and Prince Eugene destroy the Franco-Bavarian army in the field in 1704
- The great battles of 1756 among the crowns you don't hold: Rossbach and Leuthen in 1757, Kunersdorf in 1759
- The great battles of 1805 among the crowns you don't hold: Austerlitz, Jena and Auerstedt, Leipzig
- Field Manual: a History page with the turns history takes in each of the three starts
- An 1805 game opens with a card laying out the year: who reigns, your side and your enemies, when the score is counted, and what history has in store
- In a game begun in 1805, history moves as it did if the crowns are still placed for it: in 1806 Prussia joins the Fourth Coalition against France, in 1807 Russia may make peace with France at Tilsit, in 1808 Spain rises against the French, in 1809 Austria takes up arms again, in 1812 Russia and France come to war, and in 1813 the Sixth Coalition forms
- In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire is dissolved, and Francis II reigns on as Francis I of Austria
- The Continental System: from 1806, while France stands, she and her allies will not trade with a British player, and an ally of France that trades with Britain angers her
- In 1810, if Napoleon still reigns and Austria is at peace with him, he sets Joséphine aside and marries Marie Louise of Austria, joining the two houses; in 1811 their son, the King of Rome, is born
- Playing France or Austria, the Austrian match of 1810 is yours to make or refuse
- History's other turns of the crown: George II dies in 1760, Charles IV gives up the throne of Spain to Ferdinand VII in 1808, and a prince crowned without a regnal name drops his title
- In 1811, if George III still reigns, his mind fails and the Prince of Wales governs Britain as Prince Regent
- General Winter: on the map of Europe a foreign regiment caught in Russia's lands in winter loses men twice as fast
- An 1805 game counts its score at 1815, when the Congress of Vienna meets, or at 1825 (a new crown keeps Turn 200 or 300)
- At the end of an 1805 game the great crowns are summed up as they stand at the Congress: their towns and who reigns
- In the historical starts the score at the peace is reckoned among the great powers and you: a lesser crown that sat out the war and settled the empty north no longer carries off the victory
- In the historical starts the rival crowns make for the towns they fought over: Austria for Breslau in Silesia, Frederick for Dresden and Prague, Napoleon for Vienna and Berlin
- In 1805 Russia's capital is St Petersburg, where the Tsar's court sat
- In 1805 the wonders of nature are long known: the charted map no longer hands out every explorer's gift on the first turn
- On the map of Europe the crowns have the tempers history gave them: France, Prussia, Sweden and Warsaw warlike, Britain and the Dutch merchants, Austria a builder, Russia and the Porte expansionist, and so on
- On the map of Europe brigands plunder a town they take but never burn it to the ground
- Coalitions: once your crown stands far ahead (the second alarm of Europe), the crowns that distrust you may band together against you, two to four at once, at war with you and allied to one another: the First Coalition, then the Second, no sooner than some thirty-five turns apart
- And when a rival crown grows too great (a third of all the towns and well ahead in score), the others band together against it and ask you to join them: join, and you are at war with it at the coalition's side
- Royal marriages, as in Old World: propose a match between your court and another in the Kingdoms panel (60 gold, half back if refused). A crown that thinks well of you may accept; while the marriage lasts each of you thinks better of the other every turn, and making war on your in-laws costs 15 legitimacy
- A friendly crown at war with your own enemy may propose a war alliance against it, and courts that think well of you may propose a royal marriage themselves (answered in the Kingdoms panel)
- A crown that sues for peace while badly beaten or starving under your siege offers gold with it, a share of its treasury
- Allies & foes, a lens for the map (in the Kingdoms panel): every crown's lands tinted by how it stands with yours, your own in gold, allies green, enemies red, the rest grey
- The Kingdoms panel names each crown's ruler
- The court ages with the calendar: rulers, consorts and children grew a year older only every eight years, so a reign never ended; now children are born, grow up and come to the throne
- A grown heir now comes to the throne before the widowed consort, who stays at court; the 1805 crowns have their heirs, and a prince crowned takes his regnal name (the Prince of Wales becomes George IV)
- Regencies: when the heir is a child the consort rules as regent, and the heir is crowned at sixteen
- The Royal Court shows the line of succession, eldest first, with who is next in line, the dowager, and the years of recent deaths
- The Annals keep the reigns: a ruler's death and who came to the throne after
- The Annals keep your wars and your peaces: war declared, and peace made
- News of the other courts: when a crown you know loses its ruler, the log says who has come to the throne
- Fix: a crown that signs a war alliance no longer turns on its own allies or in-laws to join its new friend's wars, and your allies never join a coalition against you (Britain could declare war on its Prussian ally)
- Fewer wars out of nowhere: a crown that joins its new ally's war on you now keeps to your opening turns' peace like any other, and one with no town within reach of yours stays out of it
- The Annals of the Reign: beside the score chart and the map through the years, the notable moments of your reign under their years: towns founded, taken and lost, battles named, ambitions fulfilled, wonders raised, royal marriages, coalitions and crowns brought down
- The Annals can be copied as text, year by year, to paste wherever you like
- A new ambition and achievement, The Capital Falls: take a rival crown's capital (a town remembers being one, in your saves too)
- Achievements, kept in your browser across every game: twenty-five of them, from putting a regiment ashore on another landmass to winning on Hard or on the map of Europe. See them under Victories & Achievements on the title screen
- Battles are named: a field where three or more regiments have fallen is lettered on the chart with the nearest town and the year (Leipzig 1813), as the old atlases marked them, and written in the log
- A regiment of yours can be given a name of its own (Rename, under its name in its panel), and the panel names every kind of unit properly (Heavy Cavalry, not Heavy_cavalry)
- Dragoons and gunners in their own nation's coats too: French dragoons in green, British in red, Austrian in white, Prussian in light blue; Austrian gunners in brown, Russian in green
- A town no longer offers regiments your crown has outgrown: once the drill that upgrades one is learned, only the newer is offered (swordsmen give way to grenadiers, crossbowmen to musketeers; siege guns stay)
- Pointing at a hex beyond this turn's march shows the whole route, with a numbered roundel where each turn's march will end; and the number on a march within reach now counts the moves it costs (woods, hills, rivers and boats included), not the hexes
- The other crowns' battles at the end of a turn can be shown, played quickly, or left out unless you fight in them (Options, Their battles), and Space or Esc skips the rest of a replay
- The opening turns are your own: no crown declares war on you before turn 40 on Easy, 25 on Normal or 15 on Hard (unless you start one)
- First orders: at the start of a game a short list in the corner of what to do first (choose research, set a town's work, march a regiment, found a second town, improve a hex, choose an ambition, end the turn), ticked off as you do each. It goes when they are all done, or with its ×, and can be turned off for new games
- In the last twenty turns before the score is counted, the turn counter says how many are left
- Much faster turns on large maps: the shading that marks the land you know and the land you can see now was redrawn from 26,000 hex outlines (and blurred) every time the view changed, some four seconds a turn on a large map of Europe; it is now worked out a pixel at a time at a third of the size, the same soft edge in a fiftieth of a second, and no longer redrawn at all when only the season changes
- Faster turns: the next season's map is drawn ahead while you think (on computers with the memory for it), so the end of a turn on a large map no longer waits a third of a second to recolour the sheet
- The Map Through the Years shows the towns from the first turn (it was empty until a turn had ended)
- Closing a panel by clicking beside it no longer lets the click fall through to what lies beneath
Beta 12.6
Europe, Tempers and Tribute
- A map of Europe: choose "Europe" under Lands when you set up a game, and the crowns begin at their real capitals (London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow and the rest) on an engraved chart of the continent, its seas and ranges lettered with their old names (Mare Balticum, Pontus Euxinus, the Alps, the Carpathians). Best on a Large or Huge map. A rival is never the same nation as you any more
- On the map of Europe every crown begins with up to three of its own towns where they stood: Prussia with Berlin, Königsberg and Breslau, Austria with Vienna, Prague and Buda, Russia with Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev, and so on
- The map of Europe has its great rivers where they run, the Rhine, Danube, Elbe, Vistula, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Po, Tagus, Thames, Dnieper, Volga, Don and more, lettered with their Latin names
- On the map of Europe a town founded near a real city takes its name (Hamburg, Lyon, Kiev and some 150 more), whichever crown founds it
- Every rival crown has a temper, shown in the Kingdoms panel: Warlike crowns keep larger armies and go to war sooner, Builders raise wonders and keep the peace longer, Expansionists spread fastest, and Merchants are the easiest to get on with
- Meeting a crown tells you its temper, on the first-contact card and in the log
- Demands for tribute: a crown with twice your army that thinks little of you may demand gold (warlike crowns most often, at most once in twenty turns). Pay and it keeps the peace for fifteen turns, at a little legitimacy; refuse and it thinks much worse of you, but your people respect it
- You can demand tribute too (Kingdoms, when your army is twice theirs): a crown pays if it fears you enough (merchants soonest, warlike crowns hardly ever), and likes you less either way
- Long wars with you wear your enemies down too: after some thirty-five turns a crown may offer peace (warlike crowns hold out longer); the choice is yours, in the Kingdoms panel
- The Kingdoms panel says whom each crown is at war with, so the wars of Europe can be read at a glance
- Choose how a game can be won when you set it up: the score counted at turn 200, at turn 300 or never, and ambition victory on or off
- Town projects, as in Old World, for a town with nothing better to make: a Trade Fair turns half its production into gold, Learning into research, and Festivals ease its discontent. They never finish, and anything you choose takes over at once
- The Map Through the Years: beside the score chart, a small map of the world with every town in the colour of the crown that held it, played back turn by turn (only the lands you have seen while the game goes on, all of it at the end)
- Upgrading a merged regiment re-arms every company of its kind (at the cost of each) and keeps its men in proportion; before, its companies stayed as they were and it could end up with more men than it could hold. The Regiments page has an Upgrade button for any regiment that can be upgraded where it stands
- Tips, once each: the first time you choose a regiment or a town, earn a promotion, run out of orders, meet winter or war, learn Navigation or have two regiments side by side, a short card says what you can do. "No more tips" turns them off, and Options can bring them back
- Fix: a town's banner counted a siege out of 4 turns even behind walls (6) or bastions (8); it now shows the real number, and says so on hover
- Fix: towns' name banners near the bottom-left corner printed over the event log
Beta 12.5
Ambitions, Promotions and the Sea
- Ambitions, as in Old World: your crown sets itself one goal at a time, chosen from three (hold three towns, raise walls, field a merged regiment, build a wonder, take a town, topple a crown and so on, grander as you go). Each one fulfilled gives +10 legitimacy and 15 points of score, and the tenth is an Ambition Victory. The one in hand is shown under the top bar; click it to see them all
- Promotions, as in Old World: every rank a regiment reaches earns it a promotion, chosen from two in its panel whenever you like (a gilt star over it says one is waiting): Drilled, Hardened, Iron Discipline, Field Surgeons, Forced Marches, Squares Against Horse for the foot, Pursuit for the horse, Gunnery for the guns. The other crowns promote theirs too
- Regiments can take ship: once you know Navigation, any land unit can go aboard from a coast and cross the sea in a ship's boat (going aboard or ashore costs 3 moves, each hex of sea 1). Aboard it can't attack, fire or dig in and takes half again the harm. Crowns on islands can now be reached and conquered, and the rival crowns cross the sea too when what they want lies on another shore
- Rival crowns wage real campaigns: the army marches on one enemy town together instead of each regiment choosing its own, a regiment that gets into an enemy town stays there until it falls, and an enemy near one of their towns calls back only the regiments nearest it, not the whole army. In test games towns changed hands in wars between rivals about three times as often
- The rival crowns keep ambitions too: theirs count in their score and legitimacy as yours do (the Kingdoms panel shows how many each has fulfilled), though only you can win by them. An ambition out of reach can be set aside for another at the cost of 5 legitimacy
- War-weariness: a war between two rival crowns wears both down, and after some thirty turns they may come to terms, so Europe is no longer at war with itself all game
- Rival treasuries work: a crown with a full purse hurries one town's work a turn (as Rush Produce does for you), sells mountains of steel and powder at the market, and buys bread for its next colonists
- Your ruler's likeness in the top-left corner, as in Old World: a gilt ring round it fills with your legitimacy, and a click opens the Court
- The Race for Europe: every crown's score turn by turn as a chart ("The race" in the Kingdoms panel, and on the victory and defeat screens), with the turn's standings under the pointer and a crown's line picked out from the legend
- A Field Manual (I, or from the pause menu): every regiment with its picture, attack, men, moves, range, cost, the research it needs and what it upgrades to, and the buildings, land improvements, promotions and ambitions
- The Empire panel (O) has a second page, Regiments: every regiment you have, where it is, its men, rank and orders, those with a promotion to choose or still awaiting orders first; click one to go to it
- Keys for the new orders: J forms up with the regiment beside it, U splits a company off, Delete twice disbands; every round order button shows its key
- The tech tree and the event log in the same navy and gold as the rest of the interface
- The title screen and its buttons in navy and gold too
Beta 12.4
Merged Regiments, Fire on the March, and Every Nation in its Own Coat
- Regiments can be merged: right-click one of your own beside the one you have chosen and it marches in and takes it into its ranks, up to three companies under one colour. Their men and fire add up, every company stands on the field, and all of them fire at once
- A merged regiment can split a company off again (the unit panel), the other crowns merge theirs too, a merged regiment is marked II or III on the chart from afar, and generals wear their nation's coat
- Any regiment can be disbanded from its panel (two clicks, so a slip of the mouse loses nothing); a merged regiment goes whole, so split off a company first to keep it
- Musketeers, riflemen and the other ranged foot and horse can fire after marching, as long as they have a move left (firing ends their turn). The guns still fire only from where they began the turn. Riflemen reach 3 hexes (4 from a hill)
- The line infantry wear their own nation's coats of 1805–1812: Prussian blue, the British red coat, the Austrian white, Russian green and the rest, facings and all
- The camera glides: WASD and the arrows ease in and out (Shift for faster) instead of jumping two hexes at a time, dragging is smooth, and the chart no longer redraws itself soft and then sharp on every pan
- Towns sound like towns: a market crowd recorded in a French square, and now and then a horse walking by, a church bell, a peal or a carillon, in place of the synthesised street noise
- The rival crowns want land: they send out more settlers, two at a time once they have three towns, from smaller towns early on, and fund their colonists' food; each crown has its own appetite for expansion
- A new dress for the interface, after Old World: deep navy panels in thin gold, the End Turn button a gilt crest in the corner with the turn and the orders left, and the chosen regiment's orders as a row of round engraved buttons along the bottom (fire, march, fortify, rest, form up, split, next, disband), each with its key
- The further ahead you get (your share of the technologies, your towns, the length of the game, your lead in score), the harder Europe pushes back: rivals gain richer treasuries, steadier soldiers and more orders, raiders grow bolder, and the crowns trust you less each turn. You are told as each stage of their alarm is reached
- Volleys and guns sound as they do in the trailer: a line's eight muskets fired together with the boom and the echo off the country, and the cannon's thump and rumble
Beta 12.3
Orders, Walls and the Sound of the Field
- Old World controls: left-click picks out a regiment or town, right-click gives the order (march, attack, fire, or set out for somewhere further). A tap on a phone still marches
- Every move or attack costs an order, not only a regiment's first of the turn
- Regiments are paid for when you order them: the cost leaves the treasury at the press of the button (queued ones too), comes back if you clear the queue, and is lost if the town falls
- Which regiments still need orders, at a glance: those waiting stand on a gilt ring, those done for the turn are greyed; the Next Unit button counts them and walks through them all, and End Turn glows when none are left
- City Walls (a curtain wall and towers) and then Bastions (a star fort): the garrison takes 25% / 40% less harm and an enemy must hold the town 6 / 8 turns to take it, and you can see them raised round the town
- A town's lands grow by themselves with its people, a hex a turn, reaching further as it grows
- Regiments are smaller on the chart, well inside their hex; they lunge into the enemy, kick back when they fire, flinch red when struck, and a broken regiment's figure topples over
- New sounds for everything, made in the game itself: paper and quill, the seal at turn's end, church bells, the smith's hammer, the side drum, coin, the axe, boots and hooves on the march, steel, a volley's ragged crash; and when you lean in over woods or towns, birdsong and wind, or the murmur of the streets
- Seventeen more pieces of music of the time (Bach, Vivaldi, Corelli, Lully, Purcell, Pachelbel, Charpentier), credited under Options; the playlist shuffles
- The sea moves; volley smoke drifts off sideways instead of hiding the target; sea names stay on their water; no more leaves falling across the screen; zooming glides, and the chart stays sharp while you pan
Beta 12.2
The Atlas, Finished
- Snow drifts down over the map in winter and leaves blow across it in autumn; mountains rise in shaded relief and throw their shadows across the plains below; rivers start as fine lines in the hills and swell as streams join them on the way to the sea; pine woods grow in the north and under the mountains
- Seas, lakes and mountain ranges are lettered with their names, and sea serpents, whales and carracks swim in the open ocean; a title cartouche held by cherubs names your realm and the year in the sheet's corner, a compass rose is printed in the widest sea, a scale of miles in the lower corner, and the blank places read Terra Incognita
- Realms are lettered across their lands in spaced capitals; their borders are a wash of their colour inside a dotted line; the sheet is browned at its edges and creased where it was folded
- A village grows into a market town (or a harbour town on the coast), a great walled city at ten people, and a capital is a star fortress; town names are on parchment ribbons
- Units stand on painted wargame bases with a pennant in their realm's colour and turn to face the way they marched; from far off they show as wooden wargame blocks marked infantry, horse, guns or ships; regiment counts are pressed into wax seals
- Fields where a regiment fell are marked on the chart with crossed swords and the year, as the old maps marked their battles (and they stay marked)
- The route of march is a red dashed line with an arrowhead, roads are double-ruled, strength and morale are little ink-ruled gauges, and map messages are lettered in ink
- Every icon, every event picture, every ruler's portrait and the pictures behind the menu are hand-coloured engravings; End Turn is a wax-red button; the tech tree is a set of parchment cards; all panels are leather in gilt frames
- The chart lies on a leather desk, throwing a soft shadow, with the chartmaker's brass dividers and magnifying glass beside it; a town's garrison stands at its gate so the town can still be seen
- Deep water is hatched in fine level lines and shaded slopes in short strokes, as a copperplate engraver works; roads cross rivers on little stone bridges and a fortified town's walls are a bastioned trace; shallows are stippled off every shore, rivers snake and widen toward the sea, hills are shaded molehills, and wonders of nature are named beneath them; a siege is drawn as a ring of earthworks in red ink, and newly found land is inked in out of the blank sheet
- The city and unit panels are headed by the town's or regiment's own engraving; research is crowned by a gloria of gilt rays; the turn is announced with the season and the year in Roman numerals; a new game opens on the whole chart lying on the desk and leans in to your capital, and a big world opens with the chartmaker at work
- A wind head puffs from the sheet's corner and a key to its marks (Explicatio Notarum) sits in another; a new town, or one that changes hands, is stamped with its realm's wax seal; figures step along as they march, cast long shadows to the south-east (towns and works too) and lean a little away from the middle of the view, like miniatures on a table; your marches this turn are pricked out in dots
- Nine more event engravings (plague, storm, fire, a comet, a royal wedding, pilgrims at the cathedral, wolves in the forest, conspirators, brigands), so events show fitting pictures; the frame is numbered in degrees and the sheet signed in its foot margin; the country round a town is under the plough and settled land is dotted with little churches; a town in danger is ringed in red ink; ruler portraits are engraved miniatures in oval gilt frames; the event log is a page of the chronicle in ink on parchment; plans are pencilled on the chart, and a gunner's targets are marked with red cross-hairs
- The blank sheet is smoke-browned vellum lying on a desk, with older sheets of the survey askew beneath it, an inkwell and quill and a seal with its wax beside it, and a reading glass that shows the leather under it magnified; the chart is printed on laid paper, the land you've charted casts a soft shadow onto the blank sheet, and a small world lies in the middle of the desk
- Powder smoke, hearth smoke and burning towns are billowed clouds inked round and hatched on their shaded side, as the battle prints drew them, and a musket's flash is struck out in fine rays; borders are laid on in watercolour fading inward from the line, and a unit's reach is pencilled as a staff officer marks a day's march
- The menu's title is set on a tooled-leather board in gilt, and the minimap is drawn on the same blank vellum; names on the chart wait until the land under both their ends is known, and a new game no longer shows a glimpse of the last one's land
- From afar, towns are marked as the chart's key says (a red star for a royal city, a ringed dot for a town); battlefields are marked in red ink; deep woods open into glades; the paper shows foxing; hills are shaded more by hatching than by smudged tone; the refugees and the nomads, risings and mutinies, the engineers at their fortresses, the royal counting house and the nobles in council have their own engravings; a bear, an elephant and a lion (Hic sunt leones) roam the blank interior until the survey covers them; the scale of miles and the chart's key are framed and scrolled as the engravers set them; trees are hatched on their shaded side; the great rivers are lettered along their course (Fl. Rhenus, Fl. Danubius…); the rhumb lines run on faintly across the charted seas, as on a portolan chart; meridians and parallels are ruled at every degree numbered on the frame; regiments awaiting orders have a brass pin beside them; the sheet is dated in its foot margin, and in winter the wind head blows snow; planned orders are pencilled in ink; from afar, regiments are marked as on an 18th-century battle plan (foot as solid bars, horse hatched, guns as little cannon); the sheet's ornaments are printed over the chart when seen whole; and a big map pans several times faster zoomed right out
- The map redraws far faster: a new turn or season recolours the sheet in a fraction of the time, and panning stays smooth at every zoom
Beta 12.1
Hard Choices
- Every one of the 120 events has been rebalanced: each answer now has its own cost, risk or later consequence, no single answer is clearly best, and "do nothing" is never free
- New kinds of answer: gambles (a stated chance of something going wrong, or right) and investments that pay off a few turns later (crop rotation leaves fields fallow now and brings in a big harvest in five turns). Both are shown on the card, and the chronicle tells you when they come true
- The cards now show everything a choice does: the change in noble opinion that comes with legitimacy, deaths at court, recruits. Gains grow with your realm just as costs always did
- Some answers can now change fate: the right physicians may save your consort from the palace plague, and a general can be hired into your service
Beta 12.0
The Old World
- The map is an engraved, hand-coloured atlas sheet: relief shaded hills and mountain ranges, inked coasts with lines of water out to sea, woods drawn tree by tree, hatched hills and marsh reeds, all on aged paper inside a ruled border
- The known world fades softly into the blank vellum, where rhumb lines run out from wind-roses as on a portolan chart; land you are not watching is dimmed rather than blacked out
- The seasons recolour the whole sheet: green spring, gold summer, russet autumn, and snow with frozen shallows in winter
- Towns, farms, mines, mills, ports and wonders are little engraved vignettes, and every unit is an engraved figure
- Panels are tooled leather in gilt frames; the ground a unit can reach is one wash ruled round its edge
Beta 11.2
The Pixel Map, Sharpened
- The map is back to its bright pixel look, redrawn at twice the detail: shaded hexes, grass tufts and flowers, ripples on the water and outlined trees and buildings
- Mountains are pixel peaks with snowy tops and hills are green mounds; towns are drawn as before, with snow on their roofs in winter and captured colours flying beside the capital's church
- Soldiers, horsemen, guns and ships are small pixel figures to match the map, each standing inside its own hex
- No more emoji anywhere: the animals on the map, city-site flags, markers and messages are all drawn as painted icons
Beta 11.1
Starving Garrisons
- Troops holding a town besieged for four turns or more are weakened by hunger: blows against them land 15% harder, and the attack preview says so
Beta 11.0
Terms from the Starving
- A rival whose town is starving under your siege sues for peace (you are asked in Kingdoms, as with any offer); rivals starving each other ask for terms too
Beta 10.9
Fixes
- Siege rings, trampled fields and siege tooltips no longer show for a rival's town hidden in fog (they gave away troops you couldn't see)
- Wiping out a rival now closes the chronicle of that war too, as a conquest
- The cut-road warning is no longer repeated after loading a game, is given once a siege lifts with the road still cut, and starts afresh for a captured town
- A rival with no free shore no longer keeps buying stone for a harbour it cannot build
Beta 10.8
Polish
- The peace summary counts the colours taken and lost in the war
- Siege rings are hidden at the furthest zoom, where they cluttered the overview
Beta 10.7
Starved Out
- A town under siege for four turns running begins to starve: it loses one family to hunger every three turns (never the last) until the siege is lifted. The town tooltip counts the turns of siege
Beta 10.6
Trophies
- The latest colours a realm has taken hang over its capital as a row of small flags, each in the colours of the realm it was taken from
Beta 10.5
Reading the War from the Map
- Hovering over a town tells you if it is besieged, blockaded or cut off, and how many of its tiles the enemy holds; hovering over a held field names the town it is lost to
- The road tooltip says that a road costs one move per step
Beta 10.4
Taking the Colours
- A regiment destroyed in battle may leave its colours on the field. Taking an enemy's colours raises your legitimacy a little and lowers theirs; losing your own does the reverse. The chronicle records each one
Beta 10.3
Laurels
- A regiment with three or more battle honours wears a gold laurel on the map (a brighter one from eight)
Beta 10.2
Battle Honours
- Every regiment keeps count of the enemies it has destroyed, attacking or holding its ground; hover over it to see its honours beside its name
Beta 10.1
The Reckoning of a War
- When you make peace, the chronicle sums up the war: how long the fighting lasted, how many regiments you lost and how many you destroyed, and whether it was a victorious or a hard-won peace
Beta 10.0
Towns Under Snow
- In winter the towns lie under a dusting of snow, thickest on the roofs
Beta 9.9
Hardship
- A town under siege grows restless (+1.5 discontent); one with enemy troops in its fields or its harbour blockaded a little (+0.5). Both show in the town's mood breakdown
Beta 9.8
Siege Lines
- Any town under siege that you can see, yours or a rival's, is ringed in orange, so you can tell at a glance which of your own sieges are holding
Beta 9.7
Cut Roads
- Enemy troops standing on a road cut it: the town at its end loses its trade with the capital until the road is clear, and you are told when one of yours is cut
- Markets in fields held by the enemy no longer earn their Banking or Merchants' Guild bonus
Beta 9.6
Siege Fixes
- A town you capture no longer inherits its old owner's siege (your own troops at its gates counted as besiegers for a turn, and you were told a siege had lifted)
- Driving the besiegers off during your turn frees the fields for that same turn's harvest; a siege carries over correctly when a game is loaded, without a repeated warning
- Starting a new game clears the old map's roads at once Harbours
- Rivals who know Navigation send a worker to the shore to build a first harbour, and buy the stone for it if they are short
Beta 9.5
Blockades
- An enemy warship lying beside a port closes it: no trade or catch comes in from it, the town's fishing boats stay in, and you are told when a blockade begins and ends
Beta 9.4
Roads That Carry Armies
- A step along a road costs one move whatever the ground: through forest, over hills and across rivers (anyone's troops may use them, so mind your roads in wartime)
- Timber bridges are drawn where a road crosses a river
Beta 9.3
Frozen Rivers
- In winter the rivers freeze hard: troops behind a river lose its protection until the thaw (the tile tooltip says so)
Beta 9.2
Hearth Smoke
- In autumn and winter, pale smoke rises from the chimneys of every town, more of it from the larger towns
Beta 9.1
A Painted Map
- The map is hand-painted: meadows, forests, marsh, snowfields, rock, sea and ice, with painted farms, mines, mills, markets, ports and town houses
- Settlements are painted too: a village grows into a walled market town at 5 people, and capitals are star-fortress cities
- Mountains rise as painted peaks and hills roll; ruins, barbarian camps, redoubts, town landmarks and the wonders of nature are painted as well Relief Columns
- Rival troops marching to a threatened town now strike the besiegers they find at its gates when the fight looks good, instead of standing beside them
Beta 9.0
Living Off the Land
- Troops standing in an enemy town's fields forage: each sends a little food home and its men recover a little strength every turn
- Fields held by the enemy are drawn trampled and stripped, with the rings of their campfires
Beta 8.9
Look
- Units on the map are painted soldiers, gunners and ships in place of round badges, ringed in their nation's colour
- The emoji across menus, panels and messages are replaced by painted icons; unit lists and the unit panel show each soldier Sieges
- Enemy troops standing in a town's fields take their harvest: those fields bring in nothing while they stay (the city's yield breakdown shows what is lost)
- Two or more at its gates put the town under siege and cut its road trade; you are told when a siege begins and when it is lifted Rivers
- Rivers no longer coil round flat country into a solid knot of river tiles (one town could have a river in every field); they run in a line and end where the ground stops falling
Beta 8.8
Towns Ablaze
- A town that has just been taken or sacked burns for a few turns: embers at its heart and columns of smoke leaning downwind, thinning as the fires die
Beta 8.7
Battle Honours
- The chronicle records your regiments' victories by name, such as "The 1st Regiment of Foot destroyed Austria's 3rd Regiment of Foot"
- Promotions now name the regiment that earned them
Beta 8.6
Towns Before Colonies
- Rivals send out settlers only from towns of three or more, so a food-rich realm no longer drains every town down to a single family
Beta 8.5
Fewer Freebies
- The largest maps hold at most 40 ancient ruins (there were a hundred, a little too much treasure lying about)
Beta 8.4
Roll of Honour
- When one of your regiments falls, the chronicle records it by name ("Lost: the 3rd Hussars")
Beta 8.3
Colours of the Regiments
- Every regiment carries a number and a name in the manner of the day, counted for each realm as it is raised: the 1st Regiment of Foot, the 3rd Hussars, the 2nd Battery of Horse Artillery. Hover a unit to see it
Beta 8.2
The Edge of the Known World
- The frontier of what you've explored is softly shaded, so your map fades into the unexplored chart instead of ending in a hard edge
Beta 8.1
Smoother Hands
- Moving the mouse while smoke or floating numbers are on screen no longer stacks up extra redraws (it could stutter badly after a battle)
- Lifting the last finger after a pinch-zoom no longer counts as a tap (it could select, move or attack)
- A sideways swipe doesn't zoom, and a trackpad's small nudges add up to one zoom step instead of each zooming a full step
- Keys held when the window loses focus (or pressed with Cmd/Ctrl) no longer leave the map panning on its own
- A long chain of planned moves or a long battle replay isn't cut off by a click; if something really is stuck, units are let go cleanly
- Resizing the window keeps the view in range; move previews no longer wrap round at the map's right edge
- Rivals resent a realm with 40% of the cities only once there are at least eight in the world (the first to found a second city was set upon by everyone)
Beta 8.0
Harbour Life
- Coastal towns keep fishing boats on the water beside them (one for a small place, two from 6 people), drawn up out of the ice in winter
Beta 7.9
Camp Burners
- Rival soldiers with nothing better to do (no foe near, no city to march on) go after raider camps near their towns instead of wandering, and burn any left unguarded
Beta 7.8
Mustering
- A new land unit with no room around its city musters inside the walls (up to three there), instead of waiting turn after turn with "No room to deploy"
Beta 7.7
The Race for Wonders
- Each wonder of nature has a marked city site beside it, so it is worth racing for, and your rivals now go after them
Beta 7.6
Tidier Borders
- A city's lands grow outward nearest-first into a compact shape, and natural growth reaches only so far: 2 tiles for a small town, 3 from 5 people, 4 from 10 (borders used to creep on for ever, one town ending with ninety tiles and swallowing the sites others might have settled). Bought tiles and Urban quarters can still push past it
- Games started or loaded without the New Game screen's barbarian settings use the same defaults it shows (they were harsher)
Beta 7.5
No Death Spirals
- A noble house that has risen in rebellion needs fifteen turns before it can rise again (a weak realm used to face a new rising every few turns and never recover)
- A realm at its lowest ebb (legitimacy under 15) slowly recovers, +0.5 a turn
Beta 7.4
Workers Keep Their Heads
- Automated workers, and your rivals', run for the nearest city of their realm when raiders or an enemy army come within two tiles, and won't take a job right beside the enemy (they used to be carried off one by one)
Beta 7.3
Growing Towns
- A big town spills over into the country round it: hamlets of houses appear on its neighbouring land at 8 people, more at 12 and 16
Beta 7.2
Border Works
- Rivals at war dig redoubts on the border facing their enemy Fixes
- A city frees only an enemy's or raider's captive; a friendly worker or settler passing through is no longer taken
- A worker you give an order (a move, a Go To, a build or auto-explore) is taken off automation, so it doesn't wander back to spending your gold
- Rival settlers give up a site they can't get nearer to (across water or a closed border) and choose another, instead of stalling for twenty-five turns
- A rival city that gives up on a build no longer carries its finished work into the next one (units used to appear at once)
- Battle scars are left only where you could see the fighting
- Raider camps, ruins, wonders of nature and city sites never share a tile; a new game starts with no roads left over from the last
- Faster on big maps: science-lab counts are worked out once a turn
Beta 7.1
Weather
- Cloud shadows pass over the land and sea, drifting on with the wind from turn to turn
- The attack preview names a Redoubt's shelter, as it does a river crossing
Beta 7.0
Redoubts
- Workers can raise a Redoubt (15 stone, 10 wood, 3 turns) on open ground, hills, woods or marsh: an earthwork ring with a palisade and your pennant. A unit holding it takes 25% less damage, from blows and from fire alike
- Rivals weigh wonders of nature when choosing where to settle
Beta 6.9
Wonders of Nature
- Every map holds a few wonders of nature: the Great Falls (on a river), the Ancient Oak, the Crystal Peak, the Salt Marsh and the Sacred Grove. The city whose lands hold one draws its gifts (food, gold, science, stone, or legitimacy for the realm); the first time your people set eyes on one, you're rewarded. Hover one to see what it gives
Beta 6.8
Winter Ice & a Steadier Realm
- In winter the sea along every shore freezes over and rivers run icy pale Fixes
- A realm whose legitimacy hits zero stays there until it earns it back (it used to spring back to 50 the next turn)
- A widowed ruler takes a new consort, so the line of heirs goes on; when a noble house's head dies, his own house picks the successor (two houses could end up sharing one head)
- Captured workers and scouts are held by the raiders, not sent to fight, and go free to whoever takes their camp
- Raider camps and rebellions each keep their own banner (a camp's fall could wipe out an unrelated rising)
- Wars with realms already destroyed no longer weary your cities
- The one-time boons of Vassalage and Divine Rule come once, not every time the law is swapped back in
- Tribes no longer carry an unseen court that aged, died and held elections
Beta 6.7
Generals from the Ranks
- A seasoned soldier (Veteran or better) who wins a fight may now and then see one of its officers raised to general, while the realm has fewer than two
- Hovering a tile tells you more: a river's food, gold and defence, ancient ruins, a recent battlefield, a road to the capital
- An afternoon light lies over the map: warm from the upper left, cooler toward the lower right
Beta 6.6
Workers at Work
- Automate workers (B, or the button on a worker's panel): it mends what raiders spoiled, improves your land and moves on to the next bare tile by itself each turn. It never fells a forest unasked, and Next Unit passes it by
- Workers, yours and your rivals', head for the nearest tile they can actually improve instead of wandering (rival lands now fill with farms and mines several times faster)
- Saves keep each city's militia cooldown (reloading used to raise a fresh militia every turn)
Beta 6.5
On the March
- Columns on the march raise dust at each step (horse more than foot), and ships leave a white wake
- In winter, units caught outside a city wear a ring of frost, so you can see who is suffering the cold
Beta 6.4
Better Lands
- Every map gets a like balance: about 30% sea and 9% snowy heights whatever the dice (one map could be a third mountains), with woods on about 45% of the lowland and more open plains for farms and markets
- A captive worker standing in a city is freed by its people; an undefended city calls up its militia even with a captive inside
- Rival realms short of everything buy steel or food on the market to rebuild, and in an emergency raise only soldiers they can actually pay for (a realm could sit for years on a cannon it could never afford)
- Fixed faint vertical stripes over the fog and borders when zoomed far out
Beta 6.3
Fords & Fields of Battle
- River crossings: a melee attack from off the river onto a defender standing on river land falls 15% lighter. The attack preview says so
- Where soldiers fall, the ground stays scorched and strewn with spent shot and wreckage for a few turns, fading as the land recovers
Beta 6.2
Rivers That Matter
- Every river tile in a city's lands gives +0.5 food and +0.5 gold (shown in the city's statistics), and rivals now prefer to settle by rivers
- A city that can't place a finished unit (every tile round it taken) no longer piles up production while it waits; a rival city boxed in by its own army builds a granary, walls or a factory instead
- Rival treasuries sell surplus food on the market when they run short of gold
Beta 6.1
Fair Fights & a Truer Map Combat fixes
- Formations and generals defend the right way round: Square really is +30% defence (it was taking 30% more damage), Line -15%, and a cautious general's +15% protects his men
- Ranged units fire at most two tiles away, and not after moving (dragoons excepted); they can no longer strike from four tiles off through a move order
- Units can't walk through other armies to reach the tiles behind them
- Rival artillery waits out its reload even when an enemy stands next to it
- When a city falls, only its civilians go over to the new owner; soldiers in its lands stay loyal
- Resting never lowers morale (a line abroad used to bleed it away), and law-raised morale ceilings are kept
- The combat preview, and the rivals' judgement of a fight, count the counter-blow as it really falls Map
- Your units that can still act this turn wear a small gold pip
- Faster drawing: fog, borders' tint and seasons cost far less when zoomed out on a big map
Beta 6.0
Landmarks & Mixed Armies
- Towns show what they've built: a granary and its silo, a factory with a smoking chimney, and a landmark for each wonder (the Library's dome, the Cathedral's towers, the Arsenal and its cannon, the gilded Guildhall, the War College colonnade)
- Rival armies are mixed: foot, horse and guns, with artillery kept to about a quarter (late-game rivals used to field nothing but field guns)
- Rival workers build a first harbour once they know Navigation, so they can put ships to sea
- Empire overview (O, or the new top-bar button): every city in one table with its people, mood, spare food, gold, science, what it's building and who guards it; click one to go there
- The minimap is larger and sharp, fills its frame edge to edge (a quarter of it stood empty), shows cities as ringed dots and the view as a true-sized frame, and a click lands where you clicked
- A unit's health and morale show as bars, and its moves, sight, attack and the ground's defence as chips
- City names are banners in the realm's colours under each town, with its size, a star for a capital, a red count while it's being taken, and what it has built
- Volume sliders in Options for the music, the land's own sounds (birds, towns, marching) and the effects, kept between games
- Portraits: rulers and consorts are painted in the court dress of their own people, in the Court, on each realm's card in Kingdoms, at a first meeting, on a declaration of war (over a war camp) and among the candidates of an election
Beta 5.9
Ruins & Raiders
- Ancient ruins lie scattered across the wild land. The first unit of any realm to reach them finds something: a strongbox of gold, scholars' notes for your research, a sealed granary, an old map of the country round about, or a veterans' cache of arms
- Barbarian camps are drawn as camps: hide tents round a fire, a ring of stakes and a ragged black banner
- Raiders sack any town of three or more people (as they do a capital) instead of burning it down; only small villages can still be razed
- A soft vignette frames the map
- Events have a painted scene over them (the court, a camp, the countryside, a market, a harbour, a mine, envoys, a study), and each answer's costs and gains show as red and green chips
- Victory and defeat are painted too; a score result at turn 200 can be played on past with Keep Playing
Beta 5.8
Seasons, Sentries & Settlers
- Seasons show on the land: snow lies in winter, the woods turn gold in autumn, spring greens
- Enemies at the gates: a city with a hostile army within three tiles is ringed in red, and you're warned when the danger appears
- Settlers now cost 30 food and one citizen from the city that trains them (it needs at least 2). A city training them pauses its growth only once it can spare them
- Rival settlers head for the site they chose instead of wandering, and realms with food to spare found more cities
- New keys: K Kingdoms, + / - zoom, Z wakes a fortified unit (W only pans the map now, and never cancels a worker's build) Fixes
- Workers mid-build and fortified units can't be sent off with planning orders or auto-explore (a worker could carry its build to another tile)
- Escape on the tech tree just closes it; game keys no longer act behind it or on the title screen
- A war started by caught spies cancels open borders and other agreements; the gold counter updates after spying or a mapping deal
- Upgrading a unit drops a formation the new unit can't use (a column hussar made a lancer kept +2 moves)
- A worker's "Buy Adjacent Tile" really is adjacent to the worker
- Markets being built count toward the next one's price, and cancelling a build refunds what was paid Screens
- Tech tree laid out across the screen in three bands; hover a tech to light the road to it; click a locked one to make it your goal, and the techs on the way are studied in turn. Progress on a tech is kept when you switch away and back
- Kingdoms: each realm a card with an opinion bar, its army against yours, what it asks of you, your actions in one row and your pacts as chips
- The top bar fits a laptop: End Turn and the buttons at its right end no longer run off the screen
- The tutorial lights up what each card describes, and the research prompt waits until it's done
- Rulers, heirs and the great families have names from their own nation (twelve name lists, French at the French court and so on)
- City yields as coloured chips; dark scrollbars throughout
Beta 5.7
Roads, Shores & Painted Borders
- Roads: each city is joined to its capital by a road over land that doesn't cross a rival's territory. A city on the road earns +2 gold in trade (shown in its statistics); roads redraw as cities are founded or lost
- Borders are drawn like a painted map: dark ink beneath, the realm's colour, a light inner edge. The territory tint is one even wash instead of a grid
- The sea has surf along every shore and wave marks on open water
- Rivers are drawn as winding streams that follow the way the water runs, with tributaries joining and a mouth at the sea (older saves work out their rivers' flow when loaded)
- Battle replays only show fights you can see or take part in, skip the camera pan when the fight is already on screen, and play briskly on a busy turn
Beta 5.6
Towns, Trade & Militia
- Every city is drawn as a little town that grows with its people: a church and your flag over the capital, a ring wall once fortified
- Units are lit, brass-rimmed medallions standing on their own shadow
- The fog of war is one even shade instead of a grid of dark hex edges
- Market (top bar or M): sell surplus food, wood, stone, steel or gunpowder for gold, or buy what you lack. Prices slide as you trade and settle again next turn. Rival treasuries use it too
- An undefended city with an enemy at its gates calls up a militia (once every ten turns)
- Cities build faster as they grow, instead of every city working at the same pace
- Rivals short of gold build workers first and aim at units they can afford, rather than sitting empty-handed
- Muskets, rifles and cannon fire with a flash and a bank of drifting powder smoke; blows raise dust where they land
- An event you can't afford any answer to can now be declined (a little legitimacy lost) instead of locking the game
- Research picks up: every city's townsfolk add science (1 + 0.4 per citizen), so a growing realm reaches new techs every ten or so turns instead of every forty
- Fixed a battle replay that could wait forever when the camera was asked to pan twice at once
Beta 5.5
Living Rivals, Hungry Cities & a Sharper Map Economy & AI
- Cities grow only when they make more food than they eat; with the stores empty, a starving city can lose a citizen. The city panel shows the real food balance
- A city training a Settler stops growing while it saves the food
- AI rivals expand again: they found new cities instead of sitting on one, and stop waiting forever on builds they can't pay for
- Barbarians sack a capital instead of razing it: they carry off gold and food, burn a building and leave Diplomacy
- Seek Peace is now an offer the other side weighs (armies and goodwill); an accepted peace holds for ten turns
- An AI ally can't join a war on you during a treaty, and you're told when one does
- Barbarian raids no longer count as "being at war" when asking for agreements Map & menus
- Sharp on Retina and other high-density screens
- Unexplored land is a dark old chart; the camera can centre any tile, including the map's edges, and dragging glides
- Starting capitals sit away from the map's edge with land to work
- New painted menu backdrops; the menu fits a phone Fixes
- Rushed units pay their materials and need room to stand; the game stops cleanly at victory or defeat; loading a save no longer shows the last game's map; new games start in spring; the Engineers law's extra worker step applies to every worker; hex distances, promotions, research overflow and many smaller fixes
Beta 5.4
Old World — City Loyalty, Laws & Statistics Panel City Loyalty (Old World-style)
- Discontent vs Order replaces the old jobs-only mood. Cities track foreign culture, recent conquest, distance from capital, war weariness, low legitimacy, winter, slavery, and cruel rulers as discontent — countered by fortifications, cathedrals, granaries, garrisons, capital status, charismatic rulers, high legitimacy, and Tyranny
- Six mood tiers: Loyal (+10% production, faster growth) → Content → Uneasy → Unhappy → Furious → Rebellious (foreign-cultured cities can flip back to their original owner; native cities spawn rebel barbarians)
- When a city flips back via rebellion, the capital is reassigned, foreign garrison troops are killed, and non-combat units defect — matching capture rules
- Captured cities remember their original culture forever; re-conquest, garrisoning, or cathedrals can suppress unrest but not erase it
- City panel now shows the full discontent / order breakdown inline so you can see what is destabilising a city at a glance
Laws of the Realm — press L or click the new top-bar Laws button
- Six paired law slots inspired by Old World. First adoption in a category costs 1 order; switching costs 1 order + 60 gold:
• Governance: Centralization (+1 order, +1 legitimacy/turn) vs Vassalage (+10 family opinion, +10% building production, halved legitimacy gains)
• Labor: Slavery (+25% production, +1 discontent/city, family opinion drain) vs Freedom (+1 science & +1 food per city, +20% growth)
• Culture: Epic Poetry (+1 legitimacy/turn, +3 morale, capital order) vs Divine Rule (+15 legitimacy on adoption, family opinion drift, but unbeliever discontent)
• Order [needs Banking]: Tyranny (cities -2 discontent, family opinion drain, cheaper espionage) vs Constitution (rush -25%, +0.5 legitimacy + 0.5 family opinion/turn)
• Military [needs Military Leadership]: Limitanei (-50% maintenance, -1 ATK, +1 free unit/city) vs Standing Army (+1 ATK, +50% maintenance, +2 starting XP)
• Crafts [needs Engineering]: Engineers (+1 worker move, +20% production, cheaper wonders) vs Stonecutters (-25% stone/wood for buildings, fortifications give extra order)
- Adopting Vassalage instantly grants all your noble families +10 opinion; Divine Rule grants +15 legitimacy
City Statistics Panel — click the 📊 Statistics button on any city panel
- Production / turn as segmented pip bars for each resource (food, gold, wood, stone, steel, science, gunpowder), each with its own cap. Bars fill toward the cap and glow with a ★ MAX badge when reached or exceeded
- Public Mood shown as a split pip bar with red Discontent on the left, green Order on the right, plus per-factor bars for every contributing pressure or support
- Population shown as a citizen bar that lights up with a ★ FULL badge when the city hits its job cap
- Every yield breakdown lists the source: city center, tile improvements, banking, wonders, ruler bonuses, season multiplier, and active laws
Compatibility
- Saves are forward-compatible: existing cities are treated as native (originalNationId = current owner) and existing nations start with no laws adopted
Beta 5.0
Bug Fixes, Diplomacy & Hex Math
- End Turn (E) is now ignored when ESC menu, war declaration, or popups are open, and can no longer double-fire on rapid presses
- Combat-range highlight, AI threat detection, and city-spacing now use true hex distance (no more diamond ranges)
- Hex neighbor checks no longer leak across map edges
- Scouts no longer wander open ocean indefinitely after Shipbuilding
- River crossing penalty now applies in both directions
- Go-To now refuses unreachable destinations instead of silently consuming a turn
- Tribes and barbarians correctly start at war and will fight one another
- Multi-war eliminations credit the actual conqueror; eliminated nations' agreements are cleaned up
- Peace treaties now include a 10-turn cooldown to stop war/peace flapping
- Player-declared wars now drag War Alliance partners into the war
- AI disbands cheapest units when bankrupt instead of getting free gold; no longer queues already-built buildings
- 3rd caught espionage now provokes an immediate war declaration with explicit warning
- Production overflow from rushed or factory builds now carries into the next queued item
- End-game score breakdown now matches the displayed total
- Settler "Found City" pending name no longer leaks across unit selection; F-shortcut now checks the same conditions as the button
- Escape now blurs text inputs instead of closing menus while typing
- Renamed cities, ruler/character/family names, and tile annotations are now safely escaped in all panels
Beta 4.9
Bug Fixes & Stability
- Loaded saves now self-heal missing relations/loyalty data, preventing crashes during AI turns and combat
- Barbarian density slider set to 0 now actually disables barbarians instead of falling back to 40%
- Declaring war no longer crashes on saves that predate the loyalty system
- Fortify, formation change, chop, hunt, repair, and rest no longer waste an order when the action is a no-op
- Settling a city only consumes an order on confirm, not when opening the name dialog
- Mortars no longer fire grapeshot — AI ammo switching now respects each unit's allowed ammo types
- Killing an enemy no longer advances the attacker onto an already-occupied tile, preventing unit stacking
- Founding a city or spawning a tribe now keeps tile ownership and city ownedTiles in sync
- Set Ammo rejects ammo types the unit cannot actually load
Beta 4.8
Bug Fixes & Quality
- Game now plays fully offline; fonts and assets are bundled locally
- Cavalry charge bonus and "no ranged attack after moving" now correctly account for morale and general move bonuses
- Selected-unit reference no longer dangles when the unit dies, is captured by the AI, or its city is razed
- AI no longer walks onto tiles already occupied by enemy units
- Production queue rejects duplicate non-wonder buildings, preventing double-builds
- Loyalty values can now legitimately reach 0 instead of snapping back to 50
- Pressing W to wake a fortified unit (or arrow keys to cycle stacks) no longer also pans the camera
- Eliminated nations with no clear conqueror cleanly remove their orphan units
- Producing a building that no longer exists no longer locks the city in an infinite production loop
Beta 4.7
Diplomacy & AI
- AI nations can now refuse diplomatic requests based on ruler personality and context
- Cruel, martial, and reckless rulers are more likely to decline; diplomatic rulers are easier
- Nations at war refuse open borders and mapping agreements more often
- Powerful nations are less receptive when you approach from a position of weakness
- AI nations now seek war alliances with loyal AI allies when at war
- AI seeks peace when severely outmatched, not just when loyalty recovers
- AI prioritises weakly defended enemy cities over just the closest one
Beta 4.6
Diplomacy & AI
- AI nations now declare war on each other, not just the player
- Wars between AI nations are announced with a toast notification
- Animals show as small corner badges instead of large overlays on tiles
- Foreign units can no longer enter your borders without an open borders agreement
- Cancelling open borders now expels enemy units from your territory
Beta 4.5
AI
- AI nations now research technologies throughout the game
- All nations have a minimum science income so research always progresses
- Smarter AI tech priority: cavalry only with horses, military urgency during war, varied paths
- Friendly AI nations will move units to hunt barbarians threatening player cities and units
- Removed corrupt units with null/NaN HP on game load and each turn start
Beta 4.4
Fixes
- Fixed ranged attacks dealing NaN damage, leaving targets alive with corrupt HP
- Fixed ranged units unable to attack after previous combat changes
Beta 4.3
Combat
- Artillery units now have 4-tile attack range (5 on hills)
- Melee units can now move and attack in the same turn
- Barbarian units no longer stack on the same tile
Options
- Auto Next Unit toggle: disable automatic camera jump to next available unit after each action
Beta 4.2
Diplomacy
- Mapping Agreement: spend 30 gold to mutually reveal both nations' borders (requires Cautious+ relations)
- Infiltrate: spend 50 gold to covertly reveal an enemy's borders — 25% chance of discovery and loyalty loss
Fixes
- Fixed black screen flash during camera pan caused by accumulated canvas transform
- Rush produce no longer charges unit resource costs on top of the gold fee
- Unit upgrade now works anywhere within a city's borders, not just on the city tile
- Upgrade button now shows the correct unit name (e.g. Musketeer instead of Gunpowder Infantry)
Beta 4.1
Planning Mode (Cartography tech)
- Queue move and attack orders for multiple units simultaneously — all execute at once when you press P again
- Threat map: hover any enemy unit to see its movement range highlighted in red
- Combat preview: while assigning an attack order, hover an enemy to see estimated strike and retaliation damage
- Queued orders shown as coloured arrows on the map (blue = move, red = attack)
- Tile annotation (colour + label) still available by clicking empty tiles in planning mode
- ESC exits planning mode and discards queued orders; P executes them
Beta 4.0
UI
- Responsive topbar — collapses labels at narrow widths, wraps to two rows on small windows, abbreviates button text on very small screens
- Screenshot export — 📷 button saves the current map view as a PNG
- Unit sprites — musketeer, swordsman, crossbowman, scouts, workers, and cavalry line now render as pixel art sprites
Balance
- Production and building costs scale with city count: each additional city raises all costs by 20%
- Event resource costs follow the same city-count scaling
- Melee (non-ranged) units must be adjacent to an enemy to attack
- Pastures no longer require a herd tile — buildable on any valid terrain with Animal Husbandry
Beta 3.8
Tile Sprites for Improvements
- All 11 tile improvements now render as pixel art sprites instead of emoji icons: Farm, Market, Mine, Quarry, Steel Mill, Urban, Lumbermill, Barn, Port, Pasture, Science Lab, Treasury
- Grass tile variants updated — plains now use Grass and Grass_Plants sprites
Beta 3.7
Idle Reminders
- Popup appears at end of turn when any city is not producing — pick a unit or building directly from the popup or click More to open the full city panel
- Popup appears when no research is selected — browse available techs grouped by section with cost and turns estimate; open full Tech Tree from within the popup
- Both popups chain: idle cities appear first, then the research picker if still unset
- Dismiss with Escape or the Later button; they reappear next turn if still idle
Other
- New cities now start with a free worker
- Orders exhausted popup when you use your last order
- Tech research sound fixed
Beta 3.5
Noble Families
- Every nation now has 2–4 historic noble houses (e.g. Habsburgs, Bonapartes, Romanovs) with individual opinion scores (0–100)
- Low family opinion triggers scaled rebellions near the capital; opinion drifts based on legitimacy, gold, buildings, and events
- Court panel shows Noble Families section with opinion bars and Appease button (30g → +15 opinion)
- Old per-city discontent & rebellion system removed entirely
Events Overhaul
- 31 events expanded to 120 — 89 new events across 15 categories
- Events now require conditions: coastal city, mountain/forest/river tiles, at war, season, gold & legitimacy levels, techs, buildings, and more
- Characters can die from events: Plague in the Palace, Death of a General, Assassination Attempt, Duel of Honour
Bug Fixes
- Fixed rebel nations accumulating orphaned families and characters in memory over time
Beta 3.3
Changes
- Scrapped premade map ideas for now — nation selection screen, preset geographic city positions, world map terrain overrides, tribal nations system, and World map size all removed
- Nations and historical city name pools kept; nations spawn at random positions on procedural maps
- Default map size reverted to Large (200×130)
Beta 2.6(Save v10)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed units having 0 moves at start of turn after supply/winter attrition triggered morale flee
- Fixed E key triggering End Turn while typing in text inputs (empire name etc.)
- Fixed barbarian guard instantly respawning the turn after being killed — now waits before returning
- Fixed fleeing units retaining stuck animation state, causing visual between-tile glitch
Balance
- Default barbarian density reduced to 40% (was 60%)
- Seasons now cycle every turn (1 turn per season, 4 turns = 1 year)
- Swordsman Charge ability added: can move and attack in the same turn unless in Square formation
Map Generation
- Mountains now appear consistently (Snow tile sprites)
- Inland lakes generated in low wet areas (2–5 tile clusters)
- Rivers more frequent and meander naturally from mountains to ocean
Beta 2.5(Save v10)
Napoleonic Warfare Overhaul
- Morale system: units have morale that drops in combat — broken units flee, routed units are destroyed
- Formations: infantry and cavalry switch between Line, Column, and Square with tactical trade-offs
- Generals: new unit type with traits (aggressive, cautious, inspiring, resilient, swift) that buff nearby units
- Artillery rework: reload turns, ammo types (cannonball vs grapeshot), capturable by melee
- Supply & exhaustion: cities support limited units, over-supply causes attrition
Seasons & Calendar
- Four seasons cycle every 32 turns: Spring (+food), Summer, Autumn (-food), Winter (attrition, -movement)
- Year counter starting at 1680, advancing each full cycle of seasons
- Winter: units outside cities lose HP, swamps impassable, reduced movement
Characters & Dynasty
- Each nation has a ruler with unique traits affecting science, gold, production, morale, and diplomacy
- Characters age and can die — succession passes to spouse or triggers an election
- Court panel shows your royal family tree with trait badges
- Generals are linked to characters in your court
Enhanced Terrain
- Hills: new terrain type with defense and vision bonuses, +1 artillery range
- Rivers: movement cost penalty on river crossings
- Forests reduce vision, mountains and hills grant bonus vision
- Terrain movement costs now fully integrated into all pathfinding
Smarter AI
- AI holds 30% of forces in reserve, commits when engaged
- AI flanks with 3+ units, retreats on bad combat odds
- AI prefers high ground, switches formations and ammo types tactically
- Morale-aware: AI retreats wounded/demoralized units to safety
Bug Fixes
- Fixed terrain movement costs never being applied
- Fixed formation, general, and winter modifiers not affecting movement
- Fixed ruler trait bonuses not applying to city yields
- Fixed cannon/mortar missing ranged flag (could only melee)
- Fixed ranged attacks missing reload, ammo, and morale damage calculations
- Fixed morale treating 0 as full (nullish coalescing fix)
Beta 2.3(Save v9)
- Wonders: Great Library (+50% science), Grand Cathedral (-discontent, +growth), Royal Arsenal (+5 XP on spawn)
- Production queues: queue up to 3 items per city
- Auto-explore (X key): scouts automatically seek unexplored territory
- Unit abilities: Cavalry Charge, Grenadier Splash, Hussar Raid, Dragoon Skirmish
- AI naval production and basic naval combat AI
- Appease Citizens: spend gold to reduce discontent
Beta 2.2(Save v9)
- City buildings: Fortifications (+20% defense, +2 heal) and Granary (+growth, -discontent)
- Keyboard shortcuts: N(next unit), C(center), [/](cycle cities), arrows(cycle stack)
- Unit stack cycling UI in unit panel
- Shield/hammer visual indicators on fortified/building units
- Cavalry cheaper, ranged units faster, discontent system softer
- AI economy improvements: smarter production, worker priorities
Beta 2.0(Save v9)
City Loyalty & Rebellion
- Cities now have civilian population that grows over time
- Each citizen needs 2 jobs — provided by tile improvements
- Insufficient jobs cause rising discontent
- High discontent triggers rebellion — barbarian rebels spawn around the city
- Rebellion severity scales with how bad conditions are
- City panel shows population, jobs, mood, and discontent bar
- Pro-people event choices reduce discontent (capital most, others less)
Fog of War
- Enemy units hidden outside current vision range
- City vision radius now scales with population (5–8 tiles)
- Scouts retain their higher vision range (7–9 tiles)
Beta 1.9(Save v9)
Battle Animations & Combat Feedback
- Camera pans to battles during AI turns with sequential replay
- Floating damage numbers rise from attacked units (-HP in red)
- Attacker nudge animation — unit bumps toward defender and back
- Death particle explosions when units are killed
- Combat odds preview on hover — see estimated damage before attacking
- Movement path preview with dashed line and move cost badge
Fog of War
- Explored tiles outside current vision are now dimmed
- Hex-shaped fog with softer edges at the vision boundary
Dramatic Events
- War declarations now show a full-screen dramatic modal with war horn sound
- First-contact overlay when discovering a new civilization
- Tech completion slide-down banner showing unlocked items
- Screen shake effect on city capture or loss
Game Feel & Polish
- Turn transition banner ("Turn N") fades between turns
- End Turn button pulses when all units have finished moving
- Resource change deltas (+/-) float above topbar each turn
- Units have subtle idle bobbing animation
- City production completion shows floating text on the city
- Click-to-cycle through stacked units on the same tile
- Stack count badges (x2, x3) on tiles with multiple units
- Go-to orders now animate movement with camera follow
Bug Fixes
- Fixed device picker crash (script failed to load for returning players)
- Fixed victory score breakdown showing wrong numbers
- Fixed barbarian respawn tooltip using wrong timer value
- Fixed trade tooltip syntax error breaking the entire game
- Resume Last Game button hidden when no save exists
Beta 1.8(Save v9)
Combat & Balance
- Musketeers buffed: increased attack (8 → 10) and health (9 → 10)
- Attacks now consume the entire turn — units cannot move and attack
- Capital cities marked with a crown icon
- Refugee event "welcome them" now spawns a worker at your capital
- Musketeer, rifleman, and dragoon fire 4-shot volleys with staggered timing
Smarter AI Diplomacy
- AI nations declare war when relations reach Hostile (not just Furious)
- AI builds up army before declaring war — won't attack unprepared
- Earlier war warnings so you have time to prepare
Trade Overhaul
- Expandable trade panel per nation with dynamic pricing
- Friendly nations offer fair prices, hostile nations charge double
- AI refuses trades when suspicious and low on resources
Mobile & UI
- Device picker at game start (Desktop / Mobile)
- Mobile: touch to select, drag to pan, pinch to zoom
- Compact topbar and larger buttons on mobile
- Selected units flash with a pulsing ring
- Selected unit always renders on top when stacked
- Arrow keys switch between units on the same tile
- Rename cities from the city panel
- Go-to orders now move immediately instead of wasting a turn
Minimap
- Undiscovered nations hidden from minimap
- Territory borders shown as colored overlays
Barbarians
- Barbarian density reduced to 60% by default
- Only 1 camp (2 barbarians) spawns on turn 1
Victory History
- Victories are now saved as cards in your Victory History
- Access your past triumphs from the main menu
Beta 1.7(Save v9)
Diplomacy Overhaul
- Closed borders by default: units cannot enter foreign territory without permission
- Open Borders agreements: request access to allied territory
- War Help and Barbarian Pact diplomatic agreements
- Resource trading with AI nations
- AI requests diplomacy based on loyalty levels
Turn-Based Research
- Tech research now takes multiple turns based on science/turn output
- Progress bar shows current research status in topbar and tech tree
- Higher-cost techs take proportionally longer to research
Worker Build Times
- Improvements now take multiple turns to build (2-5 turns depending on quality)
- Veteran workers build 1 turn faster
- Workers stay in place and show progress while constructing
- Start with 2 workers (player and AI)
Barbarian Rework
- More hostile: faster spawning, more units, larger raid range
- New unit progression: Axemen (early), Raiders (turn 20+), Brutes (turn 40+)
- Barbarians hunt nearby units and target improvements
- Barbarians now raze captured cities instead of occupying them
Economy & Resources
- Gunpowder resource: produced by mines, required for gunpowder-era units
- Forests no longer produce passive wood (chop or build lumbermills)
- Lumbermill tech and improvement: 3 wood/turn on forest tiles
Territory
- Cities auto-expand 2 tiles every 5 turns
- Gray border lines between cities within the same nation
Smarter AI
- AI prioritizes building armies: minimum 2 combat units per city before workers or settlers
- Military tech research is always a priority, not just during wars
- Workers build lumbermills, markets, and quarries instead of just farms
- Workers seek out unimproved tiles instead of wandering randomly
- Peacetime production defaults to military growth over expansion
Beta 1.6(Save v8)
Menu Overhaul
- Clean 3-button main menu: New Game, Resume Last Game, Options
- Stylized "Forge Your Empire" setup screen with sections and color swatches
- Map size and difficulty selectors in setup
- Options panel with music toggle, save management, and update log
Bug Fixes
- Fixed multiple music instances playing simultaneously
- Update log popup no longer shows pause screen when closed
See in-game ESC menu for full history.
Gold:0
Food:0
Wood:0
Stone:0
Steel:0
Gunpowder:0
Science:0
⚜Legit:50
⚑Orders:0
⌛Turn1
★Score:0
Turn 1
Paused
Keyboard Shortcuts
E — End Turn T — Tech Tree L — Laws Panel M — Market O — Empire: all your cities at a glance K — Kingdoms Panel I — Field Manual Y — The race, the map through the years and the annals F — Found City (settler) G — Go To order R — Ranged Attack V — Fortify Unit Z — Wake Unit H — Rest & Heal J — Form up with the regiment beside it U — Split a company off Delete (twice) — Disband X — Auto-Explore B — Go aboard the ship beside it (a worker: Automate Worker) N / Q — Next Unit P — Planning Mode C — Center on Selection [ / ] — Cycle Cities WASD / Arrows — Pan camera +/- — Zoom in/out Space / Esc — Skip the rest of a battle replay Escape — Menu
Save Game
Update Log
Looking for Beta Testers!
This game is in beta and we need your feedback. Found a bug? Have a suggestion? Let us know at DeadlyDog Productions
Beta 13.3
Heirs, and the Years after Vienna
- Heirs who died before they could reign die in their year, and the heir history had takes their place: Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1751 (his son George is heir), Prussia's Prince Augustus William in 1758, Louis XV's Dauphin in 1765 (Louis Auguste is Dauphin), and Peter the Great's son Alexei in 1718
- After the Congress of Vienna, in a 1805 or 1812 game played on: the Holy Alliance of the Tsar, the Emperor and the King of Prussia, Napoleon's death on Saint Helena and the Greek rising in 1821, the French march into Spain for Ferdinand VII in 1823, and Louis XVIII's death in 1824, Charles X after him
- A start set to be played on past its peace says in its opening card what history has next (the Grand Vizier before Vienna, Silesia, the Revolution's wars...)
Beta 13.2
History Goes On Past the Peace
- History goes on past the peace: a game played on past its start's peace runs into the wars the next start opens with, in their year, and you are asked which side your crown takes; then that start's own years follow. From 1672 into the Siege of Vienna, from 1683 into the Great Northern War and the Spanish Succession, from 1700 into the Quadruple Alliance's war over Sicily, from 1733 into Frederick's march on Silesia and the War of the Austrian Succession, from 1778 into the Turkish war of 1787 and the Bastille, and from 1788 into the Revolution's wars. And a 1756 game goes on to Corsica sold to France and Catherine's Turkish war in 1768, Kagul and Chesma, a 1792 game to the war renewed over Malta in 1803 and the Emperor crowned in Notre-Dame in 1804. The Field Manual's History tab shows the start your game goes on into after your own, with where you stand
- A sovereign crowned when history's reign ends comes with the consort history gave: Maria Theresa with Francis Stephen of Lorraine, Frederick the Great with Elisabeth Christine, Bernadotte with Désirée Clary
- Breslau, Silesia's town, the Emperor's in the starts before 1740, and Prussia's by the Peace of Breslau when a game goes on into Frederick's war; and Ajaccio, Corsica's town, French in every start from 1778 on
- The autosave waits for a quiet moment, never more than two seconds, rather than adding a tenth of a second to the end of the turn; and it is made at once if the page is hidden or closed first
Beta 13.1
Reigns as They Ended, and Winter Quarters
- Reigns end as history had them, in every start and on through the longer games: the Emperors Leopold, Joseph and Charles VI, Queen Anne and the Georges, the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great and Catherine I, the Sultans deposed by their army, Charles XII before Fredriksten, Gustav III at the masked ball, Gustav IV Adolf deposed and Bernadotte crowned, each in the year and season it happened; and the heir history had is crowned (Philip V in Spain in 1700, the Elector of Hanover in 1714), whatever children the game gave the old sovereign. A sovereign whose reign ended later in history no longer dies of old age before it, and your own crown is never deposed by it
- 1700, after Utrecht: the Grand Dauphin dies, Louis XIV in 1715 and the Duke of Orléans governs for the boy Louis XV; Prince Eugene's Turkish war, Belgrade taken in 1717 and kept by the Peace of Passarowitz; and the peaces of the north, at Stockholm, Frederiksborg and Nystad
- Belgrade where it stood: the Turk's in 1700 and again from the Peace of Belgrade in 1739, the Emperor's in the 1718 and 1733 starts and given back in 1739; and Azov the Turk's in 1672
- 1718: Spain holds Sardinia, taken the year before, and gives Cagliari up to Victor Amadeus by the Treaty of The Hague
- Winter quarters: a rival army no longer sets out in winter for a town where the snow lies, far from its own towns, and waits for spring or takes what it can on open ground; and a regiment in a town of its own heals a point more each winter turn
- No Great Blizzard in Seville or Naples: it comes only to a crown where the snow lies over most of its towns
- Smoother on desktops: when a season comes before its sheet is drawn, the old sheet stands at full size while the new one is finished aside, and the turn no longer stops for it; and the autosave's picture is made off the main thread
- On a phone a nation's name on its card breaks between words (Austrian Netherlands)
- The idle-towns and research reminders and the ambitions card wait while the update log, an event or a choice from history is open, and come after it, instead of opening over it
Beta 13.0
The Seasons as They Fall, and History's Long Wars
- Winter snows where it snows: the lowland white from Sweden, Finland and the Baltic lands across Poland to Russia and the Ukraine, while Britain, France, the Low Countries, Denmark and the Norway shore stay open by the sea; and the mountains white wherever they stand, the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Dinaric Alps, Balkans and Caucasus, the Highlands only on their tops. Spring and autumn keep the snow on the higher mountains and in the Russian north-east, summer on the high Alps and the Caucasus, and the far north lies under it the year round
- Snow only where it lies: in winter a town's roofs, the trees, the hills and a regiment's coats are white only where the sheet has snow, and the snow falls over the view only there; Seville and Naples stay green. And the winter's march and cold are felt only where the snow lies: there a regiment moves a step less and, outside its own lands, loses men, while an army in Spain or Italy campaigns on through the winter, as they did (food falls by half everywhere)
- Where no snow lies the fishing boats stay out through the winter; and on unknown lands too the mountains are white in winter wherever they stand, and the snow, the cold and the boats follow the sheet as on the map of Europe. The rival crowns bring a regiment wearing away in the snow home to a town before the cold takes it
- The winter ice holds the ships as well as the sheet: from the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland to the White Sea no ship sails into it, and one caught there when winter comes lies frozen in till spring (the regiments aboard may still go ashore over the ice). The Atlantic, the North Sea and the Norway coast stay open, as the Gulf Stream keeps them, and are no longer drawn frozen
- History's wars last as they did: a war history declares sets the two courts against each other, so two crowns that were friends no longer make it up the next season, and a peace it makes ends the enmity
- 1805: the Finnish War. Sweden holds Åbo and Finland; in 1808 Russia, the Emperor's ally since Tilsit, falls on her to force her into the blockade, and by the Peace of Fredrikshamn in 1809 Finland and Åbo are Russian (yours to choose if you play Russia or Sweden). In 1812 Åbo is Russia's from the start
- 1805: the Sultan, urged on by the French, declares war on Russia at the end of 1806, until the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812; in 1807 France and Spain march on Portugal, and Spain and Portugal make peace when Spain rises; and in 1814, if the Allies are still at war with him, the Emperor gives up the throne for Elba
- 1814, in the 1805 and 1812 starts: by the Treaty of Kiel Denmark, beaten with France, gives Norway up to Sweden
- Reval, Swedish Estonia's town, in the 1672, 1683 and 1700 starts, and surrendering to Peter the Great with Riga in 1710; from 1718 on, Riga is Russia's Baltic port in every start (and Reval in 1718)
- The Black Sea coast as it was held: Azov the Turk's until Peter takes it in 1696, given back on the Pruth in 1711 and Russia's again at Niš in 1739; Kaffa and the Crimea the Sultan's until Catherine annexes them in 1783; Kherson and Odessa Russian from their founding; Bucharest and Jassy, Wallachia's and Moldavia's, the Sultan's; and Bergen and Trondheim, Norway's, the King of Denmark's
- Smoother on phones and tablets: the new season's sheet is drawn a little at a time over the next few frames, the old one standing meanwhile, so the end of a turn no longer stops for it (a quarter of a second or more on a phone); the new season is on the map a moment later
- Smoother on desktops: the next season's sheet, and the sheet again after a wood is felled or a town raised, are drawn aside a few milliseconds at a time and put in place when done, so the map no longer stops for a moment while you look at it
- Faster from afar: the whole of Europe seen at once draws about five times faster, and the middle zooms nearly twice as fast, on phones too
- The sea ice drawn as it lies: a floe's edge fades into the open water, and the waves fade out under it
- No emoji on the map: a camp's fire, a fortified regiment's shield, the builder's hammers and every unit, work and herd symbol drawn on the sheet are the engraved icons the panels use
Beta 12.9
Europe as It Stood, and a Snowy North
- The north lies under snow, drawn as it lies: deepest on the high fells and on the slopes turned from the sun, broken into drifts and bare patches at its edge, white where the light falls and blue-grey in shadow, the fir woods dark with snow caught in their crowns. It comes down to the Baltic in winter, and the Gulf of Bothnia and the White Sea freeze, fast ice along the shore and floes beyond. Wind-drifts are scored across the open snow, and no grass shows through it. On unknown lands the top of the sheet is snowy the same way
- 1805 as it stood: the Duchy of Warsaw (made at Tilsit in 1807) is no longer in the 1805 start, and Belgium (French since 1795) in neither 1805 nor 1812. Warsaw is Prussia's town in 1805, Brussels is France's, Mack's Austrians hold Ulm (France's first aim, which was not on the map before), and Kassel, Marburg and Hanau belong to the Elector of Hesse-Kassel until Jérôme Bonaparte's Westphalia takes them in 1807 (in 1812 that kingdom holds Magdeburg and Halle too). Nassau and the Swiss Confederation have their real heads, Duke Frederick Augustus and the Landammann Glutz-Ruchti. In 1812 the Kingdom of Holland, annexed in 1810, is gone too, and Amsterdam is France's. The Emperor gives Prussia Hanover in 1806 for her neutrality, and at Tilsit in 1807 Prussia can make peace too, giving up Warsaw to the King of Saxony's new Duchy of Warsaw and Hanover again. Saxony is an electorate until the Peace of Posen makes its Elector King Frederick Augustus I, and Bavaria's Elector is crowned Maximilian I Joseph in 1806. After Austerlitz Austria makes peace at Pressburg, giving up Venice and Ulm, and after Wagram at Schönbrunn, giving up Kraków (the Emperor's in 1805). Naples falls to the French in 1806 and Joseph Bonaparte is its king, then Murat from 1808. In 1810 King Louis gives up his crown and Holland is annexed to France.
- 1756: Peter III, six months on the throne, is deposed for Catherine II. 1792: Poland is partitioned in 1793 and 1795 and is gone, Danzig, Posen and Warsaw Prussia's, Kraków Austria's and Vilna Russia's, and Campo Formio gives France the Netherlands
- Towns change hands as history had them: Maastricht to Louis XIV in 1673 and back at Nijmegen, Buda and Belgrade to the Emperor, Riga to Peter in 1710 and Stettin to Prussia in 1713, Königsberg Russian from 1758 until Peter III gives it back, Prague the Bavarian's from 1741 to 1742, Leipzig Prussia's from Pirna to Hubertusburg, the partitions of Poland, the Netherlands to France at Campo Formio, Venice and Ulm at Pressburg, Warsaw and Hanover at Tilsit, Kraków at Schönbrunn. A treaty's terms hold even where the two crowns made their own peace first
- 1700: England is England until the Acts of Union in 1707, and Brandenburg becomes Prussia when the Elector crowns himself King in Prussia at Königsberg in 1701. Before 1806 Nassau is Nassau, not yet a duchy
- 1718: the Emperor's Naples, which Spain means to win back, is in the war even with the usual twelve rivals
- More of the year's own heads where there were no kings: the Grand Pensionary Heinsius in 1700, van der Heim in 1740 (until the Dutch make William IV of Orange stadtholder of them all in 1747), the Regent Anne of Hanover, Hanover's Elector who is also King of Great Britain, the Viceroy Eugène in Italy, and the governors of Milan, Naples and the Netherlands. An opening that names a head by his office reads properly: "William I, the Elector, reigns in Kassel". Flagships and generals go by the names of their year too: the San Felipe el Real at Cape Passaro, the Dauphin Royal in 1792, Wellington an earl in 1812
- Towns go by the names of the day: Buda, not Budapest; Pressburg, Brünn, Olmütz, Agram, Laibach, Vilna, Posen, Adrianople and Angora. No St. Petersburg before 1703, so in 1672, 1683 and 1700 the Tsar holds Kiev and Novgorod, and Riga is Sweden's. Buda is the Turk's until the Imperial army storms it in 1686 (and in 1788 Laudon's Belgrade is the Emperor's until Sistova gives it back), Brandenburg holds neither Stettin (Sweden's until 1713) nor Breslau (the Emperor's until Frederick takes it). Every crown begins with towns that were its own that year: Nuremberg and Augsburg are Bavaria's only from 1806, Geneva Swiss only from 1815, Erfurt and Halle never Saxon, Liège never the Netherlands', the Duchy of Milan no more than Milan (and no crown at all from 1714 to 1796, when it was the Emperor's), and Murat's Naples does not have Sicily. And the towns the year's wars were fought over are on the map in the right hands: Stettin Sweden's until 1713, Belgrade the Turk's, Lille and Strasbourg France's in 1792, Danzig and Vilna Poland's, Venice the Emperor's and Hanover French-occupied in 1805, Vilna, Smolensk and Riga on the road to Moscow in 1812. A town is set down only where it stood, never pushed onto another's ground under the wrong name. Hanover is among the usual twelve rivals in 1756, and the Austrian Netherlands in 1792. The aims that name Buda and Adrianople find them now
- The courts of their age: before the Revolution the great houses are the old courts' (Condé and Noailles in France, Golitsyn and Naryshkin in Russia, Stuart before 1714), not the Emperor's marshals, and characters are named for the noble families of their lands rather than for Blücher, Ney or Kutuzov. The map of Europe in 1680 has England and Brandenburg, Alexander Farnese in Brussels and Ernest Augustus in Hanover
- Faster: the map's trees, firs and hills are drawn from little kept pictures rather than stroke by stroke (they take well under half the time to lay down on a new season's sheet), and the realms' boundaries are laid on a realm at a time rather than hex by hex, so a crowded map scrolls and zooms more smoothly. The lie of the land is worked out about a fifth faster when a game begins, and a laptop with a touch screen no longer redraws the whole sheet at every end of turn
Beta 12.8
Eight New Starts, Ships That Carry Armies, and Peace at a Price
- A fifth historical start, 1683: the Siege of Vienna. The Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa and his army are camped before Vienna, and the Emperor, John Sobieski's Poland, Bavaria and Saxony stand together against the Turk; in the west Louis XIV is at war with Spain for the Reunions. Leopold I, Mehmed IV, Louis XIV, Charles II of England, Sophia regent for the young Peter and the Great Elector on their thrones, with their consorts and heirs
- History as it went: the relief of Vienna, the Truce of Ratisbon, the Edict of Nantes revoked and the Huguenots taken in by Brandenburg, Buda and Mohács, Russia in the Holy League, the Glorious Revolution and the Nine Years' War, Fleurus, Slankamen, La Hogue, Azov, Augustus the Strong elected in Poland, Zenta and the Peace of Ryswick, and the score counted at the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699
- A sixth start, 1792: the Revolution. Louis XVI's France at war with Austria and Prussia, Brunswick's army on the march, Catherine the Great, George III and the young Francis II on their thrones. Valmy and Jemappes; the King's trial (as France you decide whether the Republic is proclaimed, and the crown is called the French Republic from then on); the First Coalition, the Terror and Thermidor, the end of Poland, the Peace of Basel and the Batavian Republic, General Bonaparte in Italy, Campo Formio, the Nile, the Second Coalition, Brumaire, Marengo, and the score counted at the Peace of Amiens in 1802
- New achievements: The Kahlenberg (win a game begun in 1683) and Valmy (win a game begun in 1792)
- The historical starts are listed in order of their years, from 1683 to 1805
- A crown fighting beside you under a war alliance no longer declares war on you while your common enemy is still in the field
- Fix: in a 1756 game the Empress Elizabeth dies in 1762 even if Russia is no longer at war with Prussia, and Peter III is crowned
- The annals use the names of the day too: Poland-Lithuania and Hanover declare war, not the Duchy of Warsaw and Westphalia
- The end of a historical game names the winner by its name of the day (Poland-Lithuania, not the Duchy of Warsaw), and the annals read naturally: taken from the Ottoman Empire, peace made with the Dutch Republic
- Fix: in a historical start the crowned heads of the year no longer die of old age before the peace (Catherine the Great could die in 1793); those who died in those years die when they did
- When you attack, the game waits for the attack to play out (the charge or the volley, the smoke, and any who fall) before it picks your next regiment or takes another order; End Turn waits for it too
- In a historical start the first orders name the town your crown fought for that year: Take Breslau from Prussia, Take Vienna from Austria
- The Field Manual's History tab puts your own start first, dims the years gone by and marks where you stand
- Ships carry regiments: march a regiment to the coast beside a ship of yours and right-click the ship, and it goes aboard (a frigate or a ship of the line carries two, a galleon three). The ship sails with them, a roundel on it shows how many, and right-clicking the coast beside it puts them ashore one at a time (on a phone, tap the ship and then the coast). If the ship is sunk, they go down with her
- A seventh start, 1812: the Road to Moscow. The Emperor and Marshal Davout with the Grande Armée on the Niemen, Austria, Prussia, Warsaw, Saxony, Bavaria and Naples marching with France against Russia, Britain, Spain and Portugal. Smolensk, Borodino and Salamanca; Moscow burns and the winter retreat; Prussia and Austria change sides (as either of them you choose), Sweden comes in, Vitoria and Leipzig; the Allies in Paris and Louis XVIII; the score counted at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, or in 1820. A new achievement, The Road to Moscow
- In an 1812 game played on past the Congress, the Emperor comes back from Elba for the Hundred Days, and Waterloo follows
- A regiment, settler or worker beside a ship of yours with room has a Go aboard button in its panel
- An eighth start, 1672: the Disaster Year. Louis XIV, England and the Bishop of Münster fall on the Dutch Republic under Johan de Witt, with the Great Elector the Dutch Republic's only friend, and the Sultan marching on Poland. The Water Line, the murder of the de Witts and William of Orange, the alliance of The Hague, Khotyn and Sobieski's election, the Treaty of Westminster, Sweden's invasion of Brandenburg and Fehrbellin, Turenne killed at Sasbach, the Scanian War, and the score counted at the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678. Spain is governed by the Queen Mother as regent until Charles II comes of age. A new achievement, The Water Line
- The other crowns use their ships to carry regiments too: a ship fetches a regiment waiting on the coast, sails it to the shore nearest its target and lands it
- A ship's panel lists the regiments aboard, and Land first chooses which goes ashore next; the Empire panel lists them too, aboard their ship
- The hex tooltip says when land is out of sight (shown as last seen, washed dim), and names its owner and any regiment's crown by the name of the day
- When a peace history made involves your crown, it is offered to you to make or refuse: Breslau and Dresden in 1740, Ryswick in 1683, Basel and Campo Formio in 1792, Westminster and Nijmegen in 1672
- Playing Sweden in 1700, Denmark sues for peace at Travendal and Saxony at Altranstädt, as they did (offered to you to accept)
- In 1805, if France or Russia is yours, the raft at Tilsit is offered to you in 1807
- More of history's peaces are offered to you when your crown is a party: Ratisbon, Żurawno, Åbo, Lunéville, the Russian peace of 1801 and Amiens
- In 1756, playing Russia, the Empress Elizabeth dies in 1762 and Peter III's peace with Prussia is yours to make; playing Sweden, Prussia offers the Peace of Hamburg
- In 1805, when the war history made comes to your crown it is put to you: Prussia's in 1806, Spain's rising in 1808, Austria's in 1809, Russia's in 1812 and the Sixth Coalition in 1813
- Every war history made is put to you when the crown that went to war is yours: the coalition against Prussia and the Family Compact in 1756, the Second Silesian War in 1740, the Holy League in 1683, the First and Second Coalitions and San Ildefonso in 1792, The Hague, Sweden's invasion of Brandenburg and the Scanian War in 1672
- With a regiment chosen, the ships beside it with room are ringed in sea-blue ink, and Go aboard is the first of its orders; with a loaded ship chosen, the coast where its regiments can land is ringed
- The first turn no longer opens with Idle Towns and No Research cards over the start's own: the First orders list asks for both
- Disbanding a ship with regiments aboard is refused until they are put ashore (they were lost with her, without a word)
- Sink a foe's transport where you can see it and you hear how many regiments went down with her
- Go aboard is on the round order buttons under the map as well, and on the B key
- On a phone the view brings a chosen unit or town up near the top of the map, above its panel (now a little shorter), instead of to the middle where the panel hid it
- On a phone the ship texts say tap, not right-click
- On a phone the unit buttons go without their keyboard letters
- On a phone the tips and the Field Manual speak of taps and panel buttons, not right-clicks and keys, and the Kingdoms panel is no longer covered by the ambition plaque
- The idle towns and research reminders wait until a start's opening card is read, instead of opening under it
- On the end screen, war declarations and event cards a crown's name is written in light ink beside a dot of its colour (a dark blue or red name could hardly be read), and event cards use the name of the day
- Three events of another age are of this one now: the Nobles' Remonstrance (was Magna Carta Demands), Emigrants at the Border (was a nomadic tribe) and A Baron Swears Fealty (was a chieftain)
- A ship is not fortified: she lies at anchor, and weighs anchor again
- Peace for a town: at war, with your regiments at the gates of one of their towns, the Kingdoms panel lets you ask for it as the price of peace. They give it up only when they are losing; their garrison marches home
- And the other way: a crown well ahead of you in arms, its regiments at one of your towns, may offer peace if you cede it. Cede it, or refuse and fight on
- Between the other crowns too: one beaten in the field buys its peace with the town the victor stands before, and you hear of it if you know them both
- Treaties that promise a town now give it: the Peace of Breslau hands Breslau to Prussia, the Truce of Ratisbon Strasbourg to France, if the other side holds it
- Seek peace and Peace for a town say how they are likely to be taken: likely, even odds, doubtful or unlikely
- Pacts say their odds too, on hovering: likely, even odds, doubtful, or that they think too little of you
- Demanding tribute says its odds on hovering, as peace and pacts do
- And so does a proposal of marriage
- Options: Dim land out of sight. Turn it off and the land you have charted but can't see now is drawn plain, without the brown wash (rival regiments there stay hidden all the same)
- Hovering a ship tells who is aboard yours, and how many regiments a rival's carries; the tooltip no longer reads 'Man of_war'
- A ninth start, 1733: the Polish Succession. Louis XV goes to war for his father-in-law Stanisław, elected King of Poland, with Spain and Sardinia; Austria, Russia and Saxony put up Augustus of Saxony instead. Danzig falls, Don Carlos takes Naples and is crowned there, the Peace of Vienna sends Stanisław to Lorraine and Milan back to the Emperor, Russia and then Austria go to war with the Turk, and the score is counted at the Peace of Belgrade in 1739. With its achievement, Bitonto
- In the Kingdoms panel a crown in a war alliance with you is marked Allied, not just At peace
- 1805: Holland begins as the Batavian Republic under its Grand Pensionary, Schimmelpenninck, and is made a kingdom for Louis Bonaparte in 1806, as Nassau is made a duchy; a regent, governor or Grand Pensionary governs rather than reigns in the opening card
- Saved games show the year they stand at and the start they were begun in, and the crown by the name of the day
- History's cards wait their turn: two put to you at once are shown one after the other (the second used to replace the first, and was lost)
- Crowns declaring war in the same turn are named together on one card, instead of each card replacing the last
- A loaded ship right-clicked onto a far coast sails for the sea beside it, ready to put her regiments ashore there; go-to notices name the regiment
- A tenth start, 1788: the eve of the Revolution. Catherine the Great and the Emperor Joseph are at war with the Turk, Gustav III's Sweden has fallen on Russia, and France, bankrupt, has called the Estates-General. The Bastille falls, the Dauphin, the Sultan, the King of Spain and the Emperor die and are succeeded, Suvorov wins at Rymnik and Izmail and Gustav at Svensksund, and the peaces of Värälä, Sistova and Jassy follow; the score is counted at Jassy in 1792. With its achievement, Rymnik
- 1788, as France: in 1789 the National Assembly is put to you. Accept it and France takes the law of Constitution; call in the regiments and the mob storms the Bastille
- Resume Last Game names the crown and the year of the game it resumes
- An eleventh start, 1778: the American war comes to Europe. France is at war with Britain for the rebel colonies, Spain and the Dutch follow, and in Germany Frederick the Great's last war, with Austria over the Bavarian succession, ends at Teschen. Maria Theresa dies and Joseph II rules alone, Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, Rodney wins at the Saintes, and the score is counted at the Peace of Versailles in 1783. With its achievement, The Saintes
- The Historical Starts list is laid out in two columns on a wide screen
- Ships can auto-explore (X), charting the coasts and seas on their own
- The other crowns' fleets put to sea in war: their warships are no longer the last to be given orders nor kept back as a reserve, and with no enemy ship at hand they sail, round the capes, to lie off your nearest port and blockade it
- In the historical starts every town on the sea begins with a port beside it, to trade and fish from, and to be blockaded
- A blockaded harbour is ringed in dashed red ink on the map
- A twelfth start, 1718: the Quadruple Alliance. Philip V's Spain has landed in Sicily, and the Emperor, Britain, France and the Dutch go to war against it; Byng sinks the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro. In the north Charles XII falls before Fredriksten and Ulrika Eleonora is queen; the treaties of Stockholm, The Hague and Frederiksborg follow, and the score is counted at the Peace of Nystad in 1721. With its achievement, Cape Passaro
- On the map of Europe the crowns to choose from go by the names of the year chosen, each with its ruler (the Dutch Republic, William V of Orange, in 1778)
- A defeat on the score says where your crown placed
- Capitals on the map of Europe keep their own names: Madrid, not Toledo, when the city stands a hex off its true place
- The House of Savoy sits at Turin as King of Sardinia or of Sicily, and Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy at Milan; no Italian crown has Rome, which was the Pope's
- 1718: Victor Amadeus holds Sicily, and Spain's landing is at war with him; at the Treaty of The Hague Sicily goes to the Emperor and Savoy has Sardinia (yours to accept or refuse if Savoy is your crown)
- A town handed over by treaty never rises to go back to the crown that signed it away, and minds the change less than a conquest
- On the map of Europe a crown's far provinces are uneasy for being far, not in revolt
- Barbarians are brigands now: brigand bands, mounted brigands and brigand captains, brigand camps, and a Pact Against Brigands
- The crowns to choose from fit on a phone's screen
- From 1718 to 1792 Milan is the Emperor's, as it was from Utrecht until Bonaparte came (but in 1733, when the King of Sardinia has just taken it)
- The Bishopric of Münster sits at Münster in 1672 (it was at Kassel), and the Electorate of Hanover at Hanover
Beta 12.7
1700 to 1805: Four Starts, Kings and Heirs
- A new start, 1805: the Coalition (under Start when you set up a game). The map of Europe in the year of Austerlitz, charted to its edges: the great crowns come first, every crown begins with the learning, the towns, the armies and the fleets of the age, and the Third Coalition (Britain, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Naples) is already at war with France and her allies, while Prussia, Saxony, Denmark and the Porte stand apart. Choose your side by choosing your crown
- A second start, 1756: the Seven Years' War. Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, the Empress Elizabeth, Louis XV and George II on their thrones; Prussia and Britain against France, Austria and Saxony, with Russia and Sweden coming in in 1757, Spain and Portugal in 1762, and in 1762 the death of the Empress Elizabeth that saved Frederick. The score is counted at the Peace of Paris in 1763
- A third start, 1700: two wars at once. In the west the Spanish Succession, the Grand Alliance of Britain, Austria and the Dutch (with Marlborough and Prince Eugene) against Louis XIV and the Bourbon king of Spain; in the north Charles XII of Sweden against Peter the Great, Denmark and Saxony. Travendal in 1700, Queen Anne in 1702, Altranstädt in 1706, Poltava in 1709, and the score counted at the Peace of Utrecht in 1714
- A fourth start, 1740: the Austrian Succession. Frederick seizes Silesia from the young Maria Theresa, France, Bavaria, Spain and Saxony fall on her and Britain and the Dutch stand by her; Mollwitz, the Peace of Breslau, the Second Silesian War, Fontenoy and Hohenfriedberg, and the score counted at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748
- In 1740 games the Guards put Elizabeth on the throne of Russia in 1741
- And in 1741 Sweden goes to war with Russia, the Hats' War, until the Peace of Åbo in 1743
- Historical Starts on the title screen: the four years laid out, each opening the setup with its year, the map of Europe and its leading crown chosen
- Choosing a historical start sets the game up for it: the map of Europe, and a dozen crowns about you unless you choose fewer
- In a historical start the first orders ask you to take a town from your enemies rather than found one, and the turn counter counts down to the peace; your victories list the year and the start they were won from
- In 1700, 1740 and 1756 the crowns bear the names of their own day, on the map and in the Kingdoms panel: the Dutch Republic, the Electorate of Saxony, Poland-Lithuania, Hanover, the Spanish or Austrian Netherlands
- A new game on the map of Europe begins with the crowned heads of 1680: Louis XIV, Charles II of England, Leopold I, the Great Elector, Charles XI, John III Sobieski and the rest, with their consorts and heirs, and the Dutch Republic and the Electorate of Saxony under their own names
- In 1756 games, from 1758 Britain pays Prussia a subsidy of 12 gold a turn while the two stand together, as by the Anglo-Prussian Convention
- In 1805 the crowns are ruled by the men of the age: Napoleon, George III, Francis II, Alexander I, Frederick William III and the rest, with their consorts and something of their tempers
- In 1805 the greatest armies are greatest: France begins with the Grande Armée and Marshal Davout, Russia with its numbers and Cossacks, Austria with more whitecoats; and a general can be given a name like a regiment
- The flagships of the year of Trafalgar sail under their own names: HMS Victory, the Bucentaure and the Santísima Trinidad
- Trafalgar: in an 1805 game where neither Britain, France nor Spain is yours, Nelson destroys the French and Spanish fleets in the autumn of 1805
- Blenheim: in a 1700 game where none of France, Bavaria, Britain or Austria is yours, Marlborough and Prince Eugene destroy the Franco-Bavarian army in the field in 1704
- The great battles of 1756 among the crowns you don't hold: Rossbach and Leuthen in 1757, Kunersdorf in 1759
- The great battles of 1805 among the crowns you don't hold: Austerlitz, Jena and Auerstedt, Leipzig
- Field Manual: a History page with the turns history takes in each of the three starts
- An 1805 game opens with a card laying out the year: who reigns, your side and your enemies, when the score is counted, and what history has in store
- In a game begun in 1805, history moves as it did if the crowns are still placed for it: in 1806 Prussia joins the Fourth Coalition against France, in 1807 Russia may make peace with France at Tilsit, in 1808 Spain rises against the French, in 1809 Austria takes up arms again, in 1812 Russia and France come to war, and in 1813 the Sixth Coalition forms
- In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire is dissolved, and Francis II reigns on as Francis I of Austria
- The Continental System: from 1806, while France stands, she and her allies will not trade with a British player, and an ally of France that trades with Britain angers her
- In 1810, if Napoleon still reigns and Austria is at peace with him, he sets Joséphine aside and marries Marie Louise of Austria, joining the two houses; in 1811 their son, the King of Rome, is born
- Playing France or Austria, the Austrian match of 1810 is yours to make or refuse
- History's other turns of the crown: George II dies in 1760, Charles IV gives up the throne of Spain to Ferdinand VII in 1808, and a prince crowned without a regnal name drops his title
- In 1811, if George III still reigns, his mind fails and the Prince of Wales governs Britain as Prince Regent
- General Winter: on the map of Europe a foreign regiment caught in Russia's lands in winter loses men twice as fast
- An 1805 game counts its score at 1815, when the Congress of Vienna meets, or at 1825 (a new crown keeps Turn 200 or 300)
- At the end of an 1805 game the great crowns are summed up as they stand at the Congress: their towns and who reigns
- In the historical starts the score at the peace is reckoned among the great powers and you: a lesser crown that sat out the war and settled the empty north no longer carries off the victory
- In the historical starts the rival crowns make for the towns they fought over: Austria for Breslau in Silesia, Frederick for Dresden and Prague, Napoleon for Vienna and Berlin
- In 1805 Russia's capital is St Petersburg, where the Tsar's court sat
- In 1805 the wonders of nature are long known: the charted map no longer hands out every explorer's gift on the first turn
- On the map of Europe the crowns have the tempers history gave them: France, Prussia, Sweden and Warsaw warlike, Britain and the Dutch merchants, Austria a builder, Russia and the Porte expansionist, and so on
- On the map of Europe brigands plunder a town they take but never burn it to the ground
- Coalitions: once your crown stands far ahead (the second alarm of Europe), the crowns that distrust you may band together against you, two to four at once, at war with you and allied to one another: the First Coalition, then the Second, no sooner than some thirty-five turns apart
- And when a rival crown grows too great (a third of all the towns and well ahead in score), the others band together against it and ask you to join them: join, and you are at war with it at the coalition's side
- Royal marriages, as in Old World: propose a match between your court and another in the Kingdoms panel (60 gold, half back if refused). A crown that thinks well of you may accept; while the marriage lasts each of you thinks better of the other every turn, and making war on your in-laws costs 15 legitimacy
- A friendly crown at war with your own enemy may propose a war alliance against it, and courts that think well of you may propose a royal marriage themselves (answered in the Kingdoms panel)
- A crown that sues for peace while badly beaten or starving under your siege offers gold with it, a share of its treasury
- Allies & foes, a lens for the map (in the Kingdoms panel): every crown's lands tinted by how it stands with yours, your own in gold, allies green, enemies red, the rest grey
- The Kingdoms panel names each crown's ruler
- The court ages with the calendar: rulers, consorts and children grew a year older only every eight years, so a reign never ended; now children are born, grow up and come to the throne
- A grown heir now comes to the throne before the widowed consort, who stays at court; the 1805 crowns have their heirs, and a prince crowned takes his regnal name (the Prince of Wales becomes George IV)
- Regencies: when the heir is a child the consort rules as regent, and the heir is crowned at sixteen
- The Royal Court shows the line of succession, eldest first, with who is next in line, the dowager, and the years of recent deaths
- The Annals keep the reigns: a ruler's death and who came to the throne after
- The Annals keep your wars and your peaces: war declared, and peace made
- News of the other courts: when a crown you know loses its ruler, the log says who has come to the throne
- Fix: a crown that signs a war alliance no longer turns on its own allies or in-laws to join its new friend's wars, and your allies never join a coalition against you (Britain could declare war on its Prussian ally)
- Fewer wars out of nowhere: a crown that joins its new ally's war on you now keeps to your opening turns' peace like any other, and one with no town within reach of yours stays out of it
- The Annals of the Reign: beside the score chart and the map through the years, the notable moments of your reign under their years: towns founded, taken and lost, battles named, ambitions fulfilled, wonders raised, royal marriages, coalitions and crowns brought down
- The Annals can be copied as text, year by year, to paste wherever you like
- A new ambition and achievement, The Capital Falls: take a rival crown's capital (a town remembers being one, in your saves too)
- Achievements, kept in your browser across every game: twenty-five of them, from putting a regiment ashore on another landmass to winning on Hard or on the map of Europe. See them under Victories & Achievements on the title screen
- Battles are named: a field where three or more regiments have fallen is lettered on the chart with the nearest town and the year (Leipzig 1813), as the old atlases marked them, and written in the log
- A regiment of yours can be given a name of its own (Rename, under its name in its panel), and the panel names every kind of unit properly (Heavy Cavalry, not Heavy_cavalry)
- Dragoons and gunners in their own nation's coats too: French dragoons in green, British in red, Austrian in white, Prussian in light blue; Austrian gunners in brown, Russian in green
- A town no longer offers regiments your crown has outgrown: once the drill that upgrades one is learned, only the newer is offered (swordsmen give way to grenadiers, crossbowmen to musketeers; siege guns stay)
- Pointing at a hex beyond this turn's march shows the whole route, with a numbered roundel where each turn's march will end; and the number on a march within reach now counts the moves it costs (woods, hills, rivers and boats included), not the hexes
- The other crowns' battles at the end of a turn can be shown, played quickly, or left out unless you fight in them (Options, Their battles), and Space or Esc skips the rest of a replay
- The opening turns are your own: no crown declares war on you before turn 40 on Easy, 25 on Normal or 15 on Hard (unless you start one)
- First orders: at the start of a game a short list in the corner of what to do first (choose research, set a town's work, march a regiment, found a second town, improve a hex, choose an ambition, end the turn), ticked off as you do each. It goes when they are all done, or with its ×, and can be turned off for new games
- In the last twenty turns before the score is counted, the turn counter says how many are left
- Much faster turns on large maps: the shading that marks the land you know and the land you can see now was redrawn from 26,000 hex outlines (and blurred) every time the view changed, some four seconds a turn on a large map of Europe; it is now worked out a pixel at a time at a third of the size, the same soft edge in a fiftieth of a second, and no longer redrawn at all when only the season changes
- Faster turns: the next season's map is drawn ahead while you think (on computers with the memory for it), so the end of a turn on a large map no longer waits a third of a second to recolour the sheet
- The Map Through the Years shows the towns from the first turn (it was empty until a turn had ended)
- Closing a panel by clicking beside it no longer lets the click fall through to what lies beneath
Beta 12.6
Europe, Tempers and Tribute
- A map of Europe: choose "Europe" under Lands when you set up a game, and the crowns begin at their real capitals (London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow and the rest) on an engraved chart of the continent, its seas and ranges lettered with their old names (Mare Balticum, Pontus Euxinus, the Alps, the Carpathians). Best on a Large or Huge map. A rival is never the same nation as you any more
- On the map of Europe every crown begins with up to three of its own towns where they stood: Prussia with Berlin, Königsberg and Breslau, Austria with Vienna, Prague and Buda, Russia with Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev, and so on
- The map of Europe has its great rivers where they run, the Rhine, Danube, Elbe, Vistula, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Po, Tagus, Thames, Dnieper, Volga, Don and more, lettered with their Latin names
- On the map of Europe a town founded near a real city takes its name (Hamburg, Lyon, Kiev and some 150 more), whichever crown founds it
- Every rival crown has a temper, shown in the Kingdoms panel: Warlike crowns keep larger armies and go to war sooner, Builders raise wonders and keep the peace longer, Expansionists spread fastest, and Merchants are the easiest to get on with
- Meeting a crown tells you its temper, on the first-contact card and in the log
- Demands for tribute: a crown with twice your army that thinks little of you may demand gold (warlike crowns most often, at most once in twenty turns). Pay and it keeps the peace for fifteen turns, at a little legitimacy; refuse and it thinks much worse of you, but your people respect it
- You can demand tribute too (Kingdoms, when your army is twice theirs): a crown pays if it fears you enough (merchants soonest, warlike crowns hardly ever), and likes you less either way
- Long wars with you wear your enemies down too: after some thirty-five turns a crown may offer peace (warlike crowns hold out longer); the choice is yours, in the Kingdoms panel
- The Kingdoms panel says whom each crown is at war with, so the wars of Europe can be read at a glance
- Choose how a game can be won when you set it up: the score counted at turn 200, at turn 300 or never, and ambition victory on or off
- Town projects, as in Old World, for a town with nothing better to make: a Trade Fair turns half its production into gold, Learning into research, and Festivals ease its discontent. They never finish, and anything you choose takes over at once
- The Map Through the Years: beside the score chart, a small map of the world with every town in the colour of the crown that held it, played back turn by turn (only the lands you have seen while the game goes on, all of it at the end)
- Upgrading a merged regiment re-arms every company of its kind (at the cost of each) and keeps its men in proportion; before, its companies stayed as they were and it could end up with more men than it could hold. The Regiments page has an Upgrade button for any regiment that can be upgraded where it stands
- Tips, once each: the first time you choose a regiment or a town, earn a promotion, run out of orders, meet winter or war, learn Navigation or have two regiments side by side, a short card says what you can do. "No more tips" turns them off, and Options can bring them back
- Fix: a town's banner counted a siege out of 4 turns even behind walls (6) or bastions (8); it now shows the real number, and says so on hover
- Fix: towns' name banners near the bottom-left corner printed over the event log
Beta 12.5
Ambitions, Promotions and the Sea
- Ambitions, as in Old World: your crown sets itself one goal at a time, chosen from three (hold three towns, raise walls, field a merged regiment, build a wonder, take a town, topple a crown and so on, grander as you go). Each one fulfilled gives +10 legitimacy and 15 points of score, and the tenth is an Ambition Victory. The one in hand is shown under the top bar; click it to see them all
- Promotions, as in Old World: every rank a regiment reaches earns it a promotion, chosen from two in its panel whenever you like (a gilt star over it says one is waiting): Drilled, Hardened, Iron Discipline, Field Surgeons, Forced Marches, Squares Against Horse for the foot, Pursuit for the horse, Gunnery for the guns. The other crowns promote theirs too
- Regiments can take ship: once you know Navigation, any land unit can go aboard from a coast and cross the sea in a ship's boat (going aboard or ashore costs 3 moves, each hex of sea 1). Aboard it can't attack, fire or dig in and takes half again the harm. Crowns on islands can now be reached and conquered, and the rival crowns cross the sea too when what they want lies on another shore
- Rival crowns wage real campaigns: the army marches on one enemy town together instead of each regiment choosing its own, a regiment that gets into an enemy town stays there until it falls, and an enemy near one of their towns calls back only the regiments nearest it, not the whole army. In test games towns changed hands in wars between rivals about three times as often
- The rival crowns keep ambitions too: theirs count in their score and legitimacy as yours do (the Kingdoms panel shows how many each has fulfilled), though only you can win by them. An ambition out of reach can be set aside for another at the cost of 5 legitimacy
- War-weariness: a war between two rival crowns wears both down, and after some thirty turns they may come to terms, so Europe is no longer at war with itself all game
- Rival treasuries work: a crown with a full purse hurries one town's work a turn (as Rush Produce does for you), sells mountains of steel and powder at the market, and buys bread for its next colonists
- Your ruler's likeness in the top-left corner, as in Old World: a gilt ring round it fills with your legitimacy, and a click opens the Court
- The Race for Europe: every crown's score turn by turn as a chart ("The race" in the Kingdoms panel, and on the victory and defeat screens), with the turn's standings under the pointer and a crown's line picked out from the legend
- A Field Manual (I, or from the pause menu): every regiment with its picture, attack, men, moves, range, cost, the research it needs and what it upgrades to, and the buildings, land improvements, promotions and ambitions
- The Empire panel (O) has a second page, Regiments: every regiment you have, where it is, its men, rank and orders, those with a promotion to choose or still awaiting orders first; click one to go to it
- Keys for the new orders: J forms up with the regiment beside it, U splits a company off, Delete twice disbands; every round order button shows its key
- The tech tree and the event log in the same navy and gold as the rest of the interface
- The title screen and its buttons in navy and gold too
Beta 12.4
Merged Regiments, Fire on the March, and Every Nation in its Own Coat
- Regiments can be merged: right-click one of your own beside the one you have chosen and it marches in and takes it into its ranks, up to three companies under one colour. Their men and fire add up, every company stands on the field, and all of them fire at once
- A merged regiment can split a company off again (the unit panel), the other crowns merge theirs too, a merged regiment is marked II or III on the chart from afar, and generals wear their nation's coat
- Any regiment can be disbanded from its panel (two clicks, so a slip of the mouse loses nothing); a merged regiment goes whole, so split off a company first to keep it
- Musketeers, riflemen and the other ranged foot and horse can fire after marching, as long as they have a move left (firing ends their turn). The guns still fire only from where they began the turn. Riflemen reach 3 hexes (4 from a hill)
- The line infantry wear their own nation's coats of 1805–1812: Prussian blue, the British red coat, the Austrian white, Russian green and the rest, facings and all
- The camera glides: WASD and the arrows ease in and out (Shift for faster) instead of jumping two hexes at a time, dragging is smooth, and the chart no longer redraws itself soft and then sharp on every pan
- Towns sound like towns: a market crowd recorded in a French square, and now and then a horse walking by, a church bell, a peal or a carillon, in place of the synthesised street noise
- The rival crowns want land: they send out more settlers, two at a time once they have three towns, from smaller towns early on, and fund their colonists' food; each crown has its own appetite for expansion
- A new dress for the interface, after Old World: deep navy panels in thin gold, the End Turn button a gilt crest in the corner with the turn and the orders left, and the chosen regiment's orders as a row of round engraved buttons along the bottom (fire, march, fortify, rest, form up, split, next, disband), each with its key
- The further ahead you get (your share of the technologies, your towns, the length of the game, your lead in score), the harder Europe pushes back: rivals gain richer treasuries, steadier soldiers and more orders, raiders grow bolder, and the crowns trust you less each turn. You are told as each stage of their alarm is reached
- Volleys and guns sound as they do in the trailer: a line's eight muskets fired together with the boom and the echo off the country, and the cannon's thump and rumble
Beta 12.3
Orders, Walls and the Sound of the Field
- Old World controls: left-click picks out a regiment or town, right-click gives the order (march, attack, fire, or set out for somewhere further). A tap on a phone still marches
- Every move or attack costs an order, not only a regiment's first of the turn
- Regiments are paid for when you order them: the cost leaves the treasury at the press of the button (queued ones too), comes back if you clear the queue, and is lost if the town falls
- Which regiments still need orders, at a glance: those waiting stand on a gilt ring, those done for the turn are greyed; the Next Unit button counts them and walks through them all, and End Turn glows when none are left
- City Walls (a curtain wall and towers) and then Bastions (a star fort): the garrison takes 25% / 40% less harm and an enemy must hold the town 6 / 8 turns to take it, and you can see them raised round the town
- A town's lands grow by themselves with its people, a hex a turn, reaching further as it grows
- Regiments are smaller on the chart, well inside their hex; they lunge into the enemy, kick back when they fire, flinch red when struck, and a broken regiment's figure topples over
- New sounds for everything, made in the game itself: paper and quill, the seal at turn's end, church bells, the smith's hammer, the side drum, coin, the axe, boots and hooves on the march, steel, a volley's ragged crash; and when you lean in over woods or towns, birdsong and wind, or the murmur of the streets
- Seventeen more pieces of music of the time (Bach, Vivaldi, Corelli, Lully, Purcell, Pachelbel, Charpentier), credited under Options; the playlist shuffles
- The sea moves; volley smoke drifts off sideways instead of hiding the target; sea names stay on their water; no more leaves falling across the screen; zooming glides, and the chart stays sharp while you pan
Beta 12.2
The Atlas, Finished
- Snow drifts down over the map in winter and leaves blow across it in autumn; mountains rise in shaded relief and throw their shadows across the plains below; rivers start as fine lines in the hills and swell as streams join them on the way to the sea; pine woods grow in the north and under the mountains
- Seas, lakes and mountain ranges are lettered with their names, and sea serpents, whales and carracks swim in the open ocean; a title cartouche held by cherubs names your realm and the year in the sheet's corner, a compass rose is printed in the widest sea, a scale of miles in the lower corner, and the blank places read Terra Incognita
- Realms are lettered across their lands in spaced capitals; their borders are a wash of their colour inside a dotted line; the sheet is browned at its edges and creased where it was folded
- A village grows into a market town (or a harbour town on the coast), a great walled city at ten people, and a capital is a star fortress; town names are on parchment ribbons
- Units stand on painted wargame bases with a pennant in their realm's colour and turn to face the way they marched; from far off they show as wooden wargame blocks marked infantry, horse, guns or ships; regiment counts are pressed into wax seals
- Fields where a regiment fell are marked on the chart with crossed swords and the year, as the old maps marked their battles (and they stay marked)
- The route of march is a red dashed line with an arrowhead, roads are double-ruled, strength and morale are little ink-ruled gauges, and map messages are lettered in ink
- Every icon, every event picture, every ruler's portrait and the pictures behind the menu are hand-coloured engravings; End Turn is a wax-red button; the tech tree is a set of parchment cards; all panels are leather in gilt frames
- The chart lies on a leather desk, throwing a soft shadow, with the chartmaker's brass dividers and magnifying glass beside it; a town's garrison stands at its gate so the town can still be seen
- Deep water is hatched in fine level lines and shaded slopes in short strokes, as a copperplate engraver works; roads cross rivers on little stone bridges and a fortified town's walls are a bastioned trace; shallows are stippled off every shore, rivers snake and widen toward the sea, hills are shaded molehills, and wonders of nature are named beneath them; a siege is drawn as a ring of earthworks in red ink, and newly found land is inked in out of the blank sheet
- The city and unit panels are headed by the town's or regiment's own engraving; research is crowned by a gloria of gilt rays; the turn is announced with the season and the year in Roman numerals; a new game opens on the whole chart lying on the desk and leans in to your capital, and a big world opens with the chartmaker at work
- A wind head puffs from the sheet's corner and a key to its marks (Explicatio Notarum) sits in another; a new town, or one that changes hands, is stamped with its realm's wax seal; figures step along as they march, cast long shadows to the south-east (towns and works too) and lean a little away from the middle of the view, like miniatures on a table; your marches this turn are pricked out in dots
- Nine more event engravings (plague, storm, fire, a comet, a royal wedding, pilgrims at the cathedral, wolves in the forest, conspirators, brigands), so events show fitting pictures; the frame is numbered in degrees and the sheet signed in its foot margin; the country round a town is under the plough and settled land is dotted with little churches; a town in danger is ringed in red ink; ruler portraits are engraved miniatures in oval gilt frames; the event log is a page of the chronicle in ink on parchment; plans are pencilled on the chart, and a gunner's targets are marked with red cross-hairs
- The blank sheet is smoke-browned vellum lying on a desk, with older sheets of the survey askew beneath it, an inkwell and quill and a seal with its wax beside it, and a reading glass that shows the leather under it magnified; the chart is printed on laid paper, the land you've charted casts a soft shadow onto the blank sheet, and a small world lies in the middle of the desk
- Powder smoke, hearth smoke and burning towns are billowed clouds inked round and hatched on their shaded side, as the battle prints drew them, and a musket's flash is struck out in fine rays; borders are laid on in watercolour fading inward from the line, and a unit's reach is pencilled as a staff officer marks a day's march
- The menu's title is set on a tooled-leather board in gilt, and the minimap is drawn on the same blank vellum; names on the chart wait until the land under both their ends is known, and a new game no longer shows a glimpse of the last one's land
- From afar, towns are marked as the chart's key says (a red star for a royal city, a ringed dot for a town); battlefields are marked in red ink; deep woods open into glades; the paper shows foxing; hills are shaded more by hatching than by smudged tone; the refugees and the nomads, risings and mutinies, the engineers at their fortresses, the royal counting house and the nobles in council have their own engravings; a bear, an elephant and a lion (Hic sunt leones) roam the blank interior until the survey covers them; the scale of miles and the chart's key are framed and scrolled as the engravers set them; trees are hatched on their shaded side; the great rivers are lettered along their course (Fl. Rhenus, Fl. Danubius…); the rhumb lines run on faintly across the charted seas, as on a portolan chart; meridians and parallels are ruled at every degree numbered on the frame; regiments awaiting orders have a brass pin beside them; the sheet is dated in its foot margin, and in winter the wind head blows snow; planned orders are pencilled in ink; from afar, regiments are marked as on an 18th-century battle plan (foot as solid bars, horse hatched, guns as little cannon); the sheet's ornaments are printed over the chart when seen whole; and a big map pans several times faster zoomed right out
- The map redraws far faster: a new turn or season recolours the sheet in a fraction of the time, and panning stays smooth at every zoom
Beta 12.1
Hard Choices
- Every one of the 120 events has been rebalanced: each answer now has its own cost, risk or later consequence, no single answer is clearly best, and "do nothing" is never free
- New kinds of answer: gambles (a stated chance of something going wrong, or right) and investments that pay off a few turns later (crop rotation leaves fields fallow now and brings in a big harvest in five turns). Both are shown on the card, and the chronicle tells you when they come true
- The cards now show everything a choice does: the change in noble opinion that comes with legitimacy, deaths at court, recruits. Gains grow with your realm just as costs always did
- Some answers can now change fate: the right physicians may save your consort from the palace plague, and a general can be hired into your service
Beta 12.0
The Old World
- The map is an engraved, hand-coloured atlas sheet: relief shaded hills and mountain ranges, inked coasts with lines of water out to sea, woods drawn tree by tree, hatched hills and marsh reeds, all on aged paper inside a ruled border
- The known world fades softly into the blank vellum, where rhumb lines run out from wind-roses as on a portolan chart; land you are not watching is dimmed rather than blacked out
- The seasons recolour the whole sheet: green spring, gold summer, russet autumn, and snow with frozen shallows in winter
- Towns, farms, mines, mills, ports and wonders are little engraved vignettes, and every unit is an engraved figure
- Panels are tooled leather in gilt frames; the ground a unit can reach is one wash ruled round its edge
Beta 11.2
The Pixel Map, Sharpened
- The map is back to its bright pixel look, redrawn at twice the detail: shaded hexes, grass tufts and flowers, ripples on the water and outlined trees and buildings
- Mountains are pixel peaks with snowy tops and hills are green mounds; towns are drawn as before, with snow on their roofs in winter and captured colours flying beside the capital's church
- Soldiers, horsemen, guns and ships are small pixel figures to match the map, each standing inside its own hex
- No more emoji anywhere: the animals on the map, city-site flags, markers and messages are all drawn as painted icons
Beta 11.1
Starving Garrisons
- Troops holding a town besieged for four turns or more are weakened by hunger: blows against them land 15% harder, and the attack preview says so
Beta 11.0
Terms from the Starving
- A rival whose town is starving under your siege sues for peace (you are asked in Kingdoms, as with any offer); rivals starving each other ask for terms too
Beta 10.9
Fixes
- Siege rings, trampled fields and siege tooltips no longer show for a rival's town hidden in fog (they gave away troops you couldn't see)
- Wiping out a rival now closes the chronicle of that war too, as a conquest
- The cut-road warning is no longer repeated after loading a game, is given once a siege lifts with the road still cut, and starts afresh for a captured town
- A rival with no free shore no longer keeps buying stone for a harbour it cannot build
Beta 10.8
Polish
- The peace summary counts the colours taken and lost in the war
- Siege rings are hidden at the furthest zoom, where they cluttered the overview
Beta 10.7
Starved Out
- A town under siege for four turns running begins to starve: it loses one family to hunger every three turns (never the last) until the siege is lifted. The town tooltip counts the turns of siege
Beta 10.6
Trophies
- The latest colours a realm has taken hang over its capital as a row of small flags, each in the colours of the realm it was taken from
Beta 10.5
Reading the War from the Map
- Hovering over a town tells you if it is besieged, blockaded or cut off, and how many of its tiles the enemy holds; hovering over a held field names the town it is lost to
- The road tooltip says that a road costs one move per step
Beta 10.4
Taking the Colours
- A regiment destroyed in battle may leave its colours on the field. Taking an enemy's colours raises your legitimacy a little and lowers theirs; losing your own does the reverse. The chronicle records each one
Beta 10.3
Laurels
- A regiment with three or more battle honours wears a gold laurel on the map (a brighter one from eight)
Beta 10.2
Battle Honours
- Every regiment keeps count of the enemies it has destroyed, attacking or holding its ground; hover over it to see its honours beside its name
Beta 10.1
The Reckoning of a War
- When you make peace, the chronicle sums up the war: how long the fighting lasted, how many regiments you lost and how many you destroyed, and whether it was a victorious or a hard-won peace
Beta 10.0
Towns Under Snow
- In winter the towns lie under a dusting of snow, thickest on the roofs
Beta 9.9
Hardship
- A town under siege grows restless (+1.5 discontent); one with enemy troops in its fields or its harbour blockaded a little (+0.5). Both show in the town's mood breakdown
Beta 9.8
Siege Lines
- Any town under siege that you can see, yours or a rival's, is ringed in orange, so you can tell at a glance which of your own sieges are holding
Beta 9.7
Cut Roads
- Enemy troops standing on a road cut it: the town at its end loses its trade with the capital until the road is clear, and you are told when one of yours is cut
- Markets in fields held by the enemy no longer earn their Banking or Merchants' Guild bonus
Beta 9.6
Siege Fixes
- A town you capture no longer inherits its old owner's siege (your own troops at its gates counted as besiegers for a turn, and you were told a siege had lifted)
- Driving the besiegers off during your turn frees the fields for that same turn's harvest; a siege carries over correctly when a game is loaded, without a repeated warning
- Starting a new game clears the old map's roads at once Harbours
- Rivals who know Navigation send a worker to the shore to build a first harbour, and buy the stone for it if they are short
Beta 9.5
Blockades
- An enemy warship lying beside a port closes it: no trade or catch comes in from it, the town's fishing boats stay in, and you are told when a blockade begins and ends
Beta 9.4
Roads That Carry Armies
- A step along a road costs one move whatever the ground: through forest, over hills and across rivers (anyone's troops may use them, so mind your roads in wartime)
- Timber bridges are drawn where a road crosses a river
Beta 9.3
Frozen Rivers
- In winter the rivers freeze hard: troops behind a river lose its protection until the thaw (the tile tooltip says so)
Beta 9.2
Hearth Smoke
- In autumn and winter, pale smoke rises from the chimneys of every town, more of it from the larger towns
Beta 9.1
A Painted Map
- The map is hand-painted: meadows, forests, marsh, snowfields, rock, sea and ice, with painted farms, mines, mills, markets, ports and town houses
- Settlements are painted too: a village grows into a walled market town at 5 people, and capitals are star-fortress cities
- Mountains rise as painted peaks and hills roll; ruins, barbarian camps, redoubts, town landmarks and the wonders of nature are painted as well Relief Columns
- Rival troops marching to a threatened town now strike the besiegers they find at its gates when the fight looks good, instead of standing beside them
Beta 9.0
Living Off the Land
- Troops standing in an enemy town's fields forage: each sends a little food home and its men recover a little strength every turn
- Fields held by the enemy are drawn trampled and stripped, with the rings of their campfires
Beta 8.9
Look
- Units on the map are painted soldiers, gunners and ships in place of round badges, ringed in their nation's colour
- The emoji across menus, panels and messages are replaced by painted icons; unit lists and the unit panel show each soldier Sieges
- Enemy troops standing in a town's fields take their harvest: those fields bring in nothing while they stay (the city's yield breakdown shows what is lost)
- Two or more at its gates put the town under siege and cut its road trade; you are told when a siege begins and when it is lifted Rivers
- Rivers no longer coil round flat country into a solid knot of river tiles (one town could have a river in every field); they run in a line and end where the ground stops falling
Beta 8.8
Towns Ablaze
- A town that has just been taken or sacked burns for a few turns: embers at its heart and columns of smoke leaning downwind, thinning as the fires die
Beta 8.7
Battle Honours
- The chronicle records your regiments' victories by name, such as "The 1st Regiment of Foot destroyed Austria's 3rd Regiment of Foot"
- Promotions now name the regiment that earned them
Beta 8.6
Towns Before Colonies
- Rivals send out settlers only from towns of three or more, so a food-rich realm no longer drains every town down to a single family
Beta 8.5
Fewer Freebies
- The largest maps hold at most 40 ancient ruins (there were a hundred, a little too much treasure lying about)
Beta 8.4
Roll of Honour
- When one of your regiments falls, the chronicle records it by name ("Lost: the 3rd Hussars")
Beta 8.3
Colours of the Regiments
- Every regiment carries a number and a name in the manner of the day, counted for each realm as it is raised: the 1st Regiment of Foot, the 3rd Hussars, the 2nd Battery of Horse Artillery. Hover a unit to see it
Beta 8.2
The Edge of the Known World
- The frontier of what you've explored is softly shaded, so your map fades into the unexplored chart instead of ending in a hard edge
Beta 8.1
Smoother Hands
- Moving the mouse while smoke or floating numbers are on screen no longer stacks up extra redraws (it could stutter badly after a battle)
- Lifting the last finger after a pinch-zoom no longer counts as a tap (it could select, move or attack)
- A sideways swipe doesn't zoom, and a trackpad's small nudges add up to one zoom step instead of each zooming a full step
- Keys held when the window loses focus (or pressed with Cmd/Ctrl) no longer leave the map panning on its own
- A long chain of planned moves or a long battle replay isn't cut off by a click; if something really is stuck, units are let go cleanly
- Resizing the window keeps the view in range; move previews no longer wrap round at the map's right edge
- Rivals resent a realm with 40% of the cities only once there are at least eight in the world (the first to found a second city was set upon by everyone)
Beta 8.0
Harbour Life
- Coastal towns keep fishing boats on the water beside them (one for a small place, two from 6 people), drawn up out of the ice in winter
Beta 7.9
Camp Burners
- Rival soldiers with nothing better to do (no foe near, no city to march on) go after raider camps near their towns instead of wandering, and burn any left unguarded
Beta 7.8
Mustering
- A new land unit with no room around its city musters inside the walls (up to three there), instead of waiting turn after turn with "No room to deploy"
Beta 7.7
The Race for Wonders
- Each wonder of nature has a marked city site beside it, so it is worth racing for, and your rivals now go after them
Beta 7.6
Tidier Borders
- A city's lands grow outward nearest-first into a compact shape, and natural growth reaches only so far: 2 tiles for a small town, 3 from 5 people, 4 from 10 (borders used to creep on for ever, one town ending with ninety tiles and swallowing the sites others might have settled). Bought tiles and Urban quarters can still push past it
- Games started or loaded without the New Game screen's barbarian settings use the same defaults it shows (they were harsher)
Beta 7.5
No Death Spirals
- A noble house that has risen in rebellion needs fifteen turns before it can rise again (a weak realm used to face a new rising every few turns and never recover)
- A realm at its lowest ebb (legitimacy under 15) slowly recovers, +0.5 a turn
Beta 7.4
Workers Keep Their Heads
- Automated workers, and your rivals', run for the nearest city of their realm when raiders or an enemy army come within two tiles, and won't take a job right beside the enemy (they used to be carried off one by one)
Beta 7.3
Growing Towns
- A big town spills over into the country round it: hamlets of houses appear on its neighbouring land at 8 people, more at 12 and 16
Beta 7.2
Border Works
- Rivals at war dig redoubts on the border facing their enemy Fixes
- A city frees only an enemy's or raider's captive; a friendly worker or settler passing through is no longer taken
- A worker you give an order (a move, a Go To, a build or auto-explore) is taken off automation, so it doesn't wander back to spending your gold
- Rival settlers give up a site they can't get nearer to (across water or a closed border) and choose another, instead of stalling for twenty-five turns
- A rival city that gives up on a build no longer carries its finished work into the next one (units used to appear at once)
- Battle scars are left only where you could see the fighting
- Raider camps, ruins, wonders of nature and city sites never share a tile; a new game starts with no roads left over from the last
- Faster on big maps: science-lab counts are worked out once a turn
Beta 7.1
Weather
- Cloud shadows pass over the land and sea, drifting on with the wind from turn to turn
- The attack preview names a Redoubt's shelter, as it does a river crossing
Beta 7.0
Redoubts
- Workers can raise a Redoubt (15 stone, 10 wood, 3 turns) on open ground, hills, woods or marsh: an earthwork ring with a palisade and your pennant. A unit holding it takes 25% less damage, from blows and from fire alike
- Rivals weigh wonders of nature when choosing where to settle
Beta 6.9
Wonders of Nature
- Every map holds a few wonders of nature: the Great Falls (on a river), the Ancient Oak, the Crystal Peak, the Salt Marsh and the Sacred Grove. The city whose lands hold one draws its gifts (food, gold, science, stone, or legitimacy for the realm); the first time your people set eyes on one, you're rewarded. Hover one to see what it gives
Beta 6.8
Winter Ice & a Steadier Realm
- In winter the sea along every shore freezes over and rivers run icy pale Fixes
- A realm whose legitimacy hits zero stays there until it earns it back (it used to spring back to 50 the next turn)
- A widowed ruler takes a new consort, so the line of heirs goes on; when a noble house's head dies, his own house picks the successor (two houses could end up sharing one head)
- Captured workers and scouts are held by the raiders, not sent to fight, and go free to whoever takes their camp
- Raider camps and rebellions each keep their own banner (a camp's fall could wipe out an unrelated rising)
- Wars with realms already destroyed no longer weary your cities
- The one-time boons of Vassalage and Divine Rule come once, not every time the law is swapped back in
- Tribes no longer carry an unseen court that aged, died and held elections
Beta 6.7
Generals from the Ranks
- A seasoned soldier (Veteran or better) who wins a fight may now and then see one of its officers raised to general, while the realm has fewer than two
- Hovering a tile tells you more: a river's food, gold and defence, ancient ruins, a recent battlefield, a road to the capital
- An afternoon light lies over the map: warm from the upper left, cooler toward the lower right
Beta 6.6
Workers at Work
- Automate workers (B, or the button on a worker's panel): it mends what raiders spoiled, improves your land and moves on to the next bare tile by itself each turn. It never fells a forest unasked, and Next Unit passes it by
- Workers, yours and your rivals', head for the nearest tile they can actually improve instead of wandering (rival lands now fill with farms and mines several times faster)
- Saves keep each city's militia cooldown (reloading used to raise a fresh militia every turn)
Beta 6.5
On the March
- Columns on the march raise dust at each step (horse more than foot), and ships leave a white wake
- In winter, units caught outside a city wear a ring of frost, so you can see who is suffering the cold
Beta 6.4
Better Lands
- Every map gets a like balance: about 30% sea and 9% snowy heights whatever the dice (one map could be a third mountains), with woods on about 45% of the lowland and more open plains for farms and markets
- A captive worker standing in a city is freed by its people; an undefended city calls up its militia even with a captive inside
- Rival realms short of everything buy steel or food on the market to rebuild, and in an emergency raise only soldiers they can actually pay for (a realm could sit for years on a cannon it could never afford)
- Fixed faint vertical stripes over the fog and borders when zoomed far out
Beta 6.3
Fords & Fields of Battle
- River crossings: a melee attack from off the river onto a defender standing on river land falls 15% lighter. The attack preview says so
- Where soldiers fall, the ground stays scorched and strewn with spent shot and wreckage for a few turns, fading as the land recovers
Beta 6.2
Rivers That Matter
- Every river tile in a city's lands gives +0.5 food and +0.5 gold (shown in the city's statistics), and rivals now prefer to settle by rivers
- A city that can't place a finished unit (every tile round it taken) no longer piles up production while it waits; a rival city boxed in by its own army builds a granary, walls or a factory instead
- Rival treasuries sell surplus food on the market when they run short of gold
Beta 6.1
Fair Fights & a Truer Map Combat fixes
- Formations and generals defend the right way round: Square really is +30% defence (it was taking 30% more damage), Line -15%, and a cautious general's +15% protects his men
- Ranged units fire at most two tiles away, and not after moving (dragoons excepted); they can no longer strike from four tiles off through a move order
- Units can't walk through other armies to reach the tiles behind them
- Rival artillery waits out its reload even when an enemy stands next to it
- When a city falls, only its civilians go over to the new owner; soldiers in its lands stay loyal
- Resting never lowers morale (a line abroad used to bleed it away), and law-raised morale ceilings are kept
- The combat preview, and the rivals' judgement of a fight, count the counter-blow as it really falls Map
- Your units that can still act this turn wear a small gold pip
- Faster drawing: fog, borders' tint and seasons cost far less when zoomed out on a big map
Beta 6.0
Landmarks & Mixed Armies
- Towns show what they've built: a granary and its silo, a factory with a smoking chimney, and a landmark for each wonder (the Library's dome, the Cathedral's towers, the Arsenal and its cannon, the gilded Guildhall, the War College colonnade)
- Rival armies are mixed: foot, horse and guns, with artillery kept to about a quarter (late-game rivals used to field nothing but field guns)
- Rival workers build a first harbour once they know Navigation, so they can put ships to sea
- Empire overview (O, or the new top-bar button): every city in one table with its people, mood, spare food, gold, science, what it's building and who guards it; click one to go there
- The minimap is larger and sharp, fills its frame edge to edge (a quarter of it stood empty), shows cities as ringed dots and the view as a true-sized frame, and a click lands where you clicked
- A unit's health and morale show as bars, and its moves, sight, attack and the ground's defence as chips
- City names are banners in the realm's colours under each town, with its size, a star for a capital, a red count while it's being taken, and what it has built
- Volume sliders in Options for the music, the land's own sounds (birds, towns, marching) and the effects, kept between games
- Portraits: rulers and consorts are painted in the court dress of their own people, in the Court, on each realm's card in Kingdoms, at a first meeting, on a declaration of war (over a war camp) and among the candidates of an election
Beta 5.9
Ruins & Raiders
- Ancient ruins lie scattered across the wild land. The first unit of any realm to reach them finds something: a strongbox of gold, scholars' notes for your research, a sealed granary, an old map of the country round about, or a veterans' cache of arms
- Barbarian camps are drawn as camps: hide tents round a fire, a ring of stakes and a ragged black banner
- Raiders sack any town of three or more people (as they do a capital) instead of burning it down; only small villages can still be razed
- A soft vignette frames the map
- Events have a painted scene over them (the court, a camp, the countryside, a market, a harbour, a mine, envoys, a study), and each answer's costs and gains show as red and green chips
- Victory and defeat are painted too; a score result at turn 200 can be played on past with Keep Playing
Beta 5.8
Seasons, Sentries & Settlers
- Seasons show on the land: snow lies in winter, the woods turn gold in autumn, spring greens
- Enemies at the gates: a city with a hostile army within three tiles is ringed in red, and you're warned when the danger appears
- Settlers now cost 30 food and one citizen from the city that trains them (it needs at least 2). A city training them pauses its growth only once it can spare them
- Rival settlers head for the site they chose instead of wandering, and realms with food to spare found more cities
- New keys: K Kingdoms, + / - zoom, Z wakes a fortified unit (W only pans the map now, and never cancels a worker's build) Fixes
- Workers mid-build and fortified units can't be sent off with planning orders or auto-explore (a worker could carry its build to another tile)
- Escape on the tech tree just closes it; game keys no longer act behind it or on the title screen
- A war started by caught spies cancels open borders and other agreements; the gold counter updates after spying or a mapping deal
- Upgrading a unit drops a formation the new unit can't use (a column hussar made a lancer kept +2 moves)
- A worker's "Buy Adjacent Tile" really is adjacent to the worker
- Markets being built count toward the next one's price, and cancelling a build refunds what was paid Screens
- Tech tree laid out across the screen in three bands; hover a tech to light the road to it; click a locked one to make it your goal, and the techs on the way are studied in turn. Progress on a tech is kept when you switch away and back
- Kingdoms: each realm a card with an opinion bar, its army against yours, what it asks of you, your actions in one row and your pacts as chips
- The top bar fits a laptop: End Turn and the buttons at its right end no longer run off the screen
- The tutorial lights up what each card describes, and the research prompt waits until it's done
- Rulers, heirs and the great families have names from their own nation (twelve name lists, French at the French court and so on)
- City yields as coloured chips; dark scrollbars throughout
Beta 5.7
Roads, Shores & Painted Borders
- Roads: each city is joined to its capital by a road over land that doesn't cross a rival's territory. A city on the road earns +2 gold in trade (shown in its statistics); roads redraw as cities are founded or lost
- Borders are drawn like a painted map: dark ink beneath, the realm's colour, a light inner edge. The territory tint is one even wash instead of a grid
- The sea has surf along every shore and wave marks on open water
- Rivers are drawn as winding streams that follow the way the water runs, with tributaries joining and a mouth at the sea (older saves work out their rivers' flow when loaded)
- Battle replays only show fights you can see or take part in, skip the camera pan when the fight is already on screen, and play briskly on a busy turn
Beta 5.6
Towns, Trade & Militia
- Every city is drawn as a little town that grows with its people: a church and your flag over the capital, a ring wall once fortified
- Units are lit, brass-rimmed medallions standing on their own shadow
- The fog of war is one even shade instead of a grid of dark hex edges
- Market (top bar or M): sell surplus food, wood, stone, steel or gunpowder for gold, or buy what you lack. Prices slide as you trade and settle again next turn. Rival treasuries use it too
- An undefended city with an enemy at its gates calls up a militia (once every ten turns)
- Cities build faster as they grow, instead of every city working at the same pace
- Rivals short of gold build workers first and aim at units they can afford, rather than sitting empty-handed
- Muskets, rifles and cannon fire with a flash and a bank of drifting powder smoke; blows raise dust where they land
- An event you can't afford any answer to can now be declined (a little legitimacy lost) instead of locking the game
- Research picks up: every city's townsfolk add science (1 + 0.4 per citizen), so a growing realm reaches new techs every ten or so turns instead of every forty
- Fixed a battle replay that could wait forever when the camera was asked to pan twice at once
Beta 5.5
Living Rivals, Hungry Cities & a Sharper Map Economy & AI
- Cities grow only when they make more food than they eat; with the stores empty, a starving city can lose a citizen. The city panel shows the real food balance
- A city training a Settler stops growing while it saves the food
- AI rivals expand again: they found new cities instead of sitting on one, and stop waiting forever on builds they can't pay for
- Barbarians sack a capital instead of razing it: they carry off gold and food, burn a building and leave Diplomacy
- Seek Peace is now an offer the other side weighs (armies and goodwill); an accepted peace holds for ten turns
- An AI ally can't join a war on you during a treaty, and you're told when one does
- Barbarian raids no longer count as "being at war" when asking for agreements Map & menus
- Sharp on Retina and other high-density screens
- Unexplored land is a dark old chart; the camera can centre any tile, including the map's edges, and dragging glides
- Starting capitals sit away from the map's edge with land to work
- New painted menu backdrops; the menu fits a phone Fixes
- Rushed units pay their materials and need room to stand; the game stops cleanly at victory or defeat; loading a save no longer shows the last game's map; new games start in spring; the Engineers law's extra worker step applies to every worker; hex distances, promotions, research overflow and many smaller fixes
Beta 5.4
Old World — City Loyalty, Laws & Statistics Panel City Loyalty (Old World-style)
- Discontent vs Order replaces the old jobs-only mood. Cities track foreign culture, recent conquest, distance from capital, war weariness, low legitimacy, winter, slavery, and cruel rulers as discontent — countered by fortifications, cathedrals, granaries, garrisons, capital status, charismatic rulers, high legitimacy, and Tyranny
- Six mood tiers: Loyal (+10% production, faster growth) → Content → Uneasy → Unhappy → Furious → Rebellious (foreign-cultured cities can flip back to their original owner; native cities spawn rebel barbarians)
- When a city flips back via rebellion, the capital is reassigned, foreign garrison troops are killed, and non-combat units defect to the new owner — matching the existing capture rules
- Captured cities remember their original culture forever; re-conquest, garrisoning, or cathedrals can suppress unrest but not erase it
- City panel now shows the full discontent / order breakdown inline so you can see what is destabilising a city at a glance
Laws of the Realm — press L or click the new top-bar Laws button
- Six paired law slots inspired by Old World. First adoption in a category costs 1 order; switching costs 1 order + 60 gold:
• Governance: Centralization (+1 order, +1 legitimacy/turn) vs Vassalage (+10 family opinion, +10% building production, halved legitimacy gains)
• Labor: Slavery (+25% production, +1 discontent/city, family opinion drain) vs Freedom (+1 science & +1 food per city, +20% growth)
• Culture: Epic Poetry (+1 legitimacy/turn, +3 morale, capital order) vs Divine Rule (+15 legitimacy on adoption, family opinion drift, but unbeliever discontent)
• Order [needs Banking]: Tyranny (cities -2 discontent, family opinion drain, cheaper espionage) vs Constitution (rush -25%, +0.5 legitimacy + 0.5 family opinion/turn)
• Military [needs Military Leadership]: Limitanei (-50% maintenance, -1 ATK, +1 free unit/city) vs Standing Army (+1 ATK, +50% maintenance, +2 starting XP)
• Crafts [needs Engineering]: Engineers (+1 worker move, +20% production, cheaper wonders) vs Stonecutters (-25% stone/wood for buildings, fortifications give extra order)
- Adopting Vassalage instantly grants all your noble families +10 opinion; Divine Rule grants +15 legitimacy
City Statistics Panel — click the 📊 Statistics button on any city panel
- Production / turn as segmented pip bars for each resource (food, gold, wood, stone, steel, science, gunpowder), each with its own cap. Bars fill toward the cap and glow with a ★ MAX badge when reached or exceeded
- Public Mood shown as a split pip bar with red Discontent on the left, green Order on the right, plus per-factor bars for every contributing pressure or support
- Population shown as a citizen bar that lights up with a ★ FULL badge when the city hits its job cap
- Every yield breakdown lists the source: city center, tile improvements, banking, wonders, ruler bonuses, season multiplier, and active laws
Compatibility
- Saves are forward-compatible: existing cities are treated as native (originalNationId = current owner) and existing nations start with no laws adopted
Beta 5.0
Bug Fixes, Diplomacy & Hex Math
- End Turn (E) is now ignored when ESC menu, war declaration, or popups are open, and can no longer double-fire on rapid presses
- Combat-range highlight, AI threat detection, and city-spacing now use true hex distance (no more diamond ranges)
- Hex neighbor checks no longer leak across map edges
- Scouts no longer wander open ocean indefinitely after Shipbuilding
- River crossing penalty now applies in both directions
- Go-To now refuses unreachable destinations instead of silently consuming a turn
- Tribes and barbarians correctly start at war and will fight one another
- Multi-war eliminations credit the actual conqueror; eliminated nations' agreements are cleaned up
- Peace treaties now include a 10-turn cooldown to stop war/peace flapping
- Player-declared wars now drag War Alliance partners into the war
- AI disbands cheapest units when bankrupt instead of getting free gold; no longer queues already-built buildings
- 3rd caught espionage now provokes an immediate war declaration with explicit warning
- Production overflow from rushed or factory builds now carries into the next queued item
- End-game score breakdown now matches the displayed total
- Settler "Found City" pending name no longer leaks across unit selection; F-shortcut now checks the same conditions as the button
- Escape now blurs text inputs instead of closing menus while typing
- Renamed cities, ruler/character/family names, and tile annotations are now safely escaped in all panels
Beta 4.9
Bug Fixes & Stability
- Loaded saves now self-heal missing relations/loyalty data, preventing crashes during AI turns and combat
- Barbarian density slider set to 0 now actually disables barbarians instead of falling back to 40%
- Declaring war no longer crashes on saves that predate the loyalty system
- Fortify, formation change, chop, hunt, repair, and rest no longer waste an order when the action is a no-op
- Settling a city only consumes an order on confirm, not when opening the name dialog
- Mortars no longer fire grapeshot — AI ammo switching now respects each unit's allowed ammo types
- Killing an enemy no longer advances the attacker onto an already-occupied tile, preventing unit stacking
- Founding a city or spawning a tribe now keeps tile ownership and city ownedTiles in sync
- Set Ammo rejects ammo types the unit cannot actually load
Beta 4.8
Bug Fixes & Quality
- Game now plays fully offline; fonts and assets are bundled locally
- Cavalry charge bonus and "no ranged attack after moving" now correctly account for morale and general move bonuses
- Selected-unit reference no longer dangles when the unit dies, is captured by the AI, or its city is razed
- AI no longer walks onto tiles already occupied by enemy units
- Production queue rejects duplicate non-wonder buildings, preventing double-builds
- Loyalty values can now legitimately reach 0 instead of snapping back to 50
- Pressing W to wake a fortified unit (or arrow keys to cycle stacks) no longer also pans the camera
- Eliminated nations with no clear conqueror cleanly remove their orphan units
- Producing a building that no longer exists no longer locks the city in an infinite production loop
Beta 4.7
Diplomacy & AI
- AI nations can now refuse diplomatic requests based on ruler personality and context
- Cruel, martial, and reckless rulers are more likely to decline; diplomatic rulers are easier
- Nations at war refuse open borders and mapping agreements more often
- Powerful nations are less receptive when you approach from a position of weakness
- AI nations now seek war alliances with loyal AI allies when at war
- AI seeks peace when severely outmatched, not just when loyalty recovers
- AI prioritises weakly defended enemy cities over just the closest one
Beta 4.6
Diplomacy & AI
- AI nations now declare war on each other, not just the player
- Wars between AI nations are announced with a toast notification
- Animals show as small corner badges instead of large overlays on tiles
- Foreign units can no longer enter your borders without an open borders agreement
- Cancelling open borders now expels enemy units from your territory
Beta 4.5
AI
- AI nations now research technologies throughout the game
- All nations have a minimum science income so research always progresses
- Smarter AI tech priority: cavalry only with horses, military urgency during war, varied paths
- Friendly AI nations will move units to hunt barbarians threatening player cities and units
- Corrupt units with null/NaN HP are removed on game load and each turn start
Beta 4.4
Fixes
- Fixed ranged attacks dealing NaN damage, leaving targets alive with corrupt HP
- Fixed ranged units unable to attack after previous combat changes
Beta 4.3
Combat
- Artillery units now have 4-tile attack range (5 on hills)
- Melee units can now move and attack in the same turn
- Barbarian units no longer stack on the same tile
Options
- Auto Next Unit toggle: disable automatic camera jump to next available unit after each action
Beta 4.2
Diplomacy
- Mapping Agreement: spend 30 gold to mutually reveal both nations' borders (requires Cautious+ relations)
- Infiltrate: spend 50 gold to covertly reveal an enemy's borders — 25% chance of discovery and loyalty loss
Fixes
- Fixed black screen flash during camera pan caused by accumulated canvas transform
- Rush produce no longer charges unit resource costs on top of the gold fee
- Unit upgrade now works anywhere within a city's borders, not just on the city tile
- Upgrade button now shows the correct unit name (e.g. Musketeer instead of Gunpowder Infantry)
Beta 4.1
Planning Mode (Cartography tech)
- Queue move and attack orders for multiple units simultaneously — all execute at once when you press P again
- Threat map: hover any enemy unit to see its movement range highlighted in red
- Combat preview: while assigning an attack order, hover an enemy to see estimated strike and retaliation damage
- Queued orders shown as coloured arrows on the map (blue = move, red = attack)
- Tile annotation (colour + label) still available by clicking empty tiles in planning mode
- ESC exits planning mode and discards queued orders; P executes them
Beta 4.0
UI
- Responsive topbar — collapses labels at narrow widths, wraps to two rows on small windows, abbreviates button text on very small screens
- Screenshot export — 📷 button saves the current map view as a PNG
- Unit sprites — musketeer, swordsman, crossbowman, scouts, workers, and cavalry line now render as pixel art sprites
Balance
- Production and building costs scale with city count: each additional city raises all costs by 20%
- Event resource costs follow the same city-count scaling
- Melee (non-ranged) units must be adjacent to an enemy to attack
- Pastures no longer require a herd tile — buildable on any valid terrain with Animal Husbandry
Beta 3.5
Noble Families
- Every nation now has 2–4 historic noble houses (e.g. Habsburgs, Bonapartes, Romanovs) with individual opinion scores (0–100)
- Low family opinion triggers scaled rebellions near the capital; opinion drifts based on legitimacy, gold, buildings, and events
- Court panel shows Noble Families section with opinion bars and Appease button (30g → +15 opinion)
- Old per-city discontent & rebellion system removed entirely
Events Overhaul
- 31 events expanded to 120 — 89 new events across 15 categories
- Events now require conditions: coastal city, mountain/forest/river tiles, at war, season, gold & legitimacy levels, techs, buildings, and more
- Characters can die from events: Plague in the Palace, Death of a General, Assassination Attempt, Duel of Honour
Bug Fixes
- Fixed rebel nations accumulating orphaned families and characters in memory over time
Beta 3.3
Changes
- Scrapped premade map ideas for now — nation selection screen, preset geographic city positions, world map terrain overrides, tribal nations system, and World map size all removed
- Nations and historical city name pools kept; nations spawn at random positions on procedural maps
- Default map size reverted to Large (200×130)
Beta 2.6(Save v10)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed units having 0 moves at start of turn after supply/winter attrition triggered morale flee
- Fixed E key triggering End Turn while typing in text inputs (empire name etc.)
- Fixed barbarian guard instantly respawning the turn after being killed — now waits before returning
- Fixed fleeing units retaining stuck animation state, causing visual between-tile glitch
Balance
- Default barbarian density reduced to 40% (was 60%)
- Seasons now cycle every turn (1 turn per season, 4 turns = 1 year)
- Swordsman Charge ability added: can move and attack in the same turn unless in Square formation
Map Generation
- Mountains now appear consistently (Snow tile sprites)
- Inland lakes generated in low wet areas (2–5 tile clusters)
- Rivers more frequent and meander naturally from mountains to ocean
Beta 2.5(Save v10)
Napoleonic Warfare Overhaul
- Morale system: units have morale that drops in combat — broken units flee, routed units are destroyed
- Formations: infantry and cavalry switch between Line, Column, and Square with tactical trade-offs
- Generals: new unit type with traits (aggressive, cautious, inspiring, resilient, swift) that buff nearby units
- Artillery rework: reload turns, ammo types (cannonball vs grapeshot), capturable by melee
- Supply & exhaustion: cities support limited units, over-supply causes attrition
Seasons & Calendar
- Four seasons cycle every 32 turns: Spring (+food), Summer, Autumn (-food), Winter (attrition, -movement)
- Year counter starting at 1680, advancing each full cycle of seasons
- Winter: units outside cities lose HP, swamps impassable, reduced movement
Characters & Dynasty
- Each nation has a ruler with unique traits affecting science, gold, production, morale, and diplomacy
- Characters age and can die — succession passes to spouse or triggers an election
- Court panel shows your royal family tree with trait badges
- Generals are linked to characters in your court
Enhanced Terrain
- Hills: new terrain type with defense and vision bonuses, +1 artillery range
- Rivers: movement cost penalty on river crossings
- Forests reduce vision, mountains and hills grant bonus vision
- Terrain movement costs now fully integrated into all pathfinding
Smarter AI
- AI holds 30% of forces in reserve, commits when engaged
- AI flanks with 3+ units, retreats on bad combat odds
- AI prefers high ground, switches formations and ammo types tactically
- Morale-aware: AI retreats wounded/demoralized units to safety
Bug Fixes
- Fixed terrain movement costs never being applied
- Fixed formation, general, and winter modifiers not affecting movement
- Fixed ruler trait bonuses not applying to city yields
- Fixed cannon/mortar missing ranged flag (could only melee)
- Fixed ranged attacks missing reload, ammo, and morale damage calculations
- Fixed morale treating 0 as full (nullish coalescing fix)
Beta 2.4(Save v9)
Unit Upgrade Paths
- 7 new upgrade paths: Swordsman→Grenadier, Cavalry→Hussar, Musketeer→Rifleman, Cannon→Field Gun, Scout→Veteran Scout, Worker→Veteran Worker, Frigate→Galleon
- Upgrade units in cities once you have the required technology
- Upgraded units keep their XP and proportional HP
New Wonders
- Merchant's Guild — +3 gold/city, markets yield +2 extra gold, unit maintenance halved
- War College — all combat units +1 ATK, +1 HP/turn healing everywhere, +2 max orders
New Technologies
- Banking — unlocks Treasury improvement (4 gold/turn), +1 gold per market
- Medicine — +15% population growth in all cities, units heal +1 HP/turn in cities
Balance Changes
- Dragoon nerfed: ATK 8→7, HP 10→9 (Skirmish ability still strong)
- Naval unit costs reduced ~25% across the board
- New Treasury improvement for late-game gold income
Beta 2.3(Save v9)
Wonders of the World
- 3 global unique wonders, buildable once per game — race other nations!
- Great Library — +50% science output, +1 science per city
- Grand Cathedral — -5 discontent/turn all cities, +20 legitimacy, +10% growth
- Royal Arsenal — new military units start Trained (5 XP), +2 ATK for city garrison
- AI nations also build wonders — you'll be notified when they complete one
Production Queues
- Queue up to 3 items per city (click while already producing)
- Queue displayed in city panel, Clear Queue button to reset
Auto-Explore
- Press X to send scouts on automatic exploration missions
- Scouts seek the nearest unrevealed territory each turn
- Auto-explore disables when all reachable territory is revealed
Unit Passive Abilities
- Cavalry: Charge — +3 ATK when attacking at full movement
- Grenadier: Splash — 2 damage to all enemies adjacent to the target
- Hussar: Raid — +2 ATK against non-combat units
- Dragoon: Skirmish — can attack after moving (unique among units)
- Abilities shown in unit panel with lightning bolt indicator
Naval AI & City Management
- AI now builds ships at coastal cities with ports
- Naval units patrol and engage enemy ships within range
- New Appease Citizens button: spend gold to reduce city discontent by 10
- Cost scales with current discontent level
Beta 2.2(Save v9)
City Buildings
- Cities can now produce buildings in addition to units
- Fortifications: +20% city defense (stacks with base +40%), +2 HP/turn healing for garrisoned units
- Granary: +8% population growth chance, reduces discontent growth rate
- AI builds fortifications in threatened cities and granaries in peacetime
- Building icons displayed on city labels and in city panel
Keyboard Shortcuts & QoL
- N — cycle to next idle unit with moves remaining
- C — center camera on selected unit
- [ / ] — cycle between your cities
- Arrow keys cycle units stacked on the same tile
- New unit stack cycling buttons in the unit panel
Visual Improvements
- Shield icon on fortified units, hammer icon on building workers
- Barbarian camp respawn notifications now show coordinates
Balance Changes
- Cavalry cost reduced: food 25→20, gold 30→20, steel 15→10
- Crossbowman, Musketeer, Rifleman movement increased: 3→4
- Discontent system softened: higher rebellion threshold (25), diminishing growth, probability-based rebellion
- Faster discontent recovery when population is content (-3/turn)
Smarter AI Economy
- AI checks resource affordability before queuing production
- AI builds workers when economy is struggling and tiles need improvement
- AI counts unimproved tiles to determine if workers have useful work
Beta 2.1(Save v9)
Unit Experience & Veterancy
- Combat units now earn XP from battles: +3 for a kill, +1 for dealing damage
- 5 promotion ranks: Green → Trained → Veteran → Elite → Legendary
- Each rank grants permanent ATK bonus (+1 to +5) and HP bonus (+1 to +6)
- Colored rank pips displayed below units on the map
- Unit panel and tooltips show current rank, XP progress, and effective stats
- Promotion heals bonus HP and shows a floating notification
- AI units also gain experience — veteran AI armies become tougher over time
- Military strength in Kingdoms panel now reflects veteran bonuses
Flanking & Tactics
- New flanking bonus: +10% damage per friendly combat unit adjacent to the defender
- Flanking percentage shown in the combat preview tooltip
- Surround enemies for devastating coordinated attacks
- Applies to melee, ranged, and AI attacks alike
8 New Narrative Events (26 total)
- Veteran General — a decorated officer seeks employment at your court
- Hidden Powder Cache — gunpowder barrels found in a forgotten cellar
- Religious Schism — a popular preacher divides your people
- Foreign Scholars — a diplomatic academy exchange proposal
- Mutiny at the Front — an unpaid regiment threatens revolt
- Pirate Menace — coastal raiders disrupt your trade routes
- Cultural Renaissance — artists and thinkers flock to your court
- Military Defector — an enemy officer offers intelligence for asylum
Smarter AI
- AI settlers now evaluate terrain quality: plains, forests, herds, and mountains near city sites
- AI avoids founding cities too close to their existing settlements
- AI prefers sites with good resource diversity over pure proximity
- AI threat assessment now accounts for enemy unit veterancy
- AI target selection uses effective ATK when choosing who to attack
Difficulty Now Matters
- Easy: AI earns 70% resources, deals 85% combat damage, 30% fewer barbarian spawns, +5 bonus starting resources for the player
- Normal: unchanged — balanced baseline
- Hard: AI earns 130% resources, deals 115% combat damage, +2 extra AI orders per turn, 30% more barbarian spawns
Beta 2.0(Save v9)
City Loyalty & Rebellion
- Civilian population grows over time based on food
- Each citizen needs 2 jobs (from improvements)
- Discontent rises without enough jobs, triggers rebellion
- Rebellion spawns barbarian rebels around the city
- City panel shows population, jobs, mood & discontent
- Pro-people event choices lower discontent
Fog of War
- Enemy units hidden outside current vision
- City vision scales with population (5-8 tiles)
Beta 1.9(Save v9)
Combat & Visuals
- Battle animations: melee nudge, ranged projectiles
- Floating damage numbers and death particles
- Combat odds preview on hover
- Screen shake on unit death
- AI battle replay with camera follow
Fog of War
- Hex-shaped fog with two-level opacity
- Enemy units hidden outside current vision
UI & Game Feel
- Turn banners and first contact modals
- Tech/production completion popups
- Path preview for unit movement
- Idle unit bobbing animation
- End Turn button pulses when ready
- Resource delta indicators
Combat & Balance
- Musketeers buffed: increased attack and health
- Attacks consume the entire turn
- Capital cities marked with crown icon
- Refugee event spawns worker at capital
- Musketeer volley: 4 shots with staggered timing
Smarter AI Diplomacy
- AI declares war when Hostile, builds up first
- Earlier war warnings
Trade Overhaul
- Expandable trade panel with dynamic pricing
- AI refuses trades when low on resources
Mobile & UI
- Device picker, touch controls, pinch zoom
- Unit flash, selected unit on top, arrow-key switching
- City renaming, instant go-to movement
Minimap
- Fog of war: only discovered nations shown
- Territory borders as colored overlays
Barbarians
- Density 60%, only 1 camp on turn 1
Victory History
- Victories saved as cards in main menu
Beta 1.7(Save v9)
Diplomacy Overhaul
- Closed borders by default: units cannot enter foreign territory without permission
- Open Borders agreements: request access to allied territory
- War Help and Barbarian Pact diplomatic agreements
- Resource trading with AI nations
- AI requests diplomacy based on loyalty levels
Turn-Based Research
- Tech research now takes multiple turns based on science/turn output
- Progress bar shows current research status in topbar and tech tree
- Higher-cost techs take proportionally longer to research
Worker Build Times
- Improvements now take multiple turns to build (2-5 turns depending on quality)
- Veteran workers build 1 turn faster
- Workers stay in place and show progress while constructing
- Start with 2 workers (player and AI)
Barbarian Rework
- More hostile: faster spawning, more units, larger raid range
- New unit progression: Axemen (early), Raiders (turn 20+), Brutes (turn 40+)
- Barbarians hunt nearby units and target improvements
- Barbarians now raze captured cities instead of occupying them
Economy & Resources
- Gunpowder resource: produced by mines, required for gunpowder-era units
- Forests no longer produce passive wood (chop or build lumbermills)
- Lumbermill tech and improvement: 3 wood/turn on forest tiles
Territory
- Cities auto-expand 2 tiles every 5 turns
- Gray border lines between cities within the same nation
Smarter AI
- AI prioritizes building armies: minimum 2 combat units per city before workers or settlers
- Military tech research is always a priority, not just during wars
- Workers build lumbermills, markets, and quarries instead of just farms
- Workers seek out unimproved tiles instead of wandering randomly
- Peacetime production defaults to military growth over expansion
Beta 1.6(Save v8)
Menu Overhaul
- Clean 3-button main menu: New Game, Resume Last Game, Options
- Stylized "Forge Your Empire" setup screen with sections and color swatches
- Map size and difficulty selectors in setup
- Options panel with music toggle, save management, and update log
Bug Fixes
- Fixed multiple music instances playing simultaneously
- Update log popup no longer shows pause screen when closed
Beta 1.5(Save v8)
Old World-Inspired Systems
- Orders system: limited actions per turn (base 3 + 1/city + legitimacy bonus)
- First action per unit costs 1 order; subsequent moves with that unit are free
- AI also uses orders for balanced gameplay
Legitimacy
- New resource (0-100) shown in topbar with fleur-de-lis
- Increases from cities, winning battles, capturing cities, and event choices
- Decreases from losing units, losing cities, and event choices
- Affects max orders per turn and score
Narrative Events
- 12 Napoleonic-era events with meaningful choices every 4 turns
- Events affect resources and legitimacy
- Includes: Bountiful Harvest, Desertion, Traveling Merchant, Provincial Unrest, and more
Bug Fixes
- Fixed defeat screen showing "undefined" for military count
- Keyboard hotkeys and camera no longer work during event modals
Beta 1.4(Save v8)
Gameplay
- Rest & Heal (H key): wounded units can rest to heal +3 HP (+5 in cities), uses full turn
- Resting also fortifies the unit
Victory & Defeat
- Full-screen game over overlay when your empire falls
- Full-screen victory overlay with score breakdown
- Fixed defeat screen showing wrong territory count
Beta 1.3(Save v8)
Combat Overhaul
- Terrain defense bonuses: Forest +25%, Mountain +35%, Swamp +15%, City +40%
- Fortify units (V key) for +20% defense bonus; auto-fortifies if stationary
- Siege units (cannons, mortars, field guns) deal +50% damage vs cities
- Melee kills no longer teleport attacker across impassable terrain
Diplomacy Rebalance
- Loyalty now drifts toward neutral instead of constantly decaying to war
- Stronger trade and shared-enemy bonuses for stable alliances
- AI forms coalitions against dominant empires (40%+ cities)
- War warnings: toasts at Hostile and Imminent thresholds
Economy
- Unit maintenance: military units cost 0.5 gold/turn (2 free per city)
- Gold rate in top bar now shows net income after maintenance
AI
- Diversified army composition (AI builds mix of available unit types)
- Emergency production: AI cancels civilian builds under heavy threat
Bug Fixes
- Fixed AI ranged attacks ignoring terrain and fortification defense
- Fixed movement animation playing backwards
- Fixed barbarian camp respawn timer ignoring configured delay
- Fixed tutorial replaying every new game after being skipped
- Fixed peace toggle not clearing stale peace offers in UI
Beta 1.2(Save v8)
Barbarians
- Barbarians are now more common by default (80% density, earlier spawns)
- Advanced Barbarian Settings panel with 7 configurable sliders: spawn turn, spawn chance, max units per camp, respawn delay, raid range, raider interval, camp spacing
- All barbarian settings are saved and loaded with your game
Main Menu
- Rotating background slideshow with smooth crossfade transitions
- All game SFX stop when returning to menu (music keeps playing)
UI
- Readable EB Garamond font for all body text and buttons
- Uncial Antiqua calligraphy font reserved for headings
Beta 1.0(Save v8)
Sound Effects
- Marching SFX plays during unit movement animations
- Musket shots for musketeers, riflemen, dragoons
- Cannon volleys for cannons and mortars (multiple synchronized shots)
- Field gun volleys for field artillery
- Naval broadside volleys for galleons and men-of-war
- Town ambient sounds near cities and urban tiles (like forest birds)
- Combat sounds only play for battles the player can see
Deep Diplomacy
- AI thinks like a ruler: evaluates city proximity, military threats, territory encroachment
- Happiness decays -0.5 per turn (trust erodes naturally)
- Cities within 12 tiles cause -9 happiness (border tension)
- Military buildup near borders increases suspicion
- Territory encroachment near AI cities angers them
- Power imbalance: much stronger neighbors feel threatening
- Shared enemies build trust (+2), attacking friends causes distrust
- Trade bonus while at peace with cities (+0.3/turn)
- War declared at -100 happiness (was 0)
- Declaring war immediately sets target to Hostile
- New loyalty tiers: Cautious, Sworn Enemy
UI & Settings
- Calligraphy font throughout the game
- Large italicized title on main menu
- Barbarian camp density slider in game setup (default 60%)
Beta 0.9(Save v8)
Balance
- Unit HP now varies by type (grenadiers tanky, ranged units fragile)
- Late-game unit production costs reduced ~25-30%
- Damage scales with attacker HP (wounded units hit softer)
- Combat units heal +2/turn in own territory, +3 in cities
- Science generation increased, science labs cheaper
Barbarian Camps
- Camps spawn on unexplored territory after turn 5 (40% chance/turn)
- Axemen raid and pillage your improvements
- Place a unit on a camp to destroy it (respawns in 10 turns)
- Workers can repair pillaged buildings within 2 turns
- Settle on camps or city sites to found new cities
Win Conditions
- Score system: cities, territory, techs, military, conquests
- Domination victory: eliminate all rivals
- Score victory at turn 200: highest score wins
- Victory/defeat screens with full score breakdown
Smarter AI
- AI garrisons undefended cities in peacetime
- Wounded AI units retreat to heal
- AI prioritizes high-value targets in combat
- Dynamic expansion based on available sites and military
- Strategic tech selection (military when at war, economy in peace)
- Threat-aware production: builds army when enemies are near
- AI offers peace treaties (accept/reject in Kingdoms panel)
- AI units no longer get stuck on coastlines
UI
- Attack power and unit stats shown in panels
- Turn counter and score in top bar
- Military strength and score in Kingdoms panel
- Tile yield info in tooltips
- Hotkey reference panel
- Naval units can now use go-to orders on water
- Camera waits for movement animation before cycling to next unit
- Science lab can now be built with just 1 city (was requiring 2)
- Compact save format reduces save size ~60%
- Delete buttons on save slots to free storage
- Fixed ESC key causing browser zoom
- Update log shown on first launch per version
Alpha 0.6(Save v6)
- Go-to orders for multi-turn movement
- Ranged combat (crossbowmen, musketeers, etc.)
- Unit movement animations
- Interactive tutorial for new players
- Napoleonic-era units: riflemen, grenadiers, hussars, dragoons, field guns
- Naval units: frigates, galleons, men-of-war
Alpha 0.4(Save v4)
- Village sprites and hex art
- Perimeter borders for territories
- Science system and tech tree
- Sound effects and ambient birds
- Minimap and camera improvements