Two weeks into the beta and things are calming down a bit. 192 accounts have been registered so far! Players are getting settled with their first Towns and third villages, now it's time to see how the server will unfold.

New System: Empire Messaging

Screenshot of the Empire Messages tab Screenshot of the Empire Messages tab

The game still felt a bit disjointed when teaming up. There was no way to coordinate with your group or even just chat with more than one person. Well, no longer! An Empire leader can now create threads and add members to them as desired. You can find your Empire's messages in the Messages screen under the Empire messages tab. Chat away!

Management interface for an Empire thread Management interface for an Empire thread

Features added

  • Not having enough resources is no fun. And then also having to do math even less so. You can now see which resources you're lacking and how long it will take until they're available.
  • You can now quickly switch between villages on mobile without losing your current position in the app. Click the Villages button on the left sidebar and choose the village to switch to.
  • The Buildings help page has gotten a landing page with an overview of all buildings. You can sort them on category, district or tier to get a view of what's possible.
  • The village queue now accounts for changes in the village's production when starting an already queued item. No need to cancel and requeue everything.
  • You can now see movement icons on the map for all your villages. Movements from other villages have darkened out icons.

Screenshot of not enough resources Screenshot of not having enough wood in a village

Balance changed

  • Unit Aether cost has been decoupled from their supply value. Purchasing better units for Aether was too cheap early game as an unintentional side effect from balance changes during Alpha 2.
  • Native Outpost events now have a chance to spawn an Incoming native attack at stage 3 and a Gathering native forces at stage 5. This was reversed to allow for a more consistent availability of defensive events.

Improvements made

  • Builders are now refunded when cancelling a queue item.
  • Returning merchants now have their resource values greyed out so they can be more easily distinguished as not carrying resources.
  • Your username on the settings page now links to your Kingdom profile.
  • Your Kingdom and Empire are now highlighted in the weekly top 10 if you're in the top 10.
  • Your Kingdom and Empire now highlighted in the statistics.
  • Milestone values now show X million as text instead of the full number so it fits in the UI on smaller screens when it gets too large.

For smaller screens, a new Villages button shows up on the left sidebar to quickly swap between villages For smaller screens, a new Villages button shows up on the left sidebar to quickly swap between villages

  • The troop training screen now shows the Aether cost also if you don't have enough Aether.
  • The troop training screen now shows you how many troops you can train based on your currently stored resources.
  • The pages for sending merchants and training army no longer prefill 0 and 1 by default, but leave the value open to be filled by the user.
  • The right sidebar now shows the progress numbers for the current research, instead of only the percentage.
  • The left sidebar toggle for the village production now shows account population, science and culture production when toggled, instead of the bonus amounts.
  • Chat windows now poll the server for new messages every few seconds while open.

Bugs squashed

  • The tooltip for weekly top 10 medals on the Kingdom and Empire profile pages no longer goes outside the screen on mobile.
  • Army training shows the cost for 1 unit instead of a bugged value if no number is provided.

Hope to see you in game! Play Aether Kingdoms now!