Blink twice and two weeks are over, especially if you're busy running a beta. The delay in writing patch notes does not mean an absence of effort. The Natural Landmarks have spawned on beta and that meant plenty of patching to do.

Features added

  • Added a Defense Coordinator role to the Empire. They can now see incoming attacks on the Empire and some other things (more to be added).
  • All objectives now have an epic name.
  • Individual reinforcements at objectives are now visible to the owner, who can send them back, and to Empire leaders and defense coordinators, who can only see who sent what.
  • Added a page to the Empire that shows the objectives owned by the Empire, a send army button and - if permissions allow - the number of reinforcements stationed there.
  • Added a new Culture page where you can browse through the culture tiers (this will be part of Premium in the future).
  • Added a Culture planner tool, where you can plan the required culture for multiple stages of settling, tiering up and/or conquest.

Overview of individual reinforcements at a landmark Overview of individual reinforcements at a landmark

Balance changed

  • Reinforcements at objectives now eat 50% food.
  • Armies on the way to an objective that gets captured by another empire now bounce.
  • Attacks on objectives now have a speed of 4 fields per hour, similar to a siege attack and nobles.
  • Reduced culture scaling and add different scaling for settling a Village and tiering up to a Town or City.
  • The minimum fake size for objectives is 100 for Natural Landmarks, 200 for Monuments and 300 for Native Artifacts.
  • The minimum fake size for villages is now 100 for a Village, 200 for a Town and 300 for a City, or lower if the population is below the threshold.

Overview of objectives owned by the Empire and the size of the stationed army Overview of objectives owned by the Empire and the size of the stationed army

Improvements made

  • Standing movements (at villages/objectives) are now displayed on the village overview.
  • Doubled the pool of village names to draw from upon settling a new village.
  • The Research and Culture widgets in the right sidebar were updated.
  • Selecting siege targets now properly centers on small displays.
  • The title for moving armies now displays better on small displays.
  • Empire messages are now shown without coordinates. They are still visible on the Empire page.

Screenshot of the new Culture Planner tool Screenshot of the new Culture Planner tool

Bugs squashed

  • Server no longer crashes when conquering a village with a level 0 building.
  • Incoming army movements now bounce when the village is conquered by a Kingdom from another Empire, instead of the opposite happening.
  • Bouncing attacks off events no longer freaks out the server before they bounce.
  • You can no longer reinforce enemy-held objectives.
  • Reinforcements on objectives with only scouts no longer turn into scout attacks.
  • A player in beginner protection can no longer attack a player that already left beginner protection.
  • A supply event where the player is too late no longer causes the merchant to get kidnapped, bugging out the village.
  • Scout reports no longer show the word district twice.
  • Merchants now get recalculated on conquest.
  • Server now provides a nice error message when no spawns are available in a quadrant (don't worry, not an issue on beta).
  • Merchants arriving at an already finished supply event no longer cause the server to try and create a report of nothing happening.
  • Removed leading and trailing whitespaces from usernames on registration.

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