Our congratulations to the BEAST empire for their victory on Plains 2! With another server ended, we're excited to share more about our road to launch. And for those playing on Hills 1, we're adding more information to siege reports and provide a big set of balance changes based on what we learned in Plains 2.

Aether Kingdoms: Road to Launch

Almost 3 years of development and a year of Aether Kingdoms Beta has been a wild and wonderful ride. Closing off Plains 2, our 5th server, we're feeling closer to launch than ever. So... what's next?

Aether Kingdoms 1.0 needs a bit more time in the oven. Expanding the game from 1 to 3 playable factions while finishing everything else is quite a task. That's why we'll be running a Beta 4 server to apply the lessons learned from the latest beta rounds.

Beta 4 will start somewhere late November/early December and will be a shorter server, with objectives spawning earlier than usual. That way we'll ensure that Hills 1 and Beta 4 end at roughly the same time, ready for a competitive launch server.

We'll be discussing changes leading up to Beta 4 in the Discord, so come discuss and help shape the future of the game there.

Premium update

We'll be releasing Aether Premium in the run-up to Beta 4. If you're not familiar with it yet, Premium will be our primary monetisation method. It's a subscription that'll unlock the full Kingdom Statistics, endlessly repeatable village projects and a other helpful features. We'll put up a page with full details of Aether Premium before it goes live.

We're working on all the features and documentation to ensure we're fair, transparent and compliant. This includes self-service account deletion, a refund button for recent payments, support tickets and more things like that. You will receive a (legally required) email update with more information about Premium and the legal stuff in the near future.

All the ongoing work on Beta 4 and Premium means that Hills 1 will enter a more stable state. This will help us test long-term server performance, so we're eager to see if any issues arise there.

New Feature: Total Siege Damage

Keeping track of all the siege damage done was a lot of effort. We've added a new feature that calculates this for you and shows the total in the report. And a new icon to really drive home that you did damage.

img.png The new siege damage report

The server will also keep track of the total siege damage done by player and empire, but only to players in other empires. We don't want to encourage bombarding new players as soon as they get out of beginner protection.

Balance changed

  • Objectives are too strong when combining the 50% consumption bonus with having unbreakable level 10 walls. We like the stacking of big armies, so objectives will no longer have any walls.
  • Objectives can now only be attacked if the attacker has a town hall level 10 at the time of sending the attack.
  • Artifacts will now spawn 2 weeks after Monument activation, as announced in the last patch notes.
  • The damage change for walls when sieging is increased from 76% to 81%. This gives expected damage of 2 (was 1.78) with a level 10 Siege Workshop, and 2.78 at level 20 (was 2.36). Overall this should make it a bit more reliable to knock down the walls 2-3 levels.
  • The Keep now affects the speed of units moving between your own villages, instead of only reinforcements.
  • The Keep now applies its bonus to reinforcing events.
  • Units affected by the Keep will go no faster than 10 fields per hour. If a unit's base speed is 10 fields per hour or higher, it will not be increased. For example, a Longbow with level 10 Keep stays the same at 9 fields per hour. A spearman was 10.5 fields per hour, but now goes 10 fields per hour. A lancer now goes 14 fields per hour, instead of 21, because it's no longer affected.
  • Delayed reinforcements are now limited to the Fortification district. While we appreciate the comfort delayed sending brings, we feel that some requirement is necessary for defenders to balance it out with attackers needing a Military district.
  • Each Noble standing in the home village now gives +1 Loyalty per hour.
  • Reduced Cataphract industry cost from 26 to 22.

Barbarians

We're reducing Barbarian attack damage across the board to equalise the faction's event difficulty between attackers and defenders.

  • Raider attack reduced from 10 to 9.
  • Axeman attack reduced from 18 to 16.
  • Shieldmaiden attack reduced from 22 to 20.
  • Berserker attack reduced from 48 to 38.
  • Bowman attack reduced from 8 to 7.
  • Warden attack reduced from 20 to 18.
  • Outrider attack reduced from 26 to 20.
  • Chieftain attack reduced from 76 to 68.

img_1.png Map with the new option to hide all event icons on the view with images (except objectives)

Improvements made

  • The Monument now shows a send resources button on the map when that option is available.
  • The Empire incomings map overlay is now a toggle only for showing the incomings, giving you full control over how you want to view the map with incomings.
  • Added a map option to show large/small/no event icons regardless of viewing mode.
  • Building name and level on the village building page now collapse nicely on smaller screens.
  • The arrow buttons to switch between villages in the advisor are now better usable on small screens.
  • The advisor now gives hints about each objective 2 weeks before they spawn or activate.
  • Army movements now show an icon representing the origin and target if it's a village or objective.

Bugs squashed

  • The starting tier for the culture planner and changing the tier on the culture page should work again.
  • Corrected some faulty building descriptions (missing word, spelling).

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