Patch Notes

The Tech Tree page listed a "Keystone" node type and a "meta to unlock" cost on every node — implying some techs need a permanent currency earned across runs before you can even take them in a match. No node in the tree is a Keystone, and that permanent-unlock cost isn't checked by anything when you allocate a node in a match. The page now shows only what's real: Minor and Notable nodes, and the in-match research cost to take them.

• Content Removed the "Keystone" entry from the Tech Tree legend and the "N meta to unlock" stat from the node panel — no node in the tree is a Keystone, and the meta-unlock cost isn't enforced anywhere in a match. The tree now shows exactly what allocating a node in a real game requires: the in-match research cost.

The run modifier picker — an optional harder challenge that multiplies your score — was gated on a state a campaign could never actually reach, so it never appeared. It now shows up right where it was meant to: at the start of any new campaign, once you've beaten a full campaign at least once.

• Fix Fixed the run modifier picker so it actually becomes available: once you've beaten a full campaign (reached and cleared the final phase) at least one time, every new campaign you start offers the choice from the very first phase.

Every result screen — the five daily quizzes, the Daily Map, and Empires matches — now shows a small feedback widget right after the result: thumbs up or down, plus an optional short note. It's one tap, no account needed, and it goes straight to us.

• Feature Platform Added a 👍👎 feedback widget (with an optional 140-character note) to all seven result screens: the five daily quizzes, the Daily Map, and Empires matches. Voting takes one tap and sends immediately — no extra step, no login.

Some unit and card pages listed a keyword — Charge, Ambush, Scorched Earth, and a couple of others — that described a mechanic the game doesn't actually have. The keyword glossary listed those the same way as the real ones, with no way to tell them apart.

• Content Unit and card pages no longer show a keyword chip for effects that aren't actually implemented. Real keywords (Counter, Siege, Overwatch, and the rest) are unaffected.
• Content The keyword glossary now marks unimplemented mechanics as "planned" instead of describing them the same way as working ones.

A follow-up fix to the Civilization/Archetype cleanup shipped earlier today — a coding mistake could have broken the Archetypes pages during a deploy. Caught and fixed before it reached the live site.

• Fix Fixed a scoping mistake that could have broken the Archetypes pages during a site rebuild. No content changed — this just makes sure the pages build correctly.

The keyboard path used to be a search box — type a country and the map would jump straight to it, which handed you the answer's location without ever having to look at the map yourself. It's arrow-key browsing now: reach the map, step through the countries one at a time, and answer whichever one you're on.

• UX Dailies Replaced the Daily Map's text search with keyboard browsing: Tab reaches the map, arrow keys move through the countries one at a time (alphabetically), Enter or Space answers the one you're on. There's no way to type a country's name anymore — finding it is visual again, the same task a mouse player has always had.

The wiki listed 6 playable civilizations, each with its own bonus, and 4 HQ archetypes to choose between — but civilization selection was never wired into a real match, and 2 of the 4 archetypes are never used either. Those pages are gone; what's left is what a match actually gives you.

• Content Removed the Civilizations section from the wiki (the list page and all 6 civilization pages) — picking a civilization was never a real step before a match, so the bonuses described there never applied.
• Content The Archetypes page now lists 2 archetypes instead of 4 — Militar and Industrial are the ones a match actually uses; Defensivo and Espia were never selected in a real game.

Buildings that auto-attack nearby enemies, fire missiles, spawn extra units, boost allied attack or defense, plant mines, or retaliate on destruction were shown in the wiki as generic "passive" walls, because that information simply wasn't published yet. Nineteen of the twenty-five buildings in the Command shop actually do something beyond their HP and population numbers, and their pages now say what.

• Content Building pages, and the building list, now show each building's active effect (auto-attack range and damage, missile strikes, spawn rate, attack/defense auras, mines, retaliation on destruction, movement-blocking) read straight from the game engine. Buildings with no such effect, like the Wall, now say so honestly instead of showing nothing.
• Content The population cost some buildings charge (Recruitment Center, the Grad Battery, and five others) is now shown on their pages too — it existed in the game but wasn't published before.

Bone questions with a clickable drawing were rare — most days barely showed two, and some days showed none at all. There's now a second question for each of the seventeen bones the skeleton already draws, so a click question is far more likely to come up.

• Content Dailies Added a second question for each of the seventeen bones with a clickable drawing, testing a different fact than the existing question for that bone. Days with a click question go from about 92% to over 99%, and the average number of click questions per day roughly doubles. No new artwork — the same seventeen drawn bones, just more chances for one of them to come up.

A handful of the etymology rounds had the same tell as the old Books questions: the correct origin was written out fully while the wrong ones were left short, so it stood out by length alone. All of them now read at the same length.

• Content Dailies Rewrote one wrong answer in each of the nine affected rounds so it reads at the same length as the correct origin. What each wrong answer claims is unchanged.

The Industrial archetype's description referenced two buildings that were removed from the Command shop, and all four archetype descriptions claimed effects (extra attack for units spawned near your HQ, doubled HP for nearby defenses, a higher population cap) that don't currently happen in a match — population cap in particular is the same for every archetype; only your HQ's HP actually differs. A civilization's page had the same "Required buildings" claim the archetype pages dropped yesterday, missed in that pass — it's gone too.

• Content Rewrote all four archetype descriptions to state only what's real: Defensivo has by far the toughest HQ (35 HP vs. 25 for the others); Militar, Industrial and Espia currently share the same HQ HP with no unique stat of their own. Removed the population-cap comparison (it doesn't apply per archetype) and the dead combat-bonus claims.
• Content Removed a "Required buildings" list from civilization pages that named the same buildings the archetype pages stopped listing yesterday — this one was missed in that pass.
• Content Removed a "Required by archetypes" list from building pages, the same claim shown from the other direction — also missed in yesterday's pass.

Archetype pages listed "Required" and "Forbidden" buildings, as if picking an archetype locked you into a specific deck. It never did — the Command shop offers the same buildings to everyone regardless of archetype. Archetype pages now show what actually changes: your HQ's stats and which civilizations use it.

• Content Removed the "Required" and "Forbidden" building lists from every archetype page — they described a deck-building rule the game doesn't have. What's left (HQ HP and which civilizations use the archetype) is what an archetype actually changes in a match.

Across every book in the pool, the right answer tended to be written out in full while the wrong ones were clipped short — so the correct choice was often the longest option on screen, readable at a glance without reading the passage at all. Every wrong answer, in all thirty books, has been rewritten to match the right one in length and tone.

• Content Dailies Rewrote 260 wrong answers across all thirty books in the pool so none of them give themselves away by being noticeably shorter than the right one. What each wrong answer says is unchanged — they're the same wrong answers, just no longer recognisable as wrong at a glance. The Iliad got this pass first, on 2026-07-28; this finishes the rest of the shelf.

The Structures page listed 5 buildings the Command shop never actually offers, left over from an older economy the game no longer uses — click through to any of them and you'd hit a dead link. It's back to matching exactly what you can build in a run.

• Content Removed 5 structures from the Structures wiki page (Intel Center, Supply Depot, Forge, Research Lab, Refinery) — they produce resources the current economy doesn't use and were never offered in the Command shop, so they could never come up in a match. The archetype pages' "Required" lists were also cleaned of the same 5, since those links pointed at pages that no longer exist.

The keyboard search box used to submit an answer the moment you typed a country's exact name and hit Enter — so reading the name right off the prompt and typing it back solved every round with zero geography. Typing still finds and highlights a country on the map, but only clicking it (or pressing Enter while it's highlighted) actually answers.

• Fix Dailies Typing a country's name and pressing Enter now highlights it on the map and zooms to it — it no longer submits an answer by itself. To answer, click the highlighted country, or press Enter again while it's highlighted. Keyboard players keep a way to play without a mouse; the map is back to being the thing you actually have to read.
• UX Dailies The highlighted country can be dismissed with Escape, which returns you to typing without answering. Clicking a different country on the map always answers that one instead, highlight or not.

Every odd-one-out round asked which word did not grow from the same ancient root. For most of them that wasn't the question being asked: the three matching words shared where they entered English from — Viking loans, Arabic maths, foods from the Aztec world — which is a different thing from sharing a root. Each round now says which of the two it means.

• Content Dailies Rounds that group words by a shared ancestor still ask about the root. Rounds that group them by where they came into English from now say so instead. Only three of the sixteen were really about a shared root, so most rounds read differently now — the words and the answers are unchanged.
• Fix Dailies One round contradicted itself: it asked which word did NOT come from the same root, and its own reveal explained that the odd word out (shirt) is the very same ancient word as skirt. It's a question about which ones arrived from Old Norse, and now it says that.

In the Iliad's questions the right answer was written out in full while the wrong ones were clipped short, so the answer stood out by shape before you'd read a word of it. All of them now read at the same length and in the same voice. The other books are getting the same pass.

• Content Dailies Every wrong answer in the Iliad's questions was rewritten to match the right one in length and tone. What each one says is unchanged — they're the same wrong answers, just no longer recognisable as wrong at a glance.

The flag of the day was served from a file named after the country, so anyone who opened the image could read the answer off its address — no flag knowledge needed. The image now loads through an address that says nothing about which flag it is.

• Fix Dailies Each flag now loads through a neutral address tied to the question number of the day, not to the country's name. The picture you see is exactly the same one; only its address changed, and it no longer spells out the answer. Because the address is tied to the day, it points at a different flag tomorrow.

The How to Play page told new players to raise their Tier in their first turns — the Tier button doesn't even appear until Phase 4. It also listed a worker cap of 10 with no mention of the population limit that actually stops you first. Both fixed.

• Content The 'Your first turns' list no longer tells you to raise your Tier — that control only appears starting Phase 4, once the game has walked you through the earlier systems. A new note explains when it shows up instead.
• Content The economy panel now shows your real Population cap (5 to start) next to the Worker cap (10) — population is what actually stops you from fielding more workers early on, and the wiki never said so. House and Community Center, which raise it, now show their exact numbers too.
• Fix Command offers were shown as 3/4/5 cards per Tier; the shop always adds one power card on top of that, so the real numbers are 4/5/6. Fixed at the source.
• Content The Research paragraph said control points were 'scattered on the map' and that you had to move a worker onto one to start earning — you actually start owning one right next to your squad from turn 1, no action needed. The only one worth fighting for is the enemy's.

Units marching on their own toward the enemy HQ could get permanently wedged next to a forest or a river, even with a clear detour one tile away. Fixed the routing, then rebalanced the campaign around it — the enemy navigates better too now, so a few phases shifted.

• Fix Units marching automatically toward the enemy HQ could get stuck forever beside a forest or river, even when a detour was right there — the old routing only ever took a step that looked closer in a straight line, and never around an obstacle. Marching now finds the real route, the same way your manual moves already did.
• Balance That fix changes how both sides play, not just how they look — the enemy finds its way around obstacles better now too. Phases 6, 7 and 8 got easier to compensate and are a bit gentler than before. Phases 5 and 9 got harder and don't have a full fix yet — see known issues.

Links from our own posts can now carry a campaign tag, so we can finally tell which ones actually bring people to the site. The privacy page was updated to say exactly what that means — it's two tags about the post, not about you.

• Feature Platform Our own links can now carry campaign tags, letting us see which posts bring people in and which don't. Only two tags are read — the source and the campaign name — never the rest of a link's address, and they're kept for the browsing session only.
• Content Site The privacy page now has a 'Campaign attribution' section spelling this out. It previously said URLs are recorded without query strings; that's still true of everything except those two campaign tags, and now the page says so.

Conscription and Quarry described their bonus in Personnel and Supplies — resources this game stopped using long ago. They actually discount gold, and now say so. The structures wiki got the same treatment: it was publishing build costs and idle production that the game never charges or produces.

• Content Conscription now reads 'power cards cost 1 less gold' and Quarry 'buildings cost 1 less gold at the Command'. Both previously described a discount in Personnel and Supplies — resources the game hasn't used since the Battlegrounds rework, so the text described a saving you could never see. The discounts themselves are unchanged; only the description was wrong.
• Fix Site The structures wiki no longer lists a build cost in Supplies and Personnel, or an idle production rate — neither exists in the game you actually play. Each page now shows the real cost: 3 gold at the Command, with placement from your hand free.

You started every match already over the worker limit — three Settlers against a cap of two, flagged in red before you'd done anything. That cap was a bug, and it's gone. Population is what limits your workforce now, the way it was always meant to.

• Fix Removed a worker cap of half your population that was never part of the design. It meant your starting squad of three Settlers was already over the limit on turn one, the counter showed 3/2 in red, and the next Settler was locked until you built a House. The real limit is 10 workers; before that, what constrains you is population — one per worker — exactly as intended.
• UX The worker counter now reads 3/10 at the start instead of 3/2, and the tutorial no longer explains a rule that didn't exist. Building a House still matters — it raises the population that lets you field more Settlers.

Units have always dealt bonus damage against certain classes — armored, air, heavy, buildings — but the game never told you which or how much. Those numbers now show up where you actually decide: on the card, in the shop, and when you inspect a unit on the board.

• UX Unit cards in your hand now show what they counter right on the card — an Anti-Tank Infantry reads '+4 Armored · +3 Heavy'. Before, the only place those numbers existed was the wiki, so picking the right unit for the fight meant guessing.
• UX Buying a building in the Command now tells you what its troops counter — a Barracks reads 'Generates Infantry (ATK 3·HP 5) · +2 vs Armored'. Buying a building is choosing which troop you'll field all match, so the counter belongs in that decision.
• UX Hovering any unit on the board now spells out its counters. The tooltip used to say just 'Counter' — telling you a bonus existed without saying against what. Now you can read the enemy's army and answer it.

A fidelity pass on the tech tree and hero roster: two heroes' abilities were pure flavor text with no actual effect, six tech-tree nodes tied to unplayable civilizations did nothing when allocated, and the tutorial pointed at a worker-buying mechanic that has never existed. All fixed; the tech tree was also rebalanced so the campaign's pacing holds with six fewer nodes.

• Content Hannibal's 'Ambush' and Saladin's 'Rally' abilities described bonuses (extra attack from forest or high ground, buffing nearby allies) that never actually triggered in a match. Their card text now describes what they really do: their raw stats are simply the toughest in the roster, no hidden trigger.
• Content Removed six tech-tree keystones (one per unplayable civilization) that had no effect when allocated — they cost Research and did nothing. The tree is now 19 nodes, all of them doing something.
• Balance Rebalanced the tech tree's per-node campaign surcharge (every 3 nodes owned → every 2) to keep the full tree spanning roughly the same stretch of the campaign after the six dead nodes came out.
• Fix Two tech nodes' descriptions didn't match what they actually did: Masonry claimed a construction discount it never granted, and Sanitation said it only buffed 'defensive structures' when it actually buffs every structure you own, HQ included. Both now describe the real effect.
• Fix The Phase 1 tutorial and early hints told you to 'buy a worker' at the Command — workers have never been for sale there; your HQ mints one for free each turn. The hints now say so.

Daily Roots — the etymology game — now has its own card on the homepage and counts toward your daily quiz streak; it shipped last week but a few spots hadn't caught up yet.

• Fix Site Daily Roots now has its own card on the homepage, right alongside the other six ways to play today. It launched last week but the front page — and the copy calling out how many quizzes there are — hadn't caught up yet.
• Fix Dailies Playing Daily Roots now counts toward the 'Triple threat' daily quest, same as the other quizzes.
• Fix Site Fixed a broken link in the wiki's per-language metadata that search engines use to find translated versions of a page.

A polish pass on the daily quizzes, driven by live measurements: the Anatomy skeleton grows much bigger with easier-to-hit bones, and long answers in Books and Roots get full-width room on phones.

• UX Dailies Daily Anatomy: the clickable skeleton is now about 40% taller, and every thin bone — fibula, clavicle, coccyx — carries a wider invisible hit area drawn right on the bone's own outline, so picking the right bone no longer demands pixel-perfect aim even along a curve. The skeleton also scrolls itself into view when a bone question appears.
• UX Dailies On phones, long answers in Daily Books and Daily Roots now stack in one full-width column instead of squeezing into half-width boxes, and the Books question heading slimmed down so the passage and all four answers sit closer to a single screen.
• Fix Empires Building placement now correctly blocks a new building from overlapping another one already on the board — a rare footprint-overlap bug that could leave a building paid-for and listed but never actually placed. Fixing this also uncovered that it had been quietly inflating how often a rookie could clear the early campaign, so expect the opening phases to feel a little tougher and truer to their intended difficulty.

A big day: a brand-new seventh daily — Roots, the etymology game — Daily Books going global with sixteen new classics, the site translated into 11 languages, and a light/dark theme toggle everywhere including the wiki.

• Feature Dailies NEW seventh daily: Roots — where words come from. Five etymology rounds a day: spot the word that does NOT share the others' ancient root, or pick which language gave English a word. Every answer, right or wrong, reveals the story behind it — why a salary is salt, why shirt and skirt are the same word, how 'orange' lost its N crossing the map.
• Feature Site Light/dark theme toggle in the site header — follows your system preference by default, remembers your choice, and switches instantly. Currently on the landing page, carousel stories and legal pages; the wiki joins next.
• Feature Site The theme toggle reaches the wiki: every wiki page now has the light/dark switch in its sidebar, with a contrast pass so tables and code blocks stay readable in both themes.
• Feature Site The site now speaks 11 languages: the homepage, carousel stories and the whole wiki are reachable under /es, /pt, /fr, /de, /ja and six more — with a language selector in the header and right-to-left support for Arabic.
• Content Site The wiki's game data joins the translation: hero lore, unit and structure descriptions, tech-tree nodes and the rest of the game reference now read natively in all 10 extra languages — not just the page chrome around them.
• Balance Empires Phase 1 (Thermopylae): the enemy now fields one extra unit per squad (unit bonus 0 → 1). Sitting back and doing nothing could win the phase — that broke the first rule of the campaign, so the opening fight now punishes passivity while staying winnable for an engaged rookie.
• UX Platform The weekly production report now raises an alert by itself if any server error appeared in the last 7 days — problems get flagged before anyone thinks to look.
• Fix Site Light theme legibility pass: accent-colored text and the support button now meet contrast guidelines on light backgrounds — no more squinting at gold-on-white.
• Content Dailies Daily Books more than doubles: 14 to 30 works, and the shelf goes global. New arrivals span Mesopotamia (Gilgamesh), Greece (the Iliad, Herodotus), Rome (the Aeneid), China (The Art of War, Three Kingdoms), the Islamic world (1001 Nights), Japan (Genji), Persia (the Shahnameh), India (the Bhagavad Gita), the Mali Empire (Sundiata), the Maya (Popol Vuh), Portugal (The Lusiads), Brazil (Dom Casmurro), and Renaissance Italy (The Prince, Dante's Inferno). The new question sets also ask WHY things happen, not just where — reading, not trivia.
• Docs Platform The engine's automated test suite got 30 long-broken tests fixed — they were casualties of the board gaining terrain and bigger buildings, not real bugs. Tolerated failures dropped from 105 to 75.

Daily Anatomy bone questions are now answered by clicking a real skeleton, and Empires starts loading its engine the moment you open the hub — so pressing Start feels far faster.

• Feature Dailies Daily Anatomy: bone questions with a drawable bone are now answered by CLICKING it on a real human skeleton — pick a bone, confirm, and the right one lights up. Organs, systems and bones too small to draw stay multiple-choice.
• UX Empires Empires now begins downloading its engine in the background as soon as you open the hub — by the time you pick a hero and press Start, most of the wait is already done. First-visit load time is now also measured for real, so future speedups chase data instead of guesses.
• Fix Dailies The weekly automated production check now plays a real daily run without ever appearing on the public leaderboard — its test player is tagged and excluded from ranks and percentiles.

An end-to-end review of the games and the site, and a same-day fix batch: the mobile menu works again, card spacing is back, XP can't be farmed, and a daily that crosses midnight tells you so.

• Fix Site The site menu now wraps on narrow phones — the Play Empires button could sit off-screen, unreachable, exactly where most visitors arrive from.
• Fix Site Restored the missing spacing on the landing page's daily cards and on the Play Empires box under every carousel story — a styling slip had text sitting flush against the card edges.
• UX Site Carousel stories now load about 90% lighter — the images were re-encoded to a modern format, cutting a typical story from ~8MB to under 1MB. Same pictures, far less waiting on mobile.
• Fix Site Wiki overview cards no longer render their titles in the browser's default link blue — back to the house gold, with contrast that actually passes.
• Fix Empires If the engine fails to download on the first try (a network hiccup), Retry now really retries — it used to replay the same failure until a full page reload.
• Balance Empires Campaign XP now pays the phase bonus only on a phase's FIRST clear. Replaying a cleared phase (including on Autopilot) earns the base amount — the same rule Supplies and victory spoils always had, closing an unlimited XP farm.
• Fix Dailies Crossing midnight (UTC) mid-quiz no longer strands you on an endless "tap your answer again" — the daily now says the day rolled over and offers to load the new challenge.
• Fix Dailies Answer locks are now airtight: a rare timing trick could re-open an already-answered question on the server. Each answer now locks atomically, for good.
• UX Platform The welcome card now lists all six daily challenges (it still said three), closes on Escape, and keeps keyboard focus inside until dismissed.
• Fix Platform A corrupted saved profile can no longer freeze the result screen or take the Empires menu down with it — saved data is checked and repaired on load.
• Content Site Carousel stories scheduled for a future feed date no longer display that future date as if already published.
• Content Site The privacy policy now covers the newsletter form it had forgotten to mention — what is collected (email, optional WhatsApp), who processes it, and how to be removed.
• Docs Platform These patch notes now cover all of CivDecoded — the games, the dailies and the site — with a scope tag on every change. If it shipped, it is on this page.

Your last 30 days show as a play-history strip, streak milestones pay badges, and the share card now says how many players you beat.

• Feature Platform Play history: your profile shows the last 30 days as a strip of played and missed days — a streak you can see, not just a number.
• Feature Platform Two new badges: Week One (7-day streak) and Iron Will (30-day streak).
• Feature Dailies Daily shares now carry your percentile — "Beat 87% of players" — computed from everyone who finished that day's board.
• Fix Site Hero pages on the wiki glow in each hero's color instead of showing an empty grey box where the art will one day live.
• Content Site The landing page now shows all six ways to play today, with the Empires Daily Challenge front and center.

Anatomy and Books join the daily lineup, the Empires Daily gains ghosts of yesterday's best player, and the whole daily loop comes together.

• Feature Dailies Daily Anatomy: a new quiz on bones, organs and body systems — 10 questions, one try per day, on the same server-scored board as the others.
• Feature Dailies Daily Books: read a 300-word summary of a classic, then answer 5 questions on what it actually says. Reading comprehension as a daily habit — no trivia.
• Feature Empires Ghost lobby: win the Empires Daily and your final army's vanguard may haunt tomorrow's players. Today's board can carry up to 5 units from yesterday's best result, and beating an active ghost pays +10% on the daily score.
• Feature Platform The Empires Daily now counts toward the same daily loop as the quizzes: streak in the header, an all-time best-run board, and a shareable campaign result.
• Fix Empires A batch of fixes from a full narrated playthrough: truncated card names, cut-off tech labels, a hub that flashed broken before the first match, a briefing tip now matching the wiki, and phase 9's missing date.
• Fix Platform The quest dot in the menu no longer lies about unclaimed rewards, and the First Steps badge no longer celebrates a defeat.
• Fix Dailies The England flag now loads — it was pointing at artwork that does not exist.
• Content Site All 38 carousel stories from the feed are now readable on the site, slide by slide, with full alt text on every image.

Your best campaign run now has an all-time rank, the wiki finally explains mutators, Supplies and run score, and the board no longer breaks on a phone.

• Feature Your best-ever run score now has an all-time leaderboard rank, shown on the campaign victory screen the moment you set a new record.
• Content The wiki now covers Mutators, Supplies and Run Score in full, with real numbers pulled straight from the game.
• Fix The economy page's market rate is now the actual live number instead of a hardcoded guess.
• Fix Fixed a layout bug that made the whole page scroll sideways on narrow phone screens.
• UX The wiki link in the HUD now opens the exact campaign phase you're playing, instead of the wiki's front page.

Once you've beaten the campaign, a mutator lets you replay it harder for a bigger score. Supplies now also reward clearing phases, not just waiting.

• Feature Mutators: after beating the Commander, pick one modifier — Raiding Column, Entrenched Enemy or The Horde — that toughens every phase of your next campaign in exchange for a run-score multiplier.
• Feature Supplies now reward performance, not just time: clearing a phase for the first time in a run mints Supplies proportional to how hard that phase is, on top of the existing idle trickle.

Tech now carries from phase to phase and resets on New Campaign — with spoils for every first clear, a run score, and a Daily leaderboard.

• Feature Campaign tech is now run-scoped: nodes you research carry from phase to phase and compound. 'New campaign' resets the ladder and the tech web together — heroes, Supplies and perks stay yours for good.
• Feature Research gets pricier as your web grows: every few nodes allocated in a campaign, future nodes cost +1 ◈. A full web is a late-campaign achievement, not an early formality.
• Feature Spoils of victory: clear a phase for the first time and pick one of three tech nodes, granted free into your run.
• Feature Run score: each phase cleared is worth points in proportion to how hard it is — the boss is worth several times the opening — with a small penalty per retry. There is no permadeath; a defeat just replays the phase. The score is what carries the stakes.
• Feature The Daily now has a leaderboard: your score is submitted when you finish, and the daily card shows the top players and your rank.

Less thrown at you up front, and you can actually see the board.

• Feature Phase 1 is now a clean intro — you start with 3 workers and 1 infantry, no hero. You pick your hero after clearing Phase 1, so the first match is about learning the loop, not choosing.
• UX Structures are flattened on the board — the 3D blocks were hiding units standing behind them. Buildings are near-flat now; the HQ keeps a subtle raise.

Making the systems legible to a first-time player.

• UX Tech tree now shows an axis legend — Military (attack / siege), Economic (income), Civil (defense / pop) — so you can tell which coloured branch does what. The coaching says 'allocate attack/siege'; now you can see where that is.
• UX New '?' button in the HUD opens a glossary — ◈ Research, Gold, Pop, Tier, the Command, Fusion, auto-combat, Zone of Control, HQ and Hero, defined in one place. A fallback for anyone who skipped the first-turn coaching.
• UX Mobile play tightened up: the board stacks above the sidebar, controls wrap instead of overflowing, and the Tech Tree / Glossary panels open full-screen so they're readable on a phone.
• Fix Locked hero tooltip now reads 'Reach Phase N to unlock' (was 'Complete Phase N') — matching when the hero actually unlocks. Plus internal hardening so a corrupted local save can't break a match start.

First measured balance pass — Phase 8 was a brick wall; it isn't anymore.

• Balance Phase 8 (Vanguard): the adaptive enemy's resource handicap dropped from 1.4x to 1.2x. In our test matches the phase went from near-unwinnable (about 1 clear in 8 attempts) to a hard-but-fair wall (about 1 in 4), so Phases 7 and 8 no longer feel like the same brick twice.

Sharper first impression: branded share, a boot that teaches, and a clearer board.

• Feature Daily result share is now a branded image card, not just text — one tap turns a run into something postable.
• UX The ~20s engine boot now cycles gameplay tips (phase strategy, your hero's ability, fusion / fog / tech basics) instead of a blank wait.
• UX Visual pass on the board: clearer unit/structure hierarchy, auto-fit zoom at match start, and a bolder win/lose result banner.

A stability pass on six confirmed bugs; full-auto reframed so wins still mean something.

• Fix Stability pass on six confirmed bugs — a build break that could hold up updates, a slow memory leak from lingering input listeners, Daily results that could show up incomplete, and a hiccup during game boot.
• Feature Full-auto (Autopilot) is now a replay/farm tool: it only unlocks on a phase you've already beaten by hand, and never on the Daily. Your first clear of every phase is manual.
• Feature Your hero is now identifiable on the board instead of an anonymous soldier.
• Feature Fog of war is now real AoE2-style vision (it actually hides the enemy), not just a cosmetic overlay.

The product went fully English, the difficulty curve got measured (not guessed), and tech allocations started to persist.

• Balance The enemy's difficulty handicap wasn't being applied consistently behind the scenes, so some phases played easier or harder than intended. Fixed — and the entire Phase 1 to 10 difficulty curve was re-measured from real test matches afterwards.
• Balance The difficulty shown for each campaign phase now comes straight from those measured test matches — what the campaign screen says is what the enemy actually does.
• Feature Tech tree allocations now persist across campaign phases instead of resetting every match — builds become a campaign-long strategy.
• Feature Triple structure fusion (3 copies -> a 2-star golden version) is now automatic.
• Feature The tech tree can be opened and browsed from the phase-select screen, outside a match, for planning.
• Content The whole game now ships in English — every structure, power and keyword has an English name, with a guard in place so internal names can't leak into what you see.
• Fix Cleared out the remains of an older, unshipped design — one game, one source of truth.