Greetings, Strategists!
First and foremost, thank you all for your incredible patience, support, and passion for this project. This is one of the biggest updates I have ever released, representing a huge milestone and a major step forward toward the final version of the game.
Today, I'm excited to bring you a massive update packed with new content, gameplay improvements, and numerous fixes.
🆕 New Features & Content
🛡️ New Campaign: The Spartan Campaign – The Battle of Thermopylae
Experience one of history's most legendary battles in an entirely new campaign featuring 9 missions, where you'll lead the Spartans against overwhelming odds.
⭐ Hero Experience Persistence
Heroes now retain their accumulated experience between campaign missions. You will no longer lose the experience earned during previous missions, allowing your heroes to continue growing throughout the campaign.
🐘 Improved Automatic Charge System
Chariots, elephants, and camels now automatically attack and charge nearby enemies when left without orders, creating a much smoother and more satisfying experience when using these units.
🚢 Enhanced Naval Combat System
Ships now behave much more intelligently, automatically attacking and ramming nearby enemy units and vessels when idle. They also respond better to player commands, making naval battles more dynamic and enjoyable than ever.
⚔️ Unit Behavior System
You can now assign different behaviors to your units:
Aggressive
Defensive
Hold Position
Passive
This system gives you much greater tactical control over your armies.
🏹 Manual Battlefield Loot System
Workers can now be instructed to manually collect specific weapons and items from the battlefield, giving you greater control over resource management and army composition.
💬 New Taunt System
The AI now reacts to your actions by issuing threats and contextual taunts, adding much more immersion and personality to your opponents.
Players can also taunt their enemies by entering any number between 101 and 117 in the in-game chat.
🎮 Expanded Match Customization
Two new match options have been added:
Gold Collection Multiplier: Adjust the pace of the game and tailor matches to your preferred playstyle.
Nearby Ally Spawns: In team games, allies can now start closer to each other. This system also works on community-created maps, giving map creators more freedom when designing custom scenarios.
🎨 Complete Interface Overhaul
The entire user interface has been redesigned to better match the game's atmosphere and provide a more epic and immersive presentation.
🖼️ New Icons
Added new icons for various buildings, units, and technologies.
🗺️ Map Improvements
Improved Oasis map
Improved Archipelago map
Improved Waterway map
Enhanced lighting on several maps
🐞 Bug Fixes & Stability Improvements
🌐 Multiplayer
Fixed approximately 30% of the remaining multiplayer desynchronization issues.
⭐ Hero Recruitment
Fixed a difficult bug that could drastically reduce hero recruitment costs after a hero had died and gained levels.
🇪🇬 Pharaoh Guardian Ability
Fixed multiple issues with the Strength of the Nile ability, including strange animations, unintended activations, and excessive triggering.
📖 Campaign Fixes
Corrected bugs in all campaign dialogues.
Fixed various issues in both the Egyptian and Persian campaigns.
💥 Stability
Fixed crashes related to the Spartan, Egyptian, and Persian civilizations.
Corrected internal errors affecting several upgrades.
⚔️ Persian Immortals
Fixed a bug causing Persian Immortals to remain as "zombie" units on the battlefield after dying with their special ability active.
This update represents a major leap forward for the project and brings the game significantly closer to its final vision. I sincerely want to thank every single one of you for your patience, feedback, and continued support throughout development.
I hope you enjoy everything this update has to offer.
Lead your armies to glory... the war continues! ⚔️
