Open war
A new way to play: no battle rounds, just armies in the world. Soldiers in four kinds, cavalry, walls and gates, fire, and rivals that come for you in earnest.
Alongside the new look of the world, the last few days brought a whole new way to play: open war. You choose it when you start a private world.
No rounds, just war
Until now, fighting in Eras happened in battle rounds. In an open war world there are none. All fighting happens in the world itself. Strike another realm's people or buildings and you're at war with them. Make peace and it ends.
Barracks train soldiers who guard your land and fight your enemies. You send them with your mark key or from the map: they defend your own land, or attack anywhere else. Buildings burn as they're struck and mend when left alone, and a settlement whose last building falls is lost to whoever took it. A fallen ruler doesn't leave the game: they serve the realm that beat them.
Four kinds of soldier
Any barracks trains clubmen, whose heavy blows stagger. A flintknapper lets it train spearmen, who strike from further out. Once your settlement is a hamlet, an archery range adds archers, who keep their distance and shoot. Then come stables, and riders: spearmen on horseback, twice as fast as anyone on foot and harder to bring down. Your citizens put these buildings up themselves, and a barracks always trains whichever kind its settlement has fewest of, so new kinds join the ranks as soon as they unlock.
On the map, each soldier shows as a shape: a dot for a clubman, a diamond for a spearman, a triangle for an archer and a square for a rider, ringed when they're under orders. Every realm in a world now has its own colour, so you can tell two armies apart at a glance.
Walls and gates
Soldiers find their way round walls and buildings, through a gap or past the end of a wall, instead of pressing into them. A wall with a gate steers an army to the gate. A squad going round a wall spreads out as it goes rather than queueing for one spot. Send soldiers against a settlement walled all the way round and they'll break through. They swim across rivers and lakes too, slowly.
Fire
Burning buildings crackle and roar. You hear the moment one of yours catches fire, and where, while there's still time to send soldiers. When a settlement's campfire is struck, dark smoke pours off it and its stones char, so a last stand is easy to see from far away.
Rivals that mean it
Bot rulers are now a real threat on their own. They put up a second barracks early and wait for a full squad before going to war, instead of sending soldiers in by ones and twos to be picked off. Once they attack, they see it through rather than turning their army round mid-fight. They leave you alone while you're on your first steps: once your campsite is a settlement with a barracks of its own, they may come.
They also talk. Bot rulers answer envoys according to their temper: cautious ones take peace readily, bold ones only when they're losing. And they send envoys of their own.
Weight and aim
Fights feel different too. Melee used to land the instant you clicked. Now a swing lands as it comes through: quick for fists and blades, a quarter of a second for a club. You can see a blow coming, and raising your guard during the wind-up is what makes a parry. A heavy blow staggers whoever takes it unguarded, and any swing they were winding up comes to nothing.
Arrows used to fly straight at the crosshair and drop under it, landing nearly a metre low at 30 m. Now the game works out what's under your crosshair and pitches the shot to land there. Against an aurochs at 20 to 50 m, that took us from 3 hits in 9 to 8 in 9. Accurate archery needed a cost, so each arrow takes a little stamina and holding a full draw tires your arm.
Built to last
Soldiers and wars are now saved with the world. After an update or a restart, every soldier stands where they were, with their wounds and their orders, and bot rulers' wars carry on where they left off. Armies are also much cheaper to draw: people more than 40 m away use one simpler body, so a whole field of soldiers takes a sixth of the work it used to.