Changelog

More space between Multiplayer spawns

• Increased the minimum distance from a new capital to existing player or bot territory from 6 to 8 hex steps.

Wider vision and Multiplayer pacing

• Increased vision radius from 3 to 4 tiles.
• Multiplayer now starts with one bot instead of two when only one human is ready. Two or more humans start without bots.
• Additional bots can arrive every 45 seconds, up to three minutes, based on participant count and available space.
• Multiplayer matches now stop accepting new players after three minutes instead of five. Existing players can still reconnect.
• Late joiners receive their starting armies faster. Capital production reaches its maximum speed at three minutes instead of four.

Lower Tower cost

• Towers now cost 15 wood instead of 20.
• Tower rubble now returns 7 wood instead of 10.

Territory expansion and Multiplayer updates

• Farms, Foresters, and Quarries now capture adjacent neutral tiles, like Camps and Villages.
• Multiplayer late joiners receive their starting armies faster.
• Multiplayer matches stop accepting new players and bots after five minutes.

Combat fixes and Multiplayer updates

• Capital destruction leaves your Crown behind. You remain alive in the game until an enemy captures it, but you can't build on that tile.
• Bots now take over surrendered players and can win matches.
• Multiplayer late joiners receive their starting armies faster.
• Bots now treat opponents with more tiles as enemies.
• Tile purchases now cost 1–5 gold, with lower prices when you own more neighboring tiles.
• Footman HP: 24 -> 30.
• Castles no longer fire their own projectiles. This nerfs them and can fix some lategame stalemate positions.
• Improved army movement and combat. Fixed stuck armies and projectiles missing moving targets.
• Added capital attack alerts, clearer defeat explanations, and building hit flashes.
• Updated territory borders and fixed the in-game leaderboard to show more than 6 players.
• Fixed surrender during the Multiplayer opening countdown and clicks passing through the surrender button.

Terrain brushes and clearer battlefield visuals

• The Arena Editor now supports three terrain brush sizes and continuous painting as you drag
• Territory borders now have thicker outlines
• Garrison icons now have backgrounds in the owner's color
• Village HP: 40 -> 20. Farm, Forester, and Quarry HP: 20 -> 10.
• Spectator zoom now uses the same limits as normal gameplay
• Fixed army preview rendering in WebGL builds

Larger arenas and construction fixes

• The Arena Editor now supports map sizes up to 20, increased from 14
• You can now build and buy tiles beside enemy civilian buildings under construction
• Fixed bots building catapults on top of camps

New Multiplayer and Email/Password Login

• You can now join multiplayer games already in progress, with new bots arriving over time
• Multiplayer has no time limit: capture more than half the playable tiles to win
• Added weekly rankings based on multiplayer wins
• Capitals now produce your starting armies instead of ships. Removed supply deliveries of wood and stone.
• Capitals can now start inland
• Catapult HP: 30 -> 15
• Added email and password sign-in. Existing email players can use Forgot password to set their first password.
• Improved the Tutorial, army routes, and multiplayer victory feedback
• Fixed Arena Editor loading after discarding changes

Rubble Collection and Gameplay Polish

• Footmen and Horsemen now collect enemy and neutral rubble for wood and stone
• Bots become aggressive sooner: 4–6 minutes instead of 5–8
• Improved army path previews and building placement feedback
• Added arrow key camera controls and arena camera bounds
• Fixed archers blocked by enemy civilian buildings
• Fixed Tutorial startup and spectator disconnects

Polish and Fixes

• Improved building removal controls
• Added dashed automation routes
• Fixed units disappearing when retreating into full buildings
• Fixed spectator loading

Sound FX & new water

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• sound
• on

Arena Victory Results and Combat Fixes

• Arena victories now show your completion time, the Arena record, and whether you set a new record
• Fixed units that became untargetable near tile boundaries or enemy buildings
• Armies now enter friendly military buildings during combat instead of continuing to fight outside
• Fixed menu cards that wrapped below the screen at some UI scales
• Restored player name labels on other players' harbors
• Added opus3k and Ligma to Special Thanks

Happiness and Catapult Rework

• Added happiness: food shortages reduce it, a food surplus restores it, and zero food balance keeps it steady. At 0%, your people revolt and you lose.
• Catapults now stay on their construction tile, fire five shots, then disappear. Remaining ammunition is visible.
• Catapult damage: 30 -> 50
• Catapults now automatically attack enemy Farms, Foresters, Quarries, and Villages
• Capital HP: 100 -> 150
• Castle HP: 500 -> 300
• You can now buy eligible neutral civilian buildings next to your territory
• Improved HUD scaling with camera zoom, hovered previews, garrison icons, and in-game dialogs

Faster Horsemen, Smarter Bots and New Sounds

• Horseman movement speed: 0.14 -> 0.18
• Bots now plan their starting economy and expansion routes more carefully
• Added some more generic feedback sound effects
• Fixed fast mouse drags that failed to send armies
• Clarified Arena editor requirements for spawns and ship routes

Bug Fixes and Quality-of-Life Improvements

• Fixed bugs in spectate mode, lobby and chat
• Update building buttons
• Barracks model is now more easily distinguishable from other buildings
• Lobby now lists online players and who's in queue

Live Spectating

• You can now watch active matches from the Running Games list
• New Barracks model
• Barracks wood cost: 0 -> 10
• Barracks stone cost: 15 -> 0
• Barracks HP: 200 -> 50
• Barracks defense bonus: 150% -> 25%
• The Leaderboard now ranks every rated User and shows signed-in Users their own standing
• The Tutorial now includes a step for sending archers and a safer first Bot spawn

Arena Editor

• Added Arena editor
• Dynamic ship paths for custom Arenas
• Improved Arena previews and the Leaderboard
• Added more mountain variants and clearer village adjacency warnings

Champion time to beat

• Arena cards now show the champion's time to beat

Public Arenas

• Added a public Arenas page to discover and browse enabled Arenas
• You can now select an Arena to play a Bot-Only Game
• Simplified the guest game start flow

Play as Guest

• Added Guest play for Practice and matchmaking games, without requiring an account
• Foresters and quarries can now be built without an adjacent village, but they produce at half speed
• Animated Cloud Cover now hides fogged tiles and their contents
• The full map is now revealed when a match ends
• Added a final-minute countdown and warnings for overcrowded destination tiles

Tutorial and improvements

• Added Tutorial game mode
• Change in game resulting - if timer runs out and a bot owns the most tiles no player wins
• Villages and Camps now capture adjacent forests when built
• Catapults can camp on rubble tiles
• Improved build menu UI and warning/info messages
• Fixed a bug that caused enemy units to stay visible in FoW

Faster pace

• Faster movement speed for all units

BIG CHRISTMAS UPDATE

• All units are now visible on top of buildings
• Garrison size is now limited, overflowing units will turn back
• Button to Remove any building (including your base)
• Archers and catapults can no longer target resource buildings (farm, village, forester, quarry)
• Units inside a building with no HP now take full incoming damage (don't leave your units inside a building that you know it's gonna collapse)
• Camp cost: 2 -> 4
• Forester wood cost: 3 -> 2
• Quarry wood cost: 5 -> 2
• Infantry HP: 16 -> 24
• Camp HP: 50 -> 30
• Upgrade duration for all buildings: 3s
• Building heal rate per sec: 1.5% -> 1.0%
• Human players now always start further away from each other
• Base HP: 150 -> 100
• Def bonus against projectiles for units inside a forest: 75% -> 25%

Another balance update

• Units now absorb damage dealt to a building if that building is at 0 HP
• Cavalry HP: 6 -> 10
• Archer DPS: 0.666 -> 0.6

⚖️ Balance update

• Camp HP: 30 -> 50
• Infantry DPS: 2.6 -> 2.0
• Cavalry DPS: 3.125 -> 2.0
• Infantry & cavalry throwing rocks DPS: 0.33 -> 2.0
• Harbor (base) HP: 100 -> 150
• Clear rubble duration: 30s -> 10s

Bug fixes

• Catapults and archers no longer shoot through mountains
• Fixed catapult "Command" hover preview

Rubble auto-clear

• Rubble now clears automatically after 30s, no need to click on it anymore
• ELO score system
• ELO based matchmaking for 1v1 games - max elo difference is 100 points
• Dedicated "singleplayer" button

Throwing rocks outside the building?

• Buildings now absorbs all the incoming damage - units not getting hurt inside
• Melee units inside a building throw rocks on enemy units in 1 tile radius - the rock does 1/2 damage of an arrow
• Player names visible in queue

New hover action previews

• Added new icons/texts for all the different actions available when interacting with tiles and buildings
• Fixed a bug that caused starting food to be "-3" instead of "0"
• Fixed bug with progress bars and unit icons not hiding in fog of war

Slightly less chaotic bots

• Fixed the rare "Disconnected" issue
• Bots are now slightly less chaotic
• Sending army to a building which have automation set to that direction now cancels the automation
• Countdown before the game starts increased from 2s to 10s (based on Falastin's report about joining the game late)

Improvements to unit movement and army sending VFX feedback

• Units now regroup on the next tile instead of the current tile after finishing a battle or destroying a building
• Added VFX effect when sending an army
• Hall of fame (see Leaderboard page)
• Permanent banner with link to this game on Hexarena.io (classic hex)

Catapults only target buildings

• Catapults no longer shoot at units nor other catapults
• Custom game cursor
• Building finished VFX
• Catapult HP: 14 -> 20 (note that encamped catapult has 30 HP)
• Fixed bug with ships of defeated players not being destroyed
• Fixed bug causing incorrect army send preview icons for catapults
• Added chat message that shows amount of points awarded for PvP matches
• Added some screenshots to "How to play" page

New army path indicators and balance changes

• Dynamic army path indicators showing attack and building icons
• Castle HP: 400 -> 500
• Castle stone cost: 100 -> 80
• Castle gold cost: 50 -> 20
• Catapult damage: 40 -> 30
• Barracks stone cost: 10 -> 15
• Clearing rubble on contested tiles is no longer allowed
• Build menu now updates when neighbouring village is built or destroyed
• Fixed some minor glitches

Polish polish polish

• Balanced sound effect volume
• Fixed bug that broke build menu on macOS when CMD key was pressed
• "Die" animation now plays correctly for last unit in the army
• Fixed bug with army banner animating to previous tile when army entered fog of war
• "Retreat!" text now pops up on retreating armies
• Fixed bug that caused HP bar to conflict with the resource bar
• Building camp on a tile with friendly attacking archers now correctly "absorbs" the archers
• Various small improvements and fixes

Bug fixes and more particles

• Fix some bugs related to previous update
• Particles animation on build

Bug fixes, VFX and less aggressive bots

• Catapult HP: 16 -> 14
• Improved army sending VFX
• Tile capture VFX
• Army training bars of other players are now hidden
• Bots start the game neutral until attacked, but later they turn into aggressive monsters
• Fixed network related bugs with army movement
• Fixed bug that caused rubble (and some buildings) to be visible in FoW
• Fixed bugs caused by switching to another browser tab or app

Supply ships & forest damage reduction

• Supply ships bring you small amount of wood and stone automatically
• Units in a forest now take only 25% of ranged damage

Bug fixes

• Fix glitches related to higher PING

Fix network connection issues

• Fixed a bug that caused game to freeze when any player disconnected

Bug fix

• Fixed bug that caused invisible building ruins after reload

Smarter bots

• Bots make better decisions

Mystery update vol. 2

• Latency compensation and smoothing
• Rubble clear duration: 8s -> 6s
• Unit HP bars are now only displayed for damaged units
• Fixed and improved mousewheel camera movement and zoom

Mystery update vol. 1

• Some good changes (hopefully some FPS improvements)
• Some bad changes (please report them so I can fix it)
• Fixed bug that caused upgraded buildings (barracks, tower and castle) to not regen HP

FPS improvements, fixes, horsemen buff

• Horsemen attack damage: 2 -> 3
• Fixed some minor army behaviour bugs
• FPS and memory efficiency improvements

Bug fixes

• Supply lines no longer cancel after setting up one in opposite direction
• Melee units no longer try to focus garrisoned armies (should prevent some army freezes)
• When no battling army unit has valid aggro army regroups (should fix some army freezes)
• Fixed issue with army not turning back when reaching ignored enemy building

Army freeze fix

• Fixed a bug where units got stuck trying to attack enemy retreating army which was stuck trying to join a neutral building

Fixes & improvements

• Barracks training no longer resets on damage
• Damaging a building that's being upgraded no longer rolls back upgrade progress
• Ranged units now always prefer shooting at units outside of a building
• Fixed a bug where units kept attacking neutral or neutral-turned-friendly building
• Fixed a bug where archers sometimes didn't shoot when inside a building
• Bots now heavily prioritise capturing a crown of defeated player
• Fixed some army related visual glitches introduced by the last update

FPS improvements & more

• FPS improvements
• Bots buying tiles less aggressively
• Running games now show up in the lobby
• In-game settings menu with options to disable certain graphics features and sounds
• Other minor fixes and improvements

Barracks incremental gold cost

• Barracks now costs gold instead of wood and price increases for each barracks you have
• Castle now costs fixed amount of gold instead of wood
• Army training time: 30s -> 40s
• Barracks no longer lose training progress on changing unit type
• Removed an option to pause barracks training

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug causing bots to get stuck
• Fixed email login link
• Fixed mouse-wheel camera movement on some devices
• Fixed leaderboard counting score for defeated bots
• Fixed bug that prevented the game from starting when some player didn't join
• You can now buy neutral tiles with rubble
• Auto-surrender when disconnected for 10 seconds
• Games now finish when other human surrenders so you don't have to kill all the bots to win (but you still need to be the largest player to win)

15 minute time cap

• Game finishes after 15 minutes, player with most tiles wins
• Surrender button
• Fixed bug with archers not shooting back from buildings
• Some actions are faster now to compensate for 15m time cap

Small improvements

• Ships move a bit faster
• Catapult camp does no longer project contested zone
• Fix bug with missing barracks hp bar
• Revert army gold cost mechanic

Barracks UI controls

• Click on barracks to change it's production! Or stop it completely if that's what you wish
• Bot stupidity level decreased dramatically

Rubble & Army gold cost

• Rubble shows up on building destroy, you need to manually clear it for gold
• Unit recruitment now consumes gold
• Crown shows up on a tile when you destroy enemy base
• Building descriptions
• Auto-reconnect on client crash
• Some known bugs were fixed
• UI and VFX improvements

Huge update focused on improving user experience.

• Changelog visible in lobby, you'll see a red dot in the menu each time new update dropped
• Building images in build menu
• Brand new ships carrying your first 6 armies
• Harbor (base) was also redesigned from scratch
• Army sending direction preview indicators
• Bots are now less aggressive during first few minutes (until they get attacked!)
• Automated army sending can now be set up on empty building (huge life improver for many)
• Camera movement with middle mouse button
• Logout button in lobby
• FPS and PING values are now visible in the game, useful if you experience any kind of lagging
• First volume of sound effects, more will follow
• Some performance optimisations were made, so it's possible the game will run smoother now
• FIX: Google login not working
• FIX: Error after account creation
• FIX: Game crashed randomly (caused by audio client)

Bug fixes and balancing.

• FIX: game over button not working
• FIX: catapults focusing non-existing targets
• FIX: build menu closes when player does not have enough resources
• Farm cost: 2/2 -> 3/3
• Camp cost: 1 -> 2
• Camp HP: 20 -> 30
• Tower cost: 15 -> 20
• Tower HP: 130 -> 150
• Castle cost: 20/50 -> 10/100
• Castle HP: 250 -> 400
• Show cursor alerts for invalid actions

Catapults, Wood & Stone & Food, FFA 6.

• FFA game mode for 6 players.
• New matchmaking queue which adds bots over time.
• You can now buy adjacent tiles for 1 gold by clicking on them.
• Bots are way smarter and more dangerous now.
• New player colors to create stronger contrast.
• Added Catapults! Expensive and strong siege weapons with very low health.
• Added new resources: wood, stone and food.
• Fog of war

First somewhat stable release.

• New HUD.
• Larger unit HP bars.
• FIX: broken spectate for some games.
• FIX: archers sometimes didn't shoot when in a building.
• FIX: units going through mountains in some cases.
• FIX: units in a surrounded building don't die.