New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.760_Chaotic_Maps_And_Ark_Empires This one has been inwork for 12 days now, and it has 9300 words (29 printed pages) of release notes. Uh... enjoy? So what's happening here, broadly? Well, there's a lot of bugfixing and quality of life stuff, for sure. Just all, all over the place. This is bringing us a lot closer to being able to come back off the beta branch, and more immediately to stop breaking savegames with new builds. We aren't quite there on that last point, as I have some more to do tomorrow that will probably break saves. But we'll be moving back to our usual policy of "every save is supposed to work forever into the future" within this week. There's a new Chaotic map type that has been added to DLC1 by tom.prince, and it's a really cool one. Going along with the Classic map that Badger added to DLC1, our first DLC that had no maps now has two awesome ones right next to each other. If you don't have DLC2, then Ark and Golem balance is now much better. If you do have DLC2, it's basically the same as you've been used to. It just wasn't meant to be exclusive to DLC2, that was an oopsie. LOTS of work has gone into the "player types" system, and there are now at the very least stubs for each of the player types that we intend to have for the base game and DLCs 1 and 3 (DLC2 has no player types planned at this time). The Necromancer Empire is a way of playing necromancer all by yourself in DLC3, and it's not fully ready for prime time testing yet, but it's getting close. By the end of this week is the goal. The Necromancer Sidekick is only for multiplayer, and is basically when a non-imperial necromancer teams up with another player. That's also basically ready to go, though multiplayer on beta is not. The Ark Empire in DLC1 is a really cool new thing that's also a throwback to our earliest alpha versions and the kickstarter design for this game. It works mostly like a regular empire, except you start out in an Ark (randomly or directly chosen) with a fleet (that is somewhat build-your-own but with restrictions) and no home on the map. Fight for a home, settle in, and then the rest of the game is more familiar. But your ark is both militarily significant as well as your "king" -- if it dies, you lose. I'm going to have a hard time choosing between necro and ark empires, personally, and figure I'll be bouncing between the two of those. No more regular empires for me for a while. The spire-infused empire is another DLC1 player type that is just a stub for now, more coming soon. Same for the Suzerain player type in DLC3. A new spectator player type for the base game is fully ready to go. Map generation in the lobby is a lot more smooth, and/or shows you the progress of its work if it's a really slow map. In general it feels way smoother, and no longer freezes your UI. And just... wow so many bugfixes and quality of life tweaks. I know I mentioned that in the first line or so, but it's literally pages and pages of those things. Major thanks to Badger and tom.prince in particular, and also SirLimbo. Oh, and SirLimbo has been continuing his work on the Brutal Guardians feature for DLC3, too. Very cool stuff. This release was particularly slow in coming because I didn't want to have too many player types in there half-finished. But at least those that are that way are clearly marked now, and in general they are all coming right along. More to come soon. Enjoy!