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A big one. Most of this came from your feedback and from a long look at what players of other strategy games miss most.

Six peoples that really play differently#

You told us the peoples felt too much alike, and you were right: for the first quarter of an hour everyone had the same buildings and the same troops. Now every people starts in its own way, misses something the others have, and has two technologies of its own.

The Franks start with a watchtower by their town center and can build their fort in the Bronze Age, but they never get gunmen. The Norse start with three spearmen and pay half for a barracks, but never build a fort. Greek farms last three times as long, and their cavalry stops at the knight. The Mongols start with two extra scouts and never build walls, towers or a university. The Arabs open their market in the Stone Age, and their infantry stops at the pikeman. The Chinese start with two extra workers, and their cavalry stops at the cataphract.

Then there are twelve new technologies, two per people: from Feudalism and the Order of Knights of the Franks to the Berserkergang of the Norse, which heals your infantry with every kill, the Caravanserai of the Arabs, which brings in gold, and the Gunpowder of the Chinese, which gives them the cannon an age early. The Civilizations screen shows it all.

A real fort#

Until now the fort was a big, expensive wall. Now it fires a volley of arrows at several enemies at once and a heavy bolt at the toughest one nearby, and every unit you put inside adds more arrows. Without siege engines you will hardly scratch it, and siege does less to it than to other buildings.

In return forts are rare: each one costs 75% more than the one before, and two of your own must stand at least 20 tiles apart. The fort has two upgrades of its own: Crenellations (Middle Ages) for more arrows and a longer reach, and Bastions (Imperial Age), which turns the bolt into a cannon that also hits the enemies next to its target.

A smarter computer opponent#

The computer now sees its attacks through. Its armies no longer march back and forth without doing anything: they follow up a won battle and go for your town centers and barracks. Against towers and forts it waits out of range until its siege engines have knocked them down, and it knocks down towers you build next to its base while they are still going up.

It also builds its walls where they count. Instead of always putting a square ring around its town center, it first looks at the land and closes off the narrow places between water, forest and rock: a short wall across a land bridge instead of a long one along the shore. Its watchtowers stand just behind its gates.

Its economy no longer leaves dozens of workers standing around, so it reaches the later ages several minutes sooner. And once it has lost, it offers to surrender instead of fighting on to the last building. Accept, or play on and finish it yourself.

New to strategy games? Beginner and Easy now give you time to settle in: Easy won't attack before minute 13, Beginner not before minute 16, and both send small groups instead of their whole army. Normal is a little gentler, so the step up to Hard is clearer. The campaign missions follow suit.

Save a multiplayer match#

A match with eight players can take all evening, and sometimes the evening ends first. Now you save it like any other game. Another day the host opens a new lobby, clicks Saved game and picks it. Teams, colours and peoples stay as they were, and everyone who joins gets their old seat back. Is someone missing? Then the computer plays for them.

On the battlefield#

• Artillery now outranges towers and forts, as it should: the catapult shoots 8 tiles, the trebuchet 9.5, the cannon 10, the howitzer 10.5 and the field gun 11.
• Cavalry is now strong against siege weapons: riders are the answer to a ram, catapult or cannon without an escort.
• The Mongol horse archer now counts as cavalry, with the Mongol speed and training bonuses.
• Melee soldiers spread out over the enemies in front of them instead of crowding around one. Order them onto a single target and they still all go for it.
• The fog of war clears a little further around your units, and siege engines and ranged units see at least as far as they shoot, so you no longer attack things you cannot see.

Ten new technologies#

Your town center can now research too: Leather Aprons make your workers tougher, Baskets and a Handcart let them carry more per trip, and Drill speeds up all training. The hospital learns to heal faster and further, siege engines get sturdier, and Ballistics gives your archers and gunmen a longer reach. Rangefinding at the workshop adds a tile to every siege engine that fires.

An interface that grows with your screen#

On a 1440p screen Aetas now uses a 125% interface, on 4K 200%, and the text stays sharp. Prefer something else? Settings > Interface > Interface size. Training, upgrading and building now show a picture of the unit or building with its name underneath, so names are no longer cut in two in German or Russian.

See what everyone else is doing#

Click a building or unit of another player to see what it is, who owns it and how much health it has left; towers and forts also show their range. You see the moment another player starts advancing to a new age, with a progress bar on the scoreboard, and the scoreboard now shows everyone's people next to their name.

Leaderboard#

The leaderboard has a Hall of fame with the top three of every past month, a button to show only your Steam friends, and a line with how many matches were played this week. Next to every name you see the people that player picks most.

Français et polski#

Aetas now speaks French and Polish too, nine languages in all. These are first versions: if something reads oddly, tell us.

Report a player#

Right-click a name and choose Report player: for chat, voice chat, their name, cheating or ruining the game. What that player said in chat goes along with the report. Muting and blocking were already there.

59 new achievements#

There are now 100, as many as Steam allows a new game for now. Finish each campaign, win every historical battle, earn gold in the challenges, and beat missions in their own special way: bring every raider home from Lindisfarne, or let Alexander himself defeat Darius. Every people has one for its unique unit. Others are for building, fighting, trading and making allies, and for memorable moments, like a worker who brings down a knight. Some are secret. Campaigns and medals you already won count: they unlock the next time you start the game.

Missions that fight back#

Nine missions were too easy; at Marathon, Leuctra and the Kalka you could even win by doing nothing. They now ask a bit more: Marathon, Leuctra, The Kalka, The Badger Mouth, Sphacteria, Songs of Chu, Ankara, Hastings and Roncevaux. At Gaugamela, Darius no longer waits for you forever, and at Over the Alps the Lombard fort fights back, so you start with four trebuchets. The Ring of the Avars went the other way: the raid comes later and is smaller.

Smaller things#

• Trade faster at the market: Shift+click buys or sells 500 at once, Ctrl+click 1000.
• Click the mouse wheel on the map to ping it for your team.
• Push-to-talk is now Page Up for your team and Page Down for everyone (your own keys stay). Voice chat is louder, and you can set each player's volume from 25% to 300%.
• With a mixed group selected, the side panel shows a button for each kind of unit: click one to keep only that kind, shift-click to drop it.
• With several buildings of the same kind selected, research is spread over them, so two blacksmiths research two upgrades at the same time.
• Workers who finish a building look further for the next one, so a long row of stables gets finished without new orders. Repairing works the same way.
• Lost your last town center or barracks but still have workers? A clock now gives you three minutes to rebuild before you are out, so one hidden worker no longer drags out a lost match.
• Fairer random maps: a start with clearly less forest nearby now gets extra groves.
• Long chat messages wrap, a dragged formation starts as a square, a match starts further zoomed out, and the music is a little quieter by default.
• Colourblind mode now colours everything: units, buildings, the minimap, the score graph and the map preview.
• Key names follow your keyboard layout (AZERTY shows ZQSD).
• If a player falls far behind, the host gets a button to play on without them. They can rejoin later.

Fixes#

• Saved games from the previous version open again. Settings, progress, saves and replays are now written safely, so a crash or a full disk can no longer wipe them, and the load screen shows all your saves, page by page, and lets you delete them.
• Multiplayer is steadier: you can rejoin a match you joined through the relay, joining no longer hangs on "connecting", a player who stops responding no longer freezes the match, and a burst of orders no longer disconnects everyone else.
• Tooltips and range rings show real values, with your upgrades and your people's bonuses, and small damage and gathering bonuses now do exactly what they promise.
• Armies no longer freeze in front of an enemy wall or a river, a mixed army stays together along a whole route, and a unit coming out of a garrison keeps its control group and can be healed again.
• Missions are fairer on every difficulty: sallies and raids no longer dry up on Brutal, allied computers no longer get stronger when you raise the difficulty, and once you have won you can no longer lose.
• Miners who run out of gold no longer make the game hitch, and long matches use less video memory.
• Replays play to the real end, seen through the eyes of whoever recorded them.
• Many more, from a freeze when opening Hotkeys during a multiplayer match to arrows that hit your brand-new ally.

Seeing "different game version" when you go online? Restart Steam and it will fetch 0.4.

Like the look of Aetas? Add it to your wishlist. It really helps.