Graphics, Movement and Performance

General

• Vehicles, siege weapons and some ships can now move in reverse, automatically choosing the quickest route while accounting for turns
• Optimized pathfinding and target selection, the game’s most demanding algorithms
• Solo players can now queue for team matches of any size; the option to search only for large matches remains available
• Added notifications for battles outside the camera view, with minimap markers and announcer messages
• Weapons now aim vertically to match the firing trajectory and wait until they are aligned before firing
• Brought back the system that predicts the winning team
• Unit descriptions now show piercing damage and the proportion of damage dealt to buildings
• Wheeled vehicles now turn more realistically

Visuals

• Added physics-based deaths for infantry, riders, animals and weapon crews, with bodies reacting to terrain and explosions according to their mass
• Redesigned the settings window
• Added individual controls for every graphics quality setting
• Realism is now the default graphics style for new settings; Standard has been renamed Vivid
• Reworked the range indicator to prioritize the main weapon
• Improved textures for some vehicles, including the BM-13, and explosion craters
• Brought birds back to the game
• Added smoke effects for steamships
• Added dust and water ripples from elephant footsteps
• Added the Blocks healthbar
• Improved the appearance of indicators above units

Bug Fixes

• A target disappearing at the start of an attack could crash the game for all players
• Choosing starting positions on maps with disconnected areas could cause the game to hang
• The initial connection could get stuck retrying indefinitely
• Attack and resource-gathering commands involving units that no longer existed could cause an error
• Lobby events arriving while the interface was loading could crash the game
• Fixed image-loading hangs and memory leaks involving textures, fonts and sounds
• Typing in text fields could trigger hotkeys, and a focused text field could prevent a window from closing with its hotkey
• Announcer messages could overlap or repeat too frequently; messages now play at least two seconds apart, with identical messages at least five seconds apart
• Turrets with limited rotation could snap abruptly when turning
• Building and research requirements could be displayed incorrectly
• Fixed sound playback and seeking errors, including errors caused by damaged recordings
• Music volume could change abruptly during fades or be applied incorrectly to stereo playback
• Positional sound volume could reset after the audio device was recreated
• Dropdown menus could leave a thin strip at the bottom
• The text cursor and selection could be misaligned with the displayed text
• Scrolling the rankings before they finished loading could cause an error
• Fullscreen mode could hide fatal error messages
• The launcher could incorrectly suggest running the game with administrator privileges

Balance

• Buildings now receive 40% of piercing damage before armor is applied, replacing individual weapons’ building-damage modifiers
• Vehicles now crush obstacles with their entire hull, including while reversing
• Reverse speed is generally 50% of forward speed; the East Asian Warship, Steamboat, Tank destroyer and Steam barge reverse at 75%
• Vehicles that could fire directly beneath themselves now have a minimum firing range of 20–30 instead of 0
• Adjusted hull dimensions for 33 types of water units, as well as the Tank Maus, 2C and FCM F1