RealmConquest
Build 0.5 Changelog

Build 0.5: A Living World

43 New 32 Changed 4 Balance 23 Fixed 4 Notice

This is the jump from 0.4 to 0.5, rolling up everything since the June 7 update. The short version: the realm now feels alive (instant updates, living bot opponents, real diplomacy), and the things you fight over got more interesting: defended relics, neutral resource outposts with immediate income, the finished covert catalog, and relic-capable nukes and spies. The full breakdown is below, grouped so you can skim what you care about: gameplay systems first, then combat and weapons, then the interface, mobile, and site work.

Highlights

Everything in this update

Realtime map updates

4 changes
New Outpost changes now appear on every player's map the moment they happen: building an outpost, starting a raze, or changing an outpost's role no longer waits for the next tick to show up on other players' screens, which could be minutes on slower realms. #
Fixed Live map events (squad launches and recalls, spy moves, nuke launches and self-destructs, jams, ion fire, colony placements and relocations) were reaching other players 3 to 8 seconds late. They now hit every connected player's map instantly. #
Fixed Tick updates, resource refreshes, build and recruitment completions ride the same instant pipeline now, so the whole interface stays in step with the realm without reloading. #
Fixed Conquest outcomes now update the map instantly. When a colony is conquered (or a player beats the commander who conquered them and frees themselves in the counter-attack), the map ownership colours, the conquered banner, and the conquer/counter-conquer actions all refresh the moment the battle resolves, instead of only after a manual page reload. #

Bots

8 changes
New Realms are now populated by bot that play like people. Each tick, every bot walks the same loop a player would: grow the economy first, unlock and train an army, form squads, then commit them where it counts, and every order goes through the exact same commands, costs, spacing rules, and travel times you play under. No free resources, no hidden bonuses, no rule-bending. #
New Bots ship with distinct personalities (aggressive rushers, opportunist raiders, cautious turtles, patient economists, expansionists, and alliance diplomats), each with its own aggression, patience, reach, and sociability, so no two realms feel like the same cast. #
New Sociable bots settle as neighborhoods and form alliances: they plant near their future teammates, found an open-join alliance once the early build-up is done, and coordinate attacks together. Die-hard crews stay loyal for the whole era; looser bots may walk out of a dead alliance and take a seat in another open one, including yours, if you leave the door open. #
New Bots play the outpost game: once their economy matures they expand with forward outposts, race for neutral ones, and upgrade held outposts into Training Bases, Radars, and Gates. Silos stay out of bot hands: strategic weapons remain a human privilege. #
New A conquered bot behaves like a conquered player: it rebuilds quietly under your rule, then rebels when it judges the odds are right. Patient personalities bide their time and want the upper hand first; aggressive ones rise the moment the engine allows it. #
New Bots relocate with intent: one stranded far from its alliance packs up and moves toward its team, and a weak loner living next to a dominating army builds an escape outpost and gets out of your shadow: the same outpost-anchored relocation players use, gates, costs, and all. #
Fixed Bot target selection learned manners: bots no longer pile onto colonies that are already conquered (including yours, so your conquests are safe from pointless bot griefing); they skip colonies under newbie protection or vacation instead of wasting attacks on them, and they weigh a defender’s garrison before committing. Bots hunt winnable conquests, not suicide runs. #
Notice The tuning goal is pressure, not punishment: bots contest land, outposts, and conquests convincingly, but they issue one order per tick, their squads and moves telegraph on the map exactly like a player’s, and there is nothing behind the curtain to out-cheat you. Beating them is about playing better, never about surviving math you can’t see. #

Alliance diplomacy & roles

7 changes
New Alliances can now sign formal pacts. Diplomacy moves through real states (Neutral → Non-Aggression Pact → Ally), and every step up is consent-based: your leadership proposes, and nothing changes until the other alliance's leadership signs. A pending proposal can be declined by them or cancelled by you. #
New War is unilateral: declare it and both alliances are at war immediately, no signature required, and it supersedes any open proposals. Ending a war is not unilateral: a white peace returns both sides to Neutral only once the other side's leadership signs it. #
New Breaking a NAP or alliance pact takes a dissolution notice: file it and the pact stays binding for a notice period counted in ticks and visible to both sides, before relations revert to Neutral. No silent backstabs. #
New Alliances gain a Captain rank, a mid-tier officer who can invite new members but can't kick, change diplomacy, or edit alliance settings. Up to three captains per alliance. #
New The alliance view now shows a pooled economy rollup: your alliance's combined metal, oil, and energy with a per-member breakdown. It's read-only intel for planning, not a shared vault: nobody can touch your stock. #
New The boards and alliance roster now show presence dots (online, idle, or offline, with a "last active" caption) alongside role chips for leader, minister, captain, and member. Presence is deliberately coarse: it tells you who's around, never what they're doing. #
Notice We went through alliance cooperation end to end and confirmed it all works: same-alliance-only trade (non-members are blocked), squad placement on ally colonies, outposts, and relics, the multi-squad fan formation for allied fleets, shared radar coverage between alliance members, and ally squad visibility on the map. #

Personal map colors

2 changes
New You can now mark any player (or a whole alliance) with one of six personal colors (blue, teal, green, red, purple, orange) from the Players and Alliances boards. Your marks recolor their colonies and outposts on the map and their rows on the boards, and they're private: nobody else ever sees them. #
Changed Personal colors beat every automatic color (official ally blue, enemy red, even same-alliance green), so the "ally" you don't trust can stay red on your map. Your own holdings stay white, always. Hit Clear on a mark and the standard diplomacy colors take back over. #

Relics

3 changes
New Relics now arrive defended: each relic enters the realm with a defending garrison that must be defeated before the relic can be claimed, and carries a crystal payload that the victor loots when the garrison falls. #
New Relic holders can now issue Relic Move orders from the map: pick a destination tile, preview ETA, arrival tick, and relic speed, then confirm the move. #
New Held relics now provide alliance radar coverage around the relic, and enemy agents can jam a relic to shut that coverage down for the jam duration. #

Outposts & placement

5 changes
New New realms now begin with 20 metal and 20 oil resource outposts already on the map. They spawn neutral and unguarded on valid land tiles, can be captured immediately, and persist as strategic income and scoring targets. #
Balance Captured resource nodes now pay out immediately: a metal node adds +5 metal per tick and an oil node +4 oil per tick from the very tick you capture it. #
New Owned outposts can now be renamed from the map. Names are cleaned up before saving and must stay within a 32-character name limit. #
Changed Placement is now terrain-aware on Fantasy map: colonies and outposts can no longer be planted on mountains, forests, or rocky hills, the same way they already couldn't go in the water. Open grass and desert stay buildable. #
Balance The default ruleset now keeps newly placed objects farther apart: colonies and outposts maintain a 34-tile keep-out from existing colonies, and outposts keep 25 tiles from other outposts. #

Combat & battle reports

6 changes
Changed A completely one-sided fight no longer produces a battle report. The battle still resolves with full effects (captures, salvage, crystals), but instead of a report the target's owner gets an 'attacked while undefended' notification and each attacker gets a capture or raid summary. Both notifications locate the spot on the map. #
New Gathering an undefended wreckage now sends a 'You gathered a wreckage' notification telling you exactly which resource and how much you were rewarded. #
Fixed Battle reports and their notifications now name the target properly (Wreckage, Gate, Silo, or <ruler>'s Colony) instead of raw internal type names. #
Fixed The crystals, Spoils, and Salvage sections of a battle report now show only what you actually received. Other participants' cuts and behind-the-scenes odds no longer leak into your report. #
Fixed Wreckage battle reports no longer render a meaningless Ownership section. #
Fixed A wreckage now yields one random salvage category (metal, oil, energy, or workers) with an amount rolled within the realm's range. #

Squads & military

10 changes
New Squad management now shows the experience and health of the units in a squad. Each unit type breaks down into sub-rows grouped by experience level and health, ordered strongest-first, so you can pick out your blooded veterans and your wounded stacks at a glance. #
New Assigning units to a squad gains a Max button that fills the squad with as many of a stack as fit its remaining capacity in one click: no more tapping the arrow dozens of times to load up your infantry. #
Balance Hurrying unit training now costs workers, not resources. One worker per remaining training tick, per hurried unit. The confirm dialog shows the exact worker bill before you commit. #
Fixed Recalling an in-flight squad now turns it around from where it actually is and brings it home in proportion to how far it had travelled: a squad one tick into an attack returns in about one tick. Previously the squad icon vanished from the map and didn't arrive home until the original full attack ETA had elapsed. #
Fixed Launching multiple squads at once now plays the proper intro: the squads lift off from the colony as one stack, glide to the travel line, and only then fan out into the V formation. Reduced-motion still snaps instantly. #
Changed Squad gate travel now plays a warp-vortex cinematic at both ends of the jump: three concentric arc rings spin and contract at the origin as squads are pulled through the gate, then expand outward at the destination as they emerge. Reduced-motion trims the effect to two rings. #
Changed The squad storage bar now counts units in training as pending capacity: it fills when recruitment starts and smoothly drops back as units are assigned into squads. #
Fixed Starting recruitment at a training base now shows the in-training units in that site's pool immediately, without needing a refresh. #
Fixed Incoming attack squads now use the enemy red ship treatment on the map, even when the squad's normal relation colour would have appeared neutral yellow. #
Fixed Squad move orders now confirm on screen the moment they're accepted, instead of waiting for a full map refresh. #

Spy & intelligence

7 changes
New Spies can now be positioned on relics. Gate travel to and from a relic also works when the spy is stationed there. #
New Agents can be planted on relics. Once seated, the agent enables covert ops against the relic's current occupier. #
New Alliance members' spy positions are now visible on the map as dimmer purple dots. Hovering shows the owning member's name. These dots are read-only. No action ring. #
Notice Only same-alliance members are visible: diplomatic "ally" relations from the alliance relations panel do not share spy positions. #
New Spy gate travel now plays a warp portal cinematic the instant you confirm the jump: spinning arc rings collapse inward at the departure gate and bloom outward at the arrival gate simultaneously, matching the near-instant nature of spy gating. #
Fixed Your positioned spy now renders as a purple dot on the game map. The dot offsets to the bottom-right corner when a squad is stationed at the same site, keeping both tappable. #
Fixed Clicking the spy dot on the map opens the Spy Orders panel directly, without needing to navigate through the sidebar. #

Covert ops

6 changes
New Poison Water Supplies is live, the final advanced covert op. A seated agent poisons the target colony's water, killing 10% of its workers. Costs 70 energy and sits on the top infiltration tier (12 pts) alongside EMP Overload. Colonies only. #
New Lockdown now appears in the covert ops catalog alongside the other advanced operations, rather than living only in the denial panel. #
New Planting an agent now goes through a confirm dialog that shows the energy cost before you commit. #
New Once your agent is embedded, the target card shows an infiltration counter: current points against the next operation's threshold, with the per-tick gain (for example 9 / 12 · +1/t), so you can see exactly when the next op unlocks. #
Balance Infiltration costs rebalanced to a clean four-tier ladder. Spread Virus drops from 4 → 3 pts (Tier 1). Destroy Heavy Vehicles aligns from 8 → 9 pts and Burn Oil Reserves from 10 → 9 pts (both Tier 3). All other costs unchanged. #
Fixed The action ring's Plant Agent and Covert Op buttons now actually do something: they open the covert panel and jump straight into the right flow instead of dead-ending. The spy ring's covert actions target the site the spy is sitting on. #

Strategic weapons

7 changes
New Nukes can now be aimed at relics. The nuke destroys units garrisoning the relic on impact. Relics are immune to radiation: no radiation zone is left behind on relic strikes, so only the garrison takes the hit. #
New Nuke and ion strikes now send outcome notifications: the launcher hears their nuke struck (or that the target was gone), the victim gets a loss summary (units, workers, agents lost, and whether radiation lingers), and ion fire notifies the interceptor and anyone whose assets were hit. #
New An ion cannon destroying an incoming nuke now plays a dedicated mid-air detonation: the beam tracks the missile's live position on the map and ends in a flash, a small fireball, and falling embers, and the nuke marker collapses on every viewer's map. Ground strikes keep their glowing impact disc. #
Fixed Nuke impacts now play on every player's screen the instant they land: the explosion cinematic no longer waits for the next data refresh. #
Fixed In-flight nuke ETAs now count down live with every tick on the detail card, hover card, and incoming-nuke ion panel, instead of showing the stale launch-time estimate until impact. #
Fixed The radiation glow on an irradiated site now lasts exactly as long as the radiation zone (it follows the live tick counter instead of a fixed few seconds), and irradiated outposts now glow too, not just colonies. #
Fixed Ion cannon strikes are now visible to every player in the realm as they happen. Previously only the firing player ever saw the beam, and the firer's own effect no longer plays twice. #

Map effects

6 changes
Changed Shields and lockdowns now render as a proper energy dome: a glassy body that brightens toward the rim, a soft rim bloom, a thin crisp outline, and a gentle breathing pulse. Lockdown is the same dome in red. #
Changed The protection ring around new colonies gains a soft glowing halo around its crisp core stroke, with a slow, subtle shimmer. #
Changed Nuke impacts are rebuilt as layered light: a white-hot flash, an expanding fireball, a feathered shockwave ring, and a burst of glowing embers arcing under gravity, replacing the old stroked circles. #
Changed The ion beam is now a soft column of light that dissolves into the sky, with a subtle energy pulse while it fires. #
Changed Radiation glows, shield ripples, and nuke self-destructs were reworked on the same soft-light system: feathered glows instead of hard-edged shapes. #
Notice Every effect keeps its reduced-motion behavior: smaller and shorter animations, no camera shake, no particle bursts. #

Action ring

3 changes
Changed The action ring now opens collapsed by default, showing only the curated primary actions for the target. A More… button appears when additional valid actions exist; pressing it expands the ring in place to the full set. Pressing Less collapses it again. #
Changed The dominant action (the first primary action on the ring) is now accented in gold, making the most relevant command obvious at a glance. #
Changed The ring now spaces and sizes itself cleanly no matter how many actions a target has, in both collapsed and expanded views. #

Mobile UI

3 changes
Changed The Squad Orders, Nuke Orders, and Spy Orders panels now dock as full-width bottom sheets above the mobile nav dock on phones and tablets, instead of appearing as floating draggable cards that overflow narrow screens. #
Changed Workspace modal sidebars now collapse into a horizontal, swipeable strip on phones, with quick actions trailing as touch-sized chips instead of stacking off-screen. #
Changed Leaderboard and board filters are easier on phones: filter chips and search controls hit the 44px touch target floor, rows reflow into labelled card-style stats, and search inputs avoid iOS focus zoom. #

Scoreboard & Hall of Fame

6 changes
New Hall of Fame standings now show each ruler's prestige ribbons: era champion, alliance/era podium, relic victor, and top-10 medals earned across past eras. Ribbons read most-prestigious-first, with a +N chip when a ruler has more than fit on the row. #
New Your own frozen standing in the Hall of Fame is now marked with a 'You' chip, so you can spot yourself at a glance among the archived rulers. #
New The Relics board now shows a relic holder's prestige ribbons next to their name, so you can tell how decorated the current occupier is, without exposing any private identifiers. #
New Profile settings now include a Show me as an active winner privacy toggle. Turning it off keeps your live colony from being locatable through the Hall of Fame while leaving your archived standings visible. #
Changed Each scoreboard board now carries its own filter tabs and search strip, so narrowing the Players, Alliances, or Relics view happens right where you're looking instead of in a shared toolbar. #
New Your My Alliance banner now shows the tick your alliance was founded (for example, Founded T-435). #

Messaging

3 changes
New Composing a new message now has a search-as-you-type recipient field: start typing a name and a dropdown of matching realm colonies narrows live, matching on both the colony name and its owner. Pick one with the mouse or the arrow keys and the exact colony name drops into the field. #
Changed The recipient field now tells you when a name matches no colony: it shows Invalid selection and holds the Send button until you choose a real recipient, so messages no longer bounce on an unknown colony name. #
Changed The broadcast ticker now shows the tick each post was published and keeps the expires in countdown synced with the live realm tick. #

Profile & settings

3 changes
New Hovering an achievement now reveals its requirement (a short note on what you need to do to earn it) as a tooltip. Locked and earned achievements alike explain themselves on hover. #
Changed The Commander row in your profile now has an inline Rename button that jumps straight to the Colony Rename screen, so you no longer have to hunt for it in the sidebar. #
Changed The Avatar Builder header gained a Rename colony shortcut, letting you hop from customizing your commander to renaming your colony in one click. #

Interface & clean-up

3 changes
New Hover or focus a top-bar resource cell to see exactly where that resource is being earned and spent each turn, including worker-growth payouts and upkeep. #
Changed Every action modal (Merge, Recruit Spy, Plant Agent, Arm Silo, Vacation, and others) now shares one consistent confirm dialog: same look, same error handling, ESC and tap-outside to close, and a proper bottom-sheet layout on mobile. #
Changed Resource cost rows now look the same in every confirm dialog and action panel. #

Typography, theme & accessibility

7 changes
Changed The interface moved to the IBM Plex type family: Plex Sans for labels, buttons, and prose, with Plex Mono reserved for live data: resource values, coordinates, and counters. #
Changed Command buttons and panel headings on the war-room target card now read in Plex Sans instead of all-monospace. Monospace is kept for the numbers and coordinates it's good at, making commands easier to scan at a glance. #
Changed Account and menu screens now use the game's signature copper accent for primary actions, links, and focus, in place of the previous near-black. #
Changed Realm status badges (scheduled, active, paused, ended) were recoloured to the warmer in-game palette instead of stock framework colours, while staying high-contrast and colour-blind-safe. #
Changed The map's placement pin and unclaimed-owner markers now render in the signature copper rather than near-black, so they read better against the world map. #
Changed Refined heading sizes and motion timing across the UI to a consistent scale for steadier rhythm. #
Fixed Keyboard focus rings are now clearly visible on both light and dark screens: the dark command surfaces previously drew a near-invisible dark-on-dark outline. #

Homepage & site

7 changes
New Added a live open-beta countdown to the hero, so the time until the first realm opens is visible without scrolling. #
New Added an at-a-glance four-step loop index (Found → Expand → Move → Win) above the detailed how-it-plays section, each step linking to its full explanation. #
Changed The homepage hero map now renders the game's real zoomed-out strategic view: pointy-top hexagon colonies, square outposts, radar and missile-silo markers, and arrow squads, all coloured by the same relation legend you see in-game (your holdings white, alliance green, ally blue, enemy red, neutral yellow). #
Changed Improved text legibility across the homepage and footer: the small monospace labels are no longer hard to read against the dark background. #
Changed Buttons, links, and footer navigation now have larger tap targets on mobile, making them easier to hit on phones. #
Fixed The registration form now exposes standard field names again, so browser autofill and password managers can fill display name, email, password, and confirmation after the restyle. #
Fixed Fixed a handful of small copy issues on the homepage and FAQ. #

If something feels off or breaks, tell us in-realm.

RealmConquest is a free-to-play, turn-based browser strategy MMO in the lineage of the classic persistent strategy games. It is an independent project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any third-party game or its publisher. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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