Onboarding Improvements & Implemented Feedback
13 October 2026
Launch day went extremely well and I've received a lot of great feedback about early game concepts that were not well guided or explained. A lot of today's changes are about adding clarity in UI elements, improving early game guidance, and fixing minor bugs.
Gameplay
- WasExploration time reduced by 30% for your next exploration.NowExploration time reduced by 50% for the next 5 explorations.
A third off one exploration was barely worth having on timers this short. The reduction multiplies with your other exploration time effects, and each exploration that completes spends one of the five. A Second Wind you already hold keeps its one remaining exploration, at the new strength.
The path only counted a step while it was the current one, so anything you did ahead of it did not count and the guide asked you to do it again. Now a step you have already done arrives with "You've already done this." and a Claim button in place of its progress line. Claiming pays the same points, with the same toast and celebration, as doing it. The Land Deed step is claimed the same way. A trade route opened for you by a cultural bond does not count as one you established.
Only the step still to do was shown, so the path read as if nothing had been done, with "Step 2 of 12" the only sign of progress. The steps you finished today now follow it, struck through and dimmed with a tick like a finished daily quest, until the day turns over at 00:00 UTC. Once the whole path is done, the panel stays up for the rest of that day and reads "All 12 steps done".
- WasVisit another player's city, Create a trade offer in a market, Have an envoy learn a skill, Establish a trade routeNowVisit another player's city, Have an envoy learn a skill, Establish a trade route, Create a trade offer in a market
The trading steps now run as one arc, ending with an offer on a market your new route already reaches. If you were partway along the path, it moves you to the right step, and no step is asked for or paid twice.
UNLOCKS: Commit your envoy to a fixed residency at a foreign city. Leaving early forfeits the reward; completing it pays a lump sum scaling with the host city's score. Each rank unlocks a longer term that pays a better rate than the host Hotel's base rate for the same hours: 1 day at 115% / 2 days at 120% / 3 days at 130%.
WasThe Embassy offered one set of terms for a visiting envoy it never named, so with several envoys at a city you could not tell which one Commit would bind. Once any of your envoys was in residence there, Commit disappeared for all the othersNowEvery envoy of yours at the city who has Temporary Embassy and is not already in residence gets their own card: their name, title, level and home city above their own terms, set by their own rank of the skill
Interface
It sits on the right of the breadcrumb whenever you have more than one city. On a phone it is the painted arrow, and the first crumb reads "Empire" so the city's name keeps its room; on a wider screen it reads "Next city", then names the city it goes to once you have started. The round follows the order My Empire lists your cities in (its last sort, by score unless you changed it), taken at your first press and kept for the round, so an upgrade partway through cannot reshuffle it. Going back through My Empire starts a new round. The building you have open comes along: from one School to the next School.
- WasOpening the catalog turned the big Learn Skills button solid blue, so it looked like the next step, and pressing it closed the catalog you had just filled in. The real button was a small "Learn N Skills" under it, out of sight once you scrolled down to pick skillsNowOnce the catalog is open the big button reads Close Skills, and Start Learning sits in a bar fixed to the foot of the screen while your plan has skills in it
The bar lines up with the School at every width and goes away once the School scrolls out of view.
On the city page at desktop widths, opening the catalog brings up a floating Lesson Plan panel with the envoy, the skills you have picked, the points left and Start Learning. It sits in the margin beside the page on a widescreen, or over the building list when there is no margin. It starts level with the envoy's panel and stays on screen as you scroll; a long plan scrolls inside it, and Start Learning never leaves the screen.
- WasA wonder shrank as you zoomed in, to 0.75 of a tile from zoom 2.5 up, so at the default zoom it was drawn smaller than a ruin (0.8) and the two looked equally importantNowA wonder is 1.25 tiles at every zoom, standing on its own tile and rising into the one above. Ruins are 0.75 of a tile, under cities at 0.8
A wonder's tap area stays on its own tile, so the part that rises into the tile above never takes a tap meant for that tile, and its nameplate sits on the raised art. Wonders also stand on the ground of their tile now, where they used to float a little above it.
A city's nameplate sits above the city, at the bottom of the tile above, so a city just under a wonder laid its plate across the wonder's base. When a wonder is in the way, the plate now drops below the city, and if that spot is taken too it becomes a slim one-line plate across the top of the city's own tile. A ruin's plate drops below it the same way.
Account and purchases
- WasA payment sent by copying the amount and address into a wallet, or sent from an exchange, carried nothing to tie it to your purchase, so it waited for support to match it by handNowEach payment request asks for an amount ending in a few digits of its own, and a transfer that arrives for exactly that amount is matched to your purchase and credited automatically
The send-by-hand panel says so under the amount: "These last digits tell us the payment is yours. Copy the amount as well as the address." It also warns that an exchange often takes its fee out of what arrives, so check that exactly the amount shown reaches the address. A transfer support does match by hand is now completed as the purchase it paid for, first-purchase bonus included, rather than paid out as a separate grant.
The first time a browser that played the beta opens the launch world, a notice explains that the beta has ended, that the world was reset for the launch on Monday, October 12th, and that signing in the same way as before starts you in the new world.
Fixes
An envoy whose journey had run out but whose arrival was not yet claimed read "Wilderness" with the coordinates of the tile they left, so an envoy at a mountain ruin showed "Wilderness (-4, 4)". It now reads "Arrived at" and the destination. The School's guidance treats that envoy as still between tiles, matching the School, which takes no lessons until the arrival is claimed.
A browser whose beta session had expired remembered the page it was on, a beta city that no longer existed, and sent new accounts there after signing in. A player with no land now goes to the start of the game. A lore link you followed in (the Journal, the Library, the Great Library) still survives signing up, and a player with land still returns to where their session ended.
Collecting from a city did not update the time the My Empire list had for it, so a new player's Sawmill stayed "never collected" there and the badge stayed lit through every cooldown.
Two Feats earned from one action, such as Clay Master and Aspiring City from a single build, showed their gold toasts with a "While you were away" summary on top of them. A Feat earned while you are playing now gets its toast alone. Feats waiting when you sign in are still summed up as before.
Following the purchase's link back to a city you had looked at before buying still showed the padlock on the feature you had just paid for, for up to a minute.
On the city page's Market step, the page scrolled, the guide stood above the row, the page scrolled again and she moved below it, over and over for as long as the step was open. The browser's toolbar hiding and reappearing as the page scrolled set it off. The page now scrolls once per step, the guide takes her place once it has come to rest, and she keeps the side she chose while she still fits there.
When a phone browser's toolbars came back on the map, the bottom of the map was cut off, and Begin Travel and Back to Map with it, until the page was reloaded.
With an envoy visiting another player's city, its page could tell you "You can now build a Homestead" for a building you could not build there, and "Here it is. Your very own city." could appear on any city's page. Both now show only on your own cities.
An envoy arriving at one of your own cities counted you as a player met, which both skills scale with. Visits to your own cities no longer count, and the ones already recorded were removed.
Accepting your own trade offer counted as a player-to-player trade, and counted twice. It no longer counts toward Merchant, Senior Merchant, Master Merchant or the daily quest.
When a trade needed a broker, another of the buyer's or the seller's own cities could fill that role and keep a cut of the other side's goods. A broker is now always a third player's city.
The line now appears only once the Library stands, reads "Deposited to" and the name its founder chose, and ends with the painted tick or a crimson cross.
The Journal showed the card, with 0 of 10 scholars, from the launch world's first day. It now stays hidden until the race can begin. The race itself is unchanged.
When the browser dropped the map's graphics, as it can when a phone switches apps or a graphics driver resets, the map threw an error while it rebuilt. It now rebuilds without one.