Envoy and Map Improvements, Enduring Changes & Stronger Merges

Open it from the new button among the map controls. Each row cycles through its states when tapped and shows how many places match: Other players' cities can be All, Openable trade routes or Established trade routes; Ruins All, Unexplored or Explored; Wonders All, Available or On Cooldown; the rest On or Off. Matching places get a gold frame and envoys a gold ring, and their nameplates stay visible at any zoom, placed so they never cover each other, the map controls or the panel. The "For envoy" picker at the top chooses whose range and progress the envoy-specific states are judged for, and those states only light places within that envoy's current range. Clear all turns everything off, and the highlight resets when you reload. While Nearby is open, the map follows Nearby's chips instead.

The line under the chips spells out what is showing, in each filter's colour, for example "Ruins + Cities + In range only".

Hovering never moves the map; a first tap on a phone moves the place into view. A pointer at the edge of the map, drawn above the map controls, shows the direction of a place that is off screen. A locked row gets a brighter border, and a pill over the map shows the place's name and distance, with a button to release it. Clicking the same row again also releases it, and another row moves the lock.

Best groups places by type and puts the most worthwhile first: wonders by the Cultural Influence they would pay, ruins whose depth nobody knows yet first (you could be the first to reach the bottom) and then the deepest, and cities by their estimated Cultural Influence. Built Wonders and Observations stay in distance order, and so do ties.

Popups opened as the pointer passed over rows while scrolling and then blocked the wheel. Popups elsewhere in the game are unchanged.

Cancel Travel takes Walk Home's place in the action menu while your envoy is travelling, and asks you to confirm first, showing the trip back time. The trip back retraces the same tiles at normal speed, ignoring speed skills and buffs, and earns nothing: no Cultural Influence, festival credit, first-visit credit or scouting finds, and the destination is not visited. Your envoy ends up back where they set out, in the state they left in, except that a Hotel stay ended by leaving is not restored, a rest charge or Return Journey spent on the journey stays spent, and cancelling a Grand Itinerary ends the circuit. Road-weary is unaffected. While returning, the nameplate and envoy list read "Returning". The trip back itself can't be cancelled, though Emergency Recall still works on it. Cancel Travel is not offered in the last 10 seconds of a journey, for supply hauls or wonder race legs, or while auto-explore is on for that envoy.

The action menu also fits a 320px screen now; its right column was cut off at the edge.

Walk Home opens the Travel Confirmation for your home city, with Begin Travel and Back. Instant Recall opens the same box with a 0m travel time, the reminder that Emergency Recall can be used once every 48 hours, and a Recall Home button. Travel Confirmation's Back button returns to the action menu, and its buttons are stacked on phones. When the recall goes through, the map moves to your envoy's home city instead of leaving you looking at the place they vanished from.

It is dimmed outside the hours you have set for auto-explore.

Every status has its own buttons: the action first, then Show on Map, and anything that cancels last, in red. Idle offers Travel and Nearby; Ready for Arrival, Arrive; Checked into Hotel, View Hotel, Check Out and Show on Map; In Residence, View Embassy, Show on Map and End Residency; Travelling, Show on Map and Cancel Travel. A button that goes to the map does exactly what clicking that envoy on the map does. On phones, tap the status dot; the menu then also says where the envoy is. Other players' envoys keep their status tooltip.

Under "When they explore", pick All day or Set hours, then a From and To hour in your local time. The window may cross midnight and follows your clock through daylight saving. Outside it, no new exploration starts: one already under way still finishes and is collected, a trip still arrives, and your return-event choice still answers questions. The 20 a day per envoy is unchanged. Outside the hours, the envoy's Auto-Explore card reads "Off until" the time your hours start, with a link to the setting. The panel's "Select envoys" button is now "Some envoys".

Desktop remembers its own collapsed state, separately from phones. On phones, the zoom level and the envoy list pill are now larger tap targets.

Phones used to draw the investigation window in the wide desktop frame turned on its side, which left a column of text as narrow as 127px on a 320px screen. Each wonder now has its own upright frame, and the window uses almost the full width of the screen. On a 390px screen the content is on average 64% wider and 84% larger. At 320px, by wonder: The Foundation Stone 61% wider and 76% larger, The Evergrove 66% and 128%, The Watering Hole of Memory 86% and 90%, The Messenger's Rest 99% and 134%, The Apex of Achievement 52% and 70%, The Storyteller's Chair 62% and 86%, and Dakshon's Wound 49% and 62%, which also uses its frame for decoding. Reading every approach option at The Messenger's Rest now takes 3 screens instead of 7.

Find it in the Smart Upgrade menu on My Empire. It is part of Master Builder, at no extra cost, and covers cities you claim later. An All buildings button ticks or unticks every type. Ticked types upgrade in the order of your priority list first, then in unlock order, and the window spells out the resulting order. Configure priority list now sets the order for both Smart Upgrade and auto-upgrade, and buildings you switch on in a single city follow the same order. A ticked type shows its switch on each city's upgrade card turned on and greyed out, with a link back to the window. Your existing per-city switches are kept, and unticking a type returns each city to the switch it had.

Every cooldown reduction is counted. A depleted extractor shows no fill.

It sits on the guide's bubbles from choosing your plot up to your first envoy, and asks you to confirm. Skipping marks that part of the tutorial done, including the Goals walkthrough. Everything from creating your first envoy on runs as normal. It can't be undone.

A player paid 500 gold for a diamond while another was listed at 50. Your own listings don't count as the cheapest, and anything below the line still buys in one tap.

Nav bar badges are now drawn in full colour. The wonder race keeps its purple badge. On phones, the row of nav icons scrolls instead of running into the menu button, and the header's diamond count is now light blue.

On a slowed-down phone profile, the map was frozen for about 4 to 4.7 seconds while opening, and now about 1.6 to 2.2. Only the nameplates near your view are drawn now, rather than one for every city and ruin in the world.

Letters keep their 20px. Phones are unchanged.

Nerf

Merges are meant to be the upkeep every land pays over time, and Enduring skipped that completely. It was always meant to greatly reduce the upkeep rather than remove it. An Enduring city's collections now draw a quarter of what they collect from its natural resources, so a city at zero stops collecting from that reserve like any other.

It costs no Gold, Land Deed or step on the claim price ladder, and can only be used on the city it was given to. The free price is shown on Claim Land, Upgrade existing land, each eligible city and every step of the merge, and the merge page explains why you have it and when it expires. A free merge can't be insured, and doesn't count toward the Merge Masters leaderboard or merge achievements. Cities that pick Enduring from now on don't get one.

Buff

High level cities use up their land far faster than young ones, so a merge now refills them in proportion. For example, sacrificing a land with 400,000 wood left gives a Town Hall 14 city 200,000 wood, a Town Hall 15 city 400,000 and a Town Hall 19 city 800,000. This applies to Claim & Merge and to sacrificing a land you own.

Buff

Mixed

No land was ever meant to have infinite resources, and the server always depleted Epic and Legendary land like any other while the city page and merge screens said it never would. They now show the real amounts and are marked low or depleted like any other land, and an extractor on land that has run dry no longer reads as ready to collect.

Buff

A tree takes fourteen days to mature, and the Named was paying less than one ordinary visit to the Evergrove. The results screen lists the 500 as its own line, "Tree matured", beside what the species paid.

A find your return-event choice answers is now also recorded in the Steward's log.

A kept land still takes its step on the claim price ladder. Insurance on sacrificing a land you own is unchanged, since there you already know the land's rarity.

A rejected carving does not use up the envoy's one.