Ranked, rebuilt
Ranked is now matchmade. Click Ranked and pick one of six modes. The game finds you a lobby with the best connection for you, starting with players near your rank and widening the search the longer you wait. There's no lobby browser, no host and nothing to set up.
Two modes are live now: Fixed World Domination and Progressive Capital Conquest. Both are six players with no bots, on Caldris, Dwarven Fortress or King's Castle. 1v1 and World Domination 70% are coming soon. The last two tiles are seasonal modes that will change each season.
In the lobby you vote on the map (three are offered) and on Pacts and Fog of War, then press Ready. The match starts when all six seats are full and every player is ready. Once the lobby is full, anyone who isn't ready within 30 seconds loses their seat.
Each mode has its own ladder, RP and leaderboard tab. You need 5 games in a mode to be placed in it.
True Rank is your overall standing across the main modes. It's the first tab on the Leaderboard. Reach GrandMaster in any two main modes and you're LEGEND, which ranks above GrandMaster and earns a season title.
The old ranked ladders are gone, including Ranked 1v1, Teams and King of the Hill.
This is Season 0, and everyone's RP starts from zero. RP from the old ladders does not carry over. End-of-season titles will read "Season 0".
In ranked you now see your own custom colour on your seat. Other players still see the standard colour.
If your game closes during a ranked match, signing back in should put you straight back into it.
Ranked penalties
A player who doesn't turn up when a ranked match starts is treated as abandoning it. A bot plays their seat, and they get the full abandon penalty: a ban strike, the loss of any RP from that match and a further 250 RP. If they reconnect and take the seat back, the penalty is removed.
If only one player arrives, the match is cancelled. Nobody gains or loses RP, and the player who showed up isn't penalised.
If you leave a lobby or miss the ready check, you can't be placed back in that same lobby for 5 minutes. Miss the ready check 3 times within an hour and you get a 5-minute queue cooldown.
World Peace (new rule)
A match now ends in World Peace if nobody's continent-bonus income changes for 5 rounds in a row. Eliminating a player resets the count. So does a capital capture in Capital Conquest, or the Hill changing hands in King of the Hill. You get a warning when World Peace is one round away.
Casual: on by default, and the host can turn it off. It ends as a draw for everyone still in the game. Correspondence uses it too.
Ranked: always on. If a ranked match ends in World Peace, every player still in it gets nothing back from the pot and loses their entry fee. It still counts as a game played.
Players already eliminated keep their place as a normal loss. World Peace isn't used in team games, tournaments or Single Player. Matches started before this update finish without it.
Changed
Siege is now off by default. Siege is the fair-play rule that kicks a player for rounds with no real attacking. It used to apply in every live online match. Now it never applies in ranked, and in casual it's a match setting the host can turn on.
Streamer Mode now needs approval. Go to Settings → Privacy and request access with your channel link. Once you're approved you can turn it on as before. If you had Streamer Mode on without approval, it has been switched off.
On phones and tablets, pressing and holding a territory no longer opens a name-report menu. That menu used to pop up in the middle of a pinch and block zooming. Tap selects, drag pans. You can still report a name through the bug reporter.
Fixed
Android: starting a second match in the same session should no longer crash the game. The game also uses much less graphics memory in menus and matches.
Simpler Graphics now runs noticeably faster on low-end phones and tablets, especially on maps with fog. Hills look a little softer and the fog has harder edges.
Join buttons go grey while you're already joining a game, so you can't join two lobbies at once. If you're kicked from a waiting lobby, the browser now says "You were removed from the lobby."
On 3:2 and 4:3 tablets, the Single Player and Tutorial banners now hang from the top of the screen instead of floating below it.