New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.723_AI_Accountant_Fired.2C_And_Relentless_Waves
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
WOW this one changes a lot in terms of balance. It turns out that about a month ago, I accidentally capped the Warden and the Praetorian Guard factions HARD. So hard that they have barely been present in the game during this time. They had the budget, but they just had nowhere to spend it. There's a bunch of new math in place that now gives them appropriate better caps depending on the AIP and the difficulty level of that AI subfaction in question.
The original release where the budgets changed and these caps got reduced too low was called "The AI Visits An Accountant," which by and large was a great release that moved things forward. But it is amusing that this big mistake was in there, and so this release referring to that accountant being fired was an immediate joke on discord.
Beyond that, though, waves also got some major balance changes. Gone is the code that makes them try to "make sure they can win" with each wave. That would lead to situations where if you were too well-defended in certain spots, you could guarantee you'd never be attacked there. And if you were equally well-defended everywhere, then you could guarantee you'd see no waves until an apocalyptic one showed up. Now that doesn't happen, waves are more common and less targeted, and this gives the Hunter some interesting potential openings as well as making things a lot more lively and actually testing your defenses in all parts. Someone on discord a few weeks ago described this as like "raptors testing the fence."
There's also a new AI subfaction, "relentless waves," which keeps the Hunter from getting any of the wave forces. They're here to fight and die. Hunter was fine on its own.