New beta build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Beta_2.745_The_Unsmothering
You need to use the current_beta branch on Steam or GOG to play this one. If you have trouble with it, there is a most_recent_stable_beta, now, too.
Sooo... a lot of what's new in this one won't affect you fully unless you start a new campaign, not that that means you have to stop your old campaign. But essentially, players were just being absolutely bombarded with choices to the point that multiple people noted how off-putting that was (on several levels -- new players being overwhelmed, and experienced players always have access to everything). This also led to giant turret death balls, in particular, because the turrets were way too cheap AND too plentiful.
Hopefully the new balance here feels more appropriate, so that there's always interesting things to find, but it's not like you're stumbling over diamonds with every step you take. Getting rewards at quite that frequency makes them feel downright devalued in general. Not to mention, doing quite so many hacks can sometimes make things like the late game spire response even more terrifying, but that may still be the case, not sure.
Speaking of the fallen spire, your cities no longer upgrade inappropriately early, and they no longer upgrade automatically. Before, it was really frustrating where if you had two cities become upgrade-able at the same time, you couldn't choose which it would be. It would default to the oldest, but you had very little control. Now you have complete control. Also better info in the tooltips on why you can't upgrade yet, or why you can, depending on what the circumstances are.
Various bugs were fixed, some out of control turrets were balanced to be more on par with others in general power, sentry frigates are not flooding you, and lots of work on features for DLC2 (not out yet).