Changelog
Every Bannerfall release: new features, improvements, balance changes and fixes, in plain language.
The Marching Season
The AI opponent now appears first in the new-game opponent choices. Plus 7 more changes. Game engine 61 → 64. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
New
- The AI opponent now appears first in the new-game opponent choices.
- New games now start against the AI opponent by default, and it is simply called AI.
- In a game with Weather on, dawn mist now hides armies from anyone who is not standing right beside them.
- In a game with Weather on, the sky now changes with the season and the time of day, and rain and snow fall wherever the weather front is passing.
- In a game with Weather on, wet plains and forest now cost an army more movement to cross, while winter frost lets it march across a frozen marsh.
- New games can now be created with Weather on: rain fronts, winter frost and dawn mist sweep across the map through four seasons. For now the weather changes how the land looks, not how armies move.
Balance
- Computer opponents no longer react to armies they cannot see when deciding whether to raze a captured city, cast battle spells or sail to attack.
Fixed
- Computer opponents no longer switch to the simpler Classic AI partway through a long day of play.
Game engine 61 → 64. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
Every Asset Is What It Says It Is
Accepting a quest now moves the map straight to where it needs to be done, instead of leaving you to find the coordinates yourself. Plus 3 more changes.
New
- Accepting a quest now moves the map straight to where it needs to be done, instead of leaving you to find the coordinates yourself.
- The new-game screen now explains what each Fog of war and Victory option does, right under the buttons.
Fixed
- The quest-offer "Accept" button reads cleanly on a phone screen instead of wrapping into an uneven, oversized button.
- Toast messages on the game board no longer cause a scrollbar to appear, so panning and zooming the map keep working while one is showing.
Every Spell Has a Name
A hero who learned a spell now shows its name in their skill list, instead of an internal code like "spell:summon_wisp".
Fixed
- A hero who learned a spell now shows its name in their skill list, instead of an internal code like "spell:summon_wisp".
The board explains itself
The Compendium now explains how a dungeon crawl actually works — what torches are for, what fleeing costs you, how a party goes deeper, how many units you may take, and what becomes of the rest of them if your hero dies down there. Plus 25 more changes. Game engine 57 → 61. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
New
- The Compendium now explains how a dungeon crawl actually works — what torches are for, what fleeing costs you, how a party goes deeper, how many units you may take, and what becomes of the rest of them if your hero dies down there.
- The public Compendium now lines up any factions you pick side by side, so you can read the same unit stat across all of them at once.
- The Map key now has a Controls tab listing everything the board responds to — press and hold to inspect, how to merge, how to pan, zoom and turn the camera, and the keyboard shortcuts.
- Every faction on the new-game screen now has an ⓘ that explains who they are, how they play and what units they field, before you commit to one.
- On a phone, the Army and Building switch now sits in the drawer's header row instead of taking a row of its own, leaving more of the drawer for what you are looking at.
- Tapping one of your armies or castles on a phone no longer covers the board with the details drawer — it raises a small bar of icons for merge, disband, inspect and deselect, and the drawer only opens when you ask for it.
- The event log now opens from a bell on the map controls bar, and that bar can be collapsed out of the way on phones.
- You can now set your own map size when you create a game, anywhere between the Small and Massive boards, and the form tells you what the limits are.
- The Compendium's Units tab now compares factions side by side — pick a stat, toggle the factions you care about on or off, and read the same number for each of them at once.
- The stats page now has a calendar of every day Bannerfall has been played, shaded by how many orders were given, so you can see at a glance when the world has been busiest.
- Verdant, arid and tundra are now chosen when you create a game, and the map is generated to match — tundra is a flat, treeless, boggy plain, and arid is dry and open.
- The board now shows the grid coordinates of the square you point at or tap, with a switch to turn it off.
Balance
- A shrine deep in a ruin now mends your party up to full health and no further, so a unit can no longer walk out of a dungeon carrying more hit points than it is built for. Crawls that leaned on that extra point are harder to survive.
Fixed
- Zooming the board now homes in on whatever is under your cursor or between your fingers, instead of sliding toward the middle of the screen.
- The home page no longer counts a game you were eliminated from as one that is waiting on your move.
- On a phone, the city, army and hero controls now sit in a full-width bar tucked under the top bar instead of a floating panel over the map.
- A game you were knocked out of now tells you that you were defeated, instead of calling it abandoned.
- Bug reports can capture screenshots and video again in Firefox and Safari, and the picker no longer re-opens when you cancel it.
- The New Game screen's option buttons — difficulty, map size, turn clock and the rest — now fit on a single line on a phone instead of spilling onto a second.
- While the computer opponents take their turns, the ring beside the waiting banner now fills one segment per opponent, so you can see which one is moving and how many are still to go before your turn.
- A hero carrying several artifacts no longer has their stat line drawn over the artifact names — hit points, movement and mana are readable again.
- Alert cards no longer stack up over the board — queuing a unit in a city raises none at all, and a message that repeats refreshes the card it already has instead of adding a copy.
- Your account is now one tap away in the header on a phone, so your saved NPC generals are no longer reachable only through the New Game form.
- The Small map can now be played with any number of opponents, up to a full table of eight, instead of refusing to start with an error.
- Your armies no longer always start on the right-hand side of the map — every new game places them somewhere different.
- The move preview now follows roads, so the route it draws and the tiles it says you can reach are the ones the game actually uses.
Game engine 57 → 61. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
Polished Map and Wildlife
Roads now follow the ground they are laid on, meet cleanly where they cross, and read as a cart track rather than a highway. Plus 10 more changes.
New
- Roads now follow the ground they are laid on, meet cleanly where they cross, and read as a cart track rather than a highway.
- Lakes and coastlines now shelve from pale shallows into deep water instead of ending at a hard edge, and the surface drifts gently instead of sitting frozen.
- Castles, towns, ruins, armies and trees now cast a soft shadow onto the ground they stand on, so the board reads as a place rather than pieces laid on a painting.
- Every faction's siege engines finally look like actual siege engines on the map, instead of a soldier standing in for one.
- Towns and villages on the map now have a different, more detailed appearance depending on how large they've grown.
- Ruins now look different depending on their theme and how decayed they are, temples and boats come in a few different appearances, and compendium entries show a picture of the location.
- Temples and rowboats on the map are now hand-painted low-poly models instead of realistic Synty art, matching the rest of the board.
- Every faction's capital city — and the neutral seat a city becomes when its ruler is defeated — now renders as a real enclosed castle with a keep, walls, corner towers, and a gatehouse, instead of a placeholder.
- Ten kinds of wildlife now live on the board — crows, gulls, songbirds, bats, deer, boar, sheep, hares, ducks and a heron on the water — and unlike the single bird and the frozen deer they replace, every one of them moves.
Fixed
- Roads on the 3D board now look like a real dirt path instead of a pale grey smear.
- Mystic-site temple statues are properly sized and no longer stand on a stray base plate; ambient sheep, boars and herons are smaller and now wander around instead of standing still; the odd glowing motes drifting near wildlife are turned off; trees and rocks across the board have a new hand-painted look.
Every city and capital flies your colours
You can now see the game's own numbers on a public stats page — how long games run, which factions are winning, and how that's shifted week to week. Plus 6 more changes.
New
- You can now see the game's own numbers on a public stats page — how long games run, which factions are winning, and how that's shifted week to week.
- Cities and capitals you control now fly a banner in your colour instead of tinting the building itself — and towns, which never showed ownership before, now do too.
- Players can now choose their kingdom's board look — verdant, arid, or tundra — from the pause menu, and the game remembers the choice for next time.
Fixed
- Cleaned up several near-identical shades of grey and gold across the game screen, the info button, and the my-games dashboard so they now match exactly.
- The bring-your-own-key and privacy pages read more comfortably, text no longer runs unusually wide or drifts between sections.
- A spell granted by an artifact now explains itself against the hero actually carrying it — an army could be told no enemy was in range when the real reason was that the hero holding the grimoire had no mana.
- none -- admin-only layout.
Send your party in, and bring it home
Heroes now fight from behind their escort instead of leading the line, so a fragile hero is no longer the first unit to take a hit. Plus 10 more changes. Game engine 53 → 57. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
New
- An opponent's account of its turn now describes what its armies really did — sitting down before a city, breaking a ruin open, raising fresh troops, a champion taking the field — instead of repeating one verb about the same place.
- An offline or sandbox game now gives you the same "since your last turn" report an online game does, including the opponent's own account of what it spent the turn doing.
- While you wait on a computer opponent's turn, a small ring now shows how many cities you and each faction you've scouted control, with a marker for whose turn it is — tap it for the full breakdown.
- Web addresses no longer carry a language code — banner-fall.com/games instead of banner-fall.com/en/games — and you can now choose your language in your account, or let the game follow your browser.
Balance
- The strength your party shows at the mouth of a ruin now counts your hero's command bonus, so the verdict the panel gives you is the one the delve itself fights with.
- Heroes now fight from behind their escort instead of leading the line, so a fragile hero is no longer the first unit to take a hit.
- Wounded units now heal themselves over time, and heal far faster resting in a city you hold.
Fixed
- Before delving a ruin, the panel now leads with the hardest single chamber your party would have to win, tells you how many chambers the place holds and whether anything down there can heal them, and says plainly that losing one fight costs the whole party.
- A wounded unit now shows its hit points as current out of maximum, including at 1 hit point, where the number used to disappear entirely.
- Computer opponents now tell you what they were doing while you were away — their account of each turn appears in the recap you see when your turn comes back around.
- Every page outside the game board now carries the same header and footer, so the games list, sign-in and account screens are no longer stranded with no way back to the rest of the site.
Game engine 53 → 57. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
Choose your difficulty, and size up a ruin before you enter
Standing at the mouth of a ruin, your party now tells you what is actually waiting inside — how many guardians, how many fights, and whether they are strong enough to face them. Plus 20 more changes. Game engine 46 → 53. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
New
- Standing at the mouth of a ruin, your party now tells you what is actually waiting inside — how many guardians, how many fights, and whether they are strong enough to face them.
- A new Opponents panel shows who is driving each seat while a game is running.
- Between your turns, each opponent now tells you what its armies were doing — but only ever about forces and places you can actually see.
- Spells you know but cannot cast now tell you exactly what they are waiting on — how much more mana, how many levels, how far the nearest enemy is — with a tap on your spellbook to read them all in one place.
- A spell your hero can only cast because of an artifact now says which artifact grants it, and names the hero carrying it when that is someone else in the army.
- Saved opponents now carry the personality you gave them instead of a model setting, so an opponent you built keeps playing the way you meant it to.
Balance
- You now pick a difficulty when you start a game, from Squire to Overlord, and the picker tells you exactly what each level gives your opponents — at Captain nobody pays more or less.
- Ruins now come in a real spread of difficulties, from a quick raid to a deep, dangerous delve, instead of nearly all being the easiest kind.
- Computer opponents now size up a ruin before committing to it, and turn back from a dungeon their party cannot survive instead of marching in regardless.
- There is one computer general now, described by how it plays rather than by how hard it is.
Fixed
- A hero's spellbook again lists every spell that hero knows. Spells it has not grown into yet are shown locked with the level they need, instead of disappearing from the panel.
- When a page cannot load your games, generals or keys, it now tells you something went wrong instead of showing an empty list as though you had none.
- A game no longer freezes on the same turn forever when an opponent is knocked out mid-round.
- Armies no longer announce that they cannot enter a ruin every time they simply walk past one, which was crowding battles and captures out of the game log.
- Computer opponents can no longer see what is guarding a ruin they have never explored, so they walk into the same unknown a player does.
- When the game picks your dungeon party for you, it now sends your strongest units and every hero that earns a place — previously it took whoever happened to be first in the stack.
- When a hero dies in a ruin, you are now always told — previously a hero who shared a name with a companion could be lost in silence.
- Computer opponents no longer plan routes through terrain they have never scouted. They must explore to find the way, the same as you.
- Computer opponents explore properly again. They were spending most of their orders trying to march into unmapped territory — which the game refuses — and now they head for the edges of what they know instead.
- Computer opponents no longer waste their turn ordering marches to places they cannot actually reach — across water, through mountains, or simply too far. They now see the real routes their armies can take, which matters most on the larger maps.
- If you play with your own AI provider key, it is now used on every turn your opponent takes — including turns played for you after a forfeit, during vacation, or when you hand your turn to the AI. If your key can't be used, the game says so and the Classic AI plays that turn.
Game engine 46 → 53. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
Opponents that use their whole army
Computer opponents recover more often when they hesitate at the end of their turn instead of leaving it unfinished. Plus 8 more changes.
Fixed
- Computer opponents recover more often when they hesitate at the end of their turn instead of leaving it unfinished.
- The bring-your-own-key page and your account settings now explain exactly what Bannerfall records about an AI opponent's turn, and make clear it's never your prompts or your provider key.
- The game log now says when an AI opponent's turn was played by the Classic AI instead of its assigned difficulty.
- Computer opponents on the default difficulty are less likely to silently stall out on turns where they command a large army.
- Computer opponents are far less likely to get stuck guessing the shape of a command's arguments — building a city's production queue, moving part of an army, or resolving a quest offer.
- Computer opponents no longer silently skip their turn when the AI provider returns an empty response — the game now retries automatically.
- The replay page's "finished" date no longer changes to a different day right after the page loads.
- Computer-controlled opponents can now split off and move specific units from their armies correctly, instead of most of those orders silently failing.
- Signing in with a password now reliably keeps you signed in instead of risking a drop back to the login page.
Opponents that finish their turn
Games no longer freeze up while a computer opponent is thinking through its turn. Plus 3 more changes.
Fixed
- Games no longer freeze up while a computer opponent is thinking through its turn.
- Computer opponents can now correctly target spells, embark and disembark fleets, respond to diplomacy offers, and pick a hero's new skill on level-up — previously they could see these actions were available but not the information needed to actually use them.
- AI opponents offered a quest at a temple no longer get stuck forever -- they now answer it (or the game answers it for them) and keep playing.
- The "waiting on an opponent" banner now updates to name each computer opponent as its turn comes up, instead of freezing on the first one while the others quietly finish.
A log that tells you what happened
A game whose computer opponent gets stuck is no longer stranded forever — it's now paused and flagged for review after a few failed attempts instead of retried endlessly. Plus 7 more changes. Game engine 43 → 46. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
New
- A game whose computer opponent gets stuck is no longer stranded forever — it's now paused and flagged for review after a few failed attempts instead of retried endlessly.
Balance
- Computer opponents now remember armies and cities they have scouted, and act on what they last saw rather than forgetting it the moment it leaves their sight — they press attacks and take cities noticeably more often.
- Cities are now built on the land around them instead of always sitting on grass, so a faction's favoured terrain finally matters when you assault a city.
- Computer opponents no longer march straight at armies and cities they have never scouted — they have to find you first.
- The computer opponents you face are now drawn at random from every faction, instead of the same two or three every game.
Fixed
- Your game log now records production changes, declined hero offers, and other actions that previously happened silently — so a turn shows what actually occurred instead of just saying it ended.
- Watching a friend's game live, or replaying a finished one from a shared link, no longer shows a broken board.
- A game can no longer get permanently stuck on a computer opponent's turn because of a failed background statistics write.
Game engine 43 → 46. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
Opponents that actually play
The Compendium now explains how heroes regain mana, how income and upkeep work, and which rules apply to your game's settings. Plus 5 more changes. Game engine 41 → 43. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
New
- The Compendium now explains how heroes regain mana, how income and upkeep work, and which rules apply to your game's settings.
Balance
- Maps now contain the neutral towns they were supposed to — the standard board was quietly generating barely half of them, leaving far less to conquer than intended.
- Computer opponents actually play their turns now. They were spending their whole thinking budget before deciding anything and silently passing — hardest difficulty was doing nothing on nine turns out of ten.
Fixed
- The minimap now shows where you're actually looking on the board, and if copying a game code ever fails it tells you why instead of doing nothing.
- Turn alerts no longer pile up as a stack of identical cards or sit in the wrong place outside a game, and a hero offering to join you appears at the top where you'll see it before it expires.
- A hero who falls in a battle you win no longer takes their magic items to the grave — a surviving hero picks them up, or they're sold and the gold goes to your treasury. Turning back at a ruin's entrance no longer seals it forever.
Game engine 41 → 43. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
Signing in works, and stays working
The sign-in email now gives you just a 6-digit code to type, so an email provider's link scanner can no longer use up your sign-in before you do. Plus 4 more changes.
Fixed
- The sign-in email now gives you just a 6-digit code to type, so an email provider's link scanner can no longer use up your sign-in before you do.
- You can now reach your account settings and sign out from the games screen, and signing out reliably ends your session right away.
- Signing in with the emailed 6-digit code now keeps you signed in instead of dropping you back on the login page.
- A computer opponent now sizes up its own armies the way battles actually resolve them — counting equipment, veteran troops and hero leadership instead of a rough headcount — so it picks its fights more sensibly.
- The changelog now shows what actually changed in each release right on the list, instead of just how many things changed.
Spectate a game, and watch it back
Watch a friend's game live, or replay any finished game from a shareable link. Computer opponents now play under the same fog of war you do. Game engine 40 → 41. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
New
- Watch a friend's game live, if they turn spectating on. Any finished game can also be replayed from a shareable link — scrub through it turn by turn, no account needed.
- Hand a turn to your AI general and read a full account of what they did while you were away.
- Heroes standing on the same tile can pass a magic item from one to another.
Balance
- Computer opponents no longer see armies and cities they have not scouted. They play under the same fog of war you do, which makes them noticeably less able to ambush you with perfect information — and, where they can see a force, they now judge its strength more accurately.
- AI opponents can read and play a dungeon crawl properly instead of guessing at it.
Fixed
- A game with an AI opponent can no longer get permanently stuck waiting on a turn that never comes.
- AI opponents stop wasting turns on moves your game's settings don't allow.
- An AI hero's level-up and skill choice now appears in your log instead of happening invisibly.
Game engine 40 → 41. In-flight games were migrated automatically.
A changelog, and a way to know what's new
Bannerfall now publishes a changelog of everything that's shipped, with an RSS feed, plus a dismissible card on your games list that tells you when something's new.
New
- A changelog at /changelog lists every release, with an RSS feed so you can follow along without checking back.
- A card on your games list tells you when a new release has notes worth reading — dismiss it and it won't come back for that release.