MergeCiv Changelog

v1.20.1 — Mending

Change: The Forge tooltip now lists every bonus to your Metal, including the Conquest Road's.
Change: Conquest Road rewards now say they last until Transcension instead of calling themselves permanent.
Fix: The welcome-back summary no longer pauses your game, and offline earnings are saved as soon as they arrive.
Fix: You now earn Valor for time your device slept with the March open.
Fix: The March battle no longer resets when you switch layers and come back.
Fix: Workshops and forges return after Transcension, even if Craftsmanship was switched off.
Fix: Founders no longer see a free-boost timer that never applied to them.
Fix: Ritual numerals no longer wrap, and the Imbue button keeps its label.

v1.20.0 — The Reliquary & Cinderwake

New: The Reliquary — a four-rank Astral constellation that raises the artifact imbue cap to three and opens Epic and Legendary artifacts to Imbuement, up to Mythic.
New: Artifact purchases now draw from a visible bag of marbles — each card shows its exact drop odds, and imbuing an artifact moves only its own marbles to the higher rarity.
New: Pioneer's Pack in the Astral Tree starts every new run with free Fellow Pilgrims and starter tiles on the board, up to a Village with Wheat, Forest, Ore and a Workshop.
New: The Wilds — carry the First Ember up Cinderwake to awaken your inner fire, breathe flame, and regrow faster with every life offered to the gem, while kobold villages barter, smelt ore and expand toward Cinderhearth.
New: Citadel Plans now keep the Culture you bank toward them across Resettlement and Ascension, and seven early lessons with a next-goal strip guide your first runs.
New: Collect all Patient Bird rewards in one tap, and adjust sound volume from a collapsible slider.
Change: The Artifact Phylactery now survives Ascension, and Culture auto-buy ticks smoothly across the minute — buying the Phylactery only when an artifact is ready at Lv 10.
Change: Each Forge stream now refines Metal from the Ore output of the specific mine connected to it, and Culture feather upgrades multiply Resettlement rewards.
Balance: Strongholds 50 and 75 reinforce at a third of the road's pace, and Strongholds 100–175 cap their garrison at 260, reinforce slower, and keep slain trolls dead.
Performance: Faster startup, lighter board ticks and smoother frame pacing across large battles and the Wilds valley.
Fix: Transcension fully resets Conquest — road progress, army, camp, training, specializations and Valor. Earned Star Pieces are banked before the reset.
Fix: Complete Wilds dragon saves now sync across devices.

v1.19.0 — Transcension

New: Transcension — at Citadel 100, start a fresh life and bank a Star Piece for every 100 Conquest landmarks you took.
New: The Astral Tree — spend Star Pieces on permanent skills: cheaper artifacts, autobuyers that survive resets, auto-Ascension, faster Conquest and a constellation for every unit line.
New: Tier II units — after Transcension, train every path to Tier II with Culture, each with its own battle art.
New: Enemy warbands fight in their own styles, each with a weakness to find.
Change: Landmark 200 is the Warlord's keep: slay its three ogres — they stay dead — then hold the flag.
Change: Landmarks 176–199 are gentler, and elite enemies ease in instead of arriving all at once.
New: Ascension, Imbuement and Resettlement now play full-screen cinematics.
New: The game is now in German, Russian and Japanese, and you can play it inside Discord.
New: The Wilds — swim and dive, airbrake, ride the wind, and help a small-folk village grow over real hours.
New: Patient Bird feather challenges, and crystals per active minute in Stats.
Fix: Saves no longer stay rejected after a confirmed restore.

v1.18.3 — Gearing

Change: Paths cost 2M culture for the first branch and 10M for the second, and switching between owned paths is free — the line's fielded troops go home and the next wave musters as the new path.
Change: Recruit Metal follows the unit you field; militia and archers never pay it.
Change: Gearing up to a costlier unit bills the difference; gearing down is free, with no refund.
New: Any line can return to its base unit, and the Muster shows what sets a recruit's Metal price.

v1.18.2 — Footing

New: Steep ground is one continuous climb — walk, scramble, cling — the slope sets your pace and Wind cost, and the keys never change.
New: Out of Wind on a face, you slide down to gentler ground and rest instead of hanging there stuck.
Change: Trunks and rock rear you up as you walk into them; A/D and the mouse still steer, Space still hops.
Change: Your talons only reach when a catch is possible, and a pass that is too high tells you how far to drop.
Change: A catch lands with a kick, a puff and a "Caught" mark; carried prey tucks under your hips and struggles quietly.
Change: Every Wilds screen now says what you need, once; the small folk arrive when their gem lights instead of standing as statues.
Fix: Claws that visibly touch an animal now catch it, and a low pass over a heavy carcass no longer stops you dead.
Fix: E always answers with what to do, and saplings no longer block a walking dragon.

v1.18.1 — Heft

New: Merges land with a pop, a burst of dust and a tier stamp; moved tiles fly into place, and a bad drop shakes and slides back home.
New: Phones now buzz on merges, drops and taps. Turn it off under Settings → Vibration.
Change: Buttons press down when tapped, and hover highlights no longer stick on touch screens.

v1.18.0 — The Wilds

New: The Aerie opens onto the Wilds, a 3D valley where you raise a wyvern from hatchling to adult.
New: Hunt real prey and offer its essence at the altar to restore the valley.
New: Wake the small folk and help their village grow.
New: Day turns to night, and you can hear every wingbeat and footfall.
Note: The Wilds is on the web first; the apps follow soon. Your original dragon is in the Classic tab.

v1.17.11 — The Ledger

New: Valor now shows what it earns per second while you are off campaign — check the rate for your army's pace, the bonuses on it, and how long the camp keeps paying.
New: Valor has a row of its own in the resource list, and on phones you can pin up to four resources to the top.

v1.17.10 — Head Start

New: Friends who arrive through your invite link now get a head start: 2 bonus boosts and +5% production the moment they link up, and the share card leads with what your friend gets.
New: Four more guides on the site, including a full Conquest guide covering the Muster Grounds, the road, valor, and the Forge.
Change: The Mentor roster now shows your current bonus and what the next recruit unlocks.

v1.17.9 — High Water

Balance: Away time and boosts now pay Valor at 10% of your army's best five minutes ever.

v1.17.8 — Quiet Wires

Change: Android testers now receive every release automatically, the way TestFlight does on iOS.
Change: Noisy telemetry can now be quieted from the web without waiting for an app update.

v1.17.7 — The Steady Cloud

Fix: Switching devices no longer asks which save to keep when this device was already fully synced, and a hidden tab no longer uploads its save three times over.
Change: A press page at mergeciv.io/press, and the About and FAQ pages now describe the Royal Shop and platforms accurately.

v1.17.6 — The Road Kept

Fix: Your war road now counts when two devices compare saves — a phone that had not seen the campaign could quietly overwrite it.
Change: A refresh no longer resurrects your army — it re-musters from camp, and the enemy keeps its losses.

v1.17.5 — The War Hawk

Feature: The bird now flies over the War tab too — miss no flights while on campaign.

v1.17.4 — The Tithe

Balance: Away time and boosts now pay Valor at 10% of your army's recent pace.

v1.17.3 — The Paymaster

Feature: Boosts now pay the war chest too — Valor at your army's recent pace for the boosted hours.

v1.17.2 — The Long Watch

Feature: Your war camp now earns Valor while you're away — a share of your army's recent pace, up to eight hours per absence.
Change: The road no longer marches on its own — ground is only taken in live battle.

v1.17.1 — A Lighter March

Performance: Big battles cost far less to draw.
Change: A struck soldier now flashes blue.
Fix: Splash damage respects each victim's own armor.
Fix: Wildlife herds graze on their own stretch of road.

v1.17.0 — The Metal War

Feature: Conquest. Raise an army on the Muster Grounds and march it down a 200-stone road — cleared sites pay resources, walled sieges pay Valor.
Feature: The Forge. A manned Workshop refines adjacent ore into Metal, the currency that arms your war.
Feature: Six lines, six trainable ranks each, and identity forks — berserkers to battle priests.
Note: War progress is permanent — every reset carries your road, host, Valor and Forge upgrades forward. Banked Metal starts each run fresh.
Feature: The bird learns war — feather tracks, war-gated rows, and Conquest Road boons.
Feature: Two Royal packs — War Chest (+20% Valor forever) and Forgemaster (+20% Metal forever).

v1.16.6 — Honest Counts

Fix: The Research tab no longer shows a count you cannot spend. Once your dragon hatched, the Dragon Egg kept being counted as something you could still buy — it is bought once and lives with the dragon, but the counter behind the badge forgot that every time you Resettled — so the mobile Research button sat on (1) forever with nothing behind it.
Fix: Pressing Save now says what it did. It saves to this device, and your progress reaches the cloud on its own schedule — but the confirmation read “Saved & Synced!” to every signed-in player whether the cloud had been reached or not, including when the connection was down. The cloud icon at the top of the screen remains the place to check that.
Fix: The board should no longer come up empty on older iPhones. On at least one device the wooden frame and its map well drew at full size with not a single tile on them, though the game underneath was running normally. Two ways that could happen have been closed off.

v1.16.5 — Flights Pay

Fix: Gold you earn in Wyrmfall now reaches your empire even when the dragon restarts as a hatchling. Where a browser walls off Wyrmfall's storage — Safari and iOS by default, and any second device always — it cannot read its own save and begins again from nothing, so every hoard it reported was smaller than the one MergeCiv holds and was refused to keep your real hoard safe. That refusal also discarded the gold you had just earned, so Gold capacity and Empire Tribute never moved however long you flew. MergeCiv now measures what each flight adds and credits that, while the hoard itself stays protected as before.

v1.16.4 — Your Choice

Fix: The Imbue Artifact ritual no longer opens with an artifact already chosen for you. It pre-selected the first eligible one, and that selection changed on its own as artifacts reached Lv 10 — so an artifact you had just levelled could quietly take the place of the one you meant to imbue, and a single tap would imbue the wrong one. Nothing is selected now; you choose the target yourself. If this cost you an artifact, say so on Discord and it can be undone.

v1.16.3 — Plain Numbers

Fix: Your dragon's form and age now update even when the hoard cannot be. If Wyrmfall cannot read its own save — common on Safari and iOS, where the browser walls off its storage — it restarts as a hatchling, and MergeCiv refuses the smaller hoard that follows so your real one is never erased. That refusal also froze the rest of the record, so The Aerie kept reporting a Hatchling however far you had actually flown. Growth now lands on its own; the hoard stays protected.
Fix: The Culture capacity breakdown lists your Theatres. The cap was always correct, but the one building that raises it had no line in the tooltip, so the numbers did not add up.
Fix: Browser page-translation no longer crashes the game. Translating the page replaced text the game was still updating, which ended the session on an error screen. The game now opts out of automatic translation — use the language picker in Settings — and recovers on its own if a translation extension does it anyway.

v1.16.2 — Imbuements Hold

Fix: A duplicate artifact no longer strips an Imbuement. An imbued artifact draws its duplicates from the rarity above, so a duplicate is the only way it can ever level — and the first one to land quietly reverted it to its original rarity and effect, undoing a 100M Culture ritual. Imbued artifacts now keep their empowered form and gain the experience as intended. If one of yours reverted, it can be restored — say so on Discord.
Fix: Artifact Imbuement now registers as progress when two devices compare saves. The ritual restarts your run but recorded nothing, so a freshly imbued save could look no further along than the pre-ritual copy on another device and you would be asked to pick between them.
Fix: A 5×5 Citadel — the one Coalesce Knowledge builds — is no longer misread as an implausible save.

v1.16.1 — Hoard Comes Home

Fix: Dragon flights credit your empire again. Since 6 Aug, Wyrmfall was recording your hoard, age and form locally but never handing them back to MergeCiv, so the Gold cap bonus and Tribute multiplier sat frozen and The Aerie kept reporting a Hatchling no matter how far you flew. Your dragon's progress was never lost — the handoff was — and it lands the next time you return from a flight.
Fix: Resources above your cap are no longer confiscated. Tapping a tile, casting a harvest spell, or claiming a Boost used to clamp every balance down to the current cap, so an over-cap balance vanished on the next tap — and tapping a forest could truncate your Gold. Growth still stops at the cap; what you already banked now stays banked until you spend it.
Fix: Signing in on a new device no longer shows an empty Citadel. The cloud restore read the wrong field names and dropped your underground map, Citadel grid and lifetime stats, rebuilding a bare Citadel until the next sync repaired it.
Fix: Switching accounts no longer shows the previous account's invite code, mentor roster, Founder status or Royal tier. Those were cached without an owner for up to six hours.
Fix: Dragging a tile no longer disarms the spell you had ready.
Fix: The Golden Compass now follows the same appraisal rule everywhere. Its tile-quality bonus applied to manual spawns without Detect Magic 5 (or the Department of Magical Appraisals) while the idle loop correctly withheld it — and the scout tooltip advertised a tier the idle loop would not deliver.
Fix: The Knowledge tooltip's Citadel row shows the Citadel's own output instead of quietly folding in the Feather bonus that is already listed beneath it.

v1.15.0 — Raise Your Dragon

Feature: Your first Resettlement uncovers an ancient dragon egg. Hatch it in The Aerie; your dragon persists through Resettlements and Ascensions.
Feature: Take Flight into Wyrmfall at dragon.mergeciv.io. Hoard, age, size, and dragon form sync back to MergeCiv.
Feature: Dragon Hoard increases maximum Gold capacity on a diminishing-return curve, up to +50%, and multiplies Empire Tribute along the same curve, up to 10×. Taxes, artifacts, and interest are unchanged.
UI: Generated artwork covers the egg and all nine growth forms, with responsive desktop/mobile and light/dark designs.
Improvement: Dragon progression participates in save migration, persistence, and cloud-conflict detection.

v1.13.1 — Boost Mana Paid Once

Fix: Boost claims no longer grant a separate instant hour of Mana or convert that simulated Mana into Magic Crystals. The boost bank remains the Mana reward: it accelerates live Mana — and Mana Syphon while capped — by up to 10× without paying the same progression twice. Genuine offline Mana and crystal earnings are unchanged, as are the instant Food, Wood, Ore, Gold, Knowledge, and Culture rewards.

v1.11.1 — Early Milestones Rebalanced

Improvement: The early Citadel milestones at Lv 2, 4, and 7 now grant +10% Food, Wood & Ore production each (stacking to ×1.3 by Lv 7) instead of small Max Knowledge raises (+10k/+20k/+50k) — a bonus you can feel from the first Imbues. The flat Max Knowledge ladder now starts at Lv 9 (+100k) and is otherwise unchanged.
Note: The production bonus applies online and offline, and your income tooltips show it as a Citadel multiplier. As with every milestone, it's permanent — derived straight from your Citadel level, surviving every reset.

v1.11.0 — Citadel Milestones

Feature: Citadel Milestones — every Citadel level now works toward a permanent reward. Every level from 1 to 10, every 5th to 50, and every 10th to 100 strengthens the empire forever: flat Max Knowledge raises (+10k at Lv 2 through +800k at Lv 80 — +1.78M in total), flat Max Culture raises (+2M at Lv 20 through +20M at Lv 70 — +27M in total), Gold cap bonuses (+25% at Lv 6/30/60/90 — ×2 in total), Food/Wood/Ore cap bonuses (+25% at Lv 15/40/70 — ×1.75 in total), and Crystal gain bonuses (+20% more crystals claimed at every Ascension, stacking to +100%).
Feature: Bureaucratic supercharge — the Lv 10 milestone makes the Bureaucratic Ritual's auto-buy pass run 10× faster, and Lv 25 lifts its ceiling to cover T4 research at any ritual rank.
Feature: The Standing Appraisal (Lv 50) — while your Gold sits at its cap, the surplus is converted into artifact appraisals automatically. Same price curve as the manual Buy, and a toggle next to the Buy button if you'd rather hoard.
Feature: The Eternal Citadel (Lv 100) — the ladder's capstone unlocks Transcension, the gateway to what lies beyond the Citadel, and nothing else: the final level is the doorway itself. (The journey arrives in a future update.)
Improvement: The Citadel Imbue ritual shows a milestone track — the next reward at a glance, the full 23-milestone ladder on tap, and a running total of the permanent bonuses already earned.
Note: Permanent bonuses come straight from your Citadel level, so they apply to existing empires immediately — and milestones recognize levels granted by Mentor gifts. Artifact milestones already passed are paid out retroactively on first load.
Fix: The Crystal gain milestone bonus no longer switches off after your first Ascension of an Imbue cycle — Ascension was forgetting the Citadel's level until the next Imbue re-taught it. Crystals claimed at every Ascension now carry the full milestone multiplier, and reloading after an Ascension no longer replays milestone announcements you've already seen.

v1.10.0 — Mentor Bonds

Feature: Mentor Bonds — linked civilizations strengthen each other along a milestone ladder: Resettlement → Wood/Food/Ore, Ascension → Mana, Artifacts → Gold Cap, Citadel Imbue → Knowledge, Artifact Imbuement → Culture. As a mentor, every recruit who reaches a rung (after a few days of genuine play) grants you +1% in that rung's category, up to +5% per category across your roster. As a recruit, linking to a mentor grants you +5% in every category, immediately — your bonuses never depend on your mentor's continued progress.
Feature: Find your invite code and link in the Share modal; arriving through a friend's link shows a one-tap Link Up prompt. Anyone can set a mentor, at any point in their journey.
Improvement: The share card and share message now carry your invite code and a tappable mergeciv.io invite link, and income tooltips break out your Mentor Bonds multipliers.
Improvement: Name your civilization from the Profile tab, and wear a title earned by your deepest milestone — Settler, Chieftain, Ascendant, Loremaster, Citadel Lord, Eternal.
Improvement: The share card now leads with your civilization's name and title, shows only your most impressive stats (no more rows of zeros), and carries your invite code written into the art — so the doorway survives even when the image is shared as a screenshot. The tappable invite link travels in the share message.

v1.9.0 — Artifact Imbuement

Feature: Artifact Imbuement — a new endgame ritual at the Citadel. Acquire the Artifact Phylactery in the Empire panel (100M Culture), then imbue any level-10 artifact: the same full reset as a Citadel imbue, but the chosen artifact is reborn at Level 1 with a permanently empowered effect and ascends one rarity tier. Every Common, Uncommon, and Rare artifact has its own imbued effect — flat generators scale with level², capacity and generation multipliers grow faster per level, and the Accelerating Timepiece winds faster the longer your run.
Note: Imbued artifacts move to their new rarity's collection tab and drop pool, and each level-up costs one Fibonacci step more XP — the climb back is steeper, but the payoff compounds. The Phylactery resets with your other empire upgrades (the ritual itself claims it), so every imbue is a fresh 100M Culture commitment.
Feature: Resonant Crystals — a new Empire upgrade (5 levels, 10k → 100M Culture). Your crystals hum in harmony, hastening the formation of new ones — crystal charge builds faster the more crystals you already hold.

v1.8.4 — Guaranteed First Epic

Improvement: Your first Epic artifact is now guaranteed to be the Interest Accumulator — the tier's gold-compounding engine — instead of a random pick, just like the Printing Press guarantee for Legendaries. After that, Epic discoveries still favor the ones you don't own yet, and rarity odds are unchanged.

v1.8.2 — Boosts Match Offline

Fix: Speed Boosts now also grant Culture, and the reward popup shows your Knowledge and Culture gains — so a boost matches what you'd earn returning from offline across every resource, not just mana and crystals.

v1.8.1 — Boosts Earn Crystals

Fix: Speed Boosts now feed overflow mana into Magic Crystals through Mana Syphon, just like returning from offline — previously, if your mana pool was already full, a boost's hour of mana topped off the bar and the rest was wasted, earning no crystals. The boost reward popup now shows the crystals you gained.

v1.8.0 — Smarter Artifact Discovery

Improvement: Discovering an Epic or Legendary artifact now favors ones you don't own yet, so a bad-luck streak can't leave you permanently missing a key high-value artifact. Once you've collected the whole tier, duplicates resume leveling it up as before.
Improvement: Your first Legendary is now guaranteed to be the Printing Press — the artifact that unlocks the Theatre endgame — instead of a coin flip with the Golden Compass.
Note: Drop rates between rarities are unchanged. Common, Uncommon, and Rare still roll evenly, since their duplicates are what level them up. This only affects which artifact you receive once a rarity is rolled.
Feature: Boosts now use a server-side charge pool that refills +1 every 6 hours (up to 4) and accumulates while you're offline, instead of resetting at device midnight — and the free boost (once per 24h) is now tracked server-side too. The boost modal shows live countdowns plus a new speedometer gauge that glows green, yellow, then red with a trembling needle and sparks past 9× speed.
Feature: New Guild Charter (Tier 5) upgrade lets you toggle Craftsmanship on or off from the Empire panel, stopping Workshop tiles from spawning so you can control your production focus. Requires the Craftsmanship legacy upgrade and costs 2M Research + 50M Culture.
Feature: Switching layers now plays a 3D cube-roll animation between citadel, surface, and underground, with a new vertical "edge lift" selector featuring icons, gliding animations, and comet trails. Scroll the grid with your mouse wheel or trackpad to switch layers — one step per flick.
Feature: Press I, U, or F to instantly cast Infuse, Upheaval, or Fission. Spell tooltips now show keycap hints on hover. (web)
Feature: New strategy library with 6 in-depth guides (Merge Strategy, Resource Guide, Resettlement & Culture, Ascension, Underground & Citadel, Idle Progression) plus a searchable changelog page — scroll below the game to find them. First-time visitors also get a welcome card explaining the basics with a link to the Beginner's Guide. (Web)
Improvement: The sync conflict modal now shows when you last actually made progress on each device rather than when the save last auto-synced, so old saves no longer show a misleading "Just now."
Fix: Fixed the cloud save conflict modal re-opening every few minutes during normal play — equal-progress saves were being misread as conflicts due to timer drift and key reordering.
Fix: Fixed banked Culture above the soft cap being truncated back to 1M after a resettle.
Fix: Citadel Imbue and reset warnings now accurately list what resets and what's preserved — Imbue now lists Gold, Wood, Food & Ore (and says "Rituals," not "Ritual Assignments"), and strategy guides now correctly describe Charge Up (×1.3 per level), Library (10,000 base cost), and Theatre cost scaling.
Fix: Fixed drag-ghost tiles appearing offset from your cursor — dragged tiles now track your finger or mouse accurately, with snappier touch response on ritual cards.
Fix: Mouse-wheel scrolling no longer pulls the game off-screen on desktop, and scrolling over the artifacts collection in the Research panel now stays contained within the panel. (Web)

v1.7.1 — Seamless Device Switching

Feature: Switching devices now shows a one-tap "Continue where you left off?" prompt with a clear side-by-side comparison — no more confusing conflict modal on every switch.
Fix: "Load Cloud Save" no longer silently does nothing after a prestige, ascension, or citadel imbue on another device — post-reset saves are now recognized as legitimate (resets are tracked in lifetime stats).
Fix: "Keep Local" now works even when your local save is behind the cloud — the cloud copy is safely snapshotted first, so the choice is always reversible.
Fix: If a cloud save genuinely looks damaged (missing a board your device has), you now get a clear warning with a "Load Anyway" option instead of a silent refusal.
Improvement: Cloud uploads retry automatically on bad connections, recover from expired sessions without needing an app restart, and sync immediately when you come back online.
Improvement: Your game keeps saving locally while a sync question is open (previously all saving paused).
Improvement: Choosing a save now takes effect immediately instead of waiting for the next sync window.

v1.6.4 — Cloud Sync

Improvement: Migrated cloud sync to a faster, more reliable backend.
Improvement: Smarter sync intervals — saves upload based on activity instead of fixed timers, reducing battery and data usage.
Improvement: Save conflict modal now clearly labels Local Save vs Cloud Save and highlights differences between them.
Feature: Speed Boost button enabled on iOS.
Fix: Session conflict detection accuracy — "Recently active" indicator replaces false "Active now" status.
Fix: Citadel and Underground tabs no longer get wiped when switching back to the game tab — cloud sync now refuses to import a save that's missing those grids when your local copy has them.
Fix: Cross-device cloud loads no longer double-count offline time (saving on PC then loading on phone after 12 h no longer adds 12 h of phone-side offline earnings on top of the PC progress).
Fix: Cloud sync now picks up changes from other devices even on quick tab switches (3 s instead of 10 s), and prefers the cloud save when it has more progress than local within the clock-skew window.
Fix: Accelerating Timepiece artifact re-engages immediately after ascending — no more needing a culture reset or page refresh.
Fix: Citadel tile hover tooltip now shows the correct knowledge/sec (matches the imbue panel — was previously doubled at higher tiers).
Fix: Science Backed Marketing upgrade stays available after Citadel rebirth instead of disappearing until you re-research Build Citadel.
Fix: Crown/Empire button now shows the pending culture bubble right after re-unlocking Resettlement post-ascension (no more clicking + Esc workaround).
Fix: Ritual of Quality now affects the very next scout — previously the first post-purchase scout could still spawn at the old tier.
Fix: Ritual cost badge on mobile no longer becomes unresponsive after a card flip animation (a stuck animation flag was permanently blocking taps).

v1.6.3 — Bugfixes

Various bug fixes and improvements.

v1.6.2 — Bugfixes

Fix: Disabled swipe navigation to prevent accidental tab switching during merges.

v1.6.1 — Bugfixes

Various bug fixes and UI polish.

v1.6.0

Feature: Theatre building — raises culture cap; autopurchases culture upgrades.
Feature: Cultural Advancement upgrade — costs 2M Culture + 1M Knowledge; unlocks the Theatre building.
Balance: Tribute gold now scales cubically with max tile tier.
UI: Dock, tooltip, and panel polish — cost formatting, scout toggle animation, constant-width panels, artifact grid tweaks, and improved mobile readability.
Fix: Drag-and-drop works on first page load and allows immediate re-drag after dropping.
Fix: Apprentice Control persists correctly with Assistance Ritual tier 2.
Fix: Offline earnings no longer lost for short away durations (<10 s).
Fix: Dock tooltips dismiss on first tap; mobile tooltips require hold to appear.

v1.5.12

UI: Research panel upgrades now sort higher-tier upgrades before lower-tier ones.

v1.5.11

Fix: Ritual cards no longer accidentally purchase when tapping to flip back to art. Purchases now only trigger from the crystal cost badge.

v1.5.10

Balance: Tribute gold now scales more aggressively with higher tiles — T10: 1→1 gold/s, T15: 1.5→3.4 gold/s, T20: 2→8 gold/s.

v1.5.9

Fix: Offline earnings no longer show inflated progress after brief tab switches.
Fix: Grid no longer gets cut off on foldable devices and certain screen orientations.
Fix: Keyboard support — Enter / Space now triggers upgrade purchases in the Research panel.

v1.5.8

Feature: Spawn Dock — scout, villager, stockpile, and library tiles sit in a persistent dock at the bottom. Drag them onto the grid to place at a specific cell, or tap to quick-place.
Feature: Account deletion — delete your account and all cloud data from Settings → Account (two-step confirmation).
Feature: Fancy Effects toggle — disable card tilt, shimmer, and glare from Settings to save battery on older devices.
UI: Tablets now use the mobile layout for a better portrait experience.
UI: Spells consolidated into the Spawn Dock (removed from action panel and resource panel).

v1.5.7

UI: Empire Panel redesigned — upgrade cards connected by a vertical timeline with tilt and glow effects on hover/device tilt.
UI: Tooltips restyled with frosted glass to match the mana overlay.
UI: Mobile mana bar — tap the lightning bolt to see mana capacity and per-second breakdown.
UI: Artifacts section in Research panel condenses into an overlay bar on scroll.
Fix: Tooltips auto-dismiss on scroll, tab switch, and outside tap — no more stuck tooltips on mobile.
Fix: Long-press tooltip suppressed while a spell is active.
Fix: Tooltips clamped to screen edges on narrow devices.

v1.5.6

Feature: Rituals now apply instantly — assigning or unassigning crystals takes effect immediately without needing to ascend first.
UI: Ritual carousel dot indicators replaced with mini tarot-card thumbnails showing each ritual's art and Roman numeral. Maxed rituals glow river-blue.
UI: Crystal cost badges on ritual cards enlarged and color-matched to each ritual's theme.
UI: Ascension modal height capped on desktop for a tighter layout.
Fix: Cloud sync reconnects no longer risk overwriting newer local progress with stale server data.
Fix: Space Ritual grid expansion now persists correctly when reopening the Ascension modal.
Security: Hardened account authentication, CORS restrictions, and WebSocket auth.

v1.5.5

Feature: Tarot-style Ritual Cards — each ritual is a flip-able card with unique generated art on the back and detailed stats on the front. Swipeable carousel in the Ascension modal.
Feature: Ascension confirmation — two-step confirm flow with a summary of what gets reset and what you gain; warns about unspent crystals before ascending.
Feature: Settlement Mastery (T5 Upgrade) — spawn higher-tier villagers (houses, villages, castles) based on upgrade level.
Feature: Coalesce Knowledge (T5 Upgrade) — grants knowledge from merging tiles when unlocked.
Feature: Adaptive Merge Throughput — auto-merge scales up when the grid is nearly full, processing multiple merges per tick to keep pace with scouting.
Feature: TouchButton component — eliminates ~300ms click delay on iOS for all interactive elements.
Feature: Session progress analytics — tracks game stage and onboarding milestones.
UI: Ritual cards show level, cost, current & next effect, and an assign button with per-ritual color theming.
UI: Ascension tab on mobile opens directly to confirmation screen (skips ritual assignment view).
UI: Mobile header hides on Ascension and Empire tabs for full-screen feel.
UI: Mobile nav bar height and safe area insets fixed for iPhones.
UI: Tile drag no longer increases tile size during drag operations.
Fix: Sync rollback prevention — reconnect `full_state` messages now include a staleness check (15s buffer) to prevent stale reconnects from overwriting newer local progress.
Fix: `pendingCloudSaveRef` mirror added for synchronous reads in visibility handlers, preventing race conditions on tab switch.
Fix: Accelerating Timepiece artifact multiplier now displays correctly in Empire culture breakdown (`runStartTime` preserved across saves).
Fix: Bonus timer no longer grows excessively on offline page refresh.
Fix: Native iOS/Android API calls now resolve to production backend (`mergeciv.io`) instead of relative paths.
Fix: Privacy page scrolling restored.
Balance: Detect Magic base cost increased from 100 → 300 Research.
Balance: Marginal Reserves base cost increased from 25k → 100k Research (costPerLevel 100k).
Technical: Visual test baselines regenerated across 9 mobile devices + desktop.

v1.5.4

Balance: Offline speed boost reworked — now uses a decaying "effective work" system (`1 + 9 × E / 14400`) instead of a flat 4× multiplier. Higher boosts drain faster, creating a natural decay curve. Boost earned 1:1 with offline seconds, capped at 14,400 effective seconds (10× max).
Balance: Build Citadel mana cost rebalanced — escalates from 10k → 100k across 10 levels (was flat 100k per level).
UI: Speed boost indicator now shows dynamic multiplier (e.g. "7.3×") instead of fixed "(4×)".
UI: Artifacts section condensed counter now shows "X/X" text instead of compact icon strip when scrolled.
Fix: Offline claim modal boost grant updated to match new effective work system.
Fix: Cloud sync stale-save buffer widened from 5 s → 15 s to prevent self-overwriting during debounce lag.
Fix: Brief background tabs (< 10 s) skip REST cloud-save download to avoid unnecessary fetches.

v1.5.3

UI: Magic Panel redesigned — collapsible hero card that condenses on scroll; shows available/total crystals, mana cap, and crystal charge inline.
UI: Ritual assignment icons added to the Magic Panel (per-ritual unique icons).
UI: Artifacts section in Research panel now sticks to top and condenses into a compact icon strip on scroll.
UI: Mobile header shows a dedicated mana bar when on the Ascension tab (replaces resource bars).
UI: Mobile mana bar moved from bottom action panel to above the grid for persistent visibility.
UI: Large numbers in Offline Claim modal, mobile Hire/Build buttons, and share card now use compact formatting (`formatCost`).
Fix: Autosave race condition — `stateRef` now updates during render instead of via `useEffect`, preventing stale saves on tab switch.
Fix: Visibility-change save deferred by 50 ms to let React flush batched state updates before persisting.

v1.5.2

UI: Removed Import Save and Restore Backup buttons from Settings (cloud sync handles save portability).

v1.5.1

UI: Settings redesigned — full-screen on mobile, modal on desktop (consistent with Empire panel).
UI: Notification toasts restyled — narrower cards with artifact images and rarity-matched accent colors.
UI: "Work/Study" button renamed to "Work/Rest".
UI: Cloud Save description updated to emphasize seamless cross-device handoff.
Fix: Mana bar now visible on mobile as soon as the Apprentice is unlocked.
Fix: Grid no longer overflows on small screens (constrained to viewport height).
Fix: Tile tooltips auto-dismiss when a tile changes type/tier (fixes stuck tooltips after auto-merge).
Fix: Manual save now immediately syncs to cloud (bypasses 30 s debounce) so the "Synced" indicator updates instantly.
Fix: "Build Citadel" upgrade correctly resets on Imbue (moved to T4 internally; retains T5 styling).
Balance: Stacked Stockpiles cost scale increased from 2.0× → 2.3× per level.

v1.5.0

Feature: Google & Apple Sign-In — link your account across devices.
Feature: Real-time cloud sync — your save stays up to date automatically.
Feature: Cross-device handoff — seamlessly switch between devices without losing progress.
Feature: Session locking — prevents data loss when multiple devices are active.
Feature: Stats tracking — time at current Citadel Tier now tracked and displayed in Settings.
Fix: Save data is always fresh when resuming (tab focus, app resume, device switch).
Balance: Detect Magic (L1) cost reduced from 1,000 → 100 Research.
Balance: Library unlock cost reduced from 10,000 → 1,000 Research.
Balance: Fiction cost reduced from 100k → 10k Research; now requires Library instead of Tales of a Boundless Book.
UI: Merged Account + Data settings tabs into single "Account & Data" tab.
UI: "Tapestry of Eras" renamed to "Accelerating Timepiece"; now shows current bonus multiplier.
UI: Updated Empire panel visuals.
UI: Mobile UI improvements.
Privacy: Updated privacy policy for cloud sync and account linking.

v1.4.7

Feature: Added "Workshop Assembly Lines" T5 Upgrade (caps stockpile spawn weight; excess → bonus tiers).
Feature: Added "Marginal Reserves" T5 Upgrade (increases Gold Cap by 15%/level, up to 2.5x).
Fix: Artifact buy now checks `empire.commonUpgrades` for Dept. of Magical Appraisals.
Fix: Offline earnings now load from saves using `timestamp` (autosave format).
UI: Scout tooltip shows Assembly Lines tier bonus info when upgrade is active.
UI: Workshop tile tooltip updated to show weight contribution and assembly line status.

v1.4.6

Fix: Offline earnings now correctly awards multiple crystals for long sessions.
Fix: Crystal charge, pending crystals, and magic crystals properly reset on Citadel Imbue.
Fix: Imbue now blocks auto-saves during reset to prevent stale state persistence.
Fix: Apprentice auto-merge no longer overrides manager pause during MANA Test.
Fix: "Buy Artifact" button now strictly requires Department of Magical Appraisals.
Fix: Culture tooltip no longer shows stale breakdown when culture rate drops to 0.
Balance: Capacitative Efficiency changed from additive (+1%/lvl) to exponential (1.01^lvl).
Balance: Ritual of Capacity cost reduced (50/250/1250 → 40/200/1000 crystals).
UI: Tooltip now auto-flips when near viewport edges (prevents off-screen tooltips).
UI: Offline claim modal now shows partial crystal progress and multi-crystal earnings.

v1.4.5

Fix: Artifact tiers no longer bypass Detect Magic gating after Citadel Imbue.
Fix: "Build Citadel" upgrade now correctly resets on Imbue (must rebuild).
Fix: Mana cap now correctly includes artifact bonuses after loading a save.
Fix: Glistening Gem appraise gate applied consistently.

v1.4.4

Fix: Stockpile cost no longer shows NaN after ascending with Wooden Box artifact.
Balance: Removed Quality Assurance upgrade.
Technical: Added `stackedStockpiles` to initial empire state for safety.

v1.4.3

Fix: Citadel Research generation now correctly uses exponential formula (2^(L-1)).
Fix: Glistening Gem artifact now unlocks correctly with 'Appraise Glistening Gem' upgrade.
Fix: Citadel Persistence issue resolved (Libraries now save/load correctly even if upgrade locked).
Fix: 'Enter Citadel' button visibility restored for players with Knowledge or Dev environment.
Fix: Citadel Access now persists after Imbuing (Build Citadel upgrade is not lost).
Fix: Interest Accumulator no longer calculates interest based on generated gold, but total gold (Test Fix / Logic Verification).
Feature: Added 'Quality Assurance' T5 Upgrade (Increases Stockpile Capacity Exponent).
Technical: Improved test coverage for Citadel Generation and Upgrade Visibility.

v1.4.2

Feature: Citadel now increases Knowledge Cap by 10k per tier.
Balance: "Mana Syphon" moved to Tier 4 and persists through Ascension.
UI: T5 Upgrades only visible when Citadel Tier > 0.
Fix: Citadel no longer generates knowledge at Tier 0.
Technical: Added unit tests for Citadel mechanics and persistence.

v1.4.1

Feature: Added "Tales of a Boundless Book" upgrade (T5) and "Boundless Book" artifact.
Balance: "Fiction" upgrade cost reduced to 100k Knowledge.
Balance: "Appraise Glistening Gem" cost reduced to 200k Knowledge.
Fix: Adjusted "Detect Magic" logic to correctly gate artifact visibility and effects.
Technical: Improved test coverage and reliability for late-game upgrades.

v1.4.0

Feature: Added Citadel.
Feature: Grid view selection now persists across sessions.
Balance: Stacked Stockpiles rebalanced (wood cost 2.0x, mana cost for upgrade).
Balance: Infused Jerky scaling updated (1.2x per level).
Fix: Logic fixes for persistence and upgrades.

v1.3.8

Hotfix: Force deployment update to resolve asset caching issues.
Change: Higher tier stockpiles cost the mana that would take to merge them.
Balance: Gold generation from Past Societies now scales with Max Tile Tier (0.1/tier) instead of Total Grid Value.
QoL: "Magical Upheaval" spell now persists after casting for easier multi-use.
Fix: "Build Citadel" upgrade now persists across resets.

v1.3.7

Upgrade: "Capacitative Efficiency" (T4 Magic) added.
Artifact: "Infused Jerky" reworked -> "Spicy Jerky" (Infusion Multiplier).
Fix: Offline duration threshold reduced to 10s.

v1.3.6

Upgrade: "Conservation of Magic" moved to Tier 4.
Fix: Various bug fixes and test stabilization.