Warzone has just been updated to version 5.10.0! This update adds a new feature called Clan Wars, as well as fixing up a few bugs and other smaller improvements. This blog post describes what’s changed.

The website and standalone clients have been updated to this version now. The Android and iOS apps will be updated within the next week or so.

Clan Wars

Clan Wars gives you a way to compete for your clan’s glory, as well as for prizes such as free coins and idle rewards. The competitions will take place in Warzone Classic games played in real-time on a variety of templates.

Here’s how it works:

Every day is divided up into several timeslots. For example, there might be a timeslot every 4 hours (midnight, 4am, 8am, noon, 4pm, 8pm). Each player can choose the timeslot that works best for them. Simply show up at whichever timeslot you wish and you will be given a choice of what template you want to play.

After selecting your template, you’ll get matched in a real-time game against an opposing clan. The winner gets a Clan War Win (CWW) assigned to their clan. If your clan gets enough CWWs, your clan will be rewarded with a territory on the Clan War Map.

You can only play one Clan War game per day, so choose the timeslot that works best for your schedule. The number of timeslots per day will start off small, but as more people participate in Clan Wars we can increase the frequency of timeslots to increase convenience.

The number of templates options per timeslot is dynamic based on historic demand for that timeslot. If lots of people are playing in a timeslot, more template options will be available, but if very few are then it might only have a single option.

Clan War Map

Instead of a leaderboard, Clan War season progress is visualized by having a giant map. Clans who win games are rewarded by getting a territory on the Clan War Map in their color. Subsequent territories a clan earns will be placed nearest to their first one, so clans will expand out in a circle over time.

The winner of the season is simply the clan with the most territories on the map.

While the exact territories and bonuses don’t have any strategic meaning, it’s advantageous to have a map instead of a simple list because it helps visualize how well clans are doing compared to others by seeing how big their circle is. It also makes it easier to visualize how much time is left in the season simply by how filled the map is.

Since clans are expanding outwards as circles, if they bump into another clan it will create visually interesting patterns, which will help visualize how the Clan War went for each clan. If a clan has a lot of success early, they might have a big uninterrupted circle, whereas if a clan had success late in the Clan War, their territories might be more scattered as they filled in gaps around the map.

Another advantage is that each season can be played on a different Warzone map. Sometimes you’re conquering the world, sometimes Europe, etc. In addition to your clan starting from a different part of the map each time, this helps make each season feel unique.

Rewards

In designing Clan Wars, a lot of effort was put into making sure that it’s fun for everyone who participates. In a traditional ladder, I feel it’s a lot of fun for the top 10%, who are competing for a high rank, but pretty bland for the majority. For players in the bottom half, their rank more has to do with how many participants there are instead of their actions.

To accomplish this, Clan War rewards are divided into two categories:

• Rewards for achieving a high rank
• Rewards for conquering a certain number of territories

While only the best strategic minds will qualify for the high-rank rewards, the number-of-territory rewards should be achievable by clans of all skill levels. For example:

Rank rewards:

• 1st place: 10,000 coins, an Epic Artifact, 1 of every Power
• 2nd place: 2,000 coins, a Rare Artifact, Multi-Level Power
• 3rd-5th place: Rare Artfiact, Inspire Mercenaries Power
• 6th-10th place: 2x Uncommon Artifacts, 2x Time Warp Powers
• 10th-20th place: Uncommon Artifact, Free Cache Power

Territory rewards: (edit: effects last for two weeks)

• 1+ territories: Alloys sell for 10% more
• 2+ territories: Mercenaries are 10% cheaper
• 3+ territories: Items sell for 10% more
• 4+ territories: Army camps give 20% more armies in levels
• 6+ territories: 30% faster artifact cooldown
• 10+ territories: Challenge level army camps give 40% more armies
• 15+ territories: 10% more armies from caches
• 20+ territories: 20% faster dig times
• 25+ territories: 15% more AP from levels
• 30+ territories: Battle attacks against you reduced by 20%

In addition to these rewards, all players who participate in a Clan War season will get a free Idle cache at the end of the season. The size of the cache goes up based on the number of territories your clan conquers.

These rewards will likely be tweaked between seasons to accomodate clan performance. Also, the first season(s) may have lowered rewards since participation in Clan Wars will grow over time.

What about Clan League?

Clan League is a player-run clan competition that has been going for many years. Clan League does a fantastic job, and in fact, part of the reason it took so long for Warzone to get a clan competition is because Clan League set the bar so high.

Clan Wars is designed to complement Clan League. In fact, I believe Clan Wars will only help Clan League become even more popular, as Clan Wars could be a stepping stone for it. Here’s why they complement each other so well, and don’t compete:

• Clan League is completely multi-day games, whereas Clan Wars uses only real-time games.
• Clan League has narrow sign-up windows which means you need to plan ahead, often by months, to participate. Clan Wars can be participated in the same day you discover it.
• Clan League uses advanced strategic templates, whereas Clan Wars uses Warzone’s most popular templates.
• Clan League requires coordinating with a clan manager and lots of prep work. Clan Wars is can be played by anyone in a clan with just a couple clicks.

When will it start?

The first season will be kicked off in a week or so — the exact date will be announced in a new blog post. We need to wait for 5.10 to be available on all app stores so that app users can participate, hence the delay.

We may, however, play a small test season before that with website users only. But it won’t have any rewards or count for anything.

Closing Remarks

Only 40 players from each clan can participate in a single Clan War season. If you’re in a clan with tons of players, you’ll have to either be one of the first 40 to join each season or join a smaller clan if you want to participate.

Clan Wars are accessible on the website under Community, and in the mobile app under the top right button. The Clan Wars button will glow when a timeslot is active and you’re eligible to join it. Players are eligible to join if they’re in a clan, haven’t already played a Clan War game today, and you clan hasn’t already reached the 40 player limit.

It’s important to note that Clans are a feature that spans across both games (Classic & Idle). Therefore, Clan Wars is similarly game-agnostic. One of the goals of Clan Wars is to help draw Idle players into Classic more. In the future, I hope to add competitions that involve idle in some way.

I hope that Clan Wars helps fill the niche of real-time competitive play that has been lacking since the real-time ladder was retired.

See you on the battlefield!

Other changes in this update

– Idle: Added new battle targeting mode: Fewest unconquered armies.
– Idle: The names of army camps and markets are now shown in the Inspection panel at the bottom.
– Idle: The powers tab now shows the quantity of that power that you have next to the button instead of on it.
– Idle: Fixed ascention counting past level wins.
– Idle: Fixed a bug that could cause an error when claiming an artifact when the artifacts dialog was open.
– Idle: Fixed army camps and mines sort being incorrect when they were first conquered.
– Idle: Fixed the victory dialog going off the bottom of the screen.
– All: Updated rules to be clear that using multiple accounts in clan wars is forbidden.
– All: When inviting players to your clan, your friends list is now paginated.
– Classic: Increased maximum coin entry fee for games from 2000 to 20000
– Classic: Surrender notification is no longer sent for instant surrender games.
– Classic: Fixed coin games without an entry fee not showing up as coin games on the Open Games page.
– Classic: Fixed text when making rematch of coin game.
– Classic: Fixed games saying “view final turn” when they really only had unread chat.
– Classic: Fixed friends being removed a game on the invite screen when you switch pages of your friends list.
– Classic: Fixed error that occurred if winning team of a coin game included an AI.
– Classic: Fixed error when clicking rematch on a quickmatch 1-coin entry fee game.
– Unity: Fixed the top right menu so that it scrolls if you don’t have room to fit the entire thing.
– Website: Fixed ad free play duration after coin purchase.