Warzone has just been updated to version 5.22.0! This update contains a bunch of improvements to the game and website. This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is live now on the website and the standalone client. The Android/iOS app should receive this update within a week or two.

Name Tags

Warzone has always supported having multiple players with the same username. However, up until now, there was no way to differentiate players with identical names. Now, players are given a tag after their name, such as Fizzer#1 and Fizzer#2. Every account, when combined with its tag, is now uniquely named.

This helps fix an issue that could occur when searching for players that have a common name. For example, if a player signs up with the name Alex and tells their friend to invite them to a game, it would previously be very challenging for their friend to find the correct Alex amongst the thousands of accounts named that.

The initial tag ordering was given out based on account signup date, with priority given to active accounts over inactive accounts (any account that has been used in the last 30 days was considered active).

400 player games

Mega games can now support 400 players, up from the previous limit of 300!

This is the last time the limit will be raised for the foreseeable future. I consider 400 the ideal size limit for mega games.

Chat Dialog

In a Warzone Classic game with lots of chat, clicking the “Load Older Messages” button will now pop up all of the chat in a new dialog instead of getting inserted into the chat area at the bottom of the screen.

This should be a big benefit to players who play in games with lots of chat. Not only is it easier to read, but it’s also separated into pages which makes it much more reliable. Previously, if a game had too much chat, trying to load it all at once could cause devices to run out of memory and crash. By giving it a dedicated dialog, it should work reliably now.

Mute Chat

In the Game Settings dialog of multi-player Warzone Classic games, there’s a new checkbox that allows you to mute the chat notifications from that game. If checked, the game will no longer appear in your My Games list due to having unread chat.

This is most useful if you joined a big game that gets lots of chat, such as a mega game, and you’ve been eliminated or surrendered from this game. Previously, this game would still appear in your My Games list every time someone chatted. Now, you can check the Mute Chat checkbox and it will stay gone for good.

In team games, you also have the option of muting public chat but keeping team chat un-muted, in case you still want to talk to your team.

Deployment Slider Auto Advance

Prior to this update, Warzone Classic games automatically advance players from the deploying phase to the attacking phase when the last army is deployed to a territory by tapping the territory. Now, it also automatically advances when you deploy via the deployment slider, too. This is a quality-of-live improvement which will help save a click, and also helps smooth over a common newbie complaint where they can’t figure out how to attack after changing their deployment method.

In order to facilitate this, it also means that now the deployment slider doesn’t automatically close when advancing to the attack phase anymore. If you decide to un-deploy armies using the slider, it will automatically revert you back to the deploy phase.

Highlight armies to use in no-luck games

When attacking a neutral in a game without randomness, the number of armies you need to attack with to capture the territory is now highlighted in the attack/transfer dialog. This helps newbies figure out what the appropriate number to attack with.

This doesn’t happen in games with luck, since there’s no one correct answer as it depends on the probabilities shown when you click Analyze. It also does not happen when attacking an enemy since the enemy could deploy armies, so there’s no way to be sure what the correct attack number is.

Other Changes

– All: When searching for players by name, you can now search for players with names with fewer than 3 characters.
– All: When watching forum threads, if you have an unread in-app notification telling you about an unread forum post, a further notification will not be created for the same thread until you read or delete the existing one.
– All: Re-ordered some achievements.
– Classic: When rating a map from a single player level, a very visible alert is now shown to ensure players know they’re rating the map and not the level.
– Classic: If you have more than 50 templates, the “Load template” page now separates them into pages to increase performance.
– Classic: In large games, the clock hover dialog now pops up as a scrollable region so it can display all players.
– Classic: The Prod 2.0 AI now takes care to never blockade a territory its commander could be on.
– Classic: Fixed a bug with modded games that could cause cards to be processed multiple times, or a card that was discarded to be played. The code now checks that you have the card before allowing a play-card order to process.
– Classic: Fixed a bug that allowed players to forward a tournament invite to someone who had block listed them.
– Classic: Fixed a bug with “finish vs AI” that made cities and other structures not be preserved.
– Classic: Fixed a bug that could, in rare conditions, make the AI refuse to play in a commerce or local deployment game with mods.
– Idle: The game now detects when you’re moving idle from one device to another and prompts you to confirm you’ve closed it in other places first, to help avoid data loss.
– Idle: Fixed a bug with auto-market that made it not respect your sell price upgrades.
– Idle: Fixed a bug that made auto-buy-market not pop up a message when it auto buys.
– Idle: Fixed a bug that made it offer you the wrong level when using a skip level power if you have unlocked the Skip Levels advancement.
– Unity: 3d maps now have a new option “only for small maps”. When setting this option, big maps will load in 2d and smaller maps in 3d, since big maps can be slow in 3d.
– Unity: When viewing a large map in 3d, it now uses higher resolution backgrounds. (actually this time)
– Unity: Increased army number size when zoomed out slightly.
– Unity: Fixed army number size in 3d maps so it lines up with 2d maps.
– Unity: Fixed crash that can happen if viewing an extremely large bonus (50+ territories). This was fixed by only rendering the first 50 territory thumbnails instead of all of them.
– Mods: Added TerritoryModification.RemoveSpecialUnitsOpt to make it easier to remove special units.
– Mods: Added GameOrderCustom.OccursInPhaseOpt to allow mods to specify which area within a turn custom orders are allowed to occur.
– Mods: Any IncomeMods that refer to a bonus the player does not have any territories in will now be skipped, since it would be impossible to deploy otherwise.
– Website: Removed empty sort option from maps page.
– UJS: Included more information in error details of some types of mod failures.
– UJS: Fixed text going outside of the dialog on the autopilot settings dialog.
– iOS: Fixed push notification box sometimes unchecking on its own in iOS 16.