Warzone has just been updated to version 5.25.0! This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is live now on the website and standalone clients. The Android and iOS apps will receive this update in the coming week or two.

3d maps on by default

When using the Unity app (Android, iOS, or standalone client), 3d maps will now be on by default for small maps. 3d maps provide a better look and feel for the game.

Large maps (over 300 territories) will still default to 2d maps.

You can always override this behavior in the settings menu, to either be on for all maps or off for all maps.

As part of this change, the maps that are built-in to the iOS and Android apps also changed to be the 3d versions. Built-in maps exist in order to allow playing the game without an internet connection. The maps used by the early single-player levels of Classic or Idle are all built into the app so that they don’t need to be downloaded from the internet.

Quickmatch Template Unlock

Quickmatch now has a new setting that players can configure called “New templates are enabled by default”. This is on by default, but if you elect to turn it off, then anytime you unlock a new quickmatch template it will be disabled by default. You can always control what templates you’re willing to play by going to the Templates page and turning each one on or off (or even control some on for real-time games and others on for multi-day games). This setting just defines whether templates will be default to on or off when you unlock them for the first time. You can unlock new templates up the maximum of 40 by winning games, or new templates can be added into quickmatch based on the community’s voting which also causes them to unlock on your next win if you’ve already unlocked the template it replaced.

This setting is configured on the Quickmatch Templates page. You must have unlocked at least 10 templates in Quickmatch before this new checkbox will appear.

Unauthenticated Multi-Player Game Viewing

Multi-player games can now be viewed without being signed in, which is useful if you want to show off your finished game to a friend who doesn’t have a Warzone account.

This is a feature I’ve been wanting to add to the game since it started, 15 years ago!

A few other pages now also work while signed out, like the multi-player dashboard and the open games page.

Other Changes

– Classic: Ladder games now replenish 3 hours of banked boot time per day.
– Classic: Tweaked ladder rating parameters to make ratings climb slightly faster.
– Classic: Fixed arrows next to players on the ladder.
– Classic: Fixed the #1 ladder idle rewards (coins and custom colors were awarded, but other rewards sometimes weren’t)
– Classic: Fixed ladder/clan war reward conflicts so the best one is used instead of the most recent one.
– Classic: Fixed new chat messages not appearing when spectating a multi-player game.
– Classic: Fixed deleted accounts not being removed from ladders.
– Classic: Fixed typo on ladder page.
– Classic: Fixed custom special units with negative combat orders that absorb damage.
– Classic: Fixed a bug that would break a game if the host didn’t invite themselves initially, but then swapped themselves in along with AIs after all other players had accepted.
– Classic: Fixed allowing spying on neutral multiple times in the same turn.
– Classic: Fixed coin transactions so they explain more detail in where they came from, such as ladder/raffle/clan wars.
– Unity: Updated Unity version to 2021.3.27
– All: The clan war seasons page now shows the most recent season on top.
– Website: Fixed a bug with mods that could make a handler get invoked when not necessary.
– Idle: Fixed mortar loading time saying “1 hour” even if reduced due to a modifier.
– Idle: Fixed the scrollbar in the Recipe Stats dialog so it doesn’t overlap content.

Warzone has just been updated to version 5.24.1! This is a small update with fixes to several bugs and making other small improvements to the game. This blog post describes what’s changed.

This update is live now on the Warzone website at https://www.warzone.com as well as in the Standalone Client. The Android and iOS apps will receive this update within the next week or two.

Ladder Boot Times

I took a look at how the ladders have been performing since the recent ladder refresh in 5.24.0, where the boot times were adjusted to use banked time, among other changes. If I take all recent ladder games, group them by week, and plot the percentage of those games that ended by boot, I can see that the percentage of games that end by boot is down significantly in the last two weeks since the ladder refresh:

That’s a good thing!

Nevertheless, there have been calls from the community for higher boot times, so I will convert 12 hours of banked time into fixed time. This will go live for all ladder games created after the 5.24.1 update — it won’t affect games that were already created.

I know some players have been calling for the boot times to be returned to a full 3 days for every turn, but I just don’t think it’s fun to have to wait three full days between every turn of a game. I’ve heard this from players over the years too — it’s generated a lot of complaints whenever someone gets stuck in a game where their opponent is waiting a full three days between every turn. And I agree — it’s simply not fun, and I’m not willing to put out a game I wouldn’t recommend playing. Three days is fine on occasion, but it shouldn’t take that long for every single turn every single time. If you really need three days for every turn, you can always make your own Warzone games and set the boot time to whatever you want, but if you want to play the official Warzone ladders then do so when you can commit to taking your turn at least 5 times per week.

Other Changes

– Classic: Updated ladder rewards to encompass more players.
– Classic: Ladder pages now show the name of the template so you don’t have to click the button to see what it is.
– Classic: Seasonal ladder pages now show the start and end date.
– Classic: Fixed ladder removing players on auto-commit.
– Classic: Fixed ladder “…” row to only appear when there’s a legit jump in players.
– Classic: Fixed the boot percentage displayed on profile. It now properly takes into account games where a player was booted multiple times, or a game where they were booted into an AI, or a game where they were booted but their team won.
– Classic: Fixed randomized slots in community levels.
– Classic: Fixed single-player “try again” button on levels with randomized slots.
– Classic: Fixed the performance of the ladder page for very active players by showing a sample of their rating/rank history instead of all of it.
– Classic: Fixed deleted accounts not being removed from active games.
– Idle: Fixed a bug that could cause the daily door dialog to get stuck open if you can’t use the power that was granted.
– Idle: Fixed 100% hospital upgrade time reduction.
– Idle: Fixed “No session 2” error.
– Idle: Fixed the armies/money hover rapidly appearing and disappearing when holding a smaller device in landscape mode.
– Website: Fixed numpad “.” button.
– Website: Fixed map of the week text “1 votes” -> “1 vote”
– Website: Fixed excessive decimal places on graphs.
– Website: Removed note about moved links under the community tab.
– Mods: Special units with a negative combat order will now fight before armies on that territory.
– Mods: Added WL.TickCount() for measuring the passage of time accurately.
– Mods: Fixed a bug that made a generic error if GetTurn was called with an invalid turn number. Now it simply calls you back with nil.
– Mods: Fixed Game.Orders returning orders for the previous turn if called right after a turn advanced.
– API: Fixed Query Game API on custom scenario games.

Warzone has just been updated to version 5.24.0! This update has a major ladder refresh, improvements to custom scenarios, and more.

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.

Ladder Refresh

Warzone’s ladders are getting a major overhaul! Warzone’s ladders are competitive arenas where players compete for the top rank. Warzone has four ladders: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and a seasonal ladder that changes its template each 60 days.

The ladders are unlocked by leveling up or by purchasing the Mega Strategy Pack. Once unlocked, you can join them on the website by going to Multi Player -> Ladders, or through the app by clicking Ladders on the multi-player tab.

See the previous blog posts for details about what’s changed in the ladder refresh.

Slot Picking

When joining an open game that uses a custom scenario, you’ll now get an option to pick which slot you’d like to join instead of being given a random one. This makes for a much better experience for those joining diplomacy games.

Mega Games can now use Custom Scenarios

Mega Games are games that involve more than the usual 40 player limit and can go all the way up to 400 players. Prior to this update, mega games could not use custom scenarios, but starting today they can! However, the catch is they can only do so using the new Randomized Slots setting.

Randomized Slots is a feature that game creators can enable when creating games using a custom scenario. When enabled, the game will not show slots at all at game creation time or in the lobby, and instead will assign every player a random slot when the game starts. This feature is primarilly added for mega games, but it can be used in any custom scenario game.

Misc Added Features

– Classic: Added the ability to sort friends by how recently they’ve been online.
– Classic: Added the ability to view who is online when forwarding tournament invites.
– Classic: Added the ability to view who is online when searching for players by name.
– Classic: Added the ability to turn off the chat dialog in the app settings. Also increased the threshold for when the chat dialog will open.
– Classic: When hovering over the clock in the upper right corner, it now explains which timer is the turn timer and which is the banked timer.
– Unity: When inviting players to a tournament, added the ability to sort players by several different things instead of only offering sort by name.
– Website: Added “critical sounds” volume control to app settings menu so the volume of the turn advance sound can now be adjusted.
– All: When inviting players to your clan, a green circle now shows accounts that are online.

Other

– Website: Moved Ladders, Tournaments, and Clan Wars links from Community to Multi-Player.
– Website: Inviting players to a tournament now uses UJS so that it gets the new features added to this page.
– Website: Fixed P and M hotkeys for zooming (short for plus and minus)
– Website: Fixed size of the yellow highlight in the attack/transfer dialog so it doesn’t get super huge when few armies are attacking.
– Website: Fixed yellow “0” not being shown when attacking with a commander and 0 armies.
– All: Fully removed Facebook and Apple sign in options (all players were notified months ago). If you lost access to your account, use the “Forgot password” option with your e-mail address. If you never set up an email on your account, contact Warzone at https://www.warzone.com/Contact
– Unity: Added the ability to report players directly from the app instead of having to be redirected to the website.
– Unity: Fixed “map not in memory” error that could rarely come up when creating games.
– Classic: Fixed allowing nudging someone right after adding them to a game.
– Classic: Fixed a bug with quickmatch where templates could forget your checked state if they were voted out, then you updated a different template, then they were voted back in.
– Classic: Fixed mega games getting laggy when the clock is updating every second.
– Classic: Fixed tournament creation so it doesn’t give negative player counts anymore when dragging sliders too far to the right.
– Classic: Fixed green online circle so it’s visible on players with the green color.
– Classic: Fixed orders not saving after being set by a mod.
– Classic: Fixed a bug that allowed wunderwaffe to pass negative armies as an attack.
– Idle: Fixed “dismiss all” button so it doesn’t re-appear after balloons are closed.
– Idle: Fixed a bug when conquering the last territory of the map that could make bonus icons not disappear.
– Idle: Fixed a bug that made auto dig not correctly record its progress during a long absense.
– Idle: Fixed a bug that could cause errors when money/s is negative.
– Mods: Mods can now use the “#” operator to get the length of a Warzone-provided dictionary, like Map.Territories.
– Mods: Fixed UI.IsDestroyed() so it’s now aware of objects created by previous script invocations.
– Mods: Improved error message received if an invalid color string is provided.
– API: The GameIDFeed API now only returns games in the last 30 days for the 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 ladders.

Ask Fizzer Anything

Fizzer will be doing an ask-me-anything session on twitch where you can ask any questions you have! This will take place on Saturday, May 13th, at 11am PDT. See this link for the time in your timezone or a countdown. If you aren’t able to make it but still want your question answered, you can post your question in this forum thread and you can watch the replay after the event.

The previously mentioned ladder refresh now has a planned release date: Tuesday, May 9th! (Tomorrow as of the time of this writing). This will go live along with update 5.24.0, which also contains a bunch of other non-ladder goodies.

It’s important to stress that this is the planned date — if anything goes wrong during deployment it could be delayed. But this is the date I will attempt to launch the new ladder system.

Based on community feedback, the move order of the ladders will stay at cyclic and will not be changed to no-luck, and the announced boot times are increasing by 1 day banked time.

The 1v1 ladder will change its map to Modified Medium Earth Board map, which is functionally identical but just looks prettier.

Each of the ladders will also now have a unique color that can be unlocked by reaching rank #1 (same logic as the trophy award). Once unlocked, the color can be used forever. Past winners of ladders will not get the new unique color, only those who qualify after the refresh.

Season LII of the seasonal ladder will launch within a day or so of the ladder refresh. It will be the first season with the new rewards. The template will be Guiroma. (as picked by Beren as usual.)

Hope you’re excited as I am!

Warzone’s ladders will soon receive a refresh, marking the first time this has happened since they were introduced back in 2011!

Warzone has four ladders: The 1v1 ladder, 2v2 ladder, 3v3 ladder, and the seasonal ladders. They are designed to be competitive arenas where players can compete with each other at the highest level.

The ladder refresh is designed to keep the spirit of what the ladders have always been, while making them more accessible, more fun, and fixing some of their rough edges. This blog post gives an overview of what will be changing about the ladders in the next update.

New Rating System

The 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 ladders will change to use the TrueSkill rating system. Ratings in these ladders will now update immediately after the end of any ladder game instead of having to wait hours to see your new rating as you do today. The effect of each ladder game on your rating is shown in the end-game dialog for each game, as well as showing your new rank which will also update immediately.

This also means that games won’t “expire” anymore. Your rating will only change when you finish a game. Ratings will be a much more permanent thing — if you leave the ladder and come back later, your rating will be exactly where it was when you left, regardless of how long you were gone.

Ratings will now start at 100 instead of 0. As part of this refresh, the ratings and ranks of all players on these three ladders will be reset back to the starting point of 100. All players in these ladders were notified about this weeks ago, so this should hopefully not be a surprise to anyone who is affected by it. Everyone will still maintain their history, such as their best ranks and the graphs that show rating history.

Games will also be created more quickly so you won’t have to wait as long to get a game.

Rewards

Today, the ladders only give out points as rewards because that’s all that was available to give out back in 2011. With this new update, all of the ladders will give a variety of rewards, such as coins, idle powers, artifacts, etc. Everyone participating will get rewards, but the rewards will get bigger the better you perform. Over 30,000 coins will be given out every week to ladder players, so the highest ranked players will certainly be rewarded for their skill.

There are two ways to earn rewards: Holding a high rank and achieving a new league (see below.) The rank rewards are given out every Sunday to all players who have been in the ladder for the entire week prior. In other words, if you leave the ladder and re-join during the week, you won’t be eligible for that week’s reward. This incentivises players to stay in the ladder long-term, rather than doing “runs” as was the case in the old ladder.

The gold trophies that can be earned for being #1 will also only be earned if you stay in the ladder for entire week prior to the rewards being given out on Sunday.

Leagues

The 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 ladders will now have leagues, such as Bronze, Silver, Gold, and more. You can achieve a league by raising your rating to specific thresholds. When you enter a new league, you’ll be notified via the end-game window on that game, and you’ll also receive rewards the first time you enter each league. The rewards start weak for Bronze but get more significant as you rise up through the different leagues.

App integration

All of the ladder UI will now be available in the iOS and Android app, instead of only being available on the website as it is today. This means that you can join and leave the ladders via the app, as well as view leaderboards and ladder games and such.

Ladders are the last major feature that has never been integrated into the app, and having app/website parity has been one of Warzone’s long-standing goals. We’ve seen the list of website-only features shrink and shrink over the years, so it’s very satisfying to finally see the last major feature finally get checked off this list!

Team Ladders

The 2v2 and 3v3 ladders today require you to join as a team with your friends. In the new ladders, you will have the option to join individually, in which case you’ll be matched up with other players who also joined individually to play as a team.

In today’s ladder, only the team as a whole has a rating, but in the new ladder each player will have their own rating. This is made possible by TrueSkill which natively supports having a team game where players on each team have different ratings.

It will still be possible to join as a team with your friends, but unlike today’s ladder, your rating won’t start over at 0 every time you switch teammates. Instead your rating is your personal rating which won’t go away just because a teammate changed.

The ladders will try to only match individual teams versus other individual teams, and fixed teams with other fixed teams, but if it can’t be done it will be possible (but should be rare) for a fixed team to be matched with an individual team.

Booting

Today, ladders use a 3-day boot time. This made sense back in 2011, but today we have internet-connected phones and the game is much more accessible. Therefore, boot times for all ladders are being reduced. The 1v1 ladders will use a one-day boot with an additional day of banked time (for a total of 2 days). The team ladders will also use a one-day base boot, but give three days of banked time (for a total of 4 days, which is actually higher than now) to help with teammate coordination. Join ladders when you’re ready to play, not to stall.

In addition, if any player is booted from a ladder, they will be immediately removed from that ladder. This is especially important for team ladders, where a boot can hurt your team. Booting should be rare in ladders as they’re considered the highest level of play.

Seasonal Ladder

The seasonal ladder isn’t receiving as many changes as the other three, but there are a couple small things changing.

First, the seasonal ladder will go back to 60-day seasons like it used to be before it was increased to 75 days.

Second, there will no longer be big gaps in between seasons, as the next season will always be started about a day after the previous season ends.

Third, rewards are being updated, but will only be given out at the end of the season based on your final rank (no weekly rewards or leagues).

For some time, Beren Erchamion has been in charge of picking seasonal ladder templates via community vote. This will still be the case after the refresh, but now that the seasonal ladder is on a more strict schedule, if he fails to pick a template in time it will fall back to Fizzer’s pick.

Template Changes

The templates are staying mostly the same as today. The 3v3 map will switch to the Europe Remake map, which is functionally identical but just looks slightly prettier. The boot times are being reduced (as outlined above).

I am considering changing the ladders to use Pure Skill, since I don’t think that the highest level of play should involve the use of randomness. This would just mean changing the move order from Cyclic to No-luck Cyclic, to eliminate the starting coin flip of who gets first pick. I’m interested to hear community feedback on this change.

Notifications

Finally, the notifications that the ladders send are now much more useful, letting you know what rewards you’ve earned (or how to earn rewards if you didn’t qualify for any), congratulating the top players of the ladder, and announcing what templates will be next in the seasonal ladder.

Conclusion

The new ladders will go live when 5.24.0 is released, which should hopefully be in the next week or two. Hope to see you on the battlefield!

Warzone has just been updated to version 5.23.0! 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.

Tags for maps and mods

Warzone now supports tagging maps and mods. For example, a map could be tagged with #Europe, #Diplomacy, or #INSS. This helps when searching for maps or mods that you want to find since you can now filter them based on these tags, such as to see all Diplomacy maps at once. This replaces the old category system that maps had, since it allows for maps to be in multiple categories at the same time.

The tags for each item can be voted on by the community. When viewing a map or mod, you’ll find a small edit button next to the tags. When editing, you can select up to three tags that you feel best describe the item. Warzone will display the three most-often-voted tags next to that item for everyone to filter on.

Show who is Online

The most-requested item on the Warzone Uservoice Forum is now a reality! When creating multi-player games, a small green circle will be displayed next to players who are currently online in the game.

3d Maps for All

3d maps no longer require a membership and can therefore be used by anyone! You can enable or disable them for your iOS or Android device by visiting the settings and locating the 3d maps button. Most players will also receive a small message asking if they want to try 3d maps.

Swap Picks for all

The “Swap Picks” mod no longer requires a membership and can now be used by everyone for free! This is the first time that a mod has been opened to non-members. This is limited only to when creating a game via the Create Game button (multi-player or single player), and does not apply to other areas like Quickmatch. The Swap Picks mod was chosen for this honor, in part, since it has a very low server impact.

In addition, non-members can now fully access the Change Mods page when making games, which lets them view a full list of all member-only mods as well as view their source code.

Mod UI Improvements

The UI around creating, viewing, and updating mods has received a refresh. It should now all be much more intuitive and easier to understand.

In addition, mod developers can now view performance data related to their mods from the last 30 days, and even get a list of games that are using their mods.

Other Changes

– All: Clan wars now inserts the rating of each clan into the game descriptions.
– Unity: Tweaked army number sizes again to be more in-line with browser when zoomed in.
– Unity: Fixed chat dialog staying open when closing the lobby that opened it.
– Classic: When muting public or team chat for a game, the game no longer shows the chat message in your My Games page at all.
– Classic: When using the “Rematch” button on a game with random teams, the newly created game will now also have random teams.
– Classic: The attack/transfer dialog now takes commanders into account when determining what number to highlight.
– Classic: When creating a new game from an existing game’s settings, you can now directly save those settings as a template without having to make a change first.
– Classic: The clock dialog is now draggable.
– Classic: When making tournaments, your list of templates is now paginated.
– Classic: Fixed the displayed expiration turn for spy cards to be one turn less than what was previously displayed, which is more accurate since cards expire at the beginning of the turn.
– Classic: Fixed a bug that could cause an error when clicking Finish vs AI on a game where a player had a diplomacy card played on them who had no territories by the end of the game.
– Classic: Fixed the yellow highlighted number on games with very low offensive kill ratios when attacking a neutral of 1.
– Classic: Fixed a bug that could cause an error when clicking “Change players” on a team template in single player.
– Classic: Fixed a bug that could allow attacking out of a gifted territory.
– Idle: The Level Stats dialog now shows your progress through the level as a percentage.
– Idle: The game now prompts you for confirmation before purchasing rare or epic artifacts.
– Idle: Fixed a bug that would cause errors if army camp discount got above 100%.
– Mods: Added API/GetModPerformance that will dump out performance data for mods you own.
– Mods: Cloning a custom special unit will now maintain that unit as assigned to the original mod.
– Mods: Fixed TerritoryModification so it can’t make negative armies.
– Mods: Fixed an error that could occur by a player without mods unlocked who opened a modded template that had a card piece with 0 weight, 0 minimums, and 0 initial pieces.

Unfortunately, Facebook has decided to disable the ability to sign into Warzone accounts using a Facebook account.

Did you sign into your Warzone account with Facebook and can no longer sign in? If so, you need to follow these instructions to get access to your account again:

1. Visit the “Forgot password” page
2. Enter the email address you had tied to your Warzone account (probably the primary one of your Facebook account) and submit it
3. Open your email account, and look for the email from Warzone. Click the link in this email. (Check your spam folder if you don’t see it)
4. Enter your email address again, and make up a password.

From now on, please use your email/password combo to access your account.

If you have an issue with this process please email me at fizzer@warzone.com and I’ll do my best to help.

Why did this happen?

Facebook sent me an email six days ago saying they couldn’t find the Privacy Policy on the warzone website. Since Warzone already has a privacy policy, I sent them a link to it. I guess they just didn’t find it or something? I didn’t think anything of it.

Well they replied with a really confusing mail, saying they needed a privacy policy in my app, which has to be accessible by all users of my website, and is commonly found in the footer of my website. Huh? I asked for clarification, are they talking about the iOS/Android/Kindle app? The website? Or the Facebook app? (Facebook has an “app” which is really just an entry that points to my website, but they call it a Facebook App)

They also mentioned “A kind reminder that the current deadline for you to comply with our request is 2022-12-21 01:00:00 PST, or your app will be restricted. If you require an extension, please make a request before the current deadline expires.”. I responded asking for clarification. I pointed out that if they are requesting changes to the iOS/Android/Kindle app, I need more than six days to do that, since app updates are subject to lengthy review times by Apple, Google, and Amazon. I went ahead and requested an extension as they said I should.

They replied with a slightly less confusing email, saying now they were talking about the iOS/Android app. But they, again, say “Privacy Policy needs to be publicly available and easily accessible for all users from your Website” and “Some common locations are the footer of your site” which doesn’t make any sense for an app. But OK, I guess I’ll ignore those, and assume they’re talking about the app.

The Warzone app does link to Warzone’s privacy policy on the Google Play Store Page and the iOS page, however there’s no link to the privacy policy from within the app itself as nobody has ever requested one before. OK fine, I tell Facebook that I’ll add a button for this in the next app update. However, it’s impossible to get an app update out in the (now) five days remaining that they’re requesting. So I (again) request an extension. This is doubly true on the week before Christmas, as app store review times are lengthened. In fact, Apple has a advisory on their website saying they “anticipate high volume and reviews may take longer to complete” and to “Plan to send time-sensitive submissions early.” I’ve seen review times of 5+ weeks in the past, which is entirely out of my control. Along with my second extension request, I inform Facebook about all of this.

Well, Facebook doesn’t seem to care about any of that, and I guess they denied my extension requests. They now have disabled the Warzone Facebook login just a few days before Christmas, so players can no longer sign in with their Facebook accounts.

What’s even more insane is that they even disabled Facebook sign in on the Warzone website, which had the privacy policy all along exactly where they were asking for it to be! I have no idea why they’d disable that.

What am I doing about it?

The whole experience has me frustrated, as I try my best to maintain a working product, but I’m not sure what I could have done differently to keep the app working in this case. I understand it’s really frustrating for players who can’t sign in to their account, especially if they’re close to getting booted in a game. I’m just as mad about this as you are.

Facebook did give me a button to request an appeal, so I clicked that and filled out the form. However they say it can take 48 hours for the appeal. If anyone out there has friends or family that work at Facebook/Meta, it might be nice to consider sending them this to see if they can get the appeal process expeditated.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten grief over having Facebook sign-in option. I’ve considered removing it in the past, but it’s a difficult thing to do since I know there are players out there who rely on it, and I don’t want to leave them stranded. However, given that now Facebook has disabled it completely, I guess it’s a good time to remove it. So I plan to completely remove the Facebook sign in option from the website and app. If you previously used this, be sure to migrate using the steps above.

I will update this post if there are any further developments.

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.

Warzone now supports a new way of developing mods! This is much easier and faster to use than the old way. I created a video showing off how it works, that you can watch here:

https://youtu.be/wTPE4NVg0O4

This new method allows mod makers to develop their mods directly against the Warzone website and alleviates the need to install the Standalone Client. To make this work, it uses the new Update Mod API introduced in the recent update.

If you’re a mod developer, give it a shot and let me know what you think!

Warzone has just been updated to version 5.21.0! This update contains a bunch of improvements to the mod framework, improvements to commanders, improvements to 3d maps, and more. This blog post describes what’s changed.

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

Commanders no longer require a membership

Commanders no longer require a membership to be included in games! Instead, they are now a normal feature that unlocks at level 38. If you are already over level 38, you’ll unlock it on your next level up, or if you’re over 53 you’ll get it right away.

Commanders now work with one-army-stands-guard

Prior to this update, commanders (and all special units) required that the one-army-stands-guard feature be disabled to be included in a game. Now, these features can be used together.

Note that the one-army-stands-guard rule can be violated when special units are present. For example, if a commander and 2 armies are on a territory that gets attacked, since armies die before the commander, the commander could be left with 0 armies on that territory. If the commander then leaves, there will be a territory with 0 armies, despite the one-army-stands-guard which normally prevents that. If you want to attack from a territory with 0 armies, you must deploy at least 2 there — one to satisfy the one army that stands guard, and additional armies to attack with.

Tank Mod

This update brings a new example mod to Warzone Classic games, the Tank Mod. When enabled, players can build a tank which is a special unit worth 10 armies. It behaves like a commander in that it cannot be partially damaged, which makes it exceptionally good at taking down neutral territories such as wastelands.

The main reason to make the tank mod is to show off the new modding features (detailed below). But as is custom, example mods are useful mods in their own right and fully work out-of-the-box.

Mods: Custom Special Units

Mods can now add their own special units to Warzone Classic games! Prior to this update, the only special units were commanders and the single-player bosses, but with this update, mods will enable an infinite number of new possibilities for special units, such as the tanks mod discussed above.

Mods can even specify their own image for their new special units. This is the first time the mods can actually insert images into the game, which will likely be used for additional mod features coming in future updates.

I look forward to seeing what the mod community can come up with!

Other Changes

– Classic: If a game ends while you’re actively watching the latest turn play out, it will now continue letting you watch the rest of the turn instead of immediately switching to the end-game state.
– Classic: Updated the look of the commerce games to make the button more noticeable and the menu look nicer.
– Classic: Fixed viewing active cards in a “Finish versus AI” game with active sanction cards.
– Classic: Fixed the custom scenario button being sometimes clickable when custom scenario radio button wasn’t checked.
– All: Clan war now randomizes the order of players in a single clan for matchmaking.
– Unity: When viewing a large map in 3d, it now uses higher resolution backgrounds. This was accomplished by tiling textures.
– Unity: Members now get a balloon asking them if they want to try 3d mode. It can still be enabled or disabled in the settings menu at any time.
– Mods: Added Client_PresentCommercePurchaseUI hook to allow adding to commerce-purchase dialog.
– Mods: Added ClientGame.HighlightTerritories to highlight a territory or multiple territories on the map.
– Mods: Added ClientGame.CreateLocatorCircle which creates a circle on the screen to alert the player to a location on the map.
– Mods: Added UI.IsDestroyed which returns true for any UI object that’s been destroyed or never existed.
– Mods: Added UpdateMod API that allows development mods to be updated remotely. More details about this will be revealed in a future blog post.
– Mods: Added mod development UI to website, at https://www.warzone.com/Mods/Develop
– Mods: InterceptNextTerritoryClick and InterceptNextBonusLinkClick can now optionally return the special value WL.CancelClickIntercept. This will cancel the intercept and let the click go through normally.
– Mods: GameOrderEvent now has a property called JumpToActionSpotOpt that lets mods set where the camera will focus when the order is selected in the orders panel.
– Mods: GameOrderEvents now show which mod created them when double-clicking on the order in the orders panel.
– Mods: GameOrderEventResult now exposes a property called CardInstancesCreated which expose the information about cards created by AddCardPiecesOpt.
– Mods: Fixed a bug that could leave dead entries in tables after calling table.remove().
– Mods: Fixed a bug that could cause an error when adding a boss to a game.
– Mods: Fixed the error message that’s received if a mod incorrectly passes a single item to a parameter that needs a table.
– Mods: Fixed card orders not validating that the correct CardID was passed.