New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Great_Refactor#Beta_3.805_Bolstering_Spire
This one has a metric ton of art, a lot of which is focused on the spire, in both the base game and DLC1. Some of the rest is focused on the neinzul in DLC1 and DLC3. In general just making things look better, and adding new art for some of the new units that are coming to DLC1 as it expands shortly.
The Fallen Spire and Spire Infused Empires both work better than ever, and also are more clear, thanks to Badger. In particular, the bolstering mechanics are a lot more clear, and you get your third fleet when you are supposed to, rather than super late. Also more journal entries and other general help text.
On the bugfix front, there’s more related to MP, and a few related to SP, again largely thanks to Badger.
There’s also a shift with golems knocking smaller units out of the way, including your own units. Let me know how that feels; if it seems off, then I’ll disable that except for giant things like the devourer golem.
There are several new spire factions coming to DLC1 in the near future, and those are drawing closer to creation thanks to StarKelp: Chromatic Spire, Gray Spire (both of which are dyson spheres), and then the Spire Shattering faction which sees… them at war including with the zenith dyson sphere, and also some dark spire involvement in a new and exciting way from the base game. I’m also going to be adding a Chromatic Spire Horror small faction in DLC1, because I had a series of cool ideas and some art that was cool that I made by accident while trying to make something else, and so it seemed like a good fit. It is a small faction, but should be neat.
In general there are now a lot more spire factions in this game: rather than just “regular” and “imperial” (which looked the same) and dark spire, we now have regular spire, imperial spire (which are visually distinct now), gray spire, dark spire, and chromatic spire. The chromatic are new in AI War 2 (all of the others had at least some presence in the original AI War), and they’re by far the meanest and to some extent scariest out of them. They’ve been really fun to work on visually.
More to come soon.
Enjoy!