### New Features - **Tutorial system** — 16-step guided first-time match with spotlight overlays, gated input, and saved progress - **Dynamic weather** — 8 weather types across 5 biomes with layered particles, wind transitions, and upgraded rain, wind, sandstorm, and thunder audio - **Post-match replay** — 30s minimap replay with nuke markers, hero highlights, portraits, and scrollable scoreboard - **War Hero awards** — Reaper, Iron Wall, Battle Sage, and Life Weaver with animated presentation - **Unit info panel** — Sprite art, stat breakdowns, and buff/effect display - **Ability upgrade trees** — Unique 4-tier race ability paths for all factions - **Quick chat radial menu** — New team callouts including Save Us, Sending Now, and Random - **Tri-resource economies** — Tenders and Horde now support deeper gold/wood/meat management - **Per-node upgrade costs** — Every race now has explicit resource costs on each upgrade node - **Expanded Horde auras** — New attack speed, healing, and dodge support auras - **Race combat music** — Distinct thematic music during matches - **AI building sprite overhaul** — New race-specific building art across all factions ### UI & Rendering - **Stat icon upgrade** — Clean SVG icons now replace old emoji-style stat markers across tooltips, upgrades, buffs, and floating combat text - **Building popup stat bars** — HP, damage, DPS, speed, range, and spawn-rate previews now show upgrade impact before purchase - **Unit Gallery overhaul** — Better layout, Elo display, clearer stat rows, and improved upgrade detail views - **Title screen updates** — Rotating duel subtitles, wider ribbon, and cleaner presentation - **Mobile improvements** — Two-tap upgrade confirmation, reduced accidental hover/tooltips, better truncation, and cleaner touch behavior - **Post-match polish** — Better hero cards, minimap clarity, and summary formatting - **Audio/UI feedback polish** — Better open, close, tab, back, toast-dismiss, and slider feedback sounds - **Rendering cleanup** — Fixed panel/tile seams, improved isometric building sizing, added flipX support, and removed outdated Tenders hut tinting - **Race flavor pass** — Upgrade-aware building names and race-specific tray icons ### Balance - **Stone renamed to Meat** across the game - **Faction/unit tuning** — Buffs to Horde Brute, Bowcleaver, Demon Overlord, Tenders Treant, and Tinker - **Geists rebalanced** — Lifesteal reduced, soul costs increased, and skeleton survivability lowered - **Economy tuning** — Crown, Oozlings, and Wild resource costs reduced - **Combat tuning** — Burn/poison now suppress regen; tower sell refund now scales by remaining HP - **Progression updates** — Spectator achievement requirement increased; Goblin boar units renamed ### Simulation & AI - **Centralized `isAbilityBuilding()` helper** for cleaner ability-building logic - **Support/tank tracking** — Added `totalBuffsApplied` and `damageTaken` stats - **Tenders seed rework** — More deterministic growth timing with shared renderer/sim constants - **Performance gains** — Spatial grid optimization and fog-of-war throttling - **4th-tier race abilities** added for all 9 races - **Retroactive research buffs** now apply to existing units - **Bot AI upgrades** — Better difficulty scaling, stronger profile steering, better harvester behavior, smarter worker allocation, earlier hut logic, and improved Bowcleaver valuation ### Multiplayer & Performance - **Desync protection** — Better remote hash comparison and disconnect buffering - **Deferred turn resolution** — Safer Firebase turn processing - **Firebase rules tightened** — Improved slot-specific write controls - **Frame-time improvements** — Cached Y-sort pixel coords, fewer iso projection calls, viewport-culling for ambient particles, and removed heavy shadow ellipses

Art & Rendering - Race-specific building sprites — 4 purchased asset packs (Human, Orc, Elf, NightElf; 205 PNGs) mapped to all 9 races with upgrade-path inheritance fallback chain - Nhance Spell Icons — 92 painted icons replace emoji in the research popup, with bordered frames and ownership coloring - Oozlings animated mound — spawn wiggle + idle wobble animation with elliptical glow effect - "Now Playing" display — music track name on title screen, auto-fades after 10s - 15 combat music tracks renamed with thematic names for Now Playing display Simulation - 4th-tier race abilities for all 9 races: - Crown: Timber Surplus (+40% wood returns) - Horde: Trophy Hunter (Troll +2% HP/dmg per kill, persists across summons) - Goblins: Elixir Mastery (permanent potion buffs) - Oozlings: Ooze Vitality (2 HP/s regen) - Demon: Mana Siphon (+50% mana from workers) - Deep: Purifying Deluge (cleanse debuffs every 2s) - Wild: Savage Instinct (frenzied units gain 15% lifesteal) - Geists: Hungering Dark (lifesteal % also increases damage) - Tenders: Ironwood (tower upgrade costs -50%) - Retroactive research buffs — existing units get HP/damage/speed on research purchase - Spatial grid optimization — O(1) neighbor lookups for auras, knockback, towers, AoE - Fog of war throttled to every 3 ticks (was every tick) - Fireball damage buff (base 25 to 35, mana bonus 0.5x to 0.7x) - Tower sell refund prorated by current HP (damaged towers refund less) Balance - Geists lifesteal nerf — base lifesteal reduced from 20% to 10% across all unit types - Geists Death Grip/Soul Arrows bonus reduced from +10% to +5% - Geist skeleton summons lifesteal tuned down (melee 15% to 8%, ranged 10% to 5%) Bot AI - Difficulty redesign — decision intervals + mistake rates replace spawn caps - Stronger profile steering — 1.5x multipliers for race build targets, 0.3x for skipped categories - Research value overhaul — scales with spawnerCount^1.5 - Early hut value boost — 1.8x/1.3x for first 2-3 huts UI - Race-flavored building names (e.g., "Brute Camp", "Tidecaller Shrine") - Improved sell refund display — shows 50% of all invested resources (base + upgrades) - Hut grid slot placement — click specifies exact slot - Race-specific icons in building tray - Unit Gallery overhaul — 4th tower column with stats, building sprites behind units, 1.8x display scale

Changelog Gameplay - Stone resource renamed to Meat across all races, docs, and balance tools - Horde building and unit costs rebalanced UI / Lobby - Two-column team layout for party and custom game lobbies - Join popup redesigned — larger scroll background, CANCEL/JOIN sword buttons, mobile keyboard support with paste - New UI icons: Dice, Arrows, Nuke, Research, Star, Mana, Ooze, Souls - General mobile UI improvements across popups and panels - Keyboard shortcut hints hidden on mobile - Top bar cleaned up for mobile — less clutter, better use of space - Building and ability names truncated with ellipsis when too wide - Suppressed native long-press context menu on mobile Audio - Race-specific combat music for all 9 races (Crown, Horde, Goblins, Oozlings, Demon, Geists, Tenders, Wild) Gallery - Unit gallery overhaul with detailed stat views and sprite previews Bug Fixes - Fixed minimap click-through bug - Fixed gallery click-through from prior scene tap - Bot AI and balance tuning pass

Changelog Post-Match Overhaul - Minimap replay — watch the full battle replay on the minimap after each match, with nuke effects and war hero highlights - War Hero & Support Hero awards with damage/kill/healing stats - Scrollable scoreboard with tabbed post-match stats New Features - Race ability upgrade trees with per-node Elo tracking - Unit info panel — tap a unit to see sprite art, stats, and WoW-style buff icons - Bot composition profiles with tick fairness shuffles Visual & Audio - Geist summon telegraph effect - Oozlings globule blob sprite - flipX sprite support and mana diamond icon - Isometric projection fixes Balance - Crown & Oozlings costs reduced ~15% - Wild stone costs reduced - Burn/poison now suppresses regen - Geist soul scaling adjustments Bug Fixes - Fixed 1px seams in 9-slice and 3-part UI rendering - Fixed minimap replay exceeding 30s target duration - Resource leak and performance fixes - Upgrade name display fixes