What's new

• Villagers and soldiers walk smoothly through the gate in a wall, even while the wall is not closed yet, and the computer no longer leaves its soldiers standing in front of its own gate. When it attacks a village with a wall, it brings its rams and strikes the wall in several places at once, instead of crowding together at the gate.
• A selection box now also catches a unit that was under it when you started the box, even if it rode on while you dragged. A rider in a fight no longer slips out of the box.
• Villagers working together at a bush, a tree or a building now each stand in a spot of their own, side by side instead of inside each other. When it gets busy they form a second row. When that is full too, whoever is left over stays put, and at a bush, a tree or another resource the game tells you how many villagers are waiting. When someone needs to get past, they shuffle aside for a moment and then step back to their spot.
• For the first ten minutes of a game you now hear a calm tune while you build up your village. After that the music moves on to another piece.
• After a game against the computer, the button Back to the site takes you to the front page. And the button to remove a unit is now called Dismiss; Delete is only for buildings now.
• You can no longer play Frisian Sea on a phone or on a tablet without a mouse, not online either: it did not work well. Instead you read that the game is played on a computer, with a mouse and a keyboard. A tablet or laptop with a mouse or trackpad plays as usual.

• Online you can now always leave a game. Back to the lobby is also at the bottom after a loss and in the menu; in the middle of a game the game asks first, and then the computer takes over your village. If you leave, you can make a new room or quick play right away. If the lobby still thinks you are in a room, the message has a Leave room button.
• Quick play no longer counts down and no longer starts by itself. You join a room that is waiting for players. Whoever came in first is the host, everyone presses I'm ready and picks their people in peace, and the host starts the game once everyone is ready. If the host does nothing for too long, the next player becomes the host.

• The one-minute film of a real game is much smaller now and has a page of its own, A minute of Frisian Sea. The front page links to it, and so does the footer at the bottom of every page.

• The front page now shows a short film of a village. The pictures next to the explanation are new too.
• The new page The Guild tells you how you can support the game and what is on the way for members.
• The new page About Frisian Sea tells what the game is, what it is about and who makes it.
• The foot of every page is tidied up: the links now stand in three columns, Play, The game and Frisian Sea.
• The bar at the top of every page is calmer. The button Play now is on the right, and your account sits under one button with your name: there you find Dashboard, My games, Profile and Log Out. You choose the language with one small button. On a phone everything is in the menu.
• The new page The Guild tells how you can support the game: what you get, what you never get and what it costs. Joining opens soon; until then you simply play everything for free. Thank you for thinking about it!

• With an account, My games shows the games you played: with and against whom, your people, the result and how long it took, and your numbers per people and per level of the computer.
• The new Statistics page shows how many games were played, how long they take and which people wins most often.

• Frisian Sea is in beta. Beta is next to the name at the top of every page, and the front page says there may still be bugs, with a link to Report a bug.
• Playing together without an account starts with a short page about the game and a check against bots: your browser works out a small puzzle by itself, in a few seconds. Then you choose Quick play or Go to the lobby. You do the check once per visit; you don't need it with an account, nor to play the computer.
• Making an account asks for the same check, on the form itself. If you already have an account, you won't notice it.
• With an invite link you go straight to the room after the check.
• Under Planned, the front page names what comes later: missions with real history. The new page Planned lists the rest: statistics, your games, a ranking, logging in with an account you already have, new maps and more.
• The Play together page shows a drawing of Fosite, a god of the Frisians.

• At the top of the menu is the name of the game, with Beta after it.
• Before a game against the computer you first choose your people and the computer's level, each with its picture. Your last choice is already selected: one click on Start, or Enter, and the game begins. Play again opens this screen too. If you reload in the middle of a game, you just carry on.
• If you open the game on a phone, or on another device without a mouse, it first says that you play Frisian Sea on a computer, with a mouse and a keyboard. Try anyway carries on as usual; the screen does not come back in that tab.

• If you leave an online game before it is decided, you lose. That also goes for resigning and for being away for more than two minutes; the computer then plays on for that player.
• If you win that way, you straight away see You won, with who left, and you choose: play on against the computer or back to the lobby. The result stands.
• After such a win, Resign in the menu is called Back to the lobby, also when you play on. You leave straight away, without being asked whether you are sure you want to resign, because you have already won.
• If you were away too long yourself, you read that you lost when you come back. Then you play on yourself again, but the result does not change.
• If you are out while only bots play on, you see your result and how long the game lasted, and later who won the game.

• The front page shows the four levels of the computer, with their pictures, and the new page The computer explains how you choose: in the menu, in a new room and per empty slot in the waiting room, and with Another game against after a won game. King plays fair too.

• Choose how strong the computer plays: Farmhand, Farmer, Chieftain or King, each with its own picture. In a new room you choose for all empty seats, in the waiting room per empty seat (through the lobby the host chooses), and against the computer in the menu, below your people. The choice in the menu applies from the next game.
• A new room, quick play and a game against the computer start on Farmer. Chieftain plays like the computer did until now.
• Farmhand thinks more slowly, reacts later and attacks late: for your first games. Farmer plays a whole game at a calm pace and defends its village. King is faster, attacks as soon as it is stronger, builds a second hall, focuses the fire of its archers, pulls wounded archers back and shoots at your coast with cogs.
• Chieftain and King play every game differently: early attack, grow first or at sea. Which one, you notice when you go and look; after the game the scores say it.
• No level gets resources or sees through the fog.
• At the top right, a computer has the picture of its level behind its name, and in the lobby a computer in a running game has it in front of its people. After a game you won against the computer, you can play straight away against the next level up.
• With ?sterkte=1234 in the address you choose the level per player: 1 Farmhand, 2 Farmer, 3 Chieftain, 4 King.
• Whoever drops out is taken over by the computer as Chieftain, as before.
• A recording of a game from before this version is dropped when you reload, and the game starts again. A replay from before this version says it is from an older version.

• A new kind of map: Islands. Everyone on their own island, with a treasure in the middle (with two players, two small treasure islands). You pick it in a new room, in the waiting room, and with ?kaart=eilanden in the address.
• At the start you see the shape of the whole map, land and water, in the view and on the minimap. Woods, resources, and buildings only show once you go and look.
• Shallow water along the coast is lighter, on every kind of map, in the view and on the minimap. That shows you where a ship can land.
• If a ship of another player with men aboard lies near your coast, the horn sounds and the space bar jumps there. A ship with only villagers aboard reports nothing.
• The computer plays Islands as every people. It builds a harbour, sails a boat past the other islands, and fishes in open sea too. It carries its army across with praams and a cog as cover (the Danes with longships), and in the Kings' Age its rams go along across the sea.
• The computer also fetches the treasure in the middle: with villagers and soldiers as cover, and the Franks with a count's court.
• A voyage of the computer across the sea now takes up to thirty men. On every map the computer defends its coast: whoever goes ashore from a ship full of men has its army against them at the coast.
• A recording or replay from before Islands is dropped when you reload, and says it is from an older version.

• Spear beats horse, horse beats bow, bow beats axe, axe beats spear. In the panel and in the tooltip you see what each unit beats and what it loses to.
• From a distance you can now tell better what a soldier carries: the axe has a large blade and the bow is curved, with a string.
• If you click a unit of another player, the panel says what it does against your units, such as "Horse: beats your bowmen, loses to your tidewalkers."
• A soldier with a spear, axe or bow, or on horseback, picks an enemy of those four kinds that it beats by itself, if that enemy is at most two tiles further away than the nearest. A target you choose yourself comes first. It never picks an enemy in the fog, hidden in the woods or on board a ship. To hit a ship, a scout or a ram first, point at it yourself; a warship takes the nearest enemy by itself.
• In the menu, below the controls, a box Who beats whom shows the four soldiers of your people.
• The bot remembers what it saw of your army, and trains, builds and researches what beats it.
• The Danish computer does not raid where its team just saw warships, and turns back on the way if it sees danger where it wants to land.
• A saved game from before this version is discarded when you reload, and the game starts over. A replay from before this version says it is from an older version.

• Villagers who take shelter in the town hall go back to the work they were doing when they come out: the same tree or resource, the same field or the same building. Their spot at the resource and their field are kept for them while they shelter. If their resource ran out in the meantime, they take the nearest one of the same kind. The computer's villagers do the same.
• A villager who cannot reach the town hall does not go in when you press Shelter, and keeps working.

• Give an order on a tree, ore, berries, fish or a building, and that target lights up briefly.

• For now, at most 1,000 people play together at once: everyone with the lobby open, in a waiting room, in a game or watching one counts. Playing the computer and the chat don't count.
• When it's full, the lobby says so, with how many people are in the lobby and the rooms right now. New room and Quick play are off, and a button takes you to a game against the computer. The page tries again by itself; as soon as there's room, you can create or join a room again.
• If you open an invite link while it's full, the waiting room says so, and you join the room by yourself as soon as there's room.
• If you're already playing, the limit doesn't affect you. If you reload or drop out for a moment, you get back in even when it's full: into your game always, and into the lobby if you're back within two minutes, also if the lobby restarted in the meantime. If you open the lobby in a second tab, you already count and always get in.
• If the lobby sits in a tab you're not looking at for five minutes, it no longer holds a place. The same goes for an invite link that waits because it's full. When you look again, it connects again right away.
• Without an account, at most eight people from one network can be in the lobby at once. Beyond that, the lobby says it's busy, and the page tries again in a minute. With an account this doesn't count.

• The computer plays the Saxons by their own rules: it keeps its army at the edge of the forest on the way to its target, and its shield guards stay together.
• The forest: a Saxon unit standing still next to a tree is hidden from the enemy until they come within three tiles. Anyone who walks can be seen, and is hidden again a second after stopping. Anyone who attacks from the forest can be seen for ten seconds afterwards. A hall is always visible. Your own hidden units have a dark green ring on the ground and a leaf above them, and with such a unit selected the edge of the forest is shown. Saxon villagers chop wood a quarter faster.
• Three new units. The shield guard (barracks, Terp Age) takes only two thirds of every blow and arrow in a shield wall, with two other shield guards close by. The seax fighter (Trading Age) is fast and hits a battering ram hard, but hits a building less hard than an axe warrior. The woodland archer (Trading Age) shoots one tile farther next to a tree.
• Three new technologies in the hall. Sacred Grove (Trading Age, key F): a Saxon unit next to a tree deals 1 more damage. Thing at Marklo (Kings' Age, key B): a villager deals 4 damage instead of 2 and has 10 more hit points. Folkburh (Kings' Age, key X): a stronger stakewall and gate, a lookout that shoots one tile farther, and the earth wall.
• The Saxons have a look of their own. A cap of pale leather with an iron band, a round shield in the player's color with a sun wheel, a woodland archer with a green hood and cloak, and a hall built as a hall house: heavy oak posts with clay between them, under a hipped roof with crossed gable boards in every age. Their other buildings stand on a stone footing like the hall, with dark oak posts and clay walls.

• The Danes can be picked, in the waiting room and in the menu against the computer, and Random now draws them too. Their motto is "The sea is our road."
• Two new units from the barracks: the hirdman, a heavy spearbearer with a round helmet, and the berserker, who hits harder once he is below half his hit points.
• The longship: a ship that shoots as long as nobody is aboard, and that has six places for soldiers you want to put ashore somewhere.
• Raiding: a Dane who destroys a building of an enemy gets a third of what it cost plus 25 food; a slain enemy villager gives what he was carrying plus 10 food.
• Strandhugg, in the wharf: whoever steps ashore from a longship moves a fifth faster for a while.
• Hedeby in the hall raises the loot of Raiding to half, and Danevirke unlocks the turfwall at half the price and gives walls a quarter more hit points. Hacksilver and Ploughland are the Danish names of Sceattas and Dike Building.
• The computer can play as a Dane: it attacks earlier, destroys first what gains the most, and researches Strandhugg and Hedeby.
• Against a Danish computer you first see a longship sailing along your coast before it heads home. Then part of its army comes across the sea to raid a wharf and whatever stands by the water, at whichever opponent's coast its ships reach fastest, while the rest marches overland to its target. Its empty longships sail along on the attack and go after fishing boats.
• The Danish hall in three ages, with a curved roof of planks. Every other Danish building with a roof has the same plank roof, clearly curved, so you can tell a Danish village from afar.
• Danish soldiers wear a dark round helmet with a spectacle guard of bright steel and a round shield of planks; the berserker wears a large bearskin, over his head as well.
• A saved game from before the Danes is discarded when you reload, and the game starts over. A replay from before the Danes says it is from an older version.

• You can now talk with the others in your room: in the waiting room to the right of the seats, and in the game at the bottom left, above the minimap. Press Enter to write to your team if you have one, or Shift and Enter to write to everyone. Chatting needs an account; a guest reads along. Next to a message you can report or block someone.
• In the game you fold the chat away with the speech balloon button at the bottom left, or with P. Then only that button stays, with the number of new messages on it; a click or P brings the chat back. Enter still opens the box to type in. The game remembers your choice for the next game.

• In a short window, such as 800 by 560, the replay bar is lower, so more of the field shows and the menu and the end screen have more room.
• To the right of the replay bar, a small button with an arrow collapses the bar, so you can watch the field in peace. Only that button stays, and it brings the bar back. The B key does the same. If the replay stops matching the game, the bar opens by itself so you see that warning. Playback carries on, and your browser remembers your choice for the next replay.

• If you mistype a recovery code when you log in with two-factor authentication, the page shows the recovery code field again, with the cursor in it. Before, it went back to the field for the code from your app.
• If ten wrong two-factor codes are entered in an hour when you log in, or thirty within 24 hours, you have to wait before the site takes a code again; the page says how long. A recovery code still works, even while someone on another network is trying codes.
• If someone reaches one of those limits on your account, you get a mail about it in your own language, at most one every 24 hours.
• After entering your password you have ten minutes to enter the code. After that, or if your password has changed in the meantime, you log in again. If you choose a new password, anyone halfway through logging in with the old one can't go any further, and earlier wrong codes no longer count.
• Play, Play together, Peoples and The story in the bar at the top each have a small picture, and the page you are on sits on a white block instead of being underlined. On a phone the bar only has the name and a Menu button. It opens the links, your account and the language below the bar, each big enough to tap.
• Your profile shows whom you blocked.
• If you delete your account, your chat messages are kept, but without your name and without your account, and the room no longer shows them. Your reports and blocks also stay, without your account. If you want the text of your messages gone as well, tick "Also erase what I wrote in the chat" when you delete. The form now says itself what goes and what stays.
• On the page about the peoples, the Saxons are now a people you can play, with pictures from the game of the shield guard, the seax fighter and the woodland archer, and of the hall and the forest.
• On the page about the peoples, the Danes are now a people you can play too, with pictures from the game of the hirdman, the berserker and the longship, and of their hall and a village with curved roofs.

• You can now also choose the Saxons: in the waiting room at your slot, and against bots in the menu, at Your people in a new game. Random now also draws the Saxons. Their line is "The people of the forest: the ambush and the shield wall.", their motto "The forest does not forget." After a game, a win says "The forest holds firm." and a loss "The trees fall, the roots remain."
• For a Saxon, Sceattas and Dike Building are called Barter Silver and Infields, and do the same. A technology's description names a Saxon's own units: with Linden Shields, a shield guard in a shield wall takes only half the damage from an arrow, and with Yew Bows, a woodland archer shoots 6 tiles, 7 next to a tree.
• A saved game from before the Saxons is discarded when you reload, and the game starts over. A replay from before the Saxons says it is from an older version.

• Escape closes the menu in the game, like the button to keep playing. Whatever you were placing stays.
• A button for something from a later age has a grey picture, and instead of the cost it says which age you need, such as Trading Age. You see the cost when you hover over the button. A button you only lack resources for stays in color.
• In the menu, the flag of the chosen language stands before the Language list.
• In the menu, the controls have a group The forest. It explains how the Saxons hide: who stands still beside a tree, who moves, who sees them and what an attack does.

• At the top of the lobby there are now two blocks: how many open rooms there are, and how many players are online (those who wait and those who play, together).
• Below those blocks are two tabs: Open rooms and Games in progress, each with its number, which follows the list. Open rooms is open first. With the keyboard you pick a tab with the left and right arrow keys.
• Each tab first shows twenty rows. If there are more, a Show more button under the list shows twenty more.
• The Games in progress tab shows the games that are running, including those from a private room: the map, who is playing with which people, a bot as Bot, and how long the game has been going. They are grey and have no button, the newest at the top; the slots of each team are together, with the word against between them, such as Two against one against one. With more than twenty, the list says how many more there are.
• On a phone the two blocks at the top are equally wide side by side, across the full width; on a very narrow screen they stand one above the other.
• A no above the list, such as This room is full, goes away by itself after ten seconds and has a cross to close it. A notice about a lasting state, such as the limit per hour, stays.

• If you play online against computers only, you can watch the whole replay straight away, with See everything and every player. If a person is among your opponents, you watch only through the eyes of your own team for the first two hours; the line under the bar says until when.

• When your network comes back, the game reconnects right away, also after you were away for more than two minutes. Before, it sometimes waited up to twenty more seconds.

• On the Peoples page, each own technology and the fortress of the Frisians and the Franks now shows its picture from the game, as on the button.
• This page now goes day by day, the newest first. Under each day are its topics; open one to read what changed.
• Every page has Play, Play together, Peoples and The story at the top, with logging in or your account on the right.
• The language choice has a small flag before each name: the Dutch flag for Nederlands, the flag of the United Kingdom for English.
• Under the buttons on the front page you can see how many players are online, such as "3 players online. Join in!", with a link to the lobby. When nobody is online, it shows nothing.
• On the page about the peoples, the Saxon forest now reads as it works: only Saxons who stand still beside a tree are hidden, and only after a second of standing still. You can still see them within three tiles. Whoever attacks from the forest can be seen for ten seconds.
• /peoples now shows the new pictures of the Franks and the Frisian Cog: the conical helmet and the domed shield with the cross, the hall with its red tiles, and cogs without castles. The sentences with them describe what you see now.

• The Franks now wear a pointed helmet with a narrow brim and a large domed shield with a metal cross, as in the psalters of the ninth century.
• Frankish buildings have wooden shingles; only the Hall and the Count's Court have red tiles. With Palatium everything is stone under red tiles.
• The cogs no longer have castles, but an afterdeck and a steering oar. The Frisian Cog has a linen bulwark along its side.
• A Silver Hoard is a low mound of earth with a broken pot, coins and hacksilver.
• Breastwork and Yew Bows have their own picture.

A historian has checked the history in the game. This changed in the words.

• Iron Ore is now called Bog Iron, and villagers dig it out of the ground instead of mining it from rock. Silver Ore is now called Silver Hoard, and villagers dig it up.
• The technology Sinew Strings is now called Yew Bows, and Arrow Slits is now called Breastwork.
• In English the town hall is now called the Hall, the King's Age the Kings' Age, the Kogge the Cog (and the Frisian Kogge the Frisian Cog), and the Wadwalker the Tidewalker.
• Beside the motto of the Frisians it now says "Better dead than a slave, the well-known watchword of Frisian freedom." The motto itself stays.
• The page about the peoples puts the Frisians, the Franks and the Saxons in a frame of about 650 to 1000. The Franks subdued Frisia and Saxony, last of all under Charlemagne, and the francisca was already an old tradition under Charlemagne. The Saxons lived between the Rhine and the Elbe.
• The Frisian rider is now described as a wealthy Frisian on horseback, instead of on a black Frisian horse.
• On the page about the peoples, the Saxon hall is a hall of heavy oak posts with clay instead of timber framing, and the Saxon shield has a sun wheel instead of a cross. In Dutch the Saxon shield guard is now called Schilddrager.
• In the story a Frisian nobleman tells instead of a chieftain, the Saxons bow to no gods but their own, and under the story it says it is set between about 650 and 1000.

• Every player now has a people. You choose the Frisians, the Franks (see The Franks), or Random; the Saxons and the Danes are already in the list and are coming later. If you choose nothing, you play the Frisians.
• In the waiting room, you choose your people at your slot, next to your team. An open slot is set to Random. Through the lobby, only the host chooses the people of a bot; without the lobby, anyone can. The same people may be chosen twice, and anyone who was ready stays ready when someone picks another people.
• Random is drawn at the start, the same for everyone in the room, from the peoples you can choose.
• Below the slots, your choice shows the line of your people, with its motto underneath. The motto of the Frisians stays in Frisian: "Leaver dea as slaaf." Hold the mouse on it to see what it means.
• Top right, each player's people is shown with every name, and after the game the standings have a People column.
• After a game, the top of the screen says whether you won or lost, with a line from your people in italics underneath. As a Frisian, that is "The sea stays Frisian." when you win and "The terp falls, but the sea does not forget us." when you lose. If you are out while the others play on, you see "You lost." with that line straight away, and in a team game also that your team is still playing. A draw has no line.
• The Wadwalker: a Frisian trains the Wadwalker at the barracks instead of the Spearbearer, on the same key (Q), for 40 food and 20 wood. It fights like a spearbearer, but on low land it is faster: 2.4 tiles per second instead of 2.0.
• The Frisian Rider: at the stable instead of the Horseman, on a black Frisian horse with a long mane. It moves 3.1 tiles per second (a horseman 2.8) and costs 60 food, 20 iron, and 45 silver.
• The Frisian Kogge: at the wharf instead of the Kogge, with a forecastle and a band of linen across the sail. It has 110 hit points (a kogge 90) and costs 110 wood, 50 iron, and 20 silver.
• Every technology works for these three as it does for the unit they replace, and the description of a technology names the units of your own people.
• Merchants: a Frisian hulk brings back a quarter more silver, 62 for food or wood and 87 for iron. With Frieze Cloth, that becomes 75 and 105.
• Trading at the quay: from the Trading Age, a Frisian trades 100 of one resource for 75 of another at their own wharf. In the wharf's panel, Give 100 is what you give away, and Get 75 is what you get for it.
• The Frisian kit: where others wear a helmet, a Frisian wears a low leather cap, and a Frisian shield is round, with a boss in the middle.
• The computer plays its people. As the Frisians, it trains wadwalkers, Frisian riders, and Frisian kogges, wants a hulk from 15 villagers on, and trades silver for iron when it is short of iron. When it takes over a player, it carries on with that player's people.

• You can now also choose the Franks: in the waiting room at your slot, and against bots in the menu. Their line is "The king's realm: heavy horsemen and counties.", their motto "Where the king comes, he stays." After a game, a win says "The realm has grown once more." and a loss "Even Charlemagne did not win every battle."
• Against bots, you choose your people in the menu, at Your people in a new game: the Frisians, the Franks, or Random. Your browser remembers it, and it applies from the next game. This also works on the site.
• The Scara: a Frank trains the Scara at the stable instead of the Horseman, for 80 food, 60 iron, and 30 silver. It has 105 hit points, deals 10 damage, and moves 2.6 tiles per second, on a heavy dark horse and with a lance. With Stirrups, it deals 12 damage and moves 3.0 tiles per second; with Leather Tunic, it has 120 hit points.
• The Axe Thrower: at the barracks instead of the Axe Warrior, on the same key (W), for 55 food and 35 iron. It has 50 hit points and deals 7 damage up close. When its target is within three tiles, it first throws its axe: 12 damage, which a shield partly stops, as it does an arrow. Then it fights up close, with its hand empty, and only after ten seconds without attacking does it have a new throwing axe. The panel tells you whether its axe is ready. With Leather Tunic, it has 60 hit points; with Heavy Axe, it deals 9 damage up close, and its throwing axe still deals 12.
• The Stone Thrower: in the King's Age, a Frank trains the Stone Thrower at the barracks (key R), for 160 wood, 60 iron, and 20 silver. It only attacks buildings, from 4 to 8 tiles from the wall, a stone of 60 damage every three seconds that never sets anything on fire. Closer than that, it does not shoot, and it does not move away either: the panel tells you it is too close. It has 150 hit points and moves 1 tile per second; arrows deal a quarter of their damage to it, an axe twice as much. It takes three places of your population, and four on a praam.
• The Count's Court (key B, with your villagers selected): in the Trading Age, a Frank builds one Count's Court, for 300 wood and 100 iron, on four by four tiles. You drop off resources there, it gives room for ten, and it trains villagers. It does not shoot, you cannot take shelter in it, and it does not keep you in the game. In the King's Age, it becomes a town hall, and you may have three town halls.
• King's Envoys, at the town hall in the Trading Age (key F), for 100 food, 100 wood, and 50 silver: your team sees where the other players' town halls stand, even in the fog, as they were when you heard of them, and you also hear of any town hall finished later.
• Vassals, at the stable in the King's Age (key R), for 200 food and 100 silver: a scara costs 40 iron instead of 60.
• Palatium, at the town hall in the King's Age (key X), for 300 wood and 100 iron: your buildings are made of stone, nothing in your village burns, and your town halls shoot two arrows per second instead of one.
• For a Frank, Sceattas and Dike Building are called Pennies and Three Fields, and do the same. Every other technology works for the scara and the axe thrower as it does for the unit they replace.
• The Frankish kit: where others wear a helmet, and the archer too, a Frank wears a pointed spangenhelm with a rim and a nose guard, and a Frankish shield is long and narrow, with a light rim, and hangs beside the body. A Frank's buildings have red roof tiles instead of thatch, and with Palatium, walls of light stone.
• The Frankish town hall stands on a yard as large as the mound of the Frisian town hall: a hall on a high stone base, with timber walls and posts, under a steep roof of red tiles with a cross on the ridge. In the Trading Age, it gets a stone wing and a low wall around the yard; in the King's Age, a stone tower with a banner, taller than the hall. A Count's Court is a lower hall with a yard, a low wall, and a banner.
• The computer also plays the Franks. It trains scaras and axe throwers and never a horseman or axe warrior, puts two stone throwers next to its gatebreakers in the King's Age, pulls a stone thrower back when it is too close or an enemy comes near, and then sends its scaras at that enemy. From 24 villagers on, it researches King's Envoys, and with four scaras, Vassals. From 30 villagers on, it builds a Count's Court in the Trading Age by the iron or silver in the middle of the map, and waits for it before the King's Age, for at most three minutes. When it takes over a Frank, it carries on as a Frank.
• A saved game from before the Franks is discarded when you reload, and the game starts over. A replay from before the Franks says it is from an older version.

• After a game you can watch the replay or save it as a file. The viewer plays the game at one, two, four, or eight times the speed, with a timeline that shows when someone reached a new age or a town hall came under attack, and you can watch through the eyes of each player. The menu keeps your last ten games.
• After a game there are two buttons: Save the replay gives you a file, and Watch the replay opens the viewer. They are there too if you are out while the others play on.
• Under Replays in the menu you find the last ten games in this browser: when, how long, whether you won or lost, and who played, with Watch and Save for each game. A game joins the list after a minute of play and one order of your own, so a short visit to the page never pushes a real game off the list.
• With Open a replay you watch a file someone sent you. A replay from another version of the game tells you which version made it.
• The timeline shows the minutes and small pictures in the player's color: a new age, an attack on a town hall, a town hall that falls, and a player who is out. Click a picture to watch from ten seconds before it; click the timeline to jump there, forward or back. The space bar plays and pauses.
• With View as you pick a player and see their fog, minimap, resources, age, and technologies (F2). Or you choose See everything.
• An online game that may still be running can only be watched through the eyes of your own team.
• If a replay does not match the game, the viewer tells you from when, with a red line on the timeline.
• If you reload the page during a game, its replay simply carries on.

• The menu is easier to read. Sound, music and language are at the top, with What's new next to the language. Below them, the controls are a short table in groups (selecting, orders, ships, hotkeys, camera and building): on the left the key, drawn as a small key, and on the right a few words on what it does. The table scrolls on its own and fades out at the bottom while there is more below, and the buttons always stay in view. The replay viewer shows its own controls the same way.

• That button shows just the name of the age, Trading Age or King's Age. The four costs of the King's Age sit below it in two rows, inside the button.

• A new ship: the Hulk, a broad cargo ship. Your wharf trains it from the Trading Age on R, for 100 wood. It does not fight or fish. Because of it, the wharf's technologies move one key: Salt Pans T, Great Sail D, High Sides F, Fish Traps G.
• A hulk trades: with Q, W, or E it loads 100 food, wood, or iron at your wharf, sails to your roadstead at the edge of the map, waits there a while, and comes back with 50 silver for food or wood and 70 for iron; a quarter more for the Frisians (see The Frisians). Then it sails again by itself; Last Trip (R) makes it stop after this trip. Right-clicking your wharf with a hulk works too.
• Your roadstead shows as a small anchor on the minimap. Every village has its own roadstead, chosen so that a trip takes equally long for everyone.
• At the roadstead, every hulk lies in a place of its own: even eight hulks together look like eight ships.
• Two hulks, kogges, or praams that meet in a channel one tile wide no longer stay stuck there forever: one sails through first, the other makes way and follows. At a wharf at the end of a narrow inlet, all your hulks also get out and back again.
• The cargo on deck shows what a hulk carries: round sacks tied at the top for food, planks for wood, bars for iron, and a chest of coins for silver.
• A hulk can be attacked anywhere on the water. If it sinks, its cargo is lost.
• A new technology at the wharf in the King's Age: Frieze Cloth (Z). After it, a Frisian hulk brings back half as much silver again as the 50 and 70: 75 for food or wood, and 105 for iron.
• Great Sail and High Sides also work for the hulk: it sails faster and has 80 hit points instead of 60.
• In a team game, from the Trading Age you can send resources to a teammate: four buttons per teammate in your town hall, each 100 of one resource, with nothing lost. Whoever gets it sees a message. With one teammate it names the sender; with more teammates it only says that it came from a teammate.
• After the game, the standings also show how much silver your hulks brought from the sea.
• The computer trades too now. From the Trading Age it trains a hulk at a wharf on the sea of its roadstead, and three once it knows of no more silver to mine. It sends a hulk on one trip at a time with food or wood it can spare, never with iron.
• Its kogges sail along with its hulks at sea and hunt another player's hulk that its team can see. It remembers for a while where it saw one, and its kogges come and look there. One kogge always stays at its wharf.
• In a team game, the computer sends a teammate what they are short of, when it has plenty itself.
• The computer researches Frieze Cloth once it has two hulks, and goes for the King's Age without the silver for it while one of its hulks is at sea.

• When you create a room, you now choose what kind of map the game gets: Mixed (as before), Forest, Coast or Open Land. Each type has a picture of such a map.
• Forest: dense forest, with paths between the villages, to the coast and to the middle. Around your town hall it stays open, as on Mixed.
• Coast: much more sea, with two or three wide inlets reaching into the land.
• Open Land: little forest and little water. Near your town hall there is mostly the forest you start with; for more wood you go farther.
• The waiting room shows the map with its picture. The host can still change it; anyone who was ready then presses I'm ready again. Quick play is always Mixed.
• Every type is as fair as Mixed: each village is equally far from the coast, from its neighbors and from a spot for a wharf, with as much wood, food, iron and silver near home.
• If you reload the page during a game, it comes back on the same map.
• On the minimap, forest is now a darker green on every type of map, so you can see where the wood is.

• /peoples is a page about the four peoples: the Frisians, the Franks, the Saxons and the Danes, what they share and what each one has of its own.
• /story tells the story of the game: the Frisian Sea and the four peoples, each told by a narrator of its own.

• A selection box now picks every unit it goes over, as you see it: also when it only touches a head or a helmet, a horse's head or tail, a Gatebreaker, or a ship's bow, rudder or mast. Before, only a narrow strip through the middle of a unit counted, and a box over a horseman, a scout, a Gatebreaker or a ship often missed it. A click now works the same way.
• The menu now fits in a small window too. Before, Resign and Close could fall below the edge of the window, especially with a message or an alarm above the menu. Messages and alarms are hidden until you close the menu; in a very low window the explanation of the controls scrolls.

• Each Iron Ore now holds 1000 iron instead of 400. There are as many as before, four near your Town Hall and six in the middle, so late in a game there is still iron for Gatebreakers and Axe Warriors.

• Your villagers can now build a stakewall (key X), for 6 wood per piece. Press and drag to lay a whole row at once, straight or diagonal, up to 40 tiles long. A preview shows for each tile whether it can go there; a tile with a resource, a building or not enough wood shows red. After a row, the stakewall stays on the mouse for the next one.
• In the Trading Age you get the gate (key C, 20 wood) and the lookout (key V, 60 wood and 20 iron). A gate placed on your own stakewall replaces that piece.
• A gate opens by itself for everyone, and shuts as soon as an enemy is near or attacking the wall nearby; it opens again only once no enemy is close. Whoever walks through the gate keeps it open, even an enemy; one of your own units standing idle in it steps aside when the gate wants to shut. With the gate selected you can shut it by hand (W) or open it (E), and set it back to automatic (Q).
• A lookout shoots an arrow every second at the nearest enemy within six tiles.
• Two technologies in the town hall: Tall Stakes in the Trading Age (350 hit points for a stakewall piece and 600 for a gate, also for what is already standing) and Arrow Slits in the King's Age (two arrows per second from a lookout).
• If your army can't reach its target because another player's wall is in the way, it attacks the piece of wall that blocks it, then carries on.
• A piece of wall you delete gives everything back as long as no work has gone into it, like any building.
• Units that need to pass through the gate of your ring head straight for it and walk right through, even with many villagers at once: nobody stops first to find the way.

• With your town hall selected, Shelter (C) calls your villagers within eight tiles into the town hall, up to fifteen. They drop off what they carry. Inside they slowly heal, and the town hall's panel shows who is inside.
• With five or more villagers inside, your town hall shoots one more arrow per second: two instead of one.
• Come Out (V) puts everyone back on the free spots around the town hall. If your town hall falls, they are outside at once.
• Land soldiers have a Stand Fast button (Q), also explained in the menu: they hold their ground, strike or shoot only at whoever comes within reach, and leave buildings and walls alone. If you send them somewhere or point out a target, they do it, even through another player's wall, then stand fast again. The same button, now Move Freely, turns it off.
• The computer shelters its villagers too when another player's soldier comes within range of its town hall, or three of them come close. Only the villagers near those soldiers go in. It sends them out again twenty seconds after the threat is gone, and after a minute inside at the latest.

• In the King's Age your barracks trains the Gatebreaker (key E), for 150 wood and 40 iron in 40 seconds: a timber frame on four wheels under a roof of hides, with an iron-headed log slung beneath. It is slow, strikes a building or a piece of wall for 40 every second and a half, and does not attack units. Right-click an enemy and it walks there.
• A Gatebreaker takes three places of your population, and four on a praam. Arrows do a quarter to it, an axe twice as much. If another player's wall is in the way, it attacks the wall, like your soldiers.
• The axe warrior now does one and a half times as much to a building, no longer twice as much.
• Pitch Arrows (key E in the bowyard, King's Age, 150 wood and 100 silver): an arrow from your bowmen or your cogs sets a wooden building on fire. It burns for twelve seconds and loses 4 hit points every second; a new arrow restarts the clock. Fire does not spread to the building next to it. Without a target, your bowmen pick a wooden building that is not burning yet.
• A burning building has flames on its roof, a light grey spot on the minimap, and its panel says how long it will still burn. A villager who repairs it puts the fire out first, in two seconds and at no cost.
• Ringburh (key X in the town hall, King's Age, 300 wood and 100 iron): a low ring around the mound of your town hall. Your town hall gets 600 more hit points and shoots two arrows per second, three with villagers inside. Other players can see the ring on your town hall.
• After Ringburh your villagers can build the Turfwall (key B), for 10 wood per piece: a low bank of sods with 500 hit points. It does not burn, and an arrow does an eighth to it. You lay it as a row, like the stakewall, and a gate on your own turfwall replaces that piece.
• In the King's Age the computer trains Gatebreakers: two, and three if it has seen at least ten pieces of wall or a lookout near its target. It sends them ahead of its wave so they arrive together with its soldiers, and has them strike your town hall or your wall. While it is short of a Gatebreaker, it keeps the iron for one.
• The computer researches Pitch Arrows once it has eight bowmen, and then sets your houses and your stakewall on fire instead of shooting at your town hall.
• When one of your Gatebreakers comes near the computer's town hall, its axe warriors sally out, six per Gatebreaker; without axe warriors, its spearbearers and riders do.
• The computer does not research Ringburh, build Turfwalls or put a ring around its town hall yet.

• If you reload the page in the middle of a game, you are back within a few seconds, with the same camera, groups and selection. After half an hour of play this used to take more than half a minute.
• This also works against the computer: reloading no longer starts a new game. To start a new one, resign and choose Play again.

• A game now has three ages: the Terp Age, the Trading Age and the King's Age. In your town hall, W advances you to the next one: to the Trading Age for 350 food and 75 wood in one minute, to the King's Age for 300 food, 75 wood, 75 iron and 50 silver in a minute and a half. While it runs, your town hall trains nothing else. Canceling gives everything back.
• You start with 300 food, 250 wood, 100 iron and 100 silver.
• In the Terp Age you build the town hall, houses, store barns, farms, the barracks and the wharf, and you train villagers, spearbearers and fishers. The bowyard, the stable and the smithy come in the Trading Age, along with the axe warrior, the bowman, the scout, the horseman, the kogge and the praam. In the King's Age you may build a second town hall.
• A button for something that comes later is off and says which age it needs.
• Your town hall grows stronger with each age: 1500, 2200 and 3000 hit points, and it sees farther. The terp beneath it grows too and the hall changes its look, so another player's town hall shows how far along they are.
• Your age is shown at the top left, with a picture of your town hall.
• A new building: the smithy (Z with your villagers selected), for 100 wood and 40 iron. That is where you research weapons.
• Sixteen technologies make your village or your army better, right away and for the whole village. You research them in the town hall, the smithy, the bowyard, the stable and the wharf, each with a fixed key and its cost on the button. A few examples: with the Yoke your villagers carry 15 instead of 10, with Sinew Strings your bowmen shoot farther, and with Raise the Terp your town hall shoots farther and has 300 more hit points.
• F2 opens an overview of all technologies: what you have done and when, what is running, and what still needs an age, another technology or a building. F2 or Escape closes it.
• When your village reaches a new age, the game tells you. If you can see another player's town hall at that moment, you hear about it when they advance too.
• After the game, below the scores, you see when each player reached the Trading Age and the King's Age, and which technologies they had.
• The computer advances too, builds a smithy and researches. It knows nothing its team has not seen.
• In a low window the end screen scrolls, and the buttons at the bottom stay in view.

• If no spot on the shore is free, a full Praam waits on the water until one opens up. With the Praam selected, you still see where it wants to unload, by a marker with a small ring that pulses slowly, and its panel says Waiting for a free spot on the shore. If it waits after Unload (Q), only its panel says so, since you did not point at a spot.

• The Town Hall shoots harder: 8 damage per arrow instead of 6. A Spearbearer hits a Horseman four times as hard instead of three times. The middle of the map has twelve Silver Ores instead of four; near your Town Hall there are still three.

• A villager building a Wharf or another building no longer stands in a corner that only connects to the land through the building site. Before, it could end up shut in between the building and the water. The computer also no longer sends a villager to a House, Barracks or Town Hall it can't reach.

• The computer plays stronger. It builds Farms before the berries run out, trains forty villagers, makes as many Axe Warriors as Spearbearers, fetches silver from the middle of the map and attacks in waves that stay together instead of in small groups. If it knows no fish near its Wharf, one of its Fishers goes looking.

• The Harbor now also trains a transport ship: the Praam (E), for 80 wood. A flat Frisian cargo boat, long and low, with a small square sail in your color and a helmsman at the stern.
• A Praam has ten spaces: ten units on foot, or five on horseback, since a horseman or scout with his horse takes two spaces. Select them and right-click your Praam: they walk to the shore and board. If the Praam is not at their shore, it comes to them.
• You can see who is on board standing on the deck, a horseman with his horse, and in the Praam's panel with a picture for each unit and how many spaces are taken.
• With the Praam selected, right-click land, and it sails there and unloads. Everyone steps ashore on the nearest free spots, and a marker shows where. The Unload button (Q) puts them ashore at the shore nearest the Praam.
• When everyone in your selection has boarded, the Praam is selected so you can sail right away.
• Units on board cannot see, cannot be hit, and do nothing until they are back on land. If the Praam sinks, they are all lost.
• A Praam does not fight, and the computer does not use it.

• If the lobby won't let the page in, the lobby page says why. If the page is from a different version of the game than the lobby, it asks you to reload the page. At home it also says what to do if that doesn't help: restart npm run online, and on the site first rebuild the game with npm run build:game. If the lobby at home is running without the site, it says how to start it with the site.

• A unit no longer waits forever behind an enemy unit that is standing still: it slips past as closely as it can, and if it can't get past, it stops, and a Praam then picks another spot on the shore. A soldier that stops like this in front of a group of enemy units standing still then attacks them, as any idle soldier does. Two units blocking each other in a narrow passage take turns sooner.
• Clicking Play online during a game now asks first whether you're sure, because your game will end.

• Playing together starts in the lobby. You see how many open rooms there are, how many players are waiting for a game and how many are playing, and the list of open rooms, nearly full at the top.
• A new room is either open, so it's in the list, or private, so only people with your link can join.
• You can put a password on an open room. Anyone joining from the list types it; your link lets people in without it.
• The waiting room shows the room's name and every player's name, with a villager in their color. Without an account you get the name of a Wadden Sea bird, like Grutto 17.
• Full rooms and rooms whose game has started aren't in the list.
• If you reload the page in the waiting room or during a game, you go straight back to your slot, even when the lobby is briefly away.
• In the waiting room, whoever created the room is the host, marked by a town hall next to their name. Only the host starts the game, and only once everyone is ready: the others press I'm ready, and the waiting room says who isn't ready yet.
• If a team changes, or the host makes the room open or private, everyone presses I'm ready again.
• The host can remove a player. They end up in the lobby and can't get back into that room; they can still join another one.
• Leave room takes you back to the lobby and frees your slot right away. If the host leaves, whoever has been in the room longest becomes the host; just reloading the page keeps the role.
• Quick play in the lobby puts you in a room that starts half a minute after the first player arrives, or right away once there are four players. The computer plays the empty slots, and the list and the waiting room count down.
• A waiting room lasts at most an hour. Five minutes before the end, it says it's closing.
• You can only be in one room at a time. If you're already in a waiting room or a game, even from another tab, the lobby tells you which room, like: You're already in Grutto 17's room. The Back to your room button takes you back to your slot. Once you leave the room, are removed, the room closes or your game is over, the message goes away and you can join again right away.
• On the site, the lobby is at /lobby, with the site's header above it. Under the title it says which name you're playing as: your player name with an account, or otherwise a guest name that stays with your browser. In the waiting room, an account is marked account.
• If you hit a limit, you read why and how long it lasts. A guest can create six rooms an hour, an account twenty; if you join too often, guess codes or try passwords, you wait a little. After the limit on new rooms, New room stays off until you can create one again, even after a reload, and the message counts down the minutes. You can still use Quick play and join a room.
• In the list, the padlock of a room with a password sits next to the room's name.
• When the emergency switch is on, only players with an account can create a room. Anyone can still join, and a game in progress isn't affected.

• The Harbor now also trains a warship: the Cog (W), for 90 wood and 40 iron. A round-bellied Frisian cog with a square sail in your color and a raised platform at the stern with an archer on it.
• A Cog shoots arrows at ships, and at units and buildings on the coast within five tiles. Against ships it deals one and a half times the damage.
• Right-click a building on the coast with a Cog: it sails until the building is in range and shoots at it. If the building is too far from the water, it does nothing.
• On its own, a Cog fights whatever it sees. It leaves enemies behind a headland or further inland alone.
• Ships you send somewhere together arrive with a tile of water between them, so they no longer pile up on each other.
• A ship leaving the Harbor no longer gets stuck in the corner of the quay.
• Cogs show as a larger dot on the minimap than other units.

• A unit you send a short way now always gets there. Before, it sometimes stopped short when it had to go left, and a villager on its way to work sometimes paused for a moment.
• Units no longer get stuck in a narrow passage. When two reached a one-tile gap at the same time, they pushed each other aside and neither got through; now one goes first and the other follows.
• Units get stuck less often: your own idle units in a narrow passage make way for units on the move, a group no longer walks back and forth when a building goes up on its spots, and a boat carrying fish gets past a boat that has almost reached its Fishing Ground.
• Units get stuck even less often: a unit no longer catches on the corner of a building, a boat gets past the boats fishing at a Fishing Ground in a narrow channel, and a villager who gets shut in no longer heads for a Farm it can't reach but chops its way out.

• At most eight boats fish one Fishing Ground at a time, each in its own spot. Send more and they deliver their catch and wait in the water near the Harbor instead of waiting their turn at the Fishing Ground.
• Two boats reaching a one-tile-wide gap at the same time no longer get stuck side by side: one goes through first and the other follows. Before, a boat carrying fish sometimes never made it back to the Harbor.
• A boat with nothing left to fish delivers its last catch and then sails away from the quay to wait in the water near the Harbor. Waiting boats no longer pile up against the quay, and the quay stays clear for boats bringing in fish.

• The computer fishes. Once its village is up and running, it builds a Harbor near fish it knows about, trains up to six Fishing Boats and sends them fishing. If it doesn't know where the fish are yet, it sends a villager to search the coast.
• Just like you, it only learns about a Fishing Ground that came back once it sees that spot. When its Fishing Grounds run out, its boats wait in the water near the Harbor, not against the quay.
• If the computer has more boats than there are spots at the Fishing Grounds it knows, the rest wait in the water near the Harbor.
• If your boats fish near its coast, its Harbor or its Fishing Grounds, it sends three Archers to the shore to sink them. Its army still goes on the attack as before.
• A computer on your team leaves your boats alone.
• If the villager building a House or another building for the computer dies, the computer sends another one after ten seconds to finish it. Before, the building stayed half-built; if it was a House, the computer built no more Houses.
• When the computer has no room left for more units, it attacks with the army it has. Before, it could keep waiting for an army that would never fit.

• Each resource has a picture: a leg of meat for food, a tree for wood, ore for iron, and a silver vein for silver. They appear in the resource bar at the top, in the costs on the buttons, and next to what a villager or boat is carrying.
• The resource bar at the top shows each picture with its amount, without the word. Hover over or tap a resource to see its name and where it comes from, also on a phone or tablet.
• A Fishing Boat with a catch shows a fish. In your stockpile, fish counts as food.
• Villagers carry their load in the shape of the resource: a leg of meat, a log, or a lump of ore.
• Each resource picture has a stripe in the resource's color underneath. Wood is light brown and iron is dark brown.
• A stump is left where a tree was cut down. Trees someone else cuts down in the fog only show as stumps once you can see that spot again.
• Forest far from where you started now always shows up. Sometimes it stayed invisible when you got there later.

• Play against the computer on the site, at /play. An old link to /game takes you there too.
• Play together takes you to the lobby. A room has a link with a ten-character code, like /play/k7q2mh3xnb; whoever opens it joins the same room. An old link to /play-together takes you to the lobby.
• The game's menu has Report a bug and What's new. Report a bug opens a short form in a new tab with your room and the version already filled in; your game keeps running in the meantime.
• If something is new since you last looked, a red dot shows on the Menu button and a New badge next to What's new.
• /status shows which version of the game is on the site and whether your browser can reach the lobby.
• The game speaks the language you chose on the site.

• A click picks the unit whose shape you hit, including a boat's sail or a villager's head when you zoom in.
• A building's panel shows a bar for construction and for training.
• The bars above buildings and units no longer flicker.
• Clicking another player's building or unit shows what it is, who owns it and how many hit points it has left.

• If you play against bots only and lose the connection, the match now waits ten minutes for you instead of two and a half.
• When the connection is lost and the game keeps trying, the button now says "Try now".
• The Harbor, the Fishing Boat and the Fishing Ground have new English names.

• Boats keep their distance and no longer pile up on each other or on the quay.
• Your own idle boats make way for a boat carrying fish, and it no longer sails over them. Other players' boats do not: blocking is allowed.
• A new boat appears in the water of the rally point, or in the largest water at the Harbor if there is no rally point.
• A Fishing Ground that runs out comes back: after two to four minutes, a new one with 500 food appears somewhere along the same coast. A coast never has more than three Fishing Grounds.
• You only see a new Fishing Ground once one of your units or buildings can see that spot.

• The build panel and the building panels show a picture of every building and unit. Costs are shown as resource pictures with a number; hover over a button for the cost in words.
• The Harbor is easier to recognize: a boathouse on walls, a boat on a slipway, and a crane.
• A Fishing Boat casts its net and hauls it back in with the catch.
• Fishing Grounds show as round dots on the minimap.

• Build a Harbor on the coast (G). It stands on land with at least three tiles of water beside it. If it can't go somewhere, the game tells you why.
• Train Fishing Boats at the Harbor (Q). Right-click a Fishing Ground to send them fishing: they bring the food back to the Harbor.
• Every map has three Fishing Grounds of 500 food near your coast.
• Archers, Cogs and the Town Hall can hit a ship. Units that fight up close can't.
• Boats and Fishing Grounds show on the minimap.