Circle Empires news & patch notes

Prepare your defenses, sharpen your blades, and get ready to return to the circles.

Circle Empires 2 launches on February 9th, 2026. Watch the date announcement trailer below:

We’re excited to share the release date for the next entry in the Circle Empires series. Since revealing the sequel in November 2024, we’ve been working to build on what made the original games special, with community feedback guiding many of the decisions along the way. Through demos and playtests, we’ve refined the look and feel of Circle Empires 2 to better capture the spirit of the series while still pushing it forward. The result is a sequel that stays true to fast-paced circle conquest, while offering more freedom in how you play. Whether you’re coming back after many hours with the original games or revisiting the circles for the first time in a while, we’re looking forward to welcoming you on February 9th.

See you in the circles, Luminous

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Circle Empires

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Iceberg Interactive

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Hey everyone,

• Knights and Merchants had a really cool economy system. Fans made a complete rebuild of the game called KamRemake.
• Beasts and Pumpkins had a cool live economy where people would be born and get old, eat bread, fight each other when they're in bad mood and fight giant bees by throwing rocks over a fence.

Hey everyone,

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Hey everyone,

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We’re excited to announce that Circle Empires 2 is in development! Luminous and Iceberg Interactive are going full circle, and we’re ready to take everything you love about the original and make it even bigger, better, and... more chaotic.

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FEATURES
• Fight exciting simultaneous turn-based battles. Predict your opponent's moves, plan your own, then watch the chaos unfold!
• Battle through randomly generated single-player maps. Equip your units with upgrade tokens to empower them, and find the craziest combos!
• Take to the field in multiplayer with or against your friends in Co-Op and PvP!
• Find the playstyle that fits you. Master the balanced Humans, the rush strat Orcs, or the mystical Wizards!
• Build your perfect battlefield in the powerful map editor, then share it with the community through the Steam Workshop!
• For returning Circle Empires players: feast your eyes on a graphical overhaul! The familiar Circle Empires look in an all-new jacket.

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Features

• Play three story-based single-player campaigns focused on Circle Empires’ ruling factions and uncover a gripping story where not everything is as it seems.
• Level up your leader and gain new skills allowing you to implement different strategies throughout the campaign
• Play with your friends in multiplayer co-op or challenge them for a game in PvP mode
• Each faction has a variety of units and creatures, all with their own special abilities and traits, offering a dynamic playstyle and making every battle unique.
• Choose the difficulty level that fits your experience (or ego), ranging from a new recruit to being a descendant of Sun Tzu. Circle Empires Tactics offers a wide range of difficulty levels for both single-player and co-op.
• Did you play through all the campaigns? Or are you looking for a new challenge? Then have a go at the map editor and create your own scenario. Share it with friends via Steam Workshop.

Join the community!

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Join the community!

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Changes

• Added cloud save for save-games and unlocked things.
• Treasury maximum size lowered to reduce lag in Treasury view.
• Fixed a memory leak that affects very long games.

What's new in Circle Empires Rivals?

• 20 different circle biomes, from dry deserts to scary swamps!
• Over 300+ units, buildings, and level-ups!
• 30 Faction leaders, each with unique bonuses or special troops!
• A huge range of difficulty options, and advanced settings to tweak everything to your liking!
• 6 different game modes, including ones unique to the RTS genre -- like the Roguelike and Stop the Army modes!
• Units and structures keep gaining stats even after hitting their 'max' level, all the way up to bonus level 99! Turn your wizard into an army-destroying archwizard with a new look to boot.

But wait, there's more!

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IT'S ALMOST HERE!

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How to claim your free key:

• Join the Iceberg Interactive Discord
• Go to the CE Rivals Open Beta #claim-a-key channel
• Type .key to receive your Open Beta key
• Redeem your key on Steam via ‘Activate a product on Steam’
• Have a big ol’ bunch of fun!

New features in Rivals:

• New unit types, like the powerful Ice Hunters and monstrous Baniter.
• More biomes, each with new mechanics that make every circle unique.
• New buildings -- healing towers, circle defenders, boulder towers, and more.
• A bunch of new game modes to test your army-leading skills.
• Oh, and did we mention multiplayer?! Yup, both co-op and PvP.

Connect with us to stay up to date!

Claim your key:

• Join the Iceberg Interactive Discord
• Go to the CE Rivals Open Beta #claim-a-key channel
• Type .key to receive your Open Beta key
• Redeem your key on Steam via ‘Activate a product on Steam’
• Have a big ol’ bunch of fun!

New features in Rivals:

• New unit types, like the powerful Ice Hunters and monstrous Baniter.
• More biomes, each with new mechanics that make every circle unique.
• New buildings -- healing towers, circle defenders, boulder towers, and more.
• A bunch of new game modes to test your army-leading skills.
• Oh, and did we mention multiplayer?! Yup, both co-op and PvP.

Connect with us to stay up to date!

How to join:

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Become a tester!

Key Features

• Fast-paced multiplayer RTS
• Play with friends in a variety of online game modes, including Co-op
• Units gain XP and level up
• The world is made of circles, each with different loot and enemies.
• Expand your empire, circle by circle
• Procedurally generated worlds contain unique flora and fauna
• 250+ different creatures and buildings, harvestable resources and level-ups
• 25+ Different faction leaders, a large variety of bonuses
• 40 huntable boss monsters
• Huge range of difficulty options for any skill level

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• School of Magic - including an enemy spawner that spawns hostile healers, pumpkin necromancers and necromancer apprentices! Who said pumpkins are only for Halloween?
• Masonry - Upgrade your buildings and walls, and make them much more durable.
• Elf archer - Start planning your Halloween costume because this update introduces a highly skilled elven warrior equipped with a bow! This impressive creature has a very high attack speed and can cause a lot of damage, but is also quite flimsy. It can be recruited by Swift the Scavanger Lord and also by Darius the Druid in the Apex Monsters DLC. The elf archer can also appear in forest biomes and can be spawned by hostile Archery Ranges.
• New biome variation - Elven autumn forest. Nothing beats a crisp autumn morning and meeting an elven on your walk through the woods. It's simply nature at its finest!

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• Catapults - You can now destroys spawners and towers at range with catapults! Most leaders can recruit them and you will find goblins using catapults to tear down your defenses (hopefully using pumpkins instead of cannonballs).
• Ice hunters - Hunt dragons with durable, single-target assassin squads. They can also be encountered in packs in the wild and can be spawned by high level hostile Stables.
• Angry Boulders - Tank creatures immune to fire, extremely angry for an unknown reason. You may find them spawn in large groups near pure gold. Recruitable by Melee Mercs, Science Society and Nature Nurturists (in Apex Monsters DLC).
• New biome variation - This is not the land of confusion but the land of sleeping angry boulders. Which is kind of the same?

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We proudly present:

Baniter monster

Namtar worker

Void canal

So, what’s the challenge?

• Play Circle Empires Apex Monsters! DLC between January 30 - February 18
• Win a single Full Conquest game in the shortest possible time, like a speedrun
• Record the gameplay - videos with witty commentary can also win the Style Award!
• Post a video with your fastest victory to your own YouTube channel (up to 10 videos can be included to increase one’s chances).

Best Speedrun Strategy

Speedrun Strategy II

Speedrun Strategy Style Award

Balance changes

• Adjusted the way circles grow in difficulty. The circles right next to your starting circle area are easier to capture, especially on high difficulties. Circles that are further away have guardians that are a bit stronger.
• Unlocked +1 difficulty level from the start for all game modes as some players were suggesting that they played on the hardest available difficulty and it was a walk in the park.
• Knight price changed from 100 food & 150 gold to 180 food & 40 gold. Hp increased from 480 to 500.
• Level 3 farm: available food amount increased from 600 to 800.
• Sunken Ruins (frog spawner) strength rating increased from 200 to 350.
• Level 1 farms available food amount increased from 180 to 220. Previously, some players felt like they were "losing resources" because the cost is 200 wood and you got 180 food out of it. This caused a puzzling situation where people were struggling with a lack of food but were reluctant to make farms. This puzzle is now more simple, you get more out of it in addition to converting wood to food.
• Made the starting circle available food amount less random. You now always have 2 blueberry bushes for a total of 600 food, previously it was possible to have 0-2.
• Buildings that have an attack and spawn creatures (e.g. barracks) no longer gain experience from combat. They get experience from spawning waves of creatures which is a more predictable behaviour. Before that, it was possible that e.g barracks accidentally finished off your dragon and gained a level, which could turn the battle around very unexpectedly.
• Hammerman and Giant Maul Warrior (Apex Monsters DLC only) have more clear bonus damage vs armor. E.g. +50% damage vs armored targets. This also means that heavily armored units take less extra damage than before.

Fixes

• Updated the Unity engine to latest version which fixes various issues (including Linux input glitch).
• Fixed an issue that caused enemies to attack you immediately after loading a save game. Due to that, old save games are no longer functional unfortunately.
• Fixed an issue with a legacy update system popping up.
• Fixed an issue where the attack cursor was the default cursor. Now it's a sword again.
• Added an option to delete save games.
• Fixed one of the issues that caused workers to go into unintended circles to work there (issue introduced in last patch)

Apex Monsters DLC only

• Added 2 rare biome variations with special armies.
• Elder Pumpkin Wizard: decreased damage from 50 to 30. This also helps to reduce the number of pumpkin warriors they can spawn as they get less last-hits when combined with other units.

Circle Empires base game new content

• Added 4 rare biome variations with special armies.

Towers are better and have different attacks

KEY FEATURES

• 6 new leaders to play as
• 12 new monsters to hunt down
• 21 new units (including unit classes)
• A new autumn-themed biome
• All leaders have a new unit to recruit
• AI empires use the new units to wreak havoc of their own

• From the Library, right click ‘Circle Empires’ and pick ‘Properties’
• In the newly opened window select the ‘Local Files’ tab
• Click ‘Browse Local Files…’ and then enter the folder titled ‘Saves’
• Here you will find your save games. Select and copy them.
• Paste the save games in the following location: C:\Users\*your user name here*\AppData\LocalLow\Circle Empires\Circle Empires\Saves (Don’t forget to replace the *your user name here*, with the username in your Windows system).

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue which caused a music volume inconsistency when booting up the game and after finished games
• Fixed multiple issues that occurred when changing the resolution of the game
• Game resolution and window size can now be modified. To modify the window size, select ‘Settings’ in the main menu > make sure ‘Full screen’ is unchecked > change the resolution using the drop-down menu. Note that changing the game window size is only possible in the main menu.
• The save game location has been changed which prevents issues at start up of games (For recovery of your old save files please see above!)
• Fixed an issue which prevented you from moving units after loading a game
• Fixed an inconsistency in the worker count due to the addition of the new worker types

Balance updates

• Wizard Towers come in smaller numbers and spawn less wizards
• Wizard Tower strength rating increased from 1000 => 1250, this means you are less likely to encounter them and less likely to get multiple in one circle
• Number of wizards per Wizard Tower decreased from 3 to 2
• XP requirement of Wizard Tower increased from 2000 to 2600 (meaning they will level up slower)
• Level 1 Wizard strength rating increased from 170 to 220

New units, balance tweaks, Korean localisation and many, many bug fixes.

New Stuff!

• New language added! Korean localisation is now available from the language select menu.
• New unit called Hammerman added. These units deal extra damage to armoured units and buildings. The more armour the target has, the more damage it deals.
• Added spawners for Dragons and Wizards.
• Leaders will now have their own workers: Goblin Workers, Pumpkin Workers, Frog Workers, Barbarian Workers.
• Zombies can now also perform worker tasks! Create a horde of zombies and use them for both fighting and collecting resources.
• New rare biome variations with a large army of hostile units but no spawners. It's like a discoverable circle of DEATH!!!
• New biome variations with Dragon Lairs and Wizard Studies.
• Added priest hideout biome variation.

Balance tweaks

• Overall game balance:
  • Easy and normal game difficulty now have more monsters to fight.
  • Highest AI difficulty is less powerful at the start of a game.
  • Neutral and AI creatures use attack move more effectively which means they will finalize their conquest of nearby circles. Previously they used to shoot some fireballs and then leave it be often times.
  • Spawners now spawn a new wave of creatures when the old wave has left the original circle. This is the case for all types of units except the goblins. This prevents the spawners from being easily killed after the defending army has left. Goblins are a special case because of the Goblin King, who pulls nearby goblins to himself.
  • Unlocking most leaders now have more requirements.
  • Reworked the way neutral units and buildings level up. Now stronger ones are more likely to level up. Previously the XP was spread more equally.
• The Area of Effect damage is reworked. More distant targets take less damage and the damage is split between targets if there are more than 6 of them. This greatly reduces the damage output of wizards, dragons, undead towers and axe throwers in case of large armies. If there's more than 6 targets then the formula is: damage=originalDamage * (0.5 + 0.5 * 6/numberOfTargets). For example, if you deal 100 splash damage to 12 targets then each gets 75 damage, not 100. This is further reduced by a distance from the centre of an explosion. Damage from burning and poison are still fully applied.
• Melee units are easier to level up and much better at high levels to make late-game melee more feasible compared to splash-burn-shoot armies. This also allows for an easier re-creation of high-level melee army after losing everything. Changes that are applied:
  • Guard level 1 XP requirement 120 => 100
  • Guard level 2 XP requirement 450 => 180
  • Guard level 3 HP 800 => 1200, damage 30 => 50, XP requirement 900 => 300
  • Guard level 4 HP 1300 => 2000, damage 50 => 120
  • Knight level 1 XP requirement 300 => 180, knockback resistance 60% => 80%
  • Knight level 2 HP 750 => 1000, knockback resistance 60% => 80%
  • Knight level 3 HP 1100 => 1600, knockback resistance 70% => 80%, damage 40 => 80 (note that knights attack faster than guards)
  • Goblin level 1 XP requirement 120 => 30, price 150 food => 80 food
  • Goblin level 2 HP 260 => 320, XP requirement 250 => 80
  • Goblin level 3 HP 380 => 700, XP requirement 400 => 240, knockback resistance 0% => 30%
  • Goblin level 4 HP 480 => 1200, damage 90 => 100, knockback resistance 0% => 50%
  • Ghost level 1 XP requirement 400 => 300, freeze resistance 40% => 90%, price: 0 wood, 500 food, 800 gold => 400 wood, 200 food, 0 gold
  • Ghost level 2 XP requirement 1000 => 600, freeze resistance 60% => 90%
  • Ghost level 3 HP 1000 => 1400, knockback resistance 40% => 70%, freeze resistance 60% => 90%
• Frenzy Mages and Druids give a bigger bonus but massing them is less effective
  • Frenzy mage and druid bonuses to all units in a circle have diminishing returns now. Each additional bonus has less effect.
  • The base bonus for frenzy mage is increased from +4% attack speed to +10% attack speed. 10 frenzy mages will give about 50% attack speed boost. Maximum attack speed increase is 10x. It takes about 75 frenzy mages to achieve that (compared to 23 in previous versions). However, the benefit of having a few frenzy mages is greatly increased.
  • The druid hit points regen bonus is increased from +30% to +50%. 10 druids will give about +150% health regen speed. It takes 78 druids to reach 10x faster health regen (compared to 18 in previous versions). However, the benefit from having a couple druids is greatly increased.
• Holding on to your bank-circles becomes more important as they now level up slower. HP increased to help with keeping them alive. Max level bank profit increased.
  • Level 1 bank HP 300 => 600
  • Level 2 bank HP 600 => 1200, XP requirement from 300 => 500
  • Level 3 bank HP 900 => 2000, income from 10 => 12
• Multiple storehouses now makes sense:
  • Workers will use the closest storehouse to bring their resources to
  • Workers harvest the closest resource if there are more than one available of the same type (e.g. the tree closest to the storehouse, in case there are multiple trees on the circle)
  • Storehouse price increased from 50 => 200 wood (note that almost all leaders get free storehouse in a circle they conquer)
  • Starting resource of wood is increased by 150 to cover the price of the first storehouse
  • Storehouse level 2 resource bonus increased from 10% => 20%, HP from 1000 => 2000, XP requirement from 1000 => 2500
  • Storehouse level 3 resource bonus from 30% => 50%. HP from 1300 => 3000.
• Unit and leader balance
  • Undead leader can no longer recruit regular workers because zombies can work
  • Undead leader no longer recruits mermen
  • Wyona the watery queen has more mermaid-oriented recruit list and frogs
  • Tenebria the Tribal King can recruit all living worker types
  • The Barbarian, Builder and Demian the Dragon can now recruit hammermen.
  • Ghosts and frost ghosts have no movement penalty on water biomes
  • Golem wood cost 10 => 100
  • Pumpkin necromancers are no longer slower than regular units
  • Barracks now spawns Hammermen
  • Price for upgrading wall increased from 1000 wood => 2000 wood
  • Giant Poison Frog damage 5 => 30
  • Void Queen strength rating is reduced from 3000 to 1800 so it spawns more easily and in greater numbers
  • Evil Mermaid price decreased from 150 food to 90 food
  • Mermaid Archer price from 100 food, 100 wood to 150 food, 150 wood
  • Mermaid Spearman price went from 100 wood, 500 food to 100 gold, 500 food
  • Mermaid Lord attack speed bonus increased from 5% to 20%
  • Mermaid Lord price decreased from 5000 wood and gold to 2000 wood and gold

Usability Improvements

• When buying new units and buildings the tooltip shows which resource types are missing, eg. wood.
• When building units and buildings, you can hold down left click to multi-spawn! For some buildings, multi-spawn is not enabled by default. Hold down SHIFT, in this case, to prevent the building type from being de-selected (e.g. storehouse).
• Advanced build options menu has units from Life Control and Camp buildings (Extra life, Frenzy Mage, Druid, goblins, ghosts, mushrooms). They become available once you get the respective building.
• The bank is using multi-build now so it's not necessary to re-select it from the menu when building multiple banks.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where changing the in-game languages would not update some menu texts until re-opening of the same menu.
• Fixed visual discrepancy in which units appeared in different sizes on the UI buttons.
• Fixed: units were sometimes unresponsive to move/attack orders after loading a save game.
• Fixed issue with saving sound and other settings.
• Fixed AI difficulty unlock criteria texts.
• Fixed localization issue with burning damage stats.
• Added validation for finding common typos with unit stats, e.g. damage is smaller than 1 gives an error now.
• Fixed: circles not playing ambient sounds after loading a game.
• Fixed an issue in which your units would aggro nearby circles unintentionally.
• Fixed the flickering health bar when a lot of damage was dealt to a single target.
• Fixed the unintentionally small damage done by mermaid priests.
• Fixed: Swift the scavenger lord gets a storehouse in each circle.
• Fixed a localization issue with Czech and Polish languages in the settings menu.

• Harder difficulty levels are harder in general, especially on large maps. On XL maps, on Impossible difficulty, there are now circles that may stop, for example, 200 expert horse archers from passing through
• Hostile circles with human population have more options for units and buildings, including towers, wizard, apprentices and healers
• Pumpkin field circles have a chance of having defensive towers and extra pumpkin warriors so they are better defended
• Void Queens and Wraith Mages can spawn in deadly, large packs
• Ghost forest can have more, well, ghosts

• Double clicking on a unit now selects all units of that type on their different respective levels. When you click on guard, it selects guard, big guard, huge guard, royal guard
• Shift + left-clicking on a unit will now add all units of that type to selection. As opposed to adding only that one unit. For example, select guards, then shift + click on knights to add all knights to selection. Now you have all guards and all knights in circle selected

• Fixed pumpkin-warrior damage output
• Changed the achievement "necromancer pact" so it triggers with level 1 necromancers (apprentices), as many players felt that it's not working while it actually required you to level up the necromancers. Works now with level 1-s as well
• Changed the achievement "worker army" so it works with level 2 workers too. Previously it required you to have 100 level 1 workers. Level 2 did not count. Now they both count
• Fixed an issue where starting a map vs AI and not selecting a difficulty resulted in map having weak creatures. The AI was strong but neutral circles had few enemies
• Fixed an issue which caused players to be unable to capture circles when playing vs AI (Barandur the Builder gained a gold pile in a new circle, but the gold pile was ‘loyal’ to the player. So if AI was playing as Barandur the Builder, there would be AI controlled gold piles which prevented the human player from capturing the circle unless the players harvests said gold pile)
• Fixed some issues that prevented high level enemies from spawning on high difficulties. You can now face crazier stuff on large maps. Like a 35000+ strength circles

• Added an attack move! Press ‘Q’ or click the attack move-button in the lower right corner. Then left-click the target location to perform an attack move. Alternatively, hold down ‘Ctrl’ or ‘Alt’ when right-clicking the target location. Units will attack any enemy that they encounter on the way. The regular moving ignores targets on the way to enable escaping from battle
• Double click selects only one unit type, e.g. guards. It used to be that it selected all units in the circle by category (like melee or ranged)
• Added keyboard controls overview in the settings menu
• Added hotkey ‘E’ to switch between simple and advanced build menus
• Going from advanced build menu to regular build menu, no longer deselects the selected units
• Units prefer to fight closer targets more intelligently. This also reduces the risk of losing your back-row troops to ranged opponents
• Display of strength and number of selected units is more visible now. It's in the bottom-middle of the screen.

• Huntable boss monsters got large HP and damage boosts
• Horse archer level 1 is now less powerful and more expensive: HP reduced from 250 to 180, damage reduced from 10 to 8, price increased from 120 food, 75 gold => 120 food and 120 gold
• Monster Mushrooms are more likely to spawn Vampires and Ghosts. Used to spawn mostly Zombies
• Removed personal bonuses from camps, storehouses and mystery boxes.
• The Goblin King got +10 armor
• Vampire level 6 got +10 armor
• Most buildings received armor and had their HP adjusted accordingly to to adjust for this balance tweak. Sunken Ruins and Sinister Towers have a bit less HP, while stables have a bit more
• Ron the Rebel King (the Knight Boss) got more resistance to knockback and additional armor
• The Goblin King got more resistance to knockback and damage 15 => 35, which will be further boosted if it's a huntable boss monster
• Giant Frogman and Giant Poison Frog now have increased poison resistance
• Giant Frogman got stronger poison attack, which does less direct damage
• Pumpkin Warrior got a damage boost from 5 to 10, and more knockback
• Axe Thrower boss gets a large knockback boost
• Decreased the Frog Witch’s attack speed, and gave the attack a tiny area of effect splash

• Fixed an issue where vampires lifesteal ability was 1000 times better than intended (meant to be 50%, was 50000% of damage dealt)
• Fixed the issue that caused the sound settings to be reset after each match. This should not happen anymore. However, if it does still occur, be sure to reach out on the forum in the ‘bug reports’-section.
• Fixed an issue where AI in Imperial Conflict stopped expanding
• Display of strength and number of selected units is more visible now. It's in the bottom-middle of the screen
• Fixed a bug that caused units to ignore certain enemies in a circle
• Fixed a bug that caused that Druid tooltip to not show
• Fixed a bug where some projectile sounds were playing in circles that are not discovered, most notably when playing vs AI
• Sleeping NPC’s can no longer move around while sleeping