What's New

The latest improvements to Legio Aeterna.

1 August 2026

Work for a faction

  • Ask a faction contact for work and they give you jobs which raises your standing with that faction.
  • If a faction barely knows you the work is small. If they think badly of you they will not pay, but you can still work for standing alone.
  • Reach high standing and the faction sends you one letter inviting you in. At Esteemed you can call in a favour.
  • The faction panel now only shows what your standing actually gets you.

Homestead and city quests

  • Getting a homestead and founding a city are now quests in your journal, with every way to unlock them listed.
  • They stay in the journal until you finish them, and closing the scroll does not lose them.

New cities on the map

  • Travel to an ancient city that is not on your map yet and it gets added, with a marker and its own region. It trades and reacts to events like any other city.

Chariot racing

  • New driver model that holds the reins properly in both hands.
  • The horses' hooves touch the ground now, and the team leaves wheel tracks and hoof marks in the sand.
  • The reins are straps that hang loose and pull tight as the team runs.

Battle campaigns

  • A unit that dies breaks apart and leaves wreckage on the tile, which clears over the next turns.
  • Enemy attacks show the real damage they did.
  • Settlements on the battle map are drawn for that view: huts around a hall for the tribes, a laid-out plan for Rome.

Talking

  • Threatening someone in a conversation stays a conversation. Only actually attacking starts a fight.
  • When your ship is ready you can ask a companion to come with you, and they answer.

When a turn fails

  • If a turn fails you can run it again. If it gets cut off you can get the full text back.

Speed

  • The villa, homestead and city views load in the background while you play, so they open straight away.
  • Smaller download on first load, and the 3D files are kept instead of downloaded again every visit.
  • General 3D performance improvements.

Fixes

  • A dice check uses the difficulty the scene asked for instead of a default one.

23 July 2026

A home on the road

  • The first time you rest on the open road, a sealed scroll offers you a homestead. Accept it to claim a roadside home (woodland or seaside by where you build).
  • Add buildings, a fishing boat, watermill, apiary, dye vats, bread oven and more, and work the land: hunt, fish and forage.

The villa is now a full estate

  • Claim a villa and run it as an estate, with a household to manage. You restore it with materials, not coin.
  • Build a kitchen, baths, library, peristyle and great hall, with gardens and farm plots. Presses make wine and oil, workshops turn wool into cloth and hide into leather, and you hire staff who work the grounds for no wages.
  • Animals in the pens eat from your stores each day, and starve if you do not feed them.

Found a city

  • Earn or buy a founder's charter (citizens only), then found a city for 600₳ plus materials. Earn it through top career rank or Senate standing, or buy one for 450₳.
  • Build it on a grid across five tiers, from a camp to a full Colonia. Appoint a governor, answer the Curia's petitions, keep unrest down, and defend it in a pitched battle when it is raided.

Found a village

  • Non-citizens found a tribal village instead: buy the land-right for 250₳ (or earn it), then found for 400₳.
  • Five tiers led by a Headman, with a rustic building set (longhouse, mead hall, moot ring, sacred grove). Rome can demand tribute or send an expedition against you.

Run a gladiator school

  • Buy a gladiator school for 900₳ in an arena city. Recruit fighters, equip them from your stores, train them, and stage bouts you can watch.
  • Win for purse and fame, pay for a mercy when you lose, handle life events among the familia, and free a favourite fighter.

Look after your holdings

  • Your villa, homestead and colony need looking after each day. Yields collect in a steward's ledger to settle line by line, in person for free or from afar for a fifth cut.
  • Buildings wear down and need repair, and a matter can come up at each holding, shown on a decision card. A new Goods tab keeps the account book.

Crafting and trade

  • A full production chain: gather raw materials, refine them at your properties, then build with them or sell them on. Around thirty new goods.
  • Recipes are now patterns you buy from the specialist in their home region, and a new Recipes tab shows what each one makes. Weapons and armour craft instantly.
  • Merchants now stock the region you are standing in, not your home region.

The arena and the races

  • Your colonia's amphitheatre becomes a local arena with its own ladder of opponents.
  • Drive the chariot race yourself in 3D instead of watching a dice roll. A new upgrade bay sells wheels and frames and repaints the livery, which change how it races and looks.
  • The race ends on a finishing board with places, names, times and your rewards.

The Olympic Games

  • The Games are rebuilt: eight events over a four-day festival, most played as 3D minigames in a full Olympia, foot races, long jump, javelin, discus, chariot, the bareback Keles and more.
  • Foot races are run first-person on a tap-for-pace rhythm with rivals. Every event has a betting board and a practice run.

Take command

  • Command a force of your own, a Roman detachment through the legion or a tribal warband you muster, with named companies, provisioning, pay and morale. It appears in your scenes.
  • Warband clashes play as a command loop, one order each round. Pitched hex battles were reworked: bigger maps, water, weather and battlefield motion.
  • Each battle opens on a council and ends on a ledger of the fallen, and the battle screen was cleared so the field fills the view.

Combat

  • Ranged weapons work in a fight now: with a bow, sling or thrown weapon you get Ranged Attack and Aimed Shot. New throwables to buy, the pilum and the Numidian javelin.
  • Your Ludus drills play out inside your fights, and damage numbers are honest, the number shown is exactly the health lost.

Skills

  • Reworked the skill trees so skills matter more and are no longer left to the GM to decide.
  • Shield Wall keeps more of your warband alive, Intimidation steadies your men against mutiny, and Presence raises the standing you earn.
  • Augury warns of ambushes on the road, Sea Legs cuts your voyage fares, and Forced March speeds the march.

On the road and at sea

  • A new pool of roadside events: tolls, shakedowns, a funeral procession, a stuck supply cart, a tax collector's stop, with the amounts set to fair sums.
  • Marching with a force draws its own stops: patrols that block the road, rival bands, river fords, men slipping away at the count.
  • Sea voyages have small events now, a good catch, bad water, a sailor's lesson, a torn sail. A night's sleep takes you to dawn, and baths and a villa cook restore more energy.

Quests

  • Quest steps are now clearly shown and can be acted on, for example by talking to the right person.
  • A new quest type: track a missing person from town to town, following informants and false trails to find them.
  • Some people you help now travel with you until their quest is done, appearing in your scenes along the way.
  • Quests vary more: the game favours ones that use its systems, avoids ones that read like your last few, and remembers what it has already offered.
  • Losing a quest item now matters, and a quest completes only on what you actually do, not the narrator's word, which should fix quests getting stuck.

Talk to anyone

  • Hold a private conversation with almost anyone in a scene, an owned gladiator, your governor, your villa staff, or anyone else you meet on the road.
  • A talk can turn: an NPC can take offence and attack, drop a lead that becomes a quest, or accept an item you hand over. Chatting with an NPC costs one turn for the whole conversation.

Multiplayer

  • A social layer opened from the menu as Multiplayer: citizens, letters and contests.
  • Write to any citizen with a gift, challenge their gladiator to a wagered bout, duel them in person, or play Tabula for stakes. You earn only the wager, so it never becomes a grind.
  • Host a live event: a chariot race for up to eight players where the chariots collide and can wreck, a pitched battle on a historical field, an Olympic contest where everyone plays the same event at once, a Tabula match, or a bout between two schools' fighters.

The world reacts to you

  • Raids, disasters, visiting traders and civic visits now come to you based on your situation rather than at random, paced so they never pile up.

Standing, factions and careers

  • Owning things and taking part now moves your standing: your first property, a villa tier, founding a city, raising a force, freeing a gladiator, and wins in the arena and the Games.
  • Four new factions: the Smugglers, the Equites, the Roman Administration and the Deserters. Buy goodwill at set prices up to Friendly; higher standing must be earned.
  • A faction you have pleased may send you a letter within days; it can open into a quest.
  • Careers do more now: a merchant earns rank on voyages and can navigate, a scholar can teach and write, an officer can take a warband to the field.

Bring your own key

  • A new Own Key plan: bring your own provider key (OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and more) and play unlimited turns on it, your key kept on your own device. Or run a local server like Ollama, free and private.
  • Own Key unlocks the full-control set: Director Mode, custom characters, unlimited saves, and the narrative dials.

Interface

  • Various interface changes.
  • New and softer sounds throughout.

Fixes and mobile

  • Fixed the property income bug that ground condition and pay to the floor on reload.
  • A fight in the wild no longer has its aftermath narrated inside a town tavern.
  • Same-name people in different cities no longer merge into one, and dismissed or dead NPCs stay gone.
  • On mobile the money, health and energy numbers read a step smaller, and the character-creation Back button no longer towers over the others.

6 July 2026

Updated UI

  • The game has a new look.
  • Scene changes paint in through an ink reveal instead of a plain fade.
  • Action buttons are redrawn everywhere, in scenes, combat, dice and the Olympics. Combat buttons are tinted by type.

Storytelling

  • The GM should repeat itself less.
  • Longer storylines now run a set number of chapters and reach a real ending instead of drifting on.
  • Rank and office are never simply handed to you in the telling. The world can tempt you or spread rumours, but titles come only through the career systems.

The Ludus

  • A new training hall, the Ludus, opens from the top bar in gladiator cities, next to the Arena. Step in and drill any combat form. This will be the beginning of the Ludus management system.

Combat

  • Two new attacks appear when you carry a blade: the Feint and the Blade Lock.

The legion

  • The legion career is rebuilt, now the Cursus Militiae. Your rank follows your war record, not time served: enemies killed in the field, campaign battles won, distance marched, roads and forts built.
  • Two new fronts to fight: the Gallic War (Avaricum, Gergovia, the siege of Alesia) and the Illyrian War (Siscia, Salona, the siege of Andetrium), each ending in a Triumph.
  • As an officer you carry a Command rating into hex battles. It steadies your men's morale and lets you Rally once a turn.

Your Journey

  • The Journey page has a new gallery, Scenes of the Empire. Every backdrop your character has seen, grouped by kind, with a lightbox to open each one full size.

Fixes and mobile

  • Fixed the villa Upgrade button being dead while you stood at your villa (same for property repair). When Upgrade is still greyed out, it now tells you why.
  • The roll die is bigger and scales with your screen.
  • Mobile: the Architecture window scrolls as one panel, the Hippodrome horse-market Buy button no longer overlaps the stats, and campaign options scroll on small screens.

26 June 2026

Careers & Politics

  • The rank screen has been rebuilt: browse and pursue any career path, track progress with a checklist, view the full ladder, and switch paths after a cooldown. Careers will get an overhaul one by one.
  • Entering the Cursus Honorum now requires Roman citizenship. The storyteller detects life changes (discharge, freedom, citizenship) and updates your standing automatically.
  • Roman citizens can stand for office, courting three voter blocs (Senate, Equites, Plebs) over a week of campaigning with speeches, games, grain, and discreet coin.
  • Face rivals in Forum debates where each bloc weighs your arguments, sway factions with targeted gifts, and host villa feasts to win over great houses.
  • Election day is now ceremonial: votes are counted bloc by bloc, with one final wager allowed before the result. Winning grants lasting rewards.
  • Each office and rank now provides permanent benefits (stat gains, items like signet rings or togas, or new skills). Honourably discharged veterans leave the service ladder.

Character, Skills & Progression

  • Redesigned skill trees with detailed upgrades.
  • Expanded character sheet.
  • Mounts and companions now appear as tap-through tiles for quick actions (call, mount, dismiss).

World, Story & Quests

  • Letters can be sent to anyone you've met via the Journal. Replies arrive days later in their own voice, sometimes with gifts.
  • Journal updates: stories appear as quest cards, People lists collapse by region, and only important named figures are retained.
  • New Game Master setting to toggle quest hooks without affecting active quests.

Battles & Combat

  • Enemy commanders now build bridges and push toward crossings instead of stalling.
  • Single bridges can no longer be destroyed, preventing soft-locks on narrow maps.
  • Battlefield visuals should now render at full clarity on phones.
  • Fixed an issue where combat could trigger incorrectly.

Economy, Equipment & Property

  • Market stalls now display remaining stock; identical goods stack when selling.
  • Equipment stacks identical items and transitions smoothly when swapping gear.
  • Property income is now delivered as a single weekly summary instead of daily notices.

World Map & Navigation

  • Cleaner map tiles and markers.
  • Stacked city events now fan out for easier selection.
  • Senate debates appear as distinct markers.

Turns & Flow

  • Resting and eating no longer consume turns.

Polish & UI

  • As part of a larger concentrated effort, redesigning and standardization will be visible across several modals. This is ongoing and may change with future updates.
  • Added a toggle for full screen mode.
  • Improved responsiveness across buttons and interactions.
  • Numbers animate when updating.
  • Scrolls unroll as they open.
  • Result screens have been visually refined for clarity.

Found a bug or have an idea for the next update?

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