Land is claimed on foot: a village sends a party of five settlers, and the zone becomes its own only when they are standing in it

Seekers set out once every two years to look for new land, so borders no longer spread on their own

Water is claimed by ships: build docks, build a fleet, and the sea along your coast becomes yours

Territorial waters are drawn as full zone squares, so the border runs across the surf instead of ending at the beach

Building is real work: the village marks out a plot, a builder walks over with a spade and digs, and only then does the house go up

Settling parties: an empty zone is no longer dropped in silence, up to ten civilians move in and start building there

Troop ships carry a company: eight tiles long, two masts, gun decks, up to forty warriors landed on an enemy shore

Warships patrol home waters in wartime and hunt enemy sail, so a troop ship can be intercepted at sea

Naval combat: ships of warring kingdoms fight on contact and sink

Ships plan a route around the landmass instead of nosing into every cape

Armies march by flow field: one shared path for the whole force, around lakes and ridges, with water as the last resort

A third of the army stays home as a garrison instead of leaving the village bare

Armies rout as a body once a village loses more than 70% of the force it sent out, then walk home, heal for a year and muster again

Wounds heal: a fed man who is not fighting recovers in two months

Alliances mean something: attack an ally and you are at war with the defender

Sign and break alliances yourself from the VILLAGES bar

Allied kingdoms trade every month, surplus moves to whoever is short and gold moves back

A rebellion starts a war on the spot, with the old kingdom attacking

Wiki panel in place of the old INSPECT button: 26 articles in 7 sections on how the world actually works

Lone people forage, so a pair placed on an empty world can feed itself instead of starving out

Living children limit per species, five for humans, so an island no longer ends up with ten thousand people

Old age is a curve instead of a cliff: deaths spread over ages 60 to 72 rather than a whole generation dying in one year

The spawn brush alternates sex, and the first six of a species are placed as grown adults

Felled trees grow back on their own spot after 18 months, and berry bushes with them

Swimming sprite: head and shoulders above water, one arm stroking, foam around, no legs

Villages spread houses and farms across their whole land instead of packing into one corner

Plague deaths now count in the yearly death total