- Class-specific items – Commanders lead better than ever with unique banners, mages command the elements with new staves, and more
- Significant AI improvements – AI rivals now develop their empires more effectively, for example through upgrading their outposts
- Balancing across the board – Unrest modifiers have been tweaked to make sprawling empires less overwhelmingly powerful, and many unit and item stats have changed
- Revamped army-strength logic – The method used for calculating army strength has been completely reworked, making evaluating threats easier for human and AI players alike
- Much more – see full patch notes below.