- Fall of an Empire: Warpath - Coming November 12 - 3 October 2026
Rise from barbarity. Warpath is the first expansion for Fall of an Empire, coming November 12. Wishlist it now. Hi all, I've been working on this alongside the patches for a while, and I can finally have something to show you. Up to now the Grand Campaign has focused entirely on playing as imperial factions, but Warpath will let you play everyone else. Take a mountain kingdom or a steppe horde and try to build a legacy that will last the ages. The Empire is weakening, its armies are worn out and its wealth is sitting just across the border. Under Warpath a tribal chieftain can end up an emperor - if his tribe holds together long enough to get there. Play every faction in the Grand CampaignEvery faction on the Grand Campaign map is playable with Warpath. Tribes get their own events and decisions, so playing as a chief looks nothing like running an imperial province. You're doing things l…
- Patch 2.07 - Resources and Economy and Quality of Life - 29 September 2026
Hi everyone,I have a big new update with a lot of QOL work and bug fixes that's ready to go. Highlights from this one are the ability to see where resources actually flow from and to on the resources map mode, a totally revamped economy screen and rebalanced economy - along with all the other things that I've mentioned below.I'll also be announcing some interesting new stuff for the game shortly, so stay tuned.Cheers,JoeEconomy and resourcesResource production, demand and starting stores have been rebalanced across the campaign. Factions begin with a few months of goods instead of multi-year stockpiles, manufactured goods come from their processing buildings, and subjects meet their own needs before sending sustainable surpluses to their liege.The Economy screen now breaks each resource down into producers, stockpiles and consumers, with clearer production and usage flows. Production ch…
- Fall of an Empire is now available on macOS - 8 September 2026
Hi all,I've just released a native Apple Silicon version of the game. If you're on a Mac you can download it from Steam the same as Windows.This is Apple Silicon only - M1 and later - on macOS Sonoma (14) or newer, with 16 GB of memory running on Metal. Intel Macs aren't supported unfortunately, I looked at doing both but it would have meant maintaining two Mac builds and I don't own an Intel Mac to properly be able to test it.I've implemented MetalFX, which is similar to DLSS. I've been testing on an M4 with 16 GB, which I recommend. An M1 with 16 GB should also be able to run it if you turn the quality down a bit. Since Macs have shared memory instead of separate RAM and VRAM, you'll probably need more memory than Windows to run the larger event models.The first time you open it, macOS may sit there for a minute or two checking the app, but after that it should be fine. Since I only h…
- Beta Patch 2.07 - Economy Work, Bugfixes, Rebalancing - 3 September 2026
Hi all,New update to the beta branch: I've been working on some bugs and QOL changes to try and get everything working as smoothly as possible before starting on the next DLC. The main features here are a redone economy screen and a change to the resources map mode that makes it easier to see where resources are coming from and going to. Additionally, I've rebalanced the gameplay to make civil wars more viable (Invite to Rebellion is easier, Western Rebels get a more powerful economy).Hopefully I'll be able to release this update publicly within the next week after it's gotten some more feedback. Also see below for a full list of changes.Cheers,JoeEconomy and resourcesResource production, demand and starting stores have been rebalanced across the campaign. Factions begin with a few months of goods instead of multi-year stockpiles, manufactured goods come from their processing buildings,…
- Patch 2.06 - New Buildings, Faction Selection and Bugfixes - 30 August 2026
Hi all, 2.06 is now ready to go and I've added quite a few more bugfixes and a couple of features vs the beta.The main updates though are QOL changes - I've tried to see as many little places where the game is harder to understand or work with.I've also added a few other things like new unique religious buildings (one per religion) and a 3D faction selection screen. This is going to be very important in a certain future expansion with a particularly large map...As always, let me know what you think. Cheers,JoeFaction selectionNew games now start on a 3D tabletop with a paper map and banners at each capital.Click a capital name in the sidebar (or on the map) to zoom the table onto that settlement.Scenarios stay hidden until their content packs are actually loaded this session, so turning a pack on mid-session no longer offers a campaign you cannot play.MilitaryYou can split a player army…
- Beta Patch 2.06 - New Faction Selection, Bugfixes - 27 August 2026
Hi everyone, I've got a new update out now in beta. Faction selection is now on a 3d tabletop map, you can split armies again after merging them, and I've gone through a lot of the recent bug reports and sorted them out.Cheers, Joe Faction selectionNew games now start on a 3D tabletop with a paper map and banners at each capital.Click a capital name in the sidebar (or on the map) to zoom the table onto that settlement.MilitaryYou can split a player army or navy from the Units tab. Select the companies you want, and they form a new force at the same location with their share of supplies, morale and veterancy. The original commander stays with the original force.Personal Guards, levies, rebels, foederati, embarked armies, and fleets in port, on blockade, or carrying troops cannot be split.Player armies and navies can be renamed from the sidebar, the same way settlements can.The military s…
- Patch 2.05 - Personal Guards, Graphics and Bugfixes - 6 August 2026
Hi all!I'm finally ready to release 2.05 and it is out of beta (with quite a lot more changes added since the beta began). The main feature in this patch is the personal guard, and I've also spent a lot of time rebalancing things, fixing bugs, improving performance and getting the game looking as good as it can (for instance, it now has much better lighting and more realistic rivers). From here I'm going to start work on the two major expansions that I have planned - I'll keep you all updated with more information and dev diaries on these two.Cheers,JoePersonal GuardForm a Personal Guard from the Military screen.Choose companies when founding, replace them later, and track recruiting per company.Imperial courts get a larger guard (double the normal household roster).The guard is named after your ruler.If the guard is wiped out, you can re-found it.Guard composition has its own screen ra…
- Beta Patch 2.05 - 23 July 2026
Hi all, I've just released patch 2.05 to beta. You can access it by right-clicking the game in Steam -> Properties -> Game Versions and Betas and enabling the beta. It's mostly bug fixes but there are a few new features and some graphical improvements as well.I'm going to leave this in beta for a few days and do some testing of it, if there are any issues I'll patch them before it's fully released.VisualsImproved the graphics a lot by increasing the strength of the sun and adding grass meshes and proper rivers that cut into the terrain.Added HDR adaptation.Characters and politicsHistorical ruler battle records now appear correctly.Character epithets are now localised.Culture and religion population groups now have proper names.Province succession rules are enforced correctly.Fixed cyclic liege-subject relationships.RebellionsRebellions now have distinct movements with their own demands.…
- The Provinces and Modding Update - 14 July 2026
Hello all,The new Provinces and Modding update is now live. It's the biggest update in the game by far, with roughly a third of the whole game's work gone into it. My goal with this update was to make the game moddable, more fun and more replayable, and fix up the main annoyances that players were having. To do so I took the step of entirely redoing the UI from scratch - literally every single screen and UI component has been done from scratch, which also makes it entirely moddable. I've also added the ability to play as other provinces - this is something a lot of people have been asking for, so now you're able to play as any province in the Empire and work your way up to Emperor, playing your way up the power blocs from the other side and building up a force of allies to fight a civil war. There have been a ton of other changes - such as a new battle screen with more control for the p…
- Beta Patch 2.03 - 12 July 2026
Hi all, got a new patch for you that should fix some issues in the beta.New FeaturesNative world glances - World-map glances are now composited natively by the engine through an offscreen atlas renderer instead of the web layer. They are smoother, flicker-free, cheaper to draw, and stay stuck to their location with no lag. Glances also load their detail on hover and stay centred and stable while you zoom.Modder world glances - Mods can now register their own native world glances through the atlas renderer, with content-pack WebUI assets mapped automatically. The Sicily pack has been migrated to the new renderer.Military command actions - Armies now have right-click context actions for issuing orders, and military commanders can be promoted straight from the command UI.Settlement building management - You can now demolish and downgrade settlement buildings, reorder the build queue to an…
- Beta for 2.0 is now live - 3 July 2026
Hi all,Great news! The beta for the new version (2.0) is now live. It will be running until the update is actually released on the 14th. This one is absolutely huge. The biggest things are the totally redone UI, the ability to play as a province and the fact that the game has been rebuilt from the ground up to allow for modding. An absolute ton of other stuff too (revamped battles with full player control, a bureaucracy system, so many more things I can't actually remember them all).To enter the beta, right-click on the game in Steam and click Properties, then go to Game Versions and Betas and choose "beta".Naturally, since this update has so many changes it will be bound to have a lot of bugs. Please let me know if you run into them, and I'll see what I can do before the update is formally released.The modding tools have been released as part of the update too. In your game's files, un…
- Beta Coming July 2 - 27 June 2026
Hello all! The beta for the next Fall of an Empire update will be going live on July 2, with the full update planned for July 14.This is a very large update - by my reckoning about 1/3 to 1/2 of the entire work up to release. The biggest changes are probably the ability to play as a province, the new modding features and the new interface. Almost every major screen has been rebuilt or heavily changed: the main menu, the HUD, sidebars, diplomacy, peace talks, the economy screen, court management, religion, military command, battle reports, events, notifications, tooltips and world glances. It also now runs through the custom UI runtime built for the game, which unfortunately has added quite some time on to the development process.There is also a lot more happening in the campaign itself. Governments have been expanded, governors matter more, provinces now show more useful information, pe…
- Hotfix and Updates - 13 June 2026
Hi all,I've just pushed a small patch that should solve the issue of being unable to complete the tutorial due to Marcellus being made a bishop. That's all for this current patch - at the same time I've been extremely busy with the big new update. Unfortunately I had some negotiations fall through for a library I wanted to use to run the new UI on, so I've been working on making a totally new HTML renderer - quite a large task, especially when it needs to have good performance in a game.This has blown out the development time for the update by a lot but I'm hoping that it should be ready for a beta soon. The upcoming patch is absolutely massive, a thousand commits compared to three thousand for the entire rest of the game's development, so expect to see a lot of changes.Cheers,Joe
- Dev Diary: Playing as a Province - 25 May 2026
Hi all,Today I want to talk about the main feature in the upcoming update: the ability to play as provinces, and the mechanics they get.Provinces are very different to independent factions - almost the exact opposite, since they’re on the other side of most systems.Province gameplay is centred around building your way up and attaining power. The main track here is the appointment to offices: you can be a member of the imperial court - such as the magister militum - a subordinate there, a leader of an army or a navy. To do so, you’ll need to win a race against other applicants for the role. Your skill will matter here, but naturally since this is a late Rome-inspired game what matters more is the emperor’s opinion of you and your perceived loyalty. Commanding a military makes you a commander of that military, plus ones below it in the hierarchy. You’re also playing on the other side of t…
- Dev Diary: Mod Editor - 10 May 2026
Hello all,Apologies for the delay since the last dev diary, I've been very busy with getting the work done for this new update, which is going to be absolutely massive. It's got three big features: the new UI, the ability to play as any Rephsian faction, and the modding tools. I've been making some really good progress with all three of them: the new UI is looking good, and there has been a lot added and updated to make the game way easier to understand and more fun, the ability to play as multiple factions is also looking great and doesn't have too much left to do. Hopefully I will be able to get a beta out this week or next at the latest, so that you will all be able to check it out yourselves. Today I want to talk about the modding tools and how they work. They're really quite in-depth, so should hopefully make it much easier to author your own campaigns and content for the game. Fir…
- Patch 1.256 - 28 April 2026
Hi all, this an update that's a got a bit more background work going on that should help for the next patch which will include the new UI, and ability to play as other characters. The main event here is migrating the game to UE5.7 from 4.27, which has allowed some noticeable visual improvements as shown below - you can see a much better-looking ocean and better lighting on the forests, and the image itself looks sharper and doesn't have the blurry effect the game had on UE4. It also includes a bunch of bugfixes and balance changes.New FeaturesEconomy AutomationThere is a new auto-buy option that fills stockpile shortages before army supplies are handed out. That should stop armies taking attrition just because the faction was briefly missing a resource at the wrong moment.Auto-sell thresholds and auto-buy settings are saved properly, and trade value now refreshes with monthly income so…
- Hotfix 1.245.3 and Some Updates - 16 April 2026
Hi all, Just a small patch for today that fixes up a few bugs and does some minor rebalancing while I work on the next major update (which seems to continually grow - I am not immune to scope creep). I'm hoping to get it out by the start of May. It will include the new UI, ability to play as other characters, and modding tools.Originally I wanted to have all the modding tools available and ready to go before the next patch, but instead I'm going to bundle them in with it. The biggest problem is that currently the UI, landscape, province borders, rivers and settlements require the Unreal Editor to work with, but that means shipping a massive editor - probably about 100GB - due to engine modifications, and also requires a lot of legal wrangling and work to be able to create a new editor for each release.Instead, my plan is to make more things dynamically loaded at the start of the game (s…
- Patch 1.245 - 9 April 2026
v1.245 Patch Notes Hi all, this is a big new update, adding new event models and a proper pop system. Settlements now use a proper pop system, power blocs have been rebuilt into active political factions with their own interactions, armies can be merged and retrained far more cleanly, and the events now react to births, deaths, executions, spies, and rebellions. New Features Unified Pop SystemSettlements no longer treat population, culture, and religion as mostly separate top-level values. They now track actual pops defined by both culture and religion, and growth, unrest, conversion, and assimilation all happen at that level. The settlement sidebar now shows a sortable demographics table with detailed breakdowns, religious diversity has been expanded across the map, and rebellions now emerge from the most aggrieved group instead of abstract unrest. Power Blocs & SenatePower blocs now f…
- Dev Diary: Other Factions - 6 April 2026
Hi all, some updates on the latest patch: it’s getting close to release and should be out in the next couple of days. The patch ended up growing quite a bit from what was planned: originally it was just meant to be a refresh of the event models, but it grew to include a new population system that separates cultures and religions, new UI features like a history of your faction’s rulers, custom interactions for power blocs, data changes to make modding easier and a ton of bug fixes and balance changes.This week I’m going to talk about a feature that's been one of the most requested since the game was first announced: the ability to play as other factions, not just the Empire itself.The Empire is made up of over twenty provinces, each with its own culture, its own governor, and its own ambitions. It's time to let you play from the other side of the imperial hierarchy.When you start a new g…
- Patch 1.244 - Religion, Military, Compliance - 24 March 2026
v1.244 Patch Notes The biggest update yet. Military command has been rebuilt from the ground up, character loyalty replaced with a proper compliance system, organised religions get bishops, and there are now victory conditions. Plus a mountain of diplomacy, economy, and UI work. Of course since there are so many changes for this update there are bound to be some bugs - please let me know if you run into any and I'll fix them up ASAP. I also didn't get around to finishing the Qwen 3.5-based event models and modding tools, but those should be ready to go in a few days. New FeaturesComplianceLoyalty and opinion have been merged into a single Compliance score (-50 to +50) that governs how willing a character is to follow your orders. It pulls from their personal loyalty, what they think of you, patronage ties, whether your reputation leans toward honour or dread, power bloc happiness, and s…
