Cinematic explosions, a faster engine and a brand new menu

The biggest visual update so far: nuclear blasts you can fly around, battles you can watch from a few metres away, a game that runs much smoother on the same machine, and a new start menu.

Version française plus bas.

Cinematic explosions

An ICBM, four seconds in: the shock ball and the base surge rolling out. / Un ICBM, quatre secondes après : la boule de choc et le nuage qui roule au sol.

• Mushroom clouds are now real volumes, lit by the sun through their own depth: the cap, the stem, the condensation rings of the biggest bombs, and the base surge rolling out over the ground.
• The fireball boils, cracks and darkens with soot as it cools. Every puff of smoke has relief, its own shadow and a silver lining against the sun.
• A nuclear flash now whites out the whole screen.
• Fixed: glowing squares around very bright lights, white or black squares during a flash, the ground flooded orange when a silo fires close to the camera.

The same strike, ten seconds in: Classic on the left, Cinema on the right. / La même frappe, dix secondes après : Classiques à gauche, Cinéma à droite.

• It is a choice: Graphics, Explosions: Auto, Cinema or Classic. Classic keeps the explosions exactly as they were, and lighter. Auto picks Cinema on High and Ultra, Classic below.

The new setting, in the menu's drawer and in the pause. / Le nouveau réglage, dans le tiroir du menu et dans la pause.

A faster engine

Same picture, many more frames. Measured on the same computer, the same scenes, before and after:

• Sandbox, High, 1080p: 55 to 89 frames a second
• Sandbox, Ultra, 1080p: 31 to 47
• A nuclear exchange (Tsar, two ICBMs, a neutron bomb, rockets): 53 to 77
• The living world: 65 to 88

The ground only works out the effects that are really there, the flash lights leave the scene between flashes, the sun's shadows are redrawn every other frame, and the bloom blurs with half the reads.

A brand new menu

The new start menu. / Le nouveau menu de démarrage.

• The whole screen: the modes as cards, every map with a preview of its shape, the sizes with their kilometres, and your game on the right with its own settings and the big start button.
• The graphics, resolution, explosions and time of day are tucked in a drawer.
• On a phone: one column, the maps in a strip you swipe, the start button always at the bottom.

Up close

A cruiser burning where she was hit. / Un croiseur qui brûle là où il a été touché.

• Get close and warships, tanks and soldiers swap to detailed models: hulls, turrets that turn, decks, funnels, the heavy tank, the infantryman with his gas mask and red goggles.
• Shells that fall short raise columns of water; a ship burns where she was hit, her fires go with her, and she sinks burning.

Infantry marching on a town. / L'infanterie marche sur une ville.

And also

Every key and mouse drag can be changed. / Chaque touche et chaque glisser de souris se change.

• Controls: a new tab in the pause. Give any action any key or mouse drag; the game tells you when a key is taken from another action.
• Follow camera: Space now follows the unit you selected (a tank, a battalion, a ship, an aircraft), else the latest missile, else a plane in the air.
• Armies cross bridges again (one bridge in thirty-five was cut for them), railway viaducts no longer start inside a tunnel.
• The camera pulls back further on the big maps.
• A crash after a long press on touch screens is fixed.
• The tutorial no longer comes back at every game once you have started it.

On iPhone and iPad, this update is waiting for Apple's review.