Hammerfist and Zaroth the Zealous Join The Fight!

The march to 24 leaders continues, and this week we’re introducing two very different kinds of troublemakers.

As you know, Circle Empires 2 launched with 12 unique leaders, and since then we’ve already expanded that roster with 6 additional arrivals. Over the coming weeks, we’re adding another 6 brand-new leaders, revealing 2 each week as they step into the spotlight.

By the end of this rollout, the total will reach 24 leaders to choose from, each bringing their own strengths, weaknesses, and distinct approach to the battlefield.

Let’s get into it!

Hammerfist

Hammerfist leads the Goblin faction, a wildly aggressive conglomeration built around quantity over quality. What goblins lack in physique, they more than compensate for with sheer numbers and a morally questionable ability to extract value from the battlefield.

Goblins gain large economic rewards from fallen enemies, allowing successful wars to rapidly fuel expansion. If you can keep the momentum going, the faction can spiral into terrifying economic growth surprisingly early.

Their armies rely on swarming tactics, expendable fighters and overwhelming pressure, but they still have tools for dealing with larger threats. Oil Catapults spread flaming destruction across tightly packed enemies, while their much larger cousin, the Giant Goblin, specializes in halving anything too bulky for the smaller goblins to handle themselves.

The faction thrives on chaos, constant expansion and turning every battlefield into a resource opportunity.

Zaroth the Zealous

Zaroth commands the Demons, a brutal faction centered around regeneration, devastating single-hit attacks and catastrophic late-game weaponry.

Demons rapidly recover from wounds and can regrow missing limbs with alarming efficiency. Some scholars have therefore suggested demons may somehow descend from octopus (octopi? octopuses?). The demons have declined to comment on this matter.

Their regenerative abilities and constant enthusiasm for civil wars caused demonic weapons to evolve around the concept of the death blow: massive singular strikes designed to destroy enemies outright instead of slowly damaging targets that will simply regrow their organs when you blink.

The faction excels at brutal direct engagements, combining regenerating frontliners with terrifying siege options and highly destructive technology. Zaroth also gains access to Aurochs alongside several particularly irresponsible doomsday devices.

Other Leaders, Improved

Celestria's units and technologies have received a wide range of adjustments to better integrate the faction into the universe. Balancing her unique mechanics is something we'll continue refining over time, and the full list of changes can be found in the patch notes.

Dennis the Destroyer has also been adjusted and now gains considerably more value from spreading conflict across the world map.

Visual Improvements

This update includes updated art for the new level 3 spawners, giving them a much more distinct appearance and helping larger settlements feel more visually impressive during the later stages of a match.

Fixes and Performance

A large number of fixes and optimizations have also been included in this update.

Changing leaders no longer removes custom-made units from your roster list. We also fixed several issues related to error logging that were reducing overall performance.

Enemies who capture circles will now sell any wall that blocks them from accessing neighboring regions. While this was technically a bug, it also accidentally became a fairly creative exploit.

Continuing a daily challenge now correctly uses random units instead of default leader units, and roster management should behave far more consistently when removing default units from leaders.

Many additional fixes related to recently added leaders have also been implemented.

UI Improvements

When the selected unit stat panel has a lot of information, the UI now displays a "Show more" button to make navigation a bit cleaner and easier to manage.

As always, thank you for all the feedback, balance discussions, bug reports and wonderfully strange strategies you've been sending our way.

With four more leaders still waiting to be revealed, our roster is only going to get more colourful.

See you among the circles!

Luminous