Hello. I apologize for the delay in uploading the video. The new tribe will take a bit more time to complete. I’ve posted a notice with more details.

- Refined Patch Notes -

1. All trait upgrades are now amplified by 1.5×.
Tower shields have been removed. Instead, every time the tower loses 1000 HP, it enters an empowered state for 10 seconds, during which it only takes 10% of incoming damage.

2. The Alien trait has been reworked.
Strikes: Has a chance to trigger a chain of consecutive attacks. For each successful strike (up to 5 in a row), attack power, attack speed, and (for melee units) HP regeneration increase. The chain resets upon failure. HP is no longer restored when attacks miss.

3. Void units now gain more HP based on their size, similar to how Venom scaling works.

4. Venom Units 1 and 2 now deal slightly more HP-based damage.
Previously, trait scaling increased at a flat rate of 2% per upgrade. Now it increases proportionally based on upgrade count.
(e.g., at 200 upgrades: previously 500%, now 571%)
Additionally, a display issue has been fixed where trait values appeared lower than intended.
(Old display: 200 → Corrected display: 500)

5. Future Army traits now scale proportionally, like Venom.
Future Army 3: HP increased by 500. Skill damage no longer affects ranged attacks. Saw damage is doubled, and its range increases when the skill is activated.

6. Alliance units now inherit the current supply state based on trait stats at the time of spawning.
Alliance 4: The missile launch angle has been increased, and missile damage now scales with its speed. Also, with each multiple rocket launcher (MRL) attack, the range gradually decreases.

7. Fairy buff durations have been increased.

8. Fake Angel upgrade scaling has been improved.
Fake Angel 3: Extra attacks now scale with trait values, and range is increased by 1.
Fake Angel 4: Shield strength now increases proportionally with upgrade levels.

8. Trait activation stack requirements have been reduced for all races except Alliance and Void.

Seeing this pop up absolutely made my night, welcome back! It’s so cool seeing how their strengths amplify each other while covering weaknesses.
Venom protecting not only alliance’s 4, but their 2. One of the main weaknesses of alliance was their smaller units not surviving long enough to take advantage of supply. On the flip side, alliance provided constant firepower and knockback, counteracting the late game slowing of giant.

Fake angel’s 4, and by extension everyone else’s dodges, allowed their future army allies in the rear to repeatedly unleash the munitions of a small nation via skill completely risk free.

One of the scariest aspects of both devil and fairy individually is the prospect of overlapping magic from their 4s. Put them together behind double shield users and an unassailable wall of projectiles and OH BOY.

Void and alien are just vicious together. Void tanking while alien’s ranged army builds up, holding out until their 4 comes in to eviscerate.

Seeing (pretty much) everyone shine so was was wonderful, and I must resist writing a thesis lmao.

Let's goo finally atfer almost an year this is the perfect time to upload this one 2026

Orange finally got the perfect protector for their missile tank. the BIG BIG GREEN MONSTER.

i feel like if venom and void were in a team everything would’ve been over alot sooner.

People watch these videos for two things:
The fights and the background music

10:54  to 11:33  is a Great  example of how level ones are a great deal to our army

Venom and void would've been a crazy Duo

ANALYSIS OF Z ARCADE'S TEAM DUOS


ALLIANCE (Orange) and GIANTS (Green)
In my opinion, they have (arguably) the best team synergy overall, hence why they won the tournament. Alliance's tanks are some of the most useful units in theory (adding foot soldiers, setting mines, and rocket rains) and they finally get to shine because green's giants have so much HP and size that they body block the opponents attacks. Even some of the armored personnel carriers (APCs) are protected by giants, which helps to address the Internet's previous comments on the APCs dying early. Their overall low production capacity is its main weakness, and that is definitely exploitable by other teams. Congrats to ALLIANCE and GIANTS!

ALIENS (Blue) and VOID (Purple)
Excellent team synergy overall. It was rough facing the DEVILS (red), but at least they won the showcase match (in a separate video). Void likes to facetank and swarm, protecting the aliens' ranged units, which is necessary given their ranged units take time to charge before dealing huge damage. In addition, that blue spider mech just shreds everything and resets the battlefield, which gives time for Void to spawn eggs safely.  Aliens and Void complement each other well, hence why they have one win and force the devils into a close call.

FAIRIES (Magenta) and DEVILS (Red)
This is the first team where I would say one side largely carried the other. They aren't an incompatible team, since the ranged fairy units have defense from the devil swarms. The issue primarily comes from the Fairies' tribe itself when analyzing it individually. As I said in my tier list in the 8P tournament video, there is nothing special about the fairies outside of the fairies shrinking giants & voids, which still remains true as Z Arcade's buffs increase the duration of their awakened powers, not fundamentally alter their movesets. Ironically, their one gimmick elevates them to at least a decent support team specifically because the Fairies and Devils all must face a duo with both types of humongous monsters in this video. That said, their battles look like the red devils swarming everything or getting destroyed, with the fairies being in the background.

FUTURE ARMY (Cyan) and FAKE ANGELS (Yellow)
This is the one team where I would say they should not work together. The reason why anyone would want to have Fake Angels in their duo is defense. Their dodge mechanic and the large yellow mech's shield makes it frustrating for opponents to deal with. Future Army's dominant behaviour on the other hand, is "I want to facetank everything". If you analyze the behaviour of the cyan mechs, the 3rd level mech always approach forward to get the chainsaw out. The 4th level cyan unit likes to rocket rain in front of the big giant's face. Literally. Since there is limited space in the front, the mechs sometimes do not allow the 4th level yellow mech to do its stalling job properly. Overall, this team looks like two individual tribes doing their own thing, rather than cooperation.

I would go as far as to say that the MIDDLE AGES team from Z Arcade's War of Ages is a much better teammate for FAKE ANGELS than FUTURE ARMY. As severely underpowered the Middle Ages team is, they at least have ranged units that are hesitant to approach forward, namely archers, catapaults, and mages (in some versions).

After seeing a 2v2 it would be crazy to see a 3v3 or even a free for all

Match 1: This was a brutal fight. Void + Alien cover each other's weaknesses well, Void provide the meatshields and numbers and Alien provides the brutal lategame unit + power, that thing almost solo-carried with its lifesteal and numbers to keep hitting. The thing is, Devils + Fairies eventually get the range and firepower in the lategame to kill that boss unit off before it starts attacking, and then the Fairy boss unit can provide support as well as attacking faster with its scaling attack speed. It could have gone either way but I do think Devils + Fairies would be the winners more often than not.

Match 2: Kind of similar to the first. Each side here has a lategame faction with a brutal lategame (Fake Angel + Venom) and an early game scaling faction. Future army does the early game presence than Alliance because they just need to provide bodies until Angels hit their power spike, Meanwhile Alliance needs to do damage while Venom provides the bodies, but their early damage ouput is nowhere near as good as Future's rocket barrages or piercing cannons until a lot later. Venom does have superior scaling potential because HP growth is certain, the Angels do have a powerful team ability but only when it's active. Even if Future Army bullies them to begin with and Angels have a bullshit boss unit, Venom CAN scale past those obstacles if allowed to. And by doing so, Alliance artillery can do whatever the hell it wants untouched.

Match 3: This battle is a tricky one to figure out because Venom + Alliance are two very different teams fighting 2 teams that are close parrallels of each other, so rather than covering their weaknesses they go much harder into their strengths + weaknesses instead. While one faction with a streamlined strength is strong for strategy games like Age of empires, this isn't one of those cases. Venom units can scale past the damage Fairies + Devils are capable of and Alliance artillery just deletes everything, and is free to hit their enemies' backlines since there's no huge units that can block those rockets. It's a simple but brutal team combo, and if anything defeats Fairies + Devils it's this.

The only possible way for alliance to ever win a battle; being carried by one of the strongest factions in late game

That blue boss is terrifying if I saw that thang coming to me swinging it’s weapons I would have died of a heart attack before it even arrived

This feels like Advanced Z Arcade because all of the things that Shocked me that changed

What a brutal war between the two 💥

orange team finaly got protection for its units, green are HUGE size and tons of hp and absorbed most of attacks while orange rocket launcher was destroying everything. I also wonder who made more demage rocket launcher or big poison shooter monster🤔

I liked it. True, it was not usual, he saw that the shield was no longer there. But it's a good idea.

But there is a drawback. You can almost not see the barrier that the balls cannot pass through (I am talking about the one at the top, where the 1st and 2nd levels of troops are available at the beginning, and the 3rd and 4th you have to wait for the barrier to open, but it is so transparent that it is almost invisible). Please make it less transparent.

The absolute MVPs of this tournament:
- Devils. still goated, still top1, still unstoppable.
- Z Arcade. you win some, you lose some. unless the author wants you to win really bad, then you just win. maybe the real balancing was the friends we met along the way
- Void/Alien combo - best synergy in the tournament, straight up
- Alien 4.  who needs a tower screenwipe if you got an unit that does that for you
- Alliance 4. Only hard counter to devil I've seen in action so far (aside from "-Refined Patch Notes-")

honorable mentions:
-fairies for allowing devils an easier earlygame
- ̶f̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶g̶e̶l̶s̶      ̶f̶u̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶m̶y̶    must've been the wind

Shrink spell was so good against giants

It feels like I watched a rainbow of chaos