Major Performance Update, AI Overhaul, & More
Tabletop Tavern Patch Notes — March 20, 2026
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Hey everyone,
This update is a big one. A lot of the work over the past weeks has been under the hood, but it should have a very noticeable impact on performance and how battles play out!
Lore Update
We’ve started rolling out the new lore we shared during Next Fest.
Added faction and hero lore to the Collections Panel
Each faction now includes both a faction overview & hero-specific lore
This is just the start. More lore will continue to be added and expanded. Some of the lore is a tad outdated due to us switching out units as you'll see below. We'll update it again soon!
Performance Overhaul
The most common negative feedback we got during Next Fest was performance. We heard you loud and clear and have been focusing heavily on reducing memory usage and improving performance across the entire project.
Benchmarks
Build Size
8.5 GB → 5.6 GB
RAM Usage
Main Menu: 7.58 GB → 1.97 GB
Empty Battle Scene: 8.19 GB → 2.07 GB
Full Battle (15v15 Iron Legion vs Green Tide): 8.34 GB → 2.72 GB
Map Scene: 9.57 GB → 2.58 GB
FPS (RTX 3080)
Battle Scene: 67 FPS → 102 FPS
This was primarily aimed at improving performance on lower end hardware, so seeing gains on high end systems as well is a nice bonus.
Full Project Overhaul
We’ve been deep in a full project-wide optimization pass. This means going through every texture, model, and asset in the game. While doing this we identified several assets that were extremely unoptimized and either updated or replaced them.
Example: Jomsvikings alone were 3x the size of the entire Drakosaur Brood faction
New models completed:
Jomsvikings
Fleshshredders
Ironguts
Still in progress:
Oni
Bloodsworn
Several Dwarf units
Events Update
Events now provide much larger rewards to make them more interesting and inline with missing out on the rewards from a battle. Cleaned up the UI to clarify the success/failure outcome of each choice
Enemy AI Overhaul
Army Behavior States
Aggressive
Default behavior
Always active at river crossings
Passive
Triggered when the army has artillery
Breaks when:
Player gets close
Player deals damage
Delayed Passive
25% chance to trigger regardless of composition
Holds passive stance for 10 seconds before switching
Flanking Improvements (Cavalry)
Starts in back row
Flanks wide left or right
Direction randomized if only one cav unit
Will not perform wide flanks at river crossings
Combat Behavior Improvements
Defensive Stance
Shielded units losing combat will switch to defensive mode
Fire at Will (Archers)
Triggers when army drops below 25% health
Target Prioritization
Artillery
Targets first unit in range
Will reprioritize to ranged units if they enter later
Archers
Targets first unit in range
Will switch to unshielded targets if current target has shields
Large Unit Targeting
Non-cavalry prioritizes enemies without anti-large
Gameplay & Logic Fixes
Enemy archers now charge into melee when out of ammo
Improved guard mode logic to prevent idle units in combat
Fixed archers:
Charging wrong targets
Breaking out of melee incorrectly
Bug Fixes
Fixed unit stats overflow issue for Bulwark unit
Fixed missing textures on campaign map
Fixed withdrawing hotkey triggering when opening bug report panel
Fixed tutorial icons (guard mode / cancel swapped)
Fixed campaign loss bug when:
Completing battle
Exiting to main menu
Crashing at end of battle
Final Note
This update was more of a foundational one. Less flashy on the surface, but it sets up Tabletop Tavern for long term success. As always, keep the feedback coming!
See you in the tavern. 🍻