When was the last update?

I have not played for about two weeks and was wanting an update before going forth!

in a few weeks or so I believe (mid august), but this is the knowledge of a drunkard

Craig Sneed, I'm assuming that your second question (in the Original Post) is your real question.  In that case, I believe the latest official pronouncement on this subject appeared in the last paragraph of Brad Wardell's Post entitled: "Fallen Enchantress Updated Screenshots", which he posted on July 18, 2012.  The concluding paragraph reads as follows:

  " We don't anticipate Beta 4 coming out until August 16th. Sorry for the wait on this but there's a lot of polish, testing, balancing, and UI to get in there.  And there will be a Beta 5 after Beta 4 at which point we'll start thinking about a release date.  We're in no hurry.  The objective here is to create the best fantasy strategic game we can possibly make. "

From my perspective, I like the sound of this explanation very much; because I hear Frogboy saying that quality is paramount to timliness.  On the other hand, I should add what we all know, that you can  never  count on when an update will be out, until it is actually sitting there available on the download site .  These things are never cast in concrete ...     

Thank you Orion, That answer was very well written!