Ozymandias News

Hi everyone, we just released our 4th major post-launch update with lots of improvements and a new DLC map: Sahara Desert. Please remember how it works with your multiplayer games, they are now in a branch in Steam so don't worry, they are not lost! See the info at the bottom of the changelog for how to find them.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2057781/Ozymandias__Sahara_Desert/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2226120/Ozymandias__Season_Pass/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1768280/Ozymandias_Bronze_Age_Empire_Sim/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22670/Turn_Based_Mega_Pack/

[h3]Check out the full patch notes:[/h3]

v1.4.0.8

• New DLC map: Sahara Desert. Everyone can play this in multiplayer, if someone who owns it creates the game.
  
• Loading screen added to the game with tips to improve your play (in 9 languages).
  
• AI empires now make better decisions about when to build cities.
  
• Rebalanced costs of growing cities in different terrain (FAQ entry updated to match)
  
• Great Lighthouse requires fewer hexes to complete.
  
• Pyramids requires more city population to complete at most levels
  
• Some other wonder levels slightly tweaked.
  
• Improved DE translations from community member, Dunkelziffer.
  
• Swords To Ploughshares now gives 120 food instead of 100 and may be offered slightly earlier in games.
  
• Legendary General now requires you to threaten 8 hexes instead of 10.
  
• Catastrophe now requires you to have 8 threatened hexes instead of 10.
  
• Java (Indonesia) difficulty from Hard to Medium.
  
• Maya (Mesoamerica) difficulty from Medium to Easy.
  
• Zapotec (Mesoamerica) difficulty from Hard to Medium.
  
• Zhou (World) difficulty from Medium to Easy.
  
• Inca (World) difficulty from Medium to Hard.
  
• Minor updates in the credits.

Multiplayer games from before the update will no longer appear in the lobby but can be played in a new compatibility branch in Steam (you need the old build to see these games). Sorry for the inconvenience, this is how we keep everyone in a game on the same build, to avoid desyncs. The branch is called v1.3.x.x-multiplayer-compatibility To switch to this branch, R-click Ozymandias in your library, select Properties > Betas and choose the branch from the drop-down. You may need to reboot Steam to make it update but usually it does it straight away. Any questions, let us know!

Click the banner below to join the merry band of 1000+ other Ozy players in our Discord :)

Order restored and less painfully than first thought. During a routine server update 4h ago, the server decided to switch to a region which had outdated data. We switched back to the right region and the server is back online now and the issues are fixed. If you played multiplayer in the last 4 hours, you will have lost this progress, sorry for the inconvenience. I expect very few people will be badly affected but let me know if you are and we'll see what we can do.

A recent maintenance update to the server has caused a problem, where at least some players can no longer see their async multiplayer games. We are turning the server off temporarily, while we fix it. Your games should survive this change but it will cause a little weirdness. If anyone suffers a bad loss in treasure as a result, let us know, we can manually add your treasure back. I will post again, when this is resolved. For more detailed updates, see Discord: https://discord.gg/PkmuSmudKG

v1.3.0.10
- Fixed bugs resulting from two opportunities being completed in the same end turn sequence and one requiring a player choice but being stuck behind the other.
- Fixed bugs resulting from an opportunity being chosen too quickly.
- Fixed games of 1000+ turns not being loadable from save files.
- Fixed city sprites sometimes being slightly blurred after resetting turn.
- Fixed issues with the app icon on Mac OS.

At 8pm UK time, we pushed a server update, which took about 30 minutes. In that time, nobody could log into multiplayer, sorry for the inconvenience. The aim was to improve mutliplayer stability as we've had issues this weekend (see previous post).

The update took a little longer than usual due to it failing on the first deployment but we fixed it and now the game does appear to be performing better. We will continue monitoring it but, at the moment, we have ~130 people online and no issues.

Since we're waiting to hear back from our server provider, Fly.io, we don't have a clear idea of what the issue was. They announced their own issues at the same time as our server was crashing but we can't be sure it's related without their input.

We felt we should try some experimental changes in the meantime, chiefly turning off various logging functions and also multiplayer notifications. We will turn this stuff back on soon, one by one, and check what, if anything, is at fault.

Predictably, turning stuff off has reduced load on the server so that probably explains the improved stability. We will be keeping a close eye on it. When we speak to Fly.io, we'll also ask about any hardware upgrades, which might help in future, if player numbers keep going up.

Thanks for bearing with us!