Microcivilization News

Hi all,

let me invite you to the beta-test of version 0.9 containing an upgraded Map & Quests, Starting civilization Perks, Worker & Wonder redesign and more.

To access the beta, use the experimental branch via pass-key:

[h2]WelshCorgiPembroke[/h2]

Just go to the Steam, find Microcivilization in your library, go to its Properties, Betas and insert your key to the text box.


The branch is already activated and should contain game version 0.9.0
This Beta will run for a minimum of two weeks. Please if you have any feedback, check out the community forum or visit us on discord.

Here's what changed since the last version:



[h2] Map Tiles [/h2]

• Map is now much larger in size and Quests have been completely redesigned into Hexagonal grid.
  
• Quest stages have been removed. Tile modifications are completed by just a single Quest run.
  
• You can now explore and annex territory on the map using your units and improve your territory based on its biome.
  
• You can build 6 different Improvements: Farmlands, Forests and Villages on lowlands biome, Quarries, Mines and Fortresses on highlands biome.
  
• Tile Improvements boost each other if compatible neighbours are created. Two separate 'adjacency bonuses' are available for each Tile Improvement type.
  
• First (silver) adjacency bonus is granted to Tiles surrounded by 2 compatible hex tiles (what constitutes compatible differs per improvement type).
  
• Second (golden) adjacency bonus is granted to Tiles surrounded by 6 compatible hex tiles.
  
• Map is generated randomly each run.
  
• Mammoths, Cannibals and Barbarians are now randomly spawned 'Crises' on the map during creation and progress through levels along with your civilization.
  
• Map now contains other Civilizations (after unlocking Medieval Era in ascension tree)
  
• Map now contains exploitable Strategic Resources (after unlocking Classical Era in ascension tree)
  
• Trade routes are no longer gained via special Strategic Resources. Instead you gain them via Tribal Villages or other Civilizations (or Perks - see below)
  
• Trade routes can no longer be 'magnified' by getting more sources of the same Route. Instead they provide a large amount of resource input by default and they scale with Technology and Heroes.
  
• Food trade route is always available (after researching Money).
  
• Your workers are the limit of how many map tiles you can have.
  
• Worker progression based on civilization has been buffed. You will now need roughly 30% population increase to gain another worker every time (i.e. number of Workers grows roughly with the speed of Logarithm with base 1.3)
  
• You can still utilize Villages to increase Workers but you will need to reach its maximum adjacency bonus (i.e. surround the village with 6 non-village improvements)
  

[h2] Diplomacy & Dilemma Cards [/h2]

• Tribal Villages now contain a deck of limited card numbers so you can repeat their quests (number shown on map).
  
• Final Dilemma card always results in the Village disappearance (but the options vary).
  
• Neutral Civilizations offer their own Deck of Dilemmas, but their cards are different.
  
• Neutral Civilizations do not disappear when you exhaust their Dilemma deck. Instead they reshuffle a new deck, or they change to Friendly/Hostile.
  
• Civilizations may also become Allied or Hostile based on some of your Dilemma choices. You can also lead surprise attacks to speed up this process.
  
• You can attack Hostile civilizations and take away their territory.
  
• You can utilize Allied Civilization tiles to provide adjacency bonus to your own tiles without any worker cost.
  
• All dilemmas are redesigned. Some of them offer access to Trade Routes for Wood, Stone or metal. You can now also gain plenty of Rare/Unique Heroes from dilemmas.
  

[h2] Units, Workshops and Wonders [/h2]

• Units over capacity (e.g. after disabling Barracks) are no longer wiped instantly, instead they start consuming Food and will only get wiped one by one when reaching starvation.
  
• Unit cap can now be greatly increased by Village and Fortress map tile improvements. Overall unit cap has increased throughout the eras.
  
• As a result of above, Granary and Barracks no longer grant flat Unit Cap increase.
  
• Barracks now (instead if flat Fort cap) grants Percentage multiplier to ALL unit caps.
  
• Granary now (instead if flat Soldier cap) grants extra Food storage space.
  
• The only way to increase Heavy unit cap (besides unique heroes) is via Fortress with a maximized Adjacency bonus (i.e. surrounded by 6 non-fort improvements).
  
• Aside from growing and feeding people, Stored Food is now used to pay for certain Quests on Map as well as for the Festival ability.
  
• Turning Granary off can now be utilized for rapid consumption of its stored food into growth.
  
• Wonders now occupy workshop slots, meaning you can no longer build everything at the same time.
  
• Wonders can now consume more than one Worker when activated. The number cost is visible on the details as well as on the toggle button.
  
• Player can demolish Workshops to make space for wonders and vice versa.
  
• Wonders can be destroyed by Crises
  
• Wonders economic effects and abilities have been redesigned.
  
• Stonehenge and Pyramids now generate lotus worth via their chargeable 'Ceremony' ability. Ceremonial wonders will create extra risk and social crises if you use them. You also have to carry and protect these wonders until ascension to actually gain Lotus from them.
  
• Stonehenge and Pyramids only work in their respective Tech Eras (neolithic and classical). They become obsolete afterwards, so If you decide to use them to farm Lotuses, you need to invest in them early on.
  
• Free worker Food traits from technology have been removed. Instead Free workers can be tuned by Civilization Perks (see below) to gain various specialist roles.
  
• Free workers are no longer a primary source of Food, instead Farmland tiles are the main way to increase popuplation.
  
• Some workshop visual style changed and some housing types were removed (due to upcoming Class Perks)
  

[h2] Combat & Crises [/h2]

• Shield ability from Fort units now has only a X% chance to block an attack which increases with technological upgrade of the Fort unit.
  
• Multiple fort instances apply to any single attack. E.g. having two 50% forts triggered will effectively create a 75% chance to block the next attack. Thus you can reach near 100% values by using large enough amount of forts.
  
• A Fort which fails its roll to block (and thus fails to deflect the Crisis attack) is kept and can roll again on further attacks.
  
• Fort block chance is now boosted by Barracks ability. Similar to +200% damage It works statistically as if the fort was triggered three times (thus a 50% fort becomes 87.5%).
  
• Similar block improvement effect as Barracks can be granted by Heroes (in smaller percentage). The resulting block chance is now visible in Hero Inventory screen as well as on the Crisis bar during combat.
  
• Some Crises have been nerfed as a result of above, since it is now more costly to defend against crises attacks all the time.
  
• Three Unique Crises have been created. They spawn randomly on the map and can yield Rare or Unique Heroes as their drop.
  
• Cannibals crisis has been added to the game.
  
• Stun duration is now automatically scaled based on Damage of the unit dealing Stun.
  
• Stun has now become more available for Heavy units and more rare for light/militia units.
  
• Drought is now more punishing for your food production (to give more spotlight to the new Granary storage capacity feature).
  
• New Barricade ability was added available from Classical era. Barricade uses Autonomy to create a Shield effect similar to what Fort units do. It has a progressive cost similar to Enlist with each Barricade used (each ability use increasing block chance but not increasing the number of blocks).
  
• Passive Hero block chances (from various Law abilities) should now be visible on Crisis during combat and are combined with any % Shield ability to create a total % chance to block.
  

[h2] Heroes [/h2]

• Primary Resource traits for Wood, Stone or Metal are now boosting all three Resources at once to lower the need for hero swapping.
  
• More Rare/Unique heroes are now granted from Tribal Village quests
  
• Drop mechanism should now drop more Rare/Unique heroes even if the crisis level is low.
  
• You can now have three separate equips and switch between the active one.
  
• Heroes can now be filtered by text search
  
• Hero Screen was slightly adjusted to group new buttons and make more space for longer descriptions.
  

[h2] Perks [/h2]

• At the beginning of all runs (after unlocking Classical era ascension), you can choose your starting location on the map.
  
• Additionally you may pick one Positive civilization Perk. Perks can modify behaviour of Tiles, Free Workers and other features.
  
• You can also choose any number of Negative Perks. Each Negative perk gives you a handicap for the next run, but allows you to pick another Positive Perk.
  
• You can also sacrifice gold lotuses to increase the number of Positive perks for a single run.
  
• You start with only a few Perks available, more Perks are unlocked via Ascension tree (via the central Era unlock nodes)
  

Note: Civilization Class Perks (mentioned in August update) have been descoped from this exact version- so there is only one class at the moment. The reason is that my final tests have not made me convinced that Class Perks are a significant improvement to the gameplay and so decided to revisit this feature and make some upgrades to it (which is still in progress). I will either release this feature in two weeks into the beta, or in case I fail to finalize them in this short time-frame, they'll be postponed to a later release.

Hi all,

the past few weeks were focused mostly on finalizations and visuals so there's not many new things to show. But a handful of features are still probably worth mentioning.

[h2]Wonders redesign[/h2]

One of the problems of existing wonder system is that you can always build all wonders you unlocked. In some sense this prevented the wonders to become economically powerful, otherwise your wonders could overshadow your workshops productivity. With a few more wonders added the game could easily become centered on them and not on workshops.

To address this, as of 0.9 Wonders will undergo a complete redesign of their ability powers. Some will be affected more than others, but generally wonders will be thoroughly buffed to get economical significance. That huge economic buff has however three drawbacks.

First drawback is that wonders will now use workshop slots. So building a wonder will force you to decide which workshop you will not build (or demolish).



Second drawback is that wonders will be unlocked with technology, so you can no longer build Eiffel tower in neolithic era.

The Third drawback is that Wonders can be Destroyed by Crises and cannot be rebuilt. Some crises may later even specialize on destruction of wonders.

As a result Wonders will now be able to fine-tune your build when you specialize your economy. So this opens a way to introducing more Wonders to the game with more significant economical powers.

[h2]Stonehenge and Ceremonial Wonders[/h2]

The existing Stonehenge Lotus gaining ability is relatively fool-proof. You build it and by using its mechanism you simply gain Lotuses right away.

In the new version, you will have to keep the Stonehenge intact until ascension to gain it's lotus value. Also the lotus value itself will be increased through it's Ceremony ability which will have it's own problems and risks attached.

There will be a few similar wonders (each for different era), that allow Lotus gain through their Ceremony ability. The trick is that as was mentioned above, each wonder takes up a workshop slot. So having four Ceremonial wonders may yield you a great reward in ascension, but it may slow down your progress significantly if you have no way to compensate the workshop loss.


[h2]Forts redesign[/h2]

Fortresses Shield ability was designed to be simple. Block a single attack. However as the game grew bigger and difficulty had to scale up, it forced the introduction of Unblockable attacks. This did not feel right to introduce this early.



So to allow more flexibility in balancing difficulty, shield ability on forts will now have a percentage chance of success. Instead of increasing instances of shields with Fort upgrade, Forts will improve their block chance.

Since this drastically lowers the usefulness of forts, some collateral rebalancing will have to occur. Forts will be made cheaper (0.9 already makes it easier to increase the cap) and some tougher Crises most likely will be nerfed (era bosses for instance)


[h2]0.9 Beta coming in about 2 weeks[/h2]

The current 0.9 version is relatively close to being publicly playable. At the minimum though it needs 2 weeks work to finalise all gaps and fix all known bugs. After that unless there are some new problems I would release the 0.9 into the experimental branch.

It will contain all the map stuff we talked about so far. If possible I will add some of the planned Tier 2 features throughout the beta. But the plan of that bit is still vague.

[h2]What's next[/h2]

Besides testing and balancing, the only remaining major feature to finish is the Diplomacy redesign with the use of Dilemma cards. This redesign will affect Tribal Villages and other Civilizations (added in 0.9) and the way you acquire Trade Routes and other boosts. The mechanism of dilemmas will stay the same, but the card effects will be more impactful (especially towards the Map).

This all for today,

See you next time,

Ondrej

Hello,

In this update I will continue where we left in the previous month. So in case you missed the last update, be sure to check it out here.

Having a solid foundation for Map grid and the ability to choose your starting location, the next step was to introduce Starting Civilization traits.



Civilization traits let you configure your civilization every time you start. They work in similar manner as your equipped Heroes, but you can only change them at the start of each run. Then you're stuck with your selection until you ascend.

Same as with Heroes, there is a limited number of Civilization Traits slots. In the beginning you will have access to a limited selection of traits and as you progress you will unlock more and more. Each time you start you can chose the best traits that fit the starting location.

[h2]Civilization Class [/h2]

The first and foremost trait to be picked is the Class of your civilization. You can always only select one Class trait. The class trait changes the looks of your buildings as well as some core economical and play-style features. In the 0.9 there will be total of 3 Class traits (more will come later). I'll share the details of each as soon as it is possible. But here are two early drafts:

An early draft of a highland Civilization Class



Another early draft of an arid Civilization Class

Each class will significantly affect your economy. Some classes will push you towards a specialization (similar to Hero factions). There will also be a generalist class which will provide the same play experience as the current version.

[h2]What other Civilization traits are there?[/h2]
The rest of the traits will further specialize your economy and play style. You can increase your focus on for example expansion (speeding up quests, increasing army size), gold production, research, trade, diplomacy and other areas.

Civ Traits will get unlocked from Ascension tree and some more advanced traits will only be accessible in later Tier 2 and 3.




A few missing details were added since the last update and overall I think the map is now playable. Majority of work was done on the Adjacency bonus system.

Adjacency Bonuses are indicated by silver/gold hex medals indicating 2 or 6 compatible adjacent tiles. See below for how adjacency is determined

[h2]The Two Adjacency bonuses[/h2]
As explained in the previous update, adjacency system will cause your tiles to produce more if they're setup in a specific pattern. The rules are relatively simple:

If at least two other compatible tiles are adjacent, tile will double its productivity.

If the tile is surrounded by 6 compatible tiles around it, it will gain a second more powerful bonus.

[h2]Compatibility[/h2]
As a base rule all tiles of the same type are 'compatible'. So for instance placing three Farmland tiles next to each other will grant 2 compatible adjacency points to each - gaining the first bonus (double productivity). At the same time a Forest will not be compatible with a Farmland so placing them next to each other will not make your land more efficient. The motivation is to build in 'clusters'.


Adjacency setup illustrated.

[h2]Villages & Fortresses[/h2]
To make things more flexible, Villages & fortresses are compatible with all other types of tiles (except themselves). This means that a Farmland adjacent to two villages will get the same bonus as if surrounded by two Farmlands. This applies the other way around as well - a village surrounded by 6 non-village tiles will receive double production as well as a special bonus (added Workers).


Having a new Map Tile economy allowed me offloading some of the functionality previously held by Workshops onto the Tiles themselves.

One example is Unit caps granted by Barracks and Granary. Instead the Barracks will now grant a Cap Multiplier, while granary does what granary should - increase food storage.

[h2]Granary Food storage[/h2]
One of the core changes in this version will be increase in Food storage size. With active Granary, you get a ton of food space. Enough to last a long drought.

As consequence Food can now be used for two things:
1) Paying for Quests and Festivals
2) Paying for Units which are over capacity (thereby introducing an over-capacity unit concept)
3) As a buffer to prevent overpopulation.

Additionally it will make more use of food generating traits and thus more crises and debuffs can now affect food production. Starvation will as a consequence have a more important (interesting) role in the future economy.

[h2]Resource Hero swapping[/h2]

One of the annoying features reported by players is the need for constant hero swapping for different construction materials.

To solve this partially I have changed the primary trait bonus on heroes to all three construction materials at the same time. So now Economy heroes simply boost % of Wood Stone and Metal always. Non-primary hero traits however still can specialize you in one material or another.

Another part of this solution will be slight rebalance of resource generation between workshops, map tiles and trade. What this means is that you will have to adjust production economy based on the geography of your current game.
For instance not having access to hill tiles will limit your stone and metal production so you will need to obtain it by trade and/or boosting your workshops(or play as a civilization class which does not need as much stone/metal)

Third part of solution is allowing Hero Builds. You will now be able to have multiple equipped sets of heroes and swap between them.

Three hero equips will be enabled, allowing to swap by hotkey/button. Also I have added a search functionality (layout and style are still just in mock-up phase)

[h2]Roadmap update[/h2]
As mentioned last time - I have got a few new ideas of mechanics for Tier 2,3 and 4. Additionally I finally thought up a reasonable way to add two additional technological eras that could work well with the new Tier 2 and 3. Part of this will also be two new Lotus types and a sort of progression of corruption and nemesis system.

The unfortunate part of this is they will be rather difficult to build with a plenty of artwork and functional features. I did my best to estimate the work needed on this new stuff and it seems to be somewhere between 4 to 12 weeks time. For this reason I decided to move the Tier work further down the Q1 2025 potentially moving the Early access as well. So apologies for the change in plans.

Feel free to check out the new updated Roadmap here.

[h2]What comes next?[/h2]
In the next four weeks my plan is to wrap up all stuff from this and previous update. There's is a lot of artwork to be done, balancing configuring and testing. Part of this is also a massive rework of all the World Wonders and the system in which they are built. I also plan to finally fix the Unit progression (along with Stun) and also redesign fort Shield ability.

This is all from today's update.

Have a nice day,

Ondrej

Hi,

i've just released a patch targeting some of the smaller issues.

• AutoClick cost is now displayed correctly (was showing 10x higher)
  
• Popups no longer change color during Fast Forward of Idle time
  
• Correct Oligarchy large icon added to the Autonomy menu
  
• Autoconstruction should now NOT construct Houses when its House-building toggle is off.
  
• Marketplace boost will no longer work on Units
  
• Restart menu button no longer showing to the first-time player in their first ascension running
  
• Tech tree max level increased to 43 as per older versions
  
• Autoclick should no longer draw Autonomy when no building is being constructed
  
• Autocombat now has option for using Militia
  
• Autocombat should be now using heavy units correctly
  
• Damage per Second debuffs (green drop) from some crises will now disappear if you die to prevent further death spiraling.
  
• Fixed missing space in Wonder names in the construction menu
  
• Great smog should correctly appear after unlocking Modern era (before this fix World War was present twice, with Great smog being there only before unlocking Modern era)
  
• Can no longer open Quest Map with a Hotkey before unlocking level 4
  

Have a nice day,

Ondrej

Hi,

today I'm going to show a bit of the new Map update stuff. After three weeks of coding it is still fresh from the oven.

Annotated work-in-progress version of the new Map system.(Nothing is final)

The old Map size for comparison

As you can see the main approach is to turn the map into a more traditional grid. While I enjoyed keeping the simplicity of the staged quest system with 'static' map tiles organised into a 'loose' grid, it has proven to be hard to expand without making it grotesquely inflexible and cluttered system.



You could ask why bother with this update at all...the quest system we had was fine?

The answer is complex but let's list a few of the reasons why making these changes:

• With more activities in research, trade and other areas, the map has proven to be a rather tedious activity mostly in later game phases.
  
• The only bottleneck on the Quest gameplay in early-era late-game (hope that makes sense) is quest speed. To me that is an indication of the mechanics missing or being too easy to max-out.
  
• With Trade introduced resources, map becomes too small to ensure any kind of options of playstyle. It even limits gaining several Achievements.
  
• There is only a limited number of cross-relations between the map mechanics and the rest of the game's mechanics.
  

[h2]20x8 Map size[/h2]

Yes we could now have a vast map with hundreds of tiles. But to some degree I don't feel it is needed and would rather not increase the map size until it is really justified.

So the decision for now is to have a 20x8 map with left-right scrolling only (fitting the 8 tiles vertically on the screen eliminating vertical scroll feels nice at the moment). Of course technically nothing prevents us now to increase the size to 200x200 with 2-way scroll should we need to in the future.

[h2]Tile improvements[/h2]

A simple chart for the map tile types indicating two 'biomes' (lowlands and highlands) each with three options of improvement on. Each of these three improvements are also convertible to one other within the biome.

In the new system, we will have a more traditional way of cultivating the wilderness. Flat lowlands can be turned into farmlands or forests, hills into mines and quarries. I intend to keep the simplicity roughly on equal level as before. So in the end I do not plan to add more tile types than we had (10 or so in version 0.8). Instead I want the tiles to be flexible and the system more intuitive.

[h2]Adjacency bonuses[/h2]

The main element related to the strict grid is adjacency bonuses for tiles close to each other. While this adds some complexity to the game, I believe it is the core feature behind hex grid that really makes the grid worth its existence. Of course it then depends on how the actual adjacency bonuses are designed...

The current experiment is based on 'adjacency' points system which boosts production of each tile. Villages act as 'wildcard' adjacency boosters for all types of tiles.

At this moment I am experimenting with various mechanics, but the adjacency system is intended to be a key feature of the whole map management. It is also highly invasive into the entire resource economy, so whatever you see on the screenshots now is quite likely to change in the near future.

[h2]Other civilizations[/h2]

Civilization tiles seen in previous version will be upgraded to entire tile regions (with it's home tile same as yours). You will have options to engage with diplomacy (using the Dilemma system that Tribal Villages use) or warfare - being able to steal territory from the losing enemy. Everything else will use the existing game features like Risk Chance, Dilemmas and Quests. We will just 'extrapolate' these features a bit further.

Other than that it is not planned to make Civilization more active agents in the game. For this update at least, the civilizations will be just a spiced-up map features, which grant you more quest options. It is certainly not meant to create a 'technology race' as is usual in classical 4x games. The time will always be on your side.

[h2]Worker Limits[/h2]
Because of the map size increase, the original feature of 'free workers generating resource' will be removed. Instead 'Worker resource' will be directly invested into the map tile expansion acting like a civilization size limit. In other words, each owned tile will reduce Workers by 1.

Because of this Workers progression from population will be re-balanced together with Food production.

[h2]Quest Limits[/h2]
Each quest now has an associated cost. Combat quests will 'reserve' a unit, meaning you will have one less available to you while the quest is in progress (you will have them back for the fight at the end though).

Construction quests (deforestation, irrigation etc.) will respectively reserve a Worker.

This way you will still have no 'actual' hard limit on parallel quests taken, but instead you can trade-off the expansion speed with the ability to defend and produce at home.

[h2]No more Quest Stages [/h2]
Claiming 160 tiles will take more than the time we currently need for a full 6-era run. In fact some of the tiles will have to be wrested from the other civs.

It is now useless to artificially increase effort per tile with quest Stages. From now on, each single quest will cause its transforming effect without the need to repeat it.

The quests duration was not increased (in fact there will be ways to make them even faster), although distance still is the main factor and far quests will eventually be longer than before simply because we now have longer distances.

[h2]What's next?[/h2]

At this moment I am working on Civilization Traits. A new game screen available in the beginning of each run, where you will be able to 'configure' your civilization's semi-permanent traits (meaning traits that last the entire run). At the same time you will be able to pick the starting location on the map - thus give you a 'planning moment' before each civilization run.

I'll share more details about these in the next update.

At the same time I am polishing the game-design for Ascension Tier 2 3 and 4 which is now coming to a solid shape (on paper). I have (un)fortunately had some new ideas to add to the game for these tiers. Some of these mechanics will not be trivial to do, but I kinda fell in love with them too much now to say no.

So as a consequence I might need to adjust the roadmap for Q3 and Q4 as soon as the designs are complete. This could probably add 4 to 8 weeks of work potentially moving the 1.0 launch date later. But we'll see...

See you in another 4 weeks,

Ondrej