Microcivilization News

Hi,

I'd like to thank everyone for their help with 0.9 beta. Today I am launching the new Map Update (along with a Daily Deal discount). This update was full of new challenges and a lot of new ideas came in so I hope you'll enjoy it.

Version 0.9 is very important in adding all the missing core game mechanisms and in some perspective it makes the game mechanics 'complete'. Not in a literal sense - there's going to be more major updates before 1.0 - but all the 'necessary' things for basic playing experience are now in place.

Sure .. a lot of things will change, but after adding Wealth Hero faction (v0.7), dynamic Research tree and AFK gameplay (v0.8) and Map management (v0.9) the game is now ready to start expanding to further levels, higher difficulties and all the fancy mid and late game features.

The map update completely reworks the old Quest system and adds a more conventional territory management in line with the 4X genre. It also reworks the wonder mechanics and adds a new civilization Perk system. If you haven't seen them yet you can check out my previous updates:

Map update

Perks

Wonders

If you would like to participate on future Betas, be sure to visit our community on discord or drop me an email on [email protected]

Cheers,

Ondrej

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[h2]0.9 Changelog[/h2]

• While selecting starting location on Map you can no longer open main menu
  
• Map in the above state should no longer become exitable via esc after Restarting a civilization round
  
• This is just a 'dirty fix' to an existing deeper issue causing menu state prone to becoming corrupted. A proper Menu state fix to prevent these issues altogether is planned in future but is too invasive to do close to major update.
  

• Destroyed Wonders should no longer show in building list
  
• Siege dilemma is now mandatory (automatically opened after a few seconds) to prevent some cheesing scenarios.
  
• Some game crashing corner case scenarios were resolved.
  

• Famine dilemma now offering a slightly less 'malevolent' option when you have no food instead of a surprise attack.
  
• Right-clicking a workshop should no longer toggle activation (it opens the demolish dialog only)
  
• Canceling Festival via right click should now work as expected.
  
• Destroy Wonder attack on Crises should no longer crash the game
  
• Barbarians created from Tribal village now have correct tile assigned and can be attacked normally.(note that this does not retroactively fix bugged barbarians, only newly created ones)
  
• Shield % will now be indicated in red when showing on unblockable attack to indicate the attack cannot be blocked by this shield.
  
• Huns now require 20 soldiers to become vulnerable due to easier access to higher unit caps.
  
• You can no longer end up starting in Sea by using a selected map tile from previous run (selected tile now resets on leaving map).
  
• Can no longer gain infinite strategic resources by working around UI validation on quest buttons.
  
• Workshops without workers now have a more explicit indicator icon on them to highlight missing workers.
  
• Destroyed Wonders should no longer contribute their Traits to your civilization.
  

• Building Stonehenge without having Classical era unlocked will no longer crash the game.
  
• Starting Autonomy boost ascension should now correctly apply on every civilization start
  
• Era bosses or Nemeses should no longer be trigger by Autoresearch during Grace period after fall.
  
• Midas/Shamanism should now correctly improve their targeted skill
  
• Ozymandias and Caesar should now correctly be affected by new map tiles.
  
• Wheat and Cows rare technologies now affect farmlands in the same way Farmer Perk does (all these effects multiply as usual for multiplier bonuses).
  
• Villages can no longer be cheesed infinitely by not collecting dilemma cards. Dillemas are now mandatory (autocollected) and villages deck no longer resets.
  
• Colossus text made a bit shorter to fit building menu (overflow fixes like this are temporary measure until bulding menu gets upgraded)
  
• Can no longer leave starting map before chosing a location by using menu hotkey.
  
• Map rendering has been slightly optimized and some performance issues removed. FPS Should be a little better though there's still more room for improvements.
  

[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.
  
• 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.
  
• 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] 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.
  
• Wonders can now consume more than one Worker when activcated. 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 economic effects and abilities have been redesigned.
  
• Stonehenge and Pyramids now generate lotus via their charging ability.
  
• Free workers given food traits from technology. Instead Free workers can be tuned by Civilization Perks (see below) to gain specific specialist role.
  
• Free workers are no longer a primary source of Food. Since you can utilize free workers by expanding on map, you can now choose whether to play a 'wide' empire stretched on the map, or 'tall' empire using free workers to boost your workshop output.
  
• 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 an resulting % 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
  
• 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 accomodate new buttons and make more space for longer hero and damage 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 otherwise unachievable by any other means.
  
• You can also choose any number of Negative Perks. Each Negative perk gives you a significant handicap for the next run, but allows you to pick another Positive Perk along it.
  
• Perks are unlocked via Ascension tree (via the central Era unlock nodes)
  
  

Hi,

While we have the Beta of 0.9 going on, today I'm going to show some early designs of Ascension Tier 2 which is planned for version 0.10. We're going to talk about scaling levels, increasing difficulty and giving players more powers via new use of Secrets, so far only usable for Tech Locks.

[h2]Ascension Tier 2[/h2]

First of all let's make it clear what 'Tier 2' means. The existing ascension tree as you know it is what I call Tier 1. It contains a central 'grade' ascensions which unlock six technological Eras. It also contains secondary ascensions which boost your active and passive abilities. Tier 1 ends with the Babel tower scenario.

Tier 2 begins where Tier 1 ends - after Babel tower. Tier 2 will allow you to keep all ascensions from the previous one and continue further. It will offer one additional era - The Future Era. This era's tech tree will be structured in a slightly different manner than the other 6 eras - more on this on future updates - and will be technically longer.

Aside from new era Tier 2 will contain new Wonders, one of the locked Hero slots and a new mechanism for scaling your economy up.

Most importantly though, Tier 2 will increase global level of all crises and heroes. Together with Future era this will allow you to get up to level 80. This Increase in difficulty will be felt right from neolithic era. New Crises will join the repertoire and old Crises will receive new attacks and their own 'perks'.

Early mock-up of the Tier 2 Tree with some of its notable ascensions

Tier 2 will end with it's own scenario and continue to Tier 3. Current plan is to have 4 Tiers in total.


[h2]What is Magnitude[/h2]

If you ever felt like having two Lumbermills, then Tier 2 will offer a new toy to play with - Magnitude. Increasing a Workshop's Magnitude in principle means multiplying all economical effects of that Workshop 'as if you had two of them'. This virtually duplicates all the workshop's passive effects but also any effects granted to it from your heroes.

Workshop pop-up has been reworked to show a more in-depth breakdown of all it's effects (if you have them).

To increase workshop Magnitude you first need to unlock this ability in Tier 2 tree. This will allow you to use Secrets (the same secrets used to force-open tech locks) for increasing any workshop's magnitude.

[h2]Magnitude Limits[/h2]

You can only increase magnitude two times per Workshop. Magnitude will also increase the workshop's worker cost (unproportionally). As a bonus though, each Magnitude III. Workshop will be given a specific unique benefit (different per workshop type).

Secrets will have a fixed number for every run (random due to randomized tribal villages). There will be no way to farm them in Tier 2 - so you need to think carefully which workshop is the best for you. Some rebalancing and hero redesigns will also happen to give you the right amount of secrets per run (I'm looking at you Archimedes).

[h2]Map tile Magnitude[/h2]

In case your play style is more expansionist, you may also decide to improve Map tile Magnitude. This uses the same Secret pool, but otherwise works like workshop magnitude. A tile will duplicate all it's effects (including adjacency benefits).

[h2]Status of v0.9 Beta & future plans[/h2]
The Beta is currently getting to it's conclusion. There's still one patch planned at a minimum (during early next week). After this I am aiming for an October release (in about 2 weeks from now). However In case you're interested to participate in beta, feel free to join (see instructions here)

As soon as the release is finished, I'll be also updating the Roadmap. It is now a lot clearer what work needs to be done for Tier 2,3 and 4 and in what order.

That is all for today,

See you next time,

Ondrej

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