Microcivilization News

Hi,

after a a longer time than I intended I managed to scramble the promised small patch addressing some of the difficulty issues.

Because some of these changes were quite invasive I had to properly consider what to do as part of next major version (which will take a bit of time, being the biggest update so far) and what can be done as a patch.

The main reasoning here is risk management - invasive changes done badly and released in a patch without a proper beta-test can lead to many side effects or eventually a complete rollback of these changes. Also some of the changes can be in conflict with the next major update. A lot can go wrong.

At the same time I did not want to trigger another beta test stage merely for the sake of balancing so I decided to split the work. So what you are getting today is the bit which I considered either safe or worth the risk.

Leaving aside small bugfixes, this patch contains three main 'feature changes':

1. Babel tower now runs on Level 40+ - effectively babel Tower is a Tier 2. The objective is to make this scenario act as a proving grounds before entering Tier 2 for real. A gateway of sorts. For players enjoying rushing strategy this should act as a check before irreversibly jumping to higher difficulty where progress can be a lot more pain. Small changes to the Babel tower were also made, but nothing big - only to make this a bit more playable. A lot of bigger changes are planned for later Major Updates.
   
2. Ascension rules have been redesigned. This is a bit of an overstatement as the rules aren't really that complex. But from now on you do not need Taj mahal to ascend mid-game. Instead you will have an opportunity to ascend after defeating Era boss starting from Tier1 Medieval era (I intended to keep this close to where Taj Mahal was available previously). From Tier2 this is available right at the Neolithic. So in case you DO overexpand to Tier 2 with weak ascension build, you have easier way out through lotus grind.
   
3. You can Respec your ascension tree. Because I believe the above two changes address the Tier 2 overexpansion sufficiently I decided I can also add respec to the mix. My reasoning here (as per some community discussion) is that I don't want respec to be a method to commonly use in ascension rushing strategy. The feature should serve in case you make a mistake, or when you get irreversibly affected by a bug or a design problem (as is the case for a few players on version 0.10). The respecs for now are limited to two per game and I did not add any method of 'farming' respec points yet (will probably do at some point). First point is gained with Medieval Era unlock, the second point is gained on Tier 2.
   

That is the main stuff which deserves a bit of explanation. Below is the full list of changes inclusing small tweaks and bugfixes.

As usual please report any bugs of problems to the community or discord. I hope there's not many more issues to solve before we can consider 0.10 to be fully stable.

Thanks,

Ondrej

You can now Ascend after defeating any Era boss crisis. This is enabled for 1 minute after the crisis destruction.
Taj Mahal no longer allows players to ascend at any time. Instead it has become a Ceremonial wonder similar to Pyramids and Stonehenge.
Once per Tier you can Respec your ascensions via a new button on the ascension screen.
You can now quick-buy ascensions with shift-click
Babel tower scenario now works as if a Tier 2 round - has a +40 levels penalty and other difficulty challenges. This is mainly to prevent players from rushing their way to tier 2.
Babel tower Scenario events now kick off 2 minutes later due to a more difficult start
Babel tower heroes are now level 70 instead of 50
Population milestone locks on technologies tweaked to better match reasonable population levels (with respect to difficulty on that level)

Auto research now has a Predicament triggering option.
Auto research no longer triggers Wonder obsoletion locks
Added a few tutorials and warning messages to important moments in the game. This was based on recent feedback where some elements were missed by accident.
Truce dilemma on Tier 2 requires slightly less units.
Early research costs in neolithic era where slightly reduced.
World war 'Era Boss' now correctly spawning before Internet when Future era unlocked.
Theater can now give both a Corruption and a Hero. Also the displayed percentages should now be accurate and make more sense with respect to Magnitude increments.
Messages on screen can now be dismissed in bulk by clicking while holding left shift (useful in late-game or when hero farming)
Should no longer be able to start the game in Sea by selecting a tile and subsequently regenerating the map.
Crisis attack buttons should now have a smaller bounding area allowing correct hover details to pop out when they overlap.
Collecting hero should now use the Currently selected tab if possible.
Inquisition Autonomy mortality condition has been reduced to 40.
Removed some obsolete Locks from the tech tree.
Map tiles can no longer increase their level past your current technology level +5.
Unit damage no longer adjusted by technology level it is unlocked on. Unit damage is now always the same.
Fixed babel tower event messages
Chichen itza is now unlocked by Warrior code instead of agriculture

Hello,

This time i'm going to share some situational update where we are with 0.10 and what is being addressed. Since there's not much to show from 0.11 yet I figured I'll expose what's going on at the moment in everything else.

We're now in the weird phase that seems to happen after every major content release. Even though the releases were quite different each time, there are always same things happening. So let's briefly touch each one of them, since they also affect you - the players - and what's coming next:

1. New features are in the game and a lot of new 'loose ends' are attracting new ideas from players, suggestions and criticism.
   
2. Game Performance at the late game is utterly horrible (note that what is late game is moving each update)
   
3. Despite running X weeks of beta, new very silly bugs keep appearing.
   
4. Balancing is off (this is especially true now when difficulty increase was one of the core features)
   
5. New features design for next major update is already in progress.
   

[h2]Loose ends[/h2]
Those of you who have engaged in discussion with me probably know by now that my approach is something like 'evolutive design'. I often place features incomplete, in a minimalistic form and I let them being bombarded by ideas from players as well as from future myself.

This has an obvious cost of looking incomplete and causing concern when things are too simplistic, or not useful (or complete rubbish). But the benefit is that each feature's potential is being shaped not in a lonely glass petri dish, but right in the wild nature among other real things.

With this 0.10 version i am introducing some features which still have a long way to go before being considered final.

[h3]Concealed Future era research[/h3]

This Future Era is the most sparsely developed feature at the moment. This is a deliberate decision (though I did intend to add full level of Genetic engineering too but the overall experience would not be very different in 0.10), I do not consider myself confident enough to design the entire endless system at once. What I needed to do was a first conceptual phase and start collecting ideas from players. There's not a single feature on the tree that would not have something i see as a 'loose end' in my head.

This is how I see the future tech tree at the moment. Each element has some way to grow.

My intention is to expand Future era retrospectively in future updates (meaning what we now have in Tier 2 will become bigger) but main update will come also in Tier 4 where the future era should theoretically double in size.

[h3]Wonder-only builds[/h3]

If you recall the previous major update, one of the most important changes there was introduction of the new Wonder system using up Workshop slots. A lot of economy builds have been removed due to that limitation and it was really a big debt of mine to reintroduce some alternative builds based off wonders.

With Tier 2 we now have a baseline wonder setup using up some of the newly created world wonders which has proven out to be more powerful (perhaps unnecessarily too powerful) compared to workshops-only setup. This is a first step towards an economy model where swapping to wonders actually makes sense and you have several 'core' setups.

Naive-version of the Ancient Seven Wonders build. A lot more power can be extracted here.

0.10 did not do that much to improve older Tier 1 Wonders in this direction and you need to reach late game T2 to make use of the 'Ancient 7 wonders', but I plan to introduce a few more wonder setups which will become somewhat 'standard' setups of wonders synergizing each other using most of the old Tier 1 wonders.

[h3]Level/Difficulty[/h3]

The first difficulty bump is done and (as expected) a lot of rough edges had to be polished. After doing a bunch of updates the Tier 2 is generally playable in most player strategies, but there still is one big problem I did not anticipate - Tier 1 difficulty progression.

First of all a lot of problems can be very easily avoided in Tier 1 skipping quickly to Tier 2. There's very little that can be 'patched' about that, a broad balancing of Tier 1 must be done so that it lands closer where Tier 2 is now.

Second, the current Ascension flow 'reach tech tree end or use Taj Mahal' is no longer good enough. Tier 2 has proven that this design is not scaling well with new tiers and needs to be re-visited.

I decided to rush with introduction of one feature I was saving for Tier 3 and beyond - a buyable ability costing Lotus, which can be recharged on Ascension tree. Horn of Resolve is the first of this 'instruments' feature. The reason was to introduce a last resort ability for crisis spirals and I needed some way to limit this feature's usage.

[h2]Game Performance[/h2]

Not much to say here. The game is horribly slow at late-game and the cause is the new features and code introduced in patches (since I do not performance-test patches).

But also the reason is that players are now capable of insane combos generating far higher production than the game reallly needs right now.

I will (as usual) plan a performance optimization along some of the future patches but only when invasive functional updates are no longer likely.

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

As stated above balancing has a few pitfalls which I will need to address as a 'semi-major' update at some point. There's currently two options : either to include this as part of 0.11 (ETA May) or deliver this as a separate mid-size update earlier.

Since this kind of change will require a LOT of testing, my preference now is to wait for 0.11 where already a LOT of testing will happen anyway. But if some bits and pieces are patchable safely, they'll land into 0.10 sooner.

There's a bunch of bugs and minor improvements that will 100% make for another small patch some time this or next week.

[h2]New Features[/h2]

Good news is that in between patches I've made a decent progress on the Tier 3 things and have now every feature 'mocked up'. For the moment I've done what could be called a 'proof of concept' so I'm now confident about these features so much that I can reveal their headlines.

• Hunting/Gathering, Slash&burn agriculture and Nomadic map flow.
  
• New droppable Idols and 'socketing' mechanism
  
• White Lotus and 'Pledges' mechanism.
  
• Red Lotus and related 'Sacrifice' mechanisms.
  
• Black Lotus and related mechanisms.
  
• Ascension meta-nemesis and related combat mechanism.
  

I'm looking forward to dig into each of these in future updates. For now this is all, I'll see you in 4 weeks.

Cheers,

Ondrej

Hello, based on feedback I've now released a new (bigger) update targeting difficulty.

Besides bugfixes and tweaked values it contains some full new features which might be more suitable for a bigger update, but during tests they turned out to be more effective ways to tune difficulty than nerfing the threats.

There's still more to do around difficulty, I still expect a minimum of one more patch in the next couple of days/weeks. And since this is very hasty feature update I think we'll also find some new bugs around. But I think the bigger problems around difficulty should now be near-solved.

Cheers,

Ondrej

[h2]'Crisis Spiral' reduction[/h2]

• All Economy heroes now have a Toggle ability similar to Leadship heroes. When active these abilities reduce Risk. The difference (for now) is only in resource cost (gold/autonomy per sec) and whether it affects All risks or One Highest risk.
  
• Hostile civilization war risk is now based on proximity to your tiles. Neighbour tiles give 10%, 1 tile distant give 5%, all others give 1%.
  
• Send Diplomat quest is now twice as fast.
  
• Quest speed modifier now showing on map. (yes with a breakdown popup)
  
• Added a 'contingency ability' called Horn of Resolve which can wipe all existing disasters and crises (no rewards) and activate Grace Period (no risks for 5m). This ability needs to be recharged in ascension shop for Gold Lotus (after unlocked with Medieval Era). This is to provide better alternative to dying a slow death in a crisis spiral. Cannot be used for Confusion of Tongues.
  
• Civilizations which are initially Hostile can now spawn on Tier 1 after Unlocking Industrial era. This is to introduce its War risk challenge earlier than during the Tier 2 difficulty big-bang.
  
• Removed social crisis risk from Internet
  
• Default crisis reward reducing risks now reduces 10% for 5 minutes instead of 5% for 3 minutes.
  
• Removed Wood boost reward from default crisis crisis reward pool.
  

[h2]Disasters & Crisis Perks[/h2]

• Social Crisis on Tier 2 now has new Resist Heavy Unit perk instead of Thorns perk.
  
• Uprising on Tier 2 now has new Resist Light Unit perk instead of Fast perk.
  
• Fire now has the Fast perk instead of Hard to Block Perk.
  
• Disease now has the Hard-to-block perk instead of Resist light unit.
  
• Thorns Perk is no longer spawning by default on any Tier 2 standard crisis.
  
• All disasters now have duration of 2 minutes instead of 3 minutes.
  
• Stacking disasters now increments duration instead of stacking their effects.
  
• Resentment now grants Thorns Perk to new crises instead of its Click Heat increase.
  
• Thorns granted from Resentment deal more damage than original Social Crisis thorns.
  
• Thorns Deaths no longer reduce Autonomy.
  
• Unit buttons now showing indicator when a Thorns Perk would affect them
  
• Rats now add new Poisonous Perk to Crises instead of giving extra attacks. Poisonous perk deals low amount of unblockable damage over time.
  
• Rats now give Growth efficiency penalty instead of Disease Risk.
  
• Storm now grants 3 unblockable attacks instead of 1.
  

[h2]Generic Hero trait drop changes (only for newly dropped)[/h2]

• Risk reduction now more likely on blue heroes
  
• Unit Cap increase on blue heroes increased.
  
• Crisis slowdown now spawning as a random trait for Blue and Red heroes
  
• Fixed incorrect odds of various traits.
  
• Unit recharge speed increased for Purple heroes (also for Mercenaries skill, which applies retrospectively for older heroes)
  
• Quest speed values scaling fixed (also retrospective for previous hero versions)
  

[h2]Other Bugs & Tweaks[/h2]

• Gold rewards from crises on Tier 2 should scale with the Era (meaning lower gold rewards early on). Same applies for certain Dillemma costs.
  
• Fixed a bug causing Babel Tower scenario not to be won correctly if the last Confusion of Tongues was defeated by Autocombat in one tick (which became more likely thanks to previous Autocombat multi-attack-per-tick patch)
  
• Babel Tower can no longer be destroyed by Wonder Crisis Attacks preventing you from winning the scenario.
  
• Added game speed buttons to hud.
  

0.10.8 hotfix Fixed crash on eiffel tower
0.10.9 hotfix Fixed crash on drag&drop merging favorite unique heroes

• Level cap enforcement fixed. You should no longer see a 45 level cap on any hero. All heroes should be limited to Level 90 instead. All heroes previously capped at 45 are now returned to normal (but anything that was above 90 due to some bug will be now 90).
  
• Level Up recipe can now be applied on Favorite heroes and should not work past level 90.
  
• Reduced food costs on Diplomacy Dilemma 'Famine relief'.
  
• Chichen Itza and Eiffel tower description now showing correctly
  
• Eiffel tower now producing +5 Autonomy per Free worker instead of 15 Research.
  
• Added a new Marshal Perk available to Tier 2 which boosts light unit damage by a flat amount at the cost of reduced heavy unit damage %.
  

Note: Serie of unit-damage-related perks was planned for a much later update, the 'Marshal' one was added now as it can also serve as a buff for a rushing player with no damage ascensions, who could otherwise be soft-locked from reaching ascendable eras in tier 2. So this is a minimalistic 'patch' for one of the remaining Tier 2 pitfalls. I plan to introduce a proper update for this particular problem but it may take time to properly design (since it will likely affect ascension flow limitations).

In case you still struggle with difficulty increase of tier 2, I'd like to ask you to please provide me with your save files. The game can be quite a complex network of dependencies and I don't want to put the burden of identifying balancing root causes on you.

Cheers,

Ondrej