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Civilization Traits

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.

What are 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.


What is new on the Map?


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).

Economy changes

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


Patch 0.8.15

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

Map update sneak peek

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.

So what is the reason of all this change?


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




Cloud Saves + 0.8.13 Patch

Hi all,

just a quick update. I have activated basic Cloud Saves functionality, so your save files should now transfer after exiting the game between devices. I successfully also tested this between a PC and a Steam Deck (you still have to exit the game to sync though, we don't yet have the fancy sync-on-suspend).

If you run into ANY issues with save sync, please let me know on Discord or email to [email protected]

Additionally there's a little patch targeting some annoying problems:

  • Fast forwarding Idle time should no longer play sounds
  • Material Locks (e.g. have at least 50 stone per sec) should now be possible to open even with Marketplace on.
  • Ferocity ability dialog should no longer crash game
  • Fixed description of Quest Locks in technology tree.
  • Removed incorrect Windmill unlock from Threshing tech (this windmill level does not exist)
  • Absorption Crisis debuff should no longer crash game when usin a Unit
  • Fixed one case of Fast Forwarding Idle time crashing due to performance optimization.

Research & Autonomy Major Content Update

Hi,

Thanks everyone for their support and help during the 0.8 beta. With three weeks gone and all discovered blocking defects fixed, I've decided to release the version to the broader audience.

You can find the main content description in my previous updates (of in the full changelog below):

Nemesees & Predicaments

Autonomy Upgrade

Dynamic Research

As usual please report any bugs either to discord or email them to [email protected]

Thanks and have fun,

Ondrej


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[h2]Full changelog[/h2]

0.8.12 Patch
  • Damaging Workshop which is being upgraded will now correctly reduce its material by default damage rate.
  • Multiple Ascensions now correctly reset the Total Lotus Score to 0 (visual bug).
  • Game should no longer crash dues to Ferocity skill
  • Storm risk modifier now presented in a slightly less confusing way on the Risk breakdown


0.8.11 Patch
  • Count of built Pyramids now correctly saved and loaded.
  • Resolution is now using letter/pillar boxing when resized
  • Zeal boost should now have correct description
  • Industrial Pollution should no longer crash the game randomly when no houses around to spawn fog.
  • Tutorial on Quests should no longer randomly crash the game
  • Perseverance reward descriptions are now aggregated on one line per types
  • Grace period (no risks take effect) after death increased to 5 minutes
  • Auto research can now be configured to ignore Nemesis locks
  • Reconstructing broken workshops is now 50% of the original resources. Welfare will halve this to 25% of original resources needed.
  • Ascension tree colors slightly changed to increase contrast between locked, unlocked and purchased nodes and make it easier to orient yourselves.
  • Tyranny trait causing death with every click will no longer kills people while in menus (it was deliberate, but causes weird corner cases now so I disabled it at least for now)
  • Disasters like Storm should no longer cause crash while processing idle time before game load.
  • Corrupted heroes should no longer be usable in Merge recipes
  • Game no longer crashes when showing cost for some recipes on a Corrupted hero (some recipes were missed in previous patch)
  • When temporarily running out of Autonomy, active Automation Toggles go on a short 'cooldown' (indicated with red clock indicator) before they kick back in. This is to prevent flickering oscilation between 1 and 0.
  • Social crisis risk caused by corruption is now showing correct description in Risk Breakdown popup
  • Wheat disease risk now showing correct description in Risk Breakdown popup
  • Nemesis lock can no longer be clicked after opening via Secret
  • Nemesis countdown is temporarily frozen if you have fallen (for the duration of the 'dark' phase after fall when you cannot do anything).



0.8.10 Patch
  • Game no longer crashes on some corner cases for tutorial messages
  • Game no longer crashes when showing cost for some recipes on a Corrupted hero
  • Game no longer crashes on some corner cases in Ascension Score screen (there are still some visual glitches reported regarding Lotus Score to be addressed with a future broader upgrade)
  • Risk caused by Monotheism should now have correct name in Crisis Risk breakdown popup
  • Technology buttons are now displaying details when hovered
  • Popups on Map screen should no longer overflow outside the screen
  • Toggle Abilities can again be toggled from Autonomy and Trade screens


0.8 Major Update

[h2] Research [/h2]
  • Technology tree has become slightly randomized and contains non-mandatory branches
  • Technologies are categorized into Central (mandatory), Minor (randomized with small bonuses) and Major (main techs with multiple traits).
  • Tree has become more compact visually to accomodate more technologies and more dynamic elements
  • You can now skip certain units and workshop levels in tech tree and aim directly for the higher levels.
  • Tech tree now contains Locks for optional major technology branches. A lock has to be first open in order to access the techs beyond it.
  • There are multiple types of locks - some require a condition to be fulfilled, some more difficult will require defeating a boss.
  • Tech tree now evolves with unlocking Eras. Locks become gradually more difficult.
  • As consequence of adding locks, Bonus stars mechanism has been removed altogether.
  • Instead from Bonuses, you now receive Heroes for every Major technology in your last two Eras.
  • Research speed has been slightly increased to compensate missing Research speed bonuses from Stars.
  • New Research Resource 'Secret' can be now gained in various ways and used to overcome technology locks faster.
  • You can discover random Rare Technologies not previously part of your tech tree after unlocking appropriate Ascension.
  • Era Boss Crises (Neolithic revolution etc.) have been converted to Locks (but other than that they work pretty much as before)


[h2] Autonomy [/h2]
  • Autonomy resource (the black-green beetle token) is now capped at your current population size (you can't have more autonomy than people). There's no way to exceed this and no penalty to be on the maximum.
  • Autonomy's passive effects to boost Research remains as before. However more instances of similar 'provision' traits have been added (not just for Research).
  • Except for passive effects Autonomy can now also be used as a 'mana' to use Autonomy-specific skills. This is similar to how Gold is used.
  • Autonomy is now hard to keep. Each Population dying causes a loss of two points of Autonomy (you can mitigate this to some degree).
  • Library is now the main source of Autonomy and it's traits have been completely reworked.
  • Theater percentages have been nerfed. Theater now also requires Gold and Autonomy to charge up (providing no passive bonus). Theater now however uses all Drop Rate bonuses and can drop Unique heroes.
  • Theater can cause one of two new types of Corruption. These contain both debuffs as well as unique boosts which can be utilized for specific gameplay style.
  • Existing Autonomy skills (auto-combat, auto-construction, auto-research) have been moved to Ascension tree (so you don't need blue heroes to use them.
  • Autoclick is still a blue trait available on heroes.
  • Autonomy skills now generally drain Autonomy per second (and all should be visible in the calculations)
  • Can select multiple technologies in a queue by selecting a Tech further down the tree.
  • Festival has been redesigned to use Autonomy as its cost and provide it's bonus in scalable way with increasing cost (based on active Festivals).
  • Festival now has a counter-part ability called Garden which costs gold and instead of mitigating excess food, it can convert excess free housing.
  • Both Festival and Garden behaviour can be improved by a number of rare traits (mostly from Unique heroes).
  • There is now also an Auto Quest skill which will automatically send quests to all tiles. This is a simplified version, which will be updated with the new Map update in next version.


[h2] Away-Playing [/h2]
  • Before loading a game, player can choose to preview what their civilization would look like if playing for the time they were away.
  • If the player likes how far the civilization survived, they can choose to continue, or instead load the game as it was when they left.
  • Away-time can be calculated up to 24 hours. It currently takes about 30s to calculate the preview for entire 24h (depending on your device specs ofc)
  • Accepting away time will grant a reward for each Hour that the civilization managed to thrive.
  • Away-time is a highly beta-feature at this moment.
  • To survive in away time it is recommended to utilize Autonomy skills and eventually combine with Blue heroes who can further boost the stability of your civilization.


[h2] Combat [/h2]
  • There are now new debuffs which can modify Crisis strength (similar to Storm from older versions).
  • Debuffs can be now gained through a new 'Predicament' mechanism which delivers a Debuff in a some randomly picked time (something like a time-bomb).
  • Surviving a debuff will grant you a new perseverance trait buff which lasts until the next ascension.
  • Later in game you will encounter new type of unique crisis with new challenges.
  • Stun has been slightly updated to only affect either Light or Heavy units (there are now two separate Stun traits)
  • Militia now upgrades with Technologies.
  • There are now new ways to increase your Militia charge cap and recharge speed.
  • Auto Combat skill now is configurable to support each unit type.
  • Era Boss Crises (Neolithic revolution etc.) have been converted to Locks (but other than that they work pretty much as before)
  • There is a new Click supercharging skill that especially auto-clicker players may like.
  • Festival is now a method to reduce Click Heat.
  • Workshops no longer scale charges capacity with level. Instead charges cap has to be increased by other (more uncommon) means.


[h2] Other [/h2]
  • Black lotus now works differently. Instead of being used as currency, it will negate any gold lotus gained during ascension.
  • Ascension tree has been expanded and restructured. As a result your old save game might end up having Ascensions which are dislocated.
  • Can select multiple technologies in a queue by selecting a Tech further down the tree.
  • More damage number details in Hero screen
  • Adde Damaged from Bolster or Barracks is now indicated on the unit ability popup
  • Unit charging traits are now showing in the same way for Workshops and Units as % per second.
  • There are now new tutorials appearing in various secondary game screens (heroes, research, quests)
  • Corruptions no longer can be avoided by equipping a trash hero. The priority to which hero it will assigned to is calculated from a more complex score system.