Imagine Earth News

Dear Colony Managers, in this update we increase the visual and gameplay diversity of our planets with the themes Jungle, Terran, Swamp, Barren, Volcanic and Frozen. Also we dedicated a lot of our time into making the Tuto and Joma mission a better experience. Read on to find out what else has changed.

• Rocks, Asteroids & Scanner
  
• Gaia Forces in Build Ring
  
• Drone Priorities
  
• Planet Themes
  
• Storytelling
  
• Translation
  
• UI & Graphics
  
• Money Balancing
  
• Balancing & Fixes
  

Asteroids now can contain all types of rare resources. They look different and when you decide to throw one of these asteroids against an opponent you might accidentally send him a big present full of ideon or lithium.



Scanners are having an increased scan radius and an increased value in gameplay. You will now have to scan all rocks to find out if there's any gold, titanium, lithium or ideon hidden in them.
Rare resources are automatically detected when you take over the field into your build radius. The amount of rare resources on all planets has been raised in general.




You can now access all the forces you have loaded in temples right from the build ring. Therefor we have thrown the forest ring out of the ring menu because you can only build forests with seed bombs from now on and the different types of forest weren't relevant enough for gameplay to take up an own slot in the main build menu.


Drones no prioritize open tasks. Dealing with fires is most important, followed by repairing highly damaged buildings. After that they will deal with new buildings and other things. They only return to the city center when they need a package to build something.



We have set up six general presets or themes for planets, so you can choose quickly under which conditions you want to play a competition round or freeplay. Choices are Terran conditions, Frozen World, Swamp, Barren, Jungle or Volcanic World.

In addition there are new mountain models on many of our planets.


We reworked the first three missions, so that you can play more straight through without being interrupted by dialogs and story suddenly popping up. More story elements are now clickable in form of info and mission icons. So you can start cut-scene when you are ready. On the other hand we made them auto started when nothing was happening story-wise for some time so you don't miss important story elements.
To make the factions more personal we have individual victory messages when others win in competition mode.

• Steam store front has been translated into Spanish
  
• Many new Russian translations for buildings, tools and UI
  

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• Bookmark panel on the upper right has a special section for dangers now
  
• New panel to display construct and upgrade details on technology screen
  
• New character for the Midras Miner
  
• Visualize fertility influence more clearly
  
• Districts: blue light when level-up possible
  
• Increased display size of warning icons
  
• Reduce snow intensity on streets
  
• Text colors on menu buttons changed so text stays more readable
  
• Added out of money message for multi-upgrading
  
• Progress ring for temple plundering
  
• New landing animation for Leen's ship
  
• Trader Icons darker
  
• Spaceport launch ramp remodeled
  

• When you take over an opponents city by buying up his shares you will no longer have to pay an extra money fee for the takeover as you paid for the shares already.
  
• City center takeover only costs shares (no more money)
  
• Rebuilding a city center with a new landing permit is now free of charge because generally you have paid for the landing permit itself or earned it otherwise.
  
• You will be getting more dividend payments out of shares you hold of other corporations to make the feature more relevant.
  
• The emission levy costs for air pollution have been reduced as it was so high that it ate up almost all of the companies profit.
  

• New range upgrades for maintenance and remediation buildings
  
• Relocating fishing ships made cheaper
  
• Warehouse: Default storage for energy food and goods is smaller. Reduced price for upgrades
  
• Increase the amount of rare resources on planets
  
• AI should include pollution in field assessment
  
• Glass factory and solar park no longer need 45°C to reach max productivity
  
• Reduced native trade frequency
  
• Reduced Bironix trade favor to 10%
  
• Increased number of science level research goals
  

• Activated desertification (!)
  
• Adjacency bonus for the stone quarry doesn't work if rocks are in the water
  
• Food shortage despite reported overproduction
  
• Remediation does not work on ruin fields
  
• Negative ghost income on startup
  
• Radius of lasers and health districts is sometime incorrect
  
• Black hole on top of small planets (e.g. Tuto)
  
• Fixed 4:3 screen UI problems
  
• Research tool-tips were sometimes partly outside of the screen
  
• Storing mechanic of Lithium not working correct
  
• Midras and natives repair themselves
  

Dear Colony Managers, space is getting more frightening by now as a new threat is arising. Read about space pirates, special vendors, unique landing ships for all eight corporations and much more in our latest update release #45. Here's what we got for you this time:

• Beware the Space Pirates
  
• New Item: Resource Piracy
  
• Unique Landing Ships
  
• Three Specialized Traders
  
• Resource Trading Partners and Auto-Trade
  
• Emission Trade and Visualization
  
• More New Features & Fixes
  

These nasty creatures land a strange kind of unknown flying object right over your warehouse to plunder it with their tractor beam. Simultaneously they start firing their board cannon to vandalize your base.



You can helplessly sit back and relax until they have stolen enough and loose interest. Or, you can choose to pay a ransom or install an energy shield onto a tower to block the guys off from your warehouses. In later missions you might as well develop lasers or pulse canons to give them a warm welcome if they ever return...


These pirates are not only a threat that randomly happens. You can also craft a landing control to send them upon one of your opponents. Sweet addition: You get half of what their ship can steal.


We are proudly presenting individual colony landing ships for all eight corporations.



After having introduced the individual factions last update now you can tell the difference between them by looking at their landing ship, which is automatically expanded into the main city tower after landing.




They come around with awesome looking new space ships amazing landing animations ;-). And they are specialized to trade either wares, items and tech, or rare resources.




The resource panel has been split into a money and a resources part. This helps to put the four basic resource classes and their storing and trading issues directly into the middle of your attention.

It now also shows you if there is another colony or trader able and willing to sell a certain resource to you when you need it (e.g for crafting).

You can also activate the automatic purchase and sale of resources. Note that this involves trading with every potential trading partner - regardless of whether the price is fair or not.




The emission levy now always must be payed as soon, as a company on the planet has a negative emission balance. Environmentally friendly corporations get emission trade payouts if there is a company that pays in.
The global emission balance is now visualized with positive values when the world's climate is OK. It's represented with negative red numbers when climate balance is going bad. Much more intuitive isn't it?

• Now you get written info on all construct upgrades left to the tool ring.
  
• The field info panel with details on deposits, pollution and other values of a single field is now also visible in navigation mode.
  
• The probability of occurrence of riots and epidemics was too low. it has been increased by about 40%.
  
• When using the seed bomb or nitro-skirlide seeds you can now see how well the plants will grow in that area.
  
• There's now a countdown for competitors coming down and landing their capsules. This puts you a bit under time pressure to find the best place for the base.
  
• You can buy landing permits in missions as soon as you got the second city center. Good news in case a city is burning down.
  
• Temples can now be repaired.
  
• Trading panel improvements
  

• Rewritten - Hypergate Ideon Objective - the vendor states out more clearly have to find and also sell the ideon crystal to him to open hyperspace gate into Udoxia Galaxy.
  
• Rebalanced - Higher runtime costs for remediation centers
  
• Fixed - Temples are no longer charging themselves apparently by surrounding nature or stuff
  
• Fixed - Rocks had a shimmering on the surface as if they where rare resources
  
• Fixed - A city center landing is now final - no more abort and vanishing of the landing capsule
  
• Fixed - Background of colony value
  
• Changed - Loading screens animations
  
• Fixed - Many particle emitter problems
  
• Fixed - Warehouse Upgrades couldn't be activated in the tech-panel
  
• Fixed - Cure goal bar looked finished after half of the task
  
• Fixed - Savegame buttons in sandbox mode or messed up
  
• Highscore background bar is reworked
  
• Fixes for Rounos mission: Joe story plot does not wait for clicking the quest icons anymore.
  
• Tornado fix - still visible in navigation when multiple tornados in one field.
  
• Midras Extractor Temple has model and animation fixes
  
• Midras Digger fixed model and particle system. Dust when drilling.
  
• Spaceport fixes
  

Thanks for your attention once again! We hope you enjoy playing Imagine Earth and share with us your ideas on development.

Wow, this feels like the biggest game system update since ever. It comes with a Simplified Chinese translation ( many thanks to deloquac! ) and so many other changes. Good timing to invite friends: Imagine Earth is 20% off during the steam summer sale.

Please check out our brand new Discord channel for Imagine Earth where we'd love to discuss the latest features with you. But first of all check out what we got for you this time:

• Items for special buildings
  
• New rare resource: Artifacts
  
• Special abilities in research
  
• Individual corporations
  
• New faction: Nootilas
  
• New faction: Privateers
  
• New UI for build ring
  
• Global warehouse storage
  
• Translation for Simplified Chinese
  
• New savegame menu
  
• New frontier visualization
  
• Fixes und Mission Improvements
  

You can now craft construction kits and landing controls for special buildings like the temple, pyramid, assimilator, Midras digger and the extractor and then place these units where and when ever you need them.



The extractor can only be build on an asteroid of course. Assimilator and digger can only be build outside the base. In rare cases traders will ship these items.


These artifacts are parts of ancient alien technology which enable you to use the Gaian energy force fields of the planet. They are used to craft all the special constructions mentioned above.


To gain artifacts you can now plunder temple ruins and wracked assimilators using drones. In addition they are produced by natives and can by bought from them (as long as you have a friendly relationship).


We have thrown the standard tools like claim and clean out of the research panel ( they're all available by default now ) to make place for eleven new research options. They are very powerful general improvements for your colony management system.

Options vary from "-10% construct costs" or "-20% percent emissions" to lower consumption of food or goods and so on. Only difficulty: You need to research a whole research sector line to unlock them on the end.


There are now eight different corporations in the game with individual setup of technologies, startup icons and special abilities. In free play and competition mode you can choose one of these parties. The unlocked technologies of each faction also includes research of the upgrades. So each company has its own preset of research points to start with in the research system.



Check out the two totally new factions to get a sense of how their individual possibilities are set up! We are actually still working on this and try to balance the factions. Please tell us what you experience throughout the gameplay ..


These corporations come with an individual background story as well which will be reflected in a kind of personal agenda as developments continues. This agenda will define how the company operates when they are you're AI controlled opponents if you chose them for a colonization match.



To get rid of these edgy triangle borders we made the visualization of the borders much more discreet and subtile.




Last update we integrated infos about a working construct into its ring so you can understand in detail what influences production and mood.

Now we have also added all the general values and information on buildings into the build ring to make the different constructs comparable. In this context the descriptions of all buildings have been revised.




There is a global storage system now. The resources will be shared between all your warehouses. Whenever a warehouse gets lost, broken or taken over by an opponent, your precious resources will be shipped to other facilities through an underground tunnel system to ensure nothing gets lost.

Each warehouse now also has two slots for energy, food and goods each by default.


Well yeah, Imagine Earth is available in Simplified Chinese now. All of a sudden deloquac popped up with a complete translation of our game. Thank you so much deloquac, this really helps us out and we'll mention you in the games credits! If anyone of you could imagine pushing this project forward with a translation into your native language please let us know: [email protected]




We have implemented a new approach to the savegame menu as well. You can now see more structured information and a small close up screenshot to pick the right savegame.

• Load campaign planets directly from campaign screen
  
• When placing a building show icons on fields that positively influence the building
  
• Xrathul particle effects working again
  
• Replaced € icon with the games currency symbol (
  
• Show claim tool option on all unowned fields (as a hint that it exists)
  
• Increase visibility of tooltip window arrow
  
• Improved store visualization of not available resources and items
  
• Improved speaker voice quality
  
• Jump to other faction city by clicking the according goals panel icon (free play)
  
• Rotate and tilt camera with pressed middle mouse or G key
  
• Don't show harvest dust for forests before harvesting has started
  
• Improved quality of small icons in the world and UI
  
• New player profile icon
  
• Construction site is no longer displayed with transparency
  

• AI now uses cannons and ideon bomb to defend against assimilators
  
• Population should always slowly grow when capacity is free and they aren't starving
  
• Chemical plants are now available in all later campaign missions
  
• Clean tool didn't show on the correct field when occupied by a multi-field building
  
• Share trading should always be allowed
  
• Increased likelyhood of incidents for intact buildings
  
• Renamed Saw mill to Wood factory
  
• Harvesting any forest type now will always "produce" timber
  
• Forests shrink slower when negative factors reduce their maximum size
  
• Temples charge with Gaia twice as fast
  

• Oil pests now take much longer before they disperse
  
• Reduced fertility and starting area
  
• Increased likelyhood of meteor showes
  
• Fixed unclear and wrong parts in space market quest
  

• Joe race goal didn't properly show population count
  
• Native quest explains in more details how treaties are working
  
• Decreased Joe's expansion speed a bit
  

• Xrathul no longer leave without you doing anything. They no loner harvest rocks and forests and only take very few fossil resources.
  
• You can use rare resources now to "donate" them to the Xrathul
  

Thanks for your interest in the Imagine Earth Project, tell us what you think about the latest developments or get engaged in any of the games social platforms. For example you can engage in our new Imagine Earth wiki on gamepedia.

Dear Colony Managers,
prepare yourselves to build some beautiful ocean districts for your people! In addition there are loads of detail improvements that give the overall playability a huge boost! Mostly based on testing and your highly appreciated feedback. Special thanks to Johannes for improving our german translation!

• Display info icons during colony placement
  
• Trade discounts and surcharges
  
• Ocean district
  
• UI improvements for research, colony shares and workshop
  
• List of gameplay improvements
  
• New rendering system for buildings and world objects
  

Placing a new colony or frontier building now displays icons on the surrounding fields. The represent the quality of the area by highlighting deserts, fields with high fertility, fossil or rare resources and more.


The price of resources and items always depends on who you are trading with. Space merchants and tech traders will charge a fee that makes buying more expensive and selling less lucrative. Natives and midras on the other side don't know a lot about space market prices and often sell stuff very cheap.



Other colonists, finally, link their pricing to your diplomatic relation. This means it can be very powerful to have a good relation towards another company.


This new district is now made available in the Lorian mission.

The ocean district can be built on coast fields and the open sea. Districts have to be linked to others who connect with the shore.



Microplastic collectors clean the seas and recover goods by filtering floating plastic, other waste and impurities from the water.

Ocean thermal energy conversion uses the temperature difference between cooler deep sea and warmer surface water to meet part of the energy demand.

• Only display elements of buildings that are already available (the buildings don't have to be licensed, though)
  
• Highlight research options by improved category: energy, food, goods, income, emissions
  

• Take-over of a city no longer needs at least 50% of shares
  
• Clearly display the player's stake in another colony
  
• Tooltip with transaction fee and expected dividend
  

• Unite different item categories in single panel with scroll bars
  

• Added "mission failed" dialog to competitions
  
• Highlight when an opposing faction is almost winning the competition
  
• "Back" buttons in game are now called "resume game" to make it more clear
  
• Infrastructure buildings now have gray icons
  

• In competition and free play other factions will no longer wait until you have placed your first city center
  
• Forests and other plants regrow much faster now after being harvested or burning
  
• Nitroskirlid-pumpkins grow bigger in most areas now
  
• Increased number of default tech licenses in competition and free play
  

We have completely rewritten our rendering system for buildings and other world objects:

• Improved render performance
  
• Much nicer animations
  
• More powerful particle effects
  

Attention colony managers,
you may have expected the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything" from update 42 or have you newer sheltered a passing hitchhiker in one of your outposts?

Anyways, what you get instead is of course just another bunch of problems which will make the colonizing business so much more interesting...

• Catastrophes let colony shares drop
  
• Riots in cities and native camps
  
• Security Complex
  
• New item: Soma
  
• New city center animation
  
• Anti-aliasing
  
• Biome & forest diversification
  
• Fixes & improvements
  

For example a persisting epidemic in another companie's colony is lowering their colony's stock price. Use this opportunity to buy their shares at a discount!

Riots, fires, hackings, flood, tornadoes, asteroids, meteors and other incidents have similar effects. Also threats like Assimilators or Xrathul will cause a drop.

Your ability to artificially trigger these natural catastrophes through temples and items makes price drops an interesting prelude to the next strategic equity buying spree and the takeover of other colonies. The free market makes it possible.





Riots are now a real threat to your colony! This is what happens when your colonists are unhappy for a long time. Under-supply of resources or negative external influences lead to a poor quality of life. If these circumstances continue for too long, people's misfortune increases to anger and a riot develops. It's too late to fight the causes of the uprising as soon as it breaks out. A riot can be pacified with the use of Soma and prevented by a security complex or a frontier tower. But the easiest thing to do is to provide good colony living conditions in the first place.



This building stations police units to maintain order in the colony. Riots of dissatisfied colonists in the surrounding area are prevented. This ensures peace and quiet, although this is associated with additional costs.
The facility monitoring upgrade scans production facilities in the surrounding area and prevents incidents.
The cyber security upgrade monitors the information networks in surrounding buildings and prevents hacker attacks.


We could finally synthesize Soma, the famous drug from Aldous Huxley. This is what the packing slip says: "To avoid major mood swings that can lead to negative moods, people regularly take Soma, a drug that has a mood-lifting and stimulating effect and is also used as an aphrodisiac. Unlike alcohol, it has no side effects at the usual dosage and is produced synthetically."



To sum it up: it's raising the general life quality and helps against riots.


A new age of ingame animations awaits us! Starting with the colony center base which is expanding in various parts that screw, bend and turn out of the ground when the landing capsule is coming down. The worker drones are now stationed on landing pads from which they will lift off to build and repair.




Might sound a bit weird but we had to disable this basic graphics feature for ages due to framework issues. But what it adds to the game's look is awesomely amazing. Lovely, calm and soft edges everywhere especially when you zoom out from the planet, have a look.


Ralph sent us a very detailed feedback with improvement suggestions to make the environment and nature more realistic (Thanks!). Based on this we decided to further diversify the biomes and forests:

• Forests in fertile areas are often better at binding CO2. This is for example the case for rain forest and bog forest
  
• Big fish swarms are more common in cold areas
  
• Industrial farming and fishing reduce fertility
  
• Steppe is bad ground for forest growth, but quite good for farms and especially resistant, so fertility is only slowly decreased
  
• Rain forest ground in contrast is easily damageable and loses it's fertility fast
  

• Added achievements for Edora, Iqunox and Thera and when reaching 40 points in the campaign
  
• Workshop queue is only available for workshops of level 2 now
  
• Camera position is restored when loading a savegame
  
• Priorization stores at least 10% of a resource's production. This amount is now shown in the list of consumed resources
  
• Fossil resources below 10% will decrease a fossil power plant's productivity (up tp 20%)
  
• Fixed bugs in highscore list
  
• New unlocked items are highlighted in the inventory
  
• Switched background music compression from ADPCM to WMA streaming