Imagine Earth News

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
  

Welcome back colony managers,

here comes a set of awesome new features improving your space colonization systems. This month we spent a lot of time into pimping the user interface of the game into it's 4th evolution and making it 4k ready by the way.

With the remediation center a very important infrastructure building made it into this release and also the logistic center got a workover enabling you to fully automate repairing and cleaning processes. And there's more...

• New user interface
  
• Remediation center & carbon sequestration
  
• Logistic center is now maintenance station
  
• Desertification threat and temple power
  
• Solar park and wind farm alignement
  
• Mountain variations
  
• Fixes & improvements
  

The existing user interface clearly did not meet the demands of our colony & planet simulation. It was very clumsy and reminiscent of a casual mobile phone game.

So we rebuilt it, using the smaller and much clearer Roboto font for all text elements, while keeping our futuristic fonts for headers and elements that need highlighting.

The new interface now has become much easier to read while taking less screen space and thisway giving even more focus to the planet itself.

New:

Old:


If you are using a relatively small screen with a high resolution you can still zoom the interface up to 150% in the options.

A side effect of our work is that the new user interface has a higher resolution and thus is ready for your 4K display.


The new building remediation center comes with an additional worker drone and uses this drone to automatically start the clean up process for nearby fields.



An powerful upgrade for the center is carbon sequestration - the technical separation and storage of CO2 emissions from surrounding buildings and power plants. Thanks to underground compression, the exhaust gases do not enter the atmosphere.

The second ugrade for this building is "Advanced Remediation Process" it halves the cost of soil clean up in the area.


The logistic center is now called "Maintenance station" and automatically repairs nearby damaged buildings by default. It's upgrades are the fire station and "Advanced Repair Process", which halves the cost of repair processes in the area.



In the course of global warming there will be new deserts emerging next to others. Thereby the infertile wasteland is growing. The only way to prevent this is to plant forests onto desert fields so it can't spread. Trees will effectively stop the process of desertification.

In the illuminati temple you can use gaian energy to create a field of desert anywhere around the world. Except on fields with forests on them.


They are aligning to the sun and the wind direction now.




Each mountain has two versions now to bring more variety into the game's look.



These two versions are now put to the three edges of big mountains as well to make it easier to see whether a field is blocked by mountains.

• Fixed animation problems: we had some seriously strange problems with sub models and animations. Mystery finally concluded!
  
• Ships and oilplatforms no longer visible under water, while being built.
  
• City expansion now also needs drones.
  
• Show diplomatic relation progress as ring (full ring reaches next diplomatic level)
  
• Fixed orientation angle of volcanoes and huge mountains on small planets
  
• Sandbox category for mushroom forests
  

As always, have fun and give feedback!
Jens & Martin

Space colony people, may we have your attention please?

The age of diplomacy just kicked into Imagine Earth! Other corporations now have an attitude towards you. When you are being offensive they will find appropriate strategies to react to your doings. Also there's a mighty construct in this update for you as well: The Midras Extractor creates tornadoes and does terraforming.

Read your way down through all those good news to catch a glimpse of some future plans we have.

Thanks very much for being with us! If you do like the way we do things here please consider giving the game a thumps up on Steam. It would help as a lot!

Why not follow our brand new twitter account @SeriousBrothers?

• Diplomacy
  
• Midras Extractor
  
• Niter pumpkin seeds
  
• Planet Bonus Goals
  
• AI & Merchants
  
• Fixes & Improvements
  

Did you always want to interact more with the colonies you share the planet with? Well we did ever since. Now the other corporations have a mood set in seven levels from being allies to enemies. They react to certain events that you trigger like stealing their land by building a tower or using a hacking tool against them.



As you can see they stopped trading stuff with us because I threw an asteroid on them. There reactions go down to aggressively taking my terrain and buildings.

Note that these are our first "diplomatic steps" and will definitely need some refinement and your feedback!


The Extractor is a high tech construct of the Midras. It absorbs the power of fallen asteroids to generate force fields. It can do rare condensation to turns rocks into gold. Technically it condenses all the small metal particles so they become harvestable. A second power generates a force field in the sky to create a small-scale air vortex in the earth's atmosphere with an almost vertical axis of rotation - a tornado. Third it enables you to do terraforming.



For the next update we plan to build these and other temple structures with artifacts you can buy from the various races.


Natives will sell pumpkin seeds now. You can use them to plant your own nitro-pumpkins whereever you like.



In addition they trade ideon treasure maps showing how much ideon is in the nearest ideon deposit. Of course, you will also find classic products like gaian energy containers and the universes most favorite meal drug "Spice" in their shop.



The bonus competition missions in the campaign mode now have 5 goals which help to introduce the victory point systems. This will make it more of a challenge to reach full points in your game profile.

• The different AI fractions have individual item crafting preferences
  
• AI finally has trade demands for energy, food and goods
  
• AI actively buys resources for crafting tactical items
  
• AI pays more attention to its emission balance
  
• AI starts with less money because the where to rich!
  
• Merchants only offers rare resources and goods - no longer food and energy
  
• Merchants tries to offer things the player likely needs (e.g. for crafting)
  

• Nice new snowy mountains
  
• New construct: ski lodge for winter sports. Ahm no, just kiddin'! Time for spring to come...
  
• Titanium goal on Tuto had a problem that we fixed.
  
• Lithium goal on Lorian had an error regarding the amount of lithium that you were about to harvest.
  
• Laser rotation speed got faster now to shoot asteroids in time.
  
• Icon render order fixed.
  
• Fixed profile generation available colors.
  
• Fire spreads slower - we felt it was to dangerous.
  
• Building city center no longer costs extra money. The landing permission is enough.
  
• You can now destruct assimilator ruins. We wonder why nobody did complain, about this.
  

During the holidays Jens scribbled down some ideas about the next buildings that will fill the build rings in of our game. Tell us which one feel most intriging to you or what other possible game features you would like to see. The 3 most original ideas in the comments of our blog will win a steam key for yourself or a friend: https://www.imagineearth.info/alpha-40/

Thanks for reading about Imagine Earth!
Martin & Jens