Ymir News

Hi, fellow Porcos!

I though i'd share a bit about the next update and what i've been working as it could take some time before its ready...

Since the release there's been many reports of unstable connection for some users. I've been investigating this on and off since then, and especially now for more than a week non-stop.
After extensive testing it turns out the networking of the engine i'm using is... broken. It is buggy and as soon as there is a bit of strain or too much traffic, it simply breaks.

This game implies a lot of transfers as there is a lot of data such as building lists, resources, techs, worldmap etc, especially during the loading times.
So it turned out that was the main cause of why some users experience connection timeouts or infinite loading times.
This is very likely to trigger as soon as the connection between client and server is slightly unstable ( distant server, short lags, bad wifi, packet drops across the network etc... ).
Now these should not normally cause any issue, but something is broken somewhere in the networking engine and its causing a failure that i cannot fix myself: long story short the engine i'm using is pretty closed and i have no direct control over it. There is also no hope for any fix from its devs either.

Therefore for the past week i've been entirely focused on trying and experimenting to see if I could find any way to workaround whatever's broken in that networking engine, but i'm working blind here and its making this a very time consuming task. I have found ways to improve things, and i'm still working on it, and i hope the improvements to be significant in connection stability for players although it might never fully fix the issue, as the root of the problem is beyond my control.

This is just yet another issue i'm having with this obsolete engine, which has now been a constant source of issues and limitations.
That is why I've started looking and learning the basics of Unity, an engine much more adapted to the needs of this game, but this is a very long term goal and would be a HUGE task. I am merely learning the basics of it right now, on whatever free time i manage to muster which is not much! So its more of a wish than an actual plan, at this stage.


The second main focus of the next update will be a global update of how advanced starts work.
Many people are asking "when will there be a new server" while many servers have plenty of available spawns. The problem being that there are currently too many issues with it and players are not convinced to use them.
Rather than restarting servers who would always be doomed to end by the same decay, my objective is to improve late game starts so that a stale server may be able to regenerate itself with new players.
For that, many improvements and fixes are needed on how late game starts work, and the next update will bring many improvements about this so that hopefully new life can be brought to older servers, as the cycle of players and empires is simply a natural process that can't be avoided: if players can't be convinced of the validity of late starts, every server will always go stale after the majority of first wave of players leave.

So that's it, just wanted to give some news so that my apparent silence isn't interpreted as not being actively working on the project!

This update is mostly visual and adding many new building animations -and sounds- to add more life to cities and buildings!
It fixes also issues related to windwheel and waterwheel annexes.

The animated update

v0.1.2.x
– added many new building animations
– added new building sounds
– fixed display issues with windwheels and waterwheels
– fixed annex number limit not working (ex windwheels)
– docks required depth reduced to 2 for all docks
– fixed UI issues with autocomplete (ex resource names in trading tab)
– fixed claim action being available to adjascent to outposts
– fixed problem allowing walls to be built in water
– state resources distributed to population no longer generate income if unsold -> now considering sold amount and not distrib amount.
– fixed UI issue in servers lobby with server side pannel beeing beneath server list.
– Fixed a battlecode error

This update mainly improves and re-balances things related to subjugation in multiplayer, fixing exploits and abusive behaviors.

Subjugated characters now get assigned a special ranked that cannot be modified by the nation owners, with fixed tax rate. The taxation from the subjugation treaty has also been removed.
This insures a fair taxation of the subjugated player, as before in most cases subjugated players where assigned a rank with max taxes additionally to the subjugation treaty, resulting in 45% tax rate from which made it impossible to keep playing.

Subjugates characters also can’t be placed beneath one another anymore, preventing nation owners to exploit the rank system.
Indeed, when vassalizing a group of players it is no longer possible to circumvent the state power maintenance costs by putting all the vassals under a single ‘buffer’ one -which also meant condemning him to death as well.

For the same reason, it is also no longer possible to use “inactives” as buffers to avoid paying the nation’s state power maintenance costs. Inacitves are now totally ignored and all their own subordinates will act as direct subordinates to the character above them.

“join nation” treaties are also automatically ended when a character is no longer part of the nation, and all national armies are reset when subjugated – as this allowed for exploits too.


Besides these, this update focuses on laying foundations against exploiters: the arrival of piracy in the first week following release was quickly followed by multi-account abuses in the second, and now more recently by the arrival of actual cheaters.
Sadly most of my work since release has been regarding these issues.
So following the anti-piracy patch insuring legit servers remain free of pirated versions, this patch brings the foundations of anti-multiaccount and anti-cheating measures.
Once the system becomes active in next updates, servers will ultimately auto-ban players flagged for cheating.
Also noteworthy that this new version might get falsely flagged by some antiviruses when launching it.


A new branch was created called “previous_version”, allowing to keep playing on the public version previous to the current one, for people who need to for whatever reason, or in the case when a new patch causes too many issues.

The improved subjugation update

v0.1.1.x
– national armies are now reset to normal armies when being subjugated
– subjugated characters cannot be vassals of another subjugated character in a nation
– treaties with a “join nation” term will auto-end legally if the character is no longer in the nation
– subjugated characters get an automatic preset rank that is ‘locked’ and cannot be modified by nation members.
– removed taxation from the automatic subjugation treaty
– when a superior is inactive, state power maintenance cost is relayed upon the superior’s superior as if the character was a direct subordinate
– fixed subjugated characters getting breaking clauses from previous treaties being broken because of the subjugation
– fixed server game names allowing for special characters that would cause issues when saving with the OS file system
– fixed battle problem when multiple characters hunt at the same time
– organized anti-cheat strategy and layed foundation of an auto-ban system
– implemented multiaccount counter-measures
– disabled equipment loot from spawned rebel (exploit)
– fixed problem at server restart of ” failed to load save”
– fixed problem of infinite worldmap loading time
– added UI button in options to hide account infos ( IPs, user ID )
– minor improvement to connection stability
– fixed battlecode error causing server crash
– fixed issue with claims
– fixed UI issue in the worldmap action wheel where available actions would not update correctly

Another patch was applied today, adding new piracy countermeasures that i've been working on this past week.
This is mostly to prevent illegitimate copies of the game to access legitimate servers (as it only took a few days before it started spreading fast).
So... thank pirates for even slower development, as i doubt this will be the end of it!

This should also reduce the usage of multi-accounts, as they're most likely relying on the use of pirated versions as well.
I might start researching on how to limit this in the near future as it threatens the game balance, if it starts spreading on official games as well.

This update also adds bug fixes on the server side, still in an effort to increase server stability.

Most of the next patches will probably keep focusing on bug fixing and server stability/management and networking, so don't expect much new exciting features for now!


v0.1.0.31
- added piracy countermeasures to protect legitimate servers
- increased production of directly exploited metal ore tiles
- increased efficiency of furniture makers, and required workforce to produce furniture -> increase wealth from furniture makers.
- set realtime games character limit to 1.
- fixed invalid preview of generated resistance when claiming an occupied territory
- changed -1 resistance decay to a proportionnal to population decay ( 1 per 100 resistance )
- fixed bug of units deploying on the edge of the map

It’s been a rough week. Never had so many urgent things to deal with at the same time…
For the next weeks, i’ll probably be focusing mostly on server management, stability, and bug fixing, so don’t expect new exciting features for a while.


Here is finally the first patch of fixes following the release, with mostly server related things.
Notably it fixes the 2 infamous issues of the primitive tribe claims, and the carriers engaging enemies.
Barbarians activity in Solo and Realtime was also reduced.
Server can now auto restart on error, which should reduce downtimes greatly as well and increase the quality of life.
Next step is to find a way to do an emergency save when there’s an error, to avoid the weird ‘rollbacks’ that happen on error.


Besides that, I’ve been started renting a professional dedicated server. All official servers will be moved to it shortly, and a new ones will be started (offical 5 or official 1 ).
The previous official 1 is renamed Official test server, and will remain on the Tester branch, running on my own home server.
Official servers will now be located near Dunkirk, in the north of France, which is also near the Atlantic internet cables if that helps! 😀
I should be able to run eventually up to 8+ on that dedicated server, with much better performances than with my laggy home server. I hope it will reduce ping timeouts and connections issues greatly.


It was also discovered that steam lobbies were filtered by region by default, which is now fixed and will allow users to see all servers worldwide , especially the official ones for people outside europe.
That will reduce the issue of server shortage especially for players in the Americas.


And lastly, it didn’t take long for piracy of the game to spread. I thought i’d have more time 🙂
That can never be avoided, however the fact that pirated copies can access legit servers is a big issue, and this one can be fixed.
I’ve been working on it for the past 2 days and a fix for that is coming – although not on this patch yet .
I will increase measures to counter piracy with additional checks.
Eventually every player will probably need to authenticate its game at least once in online mode. Offline mode should of course still be possible.


v0.1.0.19
– errors on client now invisible, and dumped into an error folder in the “cache\logs\client\error” folder.
– errors on server now silent and combined with an immediate auto-restart, improving uptime ( also dumped in “cache\logs\game\error” )
– server list will now show all worldwide servers and not only the regional ones
– lowered realtime respawn timer to a base of 10 min instead of 1hour
– fixed exploit allowing to claim tiles of primitive tribes
– added popup warning when attempting to move primitive tribe when starting
– added configurable autosave frequency in server ini files
– reduced barbarian activity in solo and realtime, less frequent and slower difficulty increase
– fixed issue of own character showing up in diplomacy menu
– fixed pathfinding issue with buildings, in battles
– fixed battlecode error on server
– primitive tribe rebellions: fixed primitives deploying inside defensive zones
– “stand ground” units will switch en “engage” if fired upon by range units in same defensive layer
– fixed infamous bug of carriers being in “engage” mode in battles ( and hunts )
– fixed speed settings icons not combatible with CJK font
– fixed some localisation issues
– fixed multiple server side crashes
– fixed crash on worldmap when worldmap quality at minimum