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Another Multi-fix update

Here is finally another update with miscellaneous bug fixes, exploit fixes, and general rebalancing!
As always, this news also includes in its changelog all the previous hotfixes that were published since the last news.

Notable changes:
– Wild animals now leave territories of growing cities above 800pop after a small grace first because it was absurd to hunt animals in the middle of a city, and also because it will make meat more scarce and thus valuable.
– Waste was slightly reduced but it now applies on market sale’s profits as well (and not just trade routes) to counter exploits taking advantage of this.
– Many issues regarding the infamous strategic tool have been fixed and improved to prevent mistakes and strategic changes not being effective.

What is going on besides that since all this time?
Besides these fixes that constantly come up, I’m working in the background on multiple long term new features, none of which is completed now unfortunately.
There is the “end game event” for a start, but i’m also working on a weather system and on a new Culture tab which will work in a way similar to government policies.
With cultural traits players will be able to specialize their people and therefore they’ll have make choices about things like what resource they can consume and produce, but more on that when these new mechanics are completed! This new cultural mechanics will in turn allow to finally add many more new resources and industries into the game.



Another Multifix update
v0.2.4.x
– fixed resources not in alphabetic order in the “allow” button of storage permissions
– fixed claim action being available on tiles occupied by enemies
– fixed pacific actions not cancelled when target tile turns out being occupied by enemies
– reduced waste from total population to +1% per 65 hab. instead of 50.
– applied waste to market sales profits
– strategic tool: fixed issues with default defensive zones around formation camp
– strategic tool: fixed not being able to deploy in neutral territories
– strategic tool: fixed UI problems when deleting a defensive zone.
– strategic tool: fixed being able to assign a troop to a defensive mode when deployed outside of it, leading to deployment being ignored.
– strategic tool: deploying troop in a defensive zone will now auto set it to defensive mode by default.
– fixed problem with destruction tool that could trigger destruction on invalid coordinates.
– increased research speed in realtime mode (doubled)
– fixed problem with trading agreements and market trades allowing trades between 2 parties not having a trade agreement.
– fixed trading bug where new sell offers wouldn’t auto adjust price to match the best buy offers if the inputted sell price was lower.
– fixed Migrants formation troops no being able to be disbanded independently (empty action menu)
– fixed free claims not working when administration is negative
– new event of wild animals leaving cities above 800pop after a 48h period
– cities and capitals now get 8 free claims
– added possibility of free claims to territory statuses
– fixed not beign able to build height 2 stone platforms
– fixed bug with construction speed of platforms
– restored ability for buildings to modify the grass density around and below them
– improved field graphics to better reflect their current state
– migrants will now spawn at 100AP when territory evacuation is completed
– only occupied territories may now be “renounced”
– increased AP regen in cities by 2
– reduced home distance malus for AP regen from 3 to 2% per tile
– fixed bug with annex tool locking up the UI
– fixed problem on client side battle pathgrids having incorrect values leading to wacky movements through fields
– Representative money wealth no longer provides a linear amount of wealth, but provides a % bonus applied to the produced wealth of every territory. 10 gold = +1% produced wealth.
– fixed crash when exiting region view with the annex tool opened.
– fixed state ownership problem when cancelling trade offers
– fied missing 25honor commitment in colonial treaties on the colony side
– fixed exploit of bypassing building’s minimum distance
– added failsafe for animal spots: unbuildable & undestroyable
– fixed instaresearch exploit
– Migrants now transfer local culture when settling in a city
– Overall redesigning of ideas triggering mechanics to fix tech stagnation on servers
– increased resistance decay speed
– decreased foreign cultures decay speed
– excluded salaries and subventions from deductible expenses in territorial statuses
– fixed dismantling causing crash when applied
– fixed exploit with rounding prices in market orders
– fixed battle pathfinding bug causing occasionnal server crashes
– fixed problem with market offers depleting state owned resources
– slowed down the evolution of intelligence of population classes

Hotfixes!

Multiple hotfixes have been applied since the last update, rather than a bigger thematic update. This is the changelog of all the cumulative hotfixes including today's.

It includes many bug and exploit fixes, an update of the anti-cheating and new formation types.
I'm aiming to get a stable enough version so i can resume working on new features in the next updates.
Below is the cumulated changelog of all the hotfixes published since the last update, including a new hotfix today (bottom of the changelog).

Hotfixes

- locked claim action in early game until leadership
- fixed rounding issues with resources decimals
- fixed bug occasionnally causing the loss of unloaded resources when pre existing storages are full
- fixed bug causing failed settling actions (empty territory, with slums and storage not poping up)
- fixed invalid wealth production for some service buildings (like cargo and trading)
- production buildings now produce wealth proportionally to actually produced resources (and not if materials aer missing)
- fixed changing formation home not properly encamping the formation
- fixed visual bug of trees appearing on buildings
- resources from events are now state owned
- fixed battle issue of troops sometimes able to raid a building through a cliff or wall
- fixed trade routes not closing when abandonning a settlement
- fixed being able to avoid the annex nb limit for waterwheels and windwheels
- fixed bugs with retreating armies causing the army to be lost after a battle
- fixed invalid deployment location for allies of a territory or gaiag animals when hunting in a settled territory
- fixed hunting battle causing militia to be deleted in same territory
- minor optimizations for large battles rendering on client side
- Militias now can't hold inventory
- evacuating a city now spawns a special migrants type formation and not a regular army
- primitive tribes are now "nomad" type formations and not a regular army
- fixed client battle pathfinding issue on water getting battle display stuck
- fixed bug allowing to uncamp formation below 50AP
- fixed bug in music tracks selection causing tracks to be missing ingame
- fixed tech inertia being enabled in solo mode causing some techs to be too slow to trigger
- armies and national armies can no longer perform the 'settle' action
- adedd 'settlers' formation type
- added 'migrants' formation type
- added 'nomads' formation type
- added formations decay to any homeless formation of a type requiring a home support (such as army & national armies)
- fixed battle bugs with water
- reduced combat strength of civilian units
- speed boost now only available for primitive tribe start
- fixed issues with formations encamping after battles
- battle AI: troops are less inclined to keep targetting an enemy troop if they were inactive in the previous turn (meaning they're unable to engage that enemy, for being in a defensive zone for example)
- battle AI: troops are now more inclined to target enemy troop if its climbing or breaching defenses.
- national armies no longer trigger exploration events, but they also cannot explore new territories (from the perspective of the character giving the movement order) -> fixing the problem of national armies getting immobilized.
- fixed barbarians not despawning when back home
- chats are now ordered by last message date + added nation flags on portraits
- added ability to block characters ingame (mute messages, chronicles, and chats)
- fixed ui issue with the "marshal" button
- fixed treaty term "join nation" available despite member not having the right to recruit
- increased pre-tax voluntary contribution of people from 20 to 25%
- implemented free city upkeep for some territorial types
- doubled lvl1 granary capacity
- increased storage capacity of livestock paddocks
- slightly increased leather production of cows and buffalos but reduced meat production
- removed wealth production of buildings with no workers (water collectors)
- fixed bug when an army retreating to a tile occupied with enemies is destroyed before battle
- fixed tactical retreats registering as a defeat (ex: range army retreating when out of ammo)
- implemented minor pathfinding optimization to better solve direct simple paths
- removed state power transfers from treaties
- removed PNB breaking clauses from treaties
- fixed loyalty issue when spawning as a colony
- upgraded the automatic anti-cheat
- fixed calculation mistakes in importation incomes
- added option to disabled the anti-cheat for server hosts (in server_settings.ini and game_settings.ini )
- fixed an issue with minimum price calculation and added more UI details in the price UI
- fixed battle issue
- loyalty high-tax penalties now proportionnally reduced from its territorial status income modificator (ex -100% for outposts = no high-tax penalty)
- improved price algorythm determining the 'profit rate' of the 'minimum price' section: now fully dynamic to adapt at best to the resource's trading activities.
- inactives no longer capped at max 10% national state power tax
- fix UI issue of servers appearing/disapearing in the servers lobby
- fixed worldmap territories not properly updating when owner switches faction
- fixed formations not updating giving/losing visibility properly on the worldmap
- fixed auto-peace not applying to all the nation members when a foreign character is subjugated by a nation member
- home distance AP regen for formations is now capped at -50% instead of -75%
- fixed bug where after a server restart all encamped units would lose some AP
- fixed barbarians not moving back to nearby barbarian territories after raids
- fixed formations not giving visibility when in battle in the worldmap
- fixed cargo from other own territories not available for trade routes unless cargo is made public
- world price average no longer considers neighbors with rights of passage only (now only considers trade rights)
- fixed rebellion of a subjugated character not triggering national defensive pacts
- rebalanced tech inertia of some critical techs being too high and causing tech lockdown
- fixed not being able to move a national army on explored territory if its owner hadn't explored it himself

The ideas propagation update

This new small update mostly changes things on the server side, thus it doesnt bring much new things visible to players, and is mostly focused on rebalancing the overall game’s tech progress rythm.

This update modifies some mechanics about how ideas are unlocked, and adds 2 new ways of discovering ideas:

  • Ideas can now passively spread along trade routes and with neighboring states you are at peace with.
  • You can now learn ideas from a foreign culture if present in one of your cities, which would typically happen after a conquest. This will not happen if the original invaded population is decimated and starving, and the city needs to have significant percentages of your culture and the foreign one for the cultural exchanges to happen.


Besides that, this update modifies other idea related things:

  • After a character discovers a new idea, a cooldown period will reduce its odds of discovering new ideas (in multiplayer).
  • Slowed down the discovery of some pivotal techs in mid and late game (in multiplayer).


The point of all these measures is on one side to reduce tech differences between nations and on the other to address the current problem of the game’s tech progress going usually too fast once the bronze age is reached, with some nations often quickly rushing through iron and steel and causing too many techs to come too fast.

This update also fixes multiple server-side issues that have been causing crashes on servers.



The ideas propagation update
v0.2.3.x
– added passive spread of ideas along trade routes and neighbors.
– added possibility to inherit ideas from cities with significant foreign culture and population (ex following occupation)
– fixed multiple issues causing server crashes in battles and pathfinding.
– added new invisible server side mechanics to better control and balance discovery speed of specific techs reducing randomness.
– slowed down discovery of some key late game techs.
– service buildings now only produce wealth for used services instead of total produced.
– The odds of unlocking new ideas is temporarily reduced every time a new idea is discovered by the character.
– fixed issue where spawning characters could inherit undiscovered techs.

The Soundtrack update

This update adds 16 minutes of new original soundtrack, with 3 new tracks made by Ben Rawles and 1 track from a guest composer Levi Bond.
Thanks to incomes generated since the Early Access release i was able to commission these new tracks to add more diversity in the musics and reduce their repetitivity: for a game meant to run for multiple hours its especially important to have a soundtrack as long as possible. I'll eventually keep commissioning additional tracks as long as i can!

Besides that this update brings various tweaks, exploit fixes and bug fixes.

Services producing culture can now be seen in their resource menu, and they now only produce culture when consumed by the population ( in order to fix things like the exploit of building many more forums than required by the local population ).
Treaties with inactives can now be broken without penalties, to make managing nations easier.
When pacifying invaded territories, resistance will now decay faster but culture will decay slower. Additionally, resistance will decay twice as fast if the invaded territory belonged to NPC ( barbarians, rebels ) or  an inactive character, making reclaiming territories easier.
Some issues with infrastructures were fixed, such as walls and roads remaining invisibly present below buildings or recycled materials missing when overriding existing infrastructures.



The soundtrack update
v0.2.2.x
- added 16min of new original soundtrack
- only services 'consumed' by population will produce state culture (as opposed as total produced before), so that the exploit of building more forums than necessary will be thwarted.
- "Claim" action now requires "Leadership" tech
- capped max population bonus when spawning in an existing city + added a temp 25 loyalty bonus
- breaking clauses are now disabled in treaties with inactive characters (= they can be broken with no penalties)
- increased speed of resistance decay in territories
- resistance decay speed x2 for territories that belonged to inactives or NPC
- slowed down rate of foreign culture decay in territories
- fixed issue of +/- 1 unit of resource missing/remaining when spending or adding resources in a territory due to resource decimal fractions
- fixed problem of unloading resources from a formation showing 0 in the formation's inventory when unloading failed in the territory and was canceled
- fixed infrastructure/terrain not clearing when placing buildings on top
- fixed infrastructure materials not recovered when building a new infrastructure or building on top
- fixed misc UI issues in the Nation tab of the Government menu
- fixed bug of partisans uprisings registering as defeat despite being won
- fixed loyalty warning even not showing for colonies and outposts
- fixed problem of trade route "export" offers registering as "transfer"
- fix bug of replentishing sale offer not reducing actual resource stocks in the territory
- fixed a pathfinding issue
- improved dedicated servers to be able to initialize a game without a pre-existing save or manual setup through the server UI

The Dedicated Servers update

This update finally adds proper dedicated servers to Ymir, by getting rid of the Steam lobby and its broken implementation in the Engine used by Ymir.
I've now made my own master server to list existing servers, allowing in turn to make servers completely independent from steam.

What does this mean for users?
  • No more disappearing or obsolete servers in the "Join game" menu.
  • You no longer need a steam client opened with a valid Ymir license to run a dedicated server.


Important notes for Game hosts
  • The game server settings are now moved inside the game save folders and renamed game_settings.ini. So all the games .ini files in the root Ymir appdata folder can therefore be moved & renamed, or deleted. server_settings.ini contains the default and global server settings.
  • The dedicated server steam app id is 749070. This is the server that can run without requiring Steam.
  • server_settings.ini now contains a url override, so you can have your server address displayed as a url instead of its actual IP.
  • Dedicated servers will now cancel their auto-restart behavior after 5 consecutive crashes.


The dedicated servers update

v0.2.1.x
- switched from steam master server to an Ymir private master server for server listing
- added new dedicated server app on steam (749070) that doesnt require the steam client and accounts to run.
- moved game settings into the save folders
- added support for custom URLs for server hosts, set in server_settings.ini
- servers now cancel their auto-restart behavior after 5 consecutive crashes.
- reduced efficiency of Tavern service and alchool required for it.
- greatly reduced efficiency and intelligence bonus from school and academy services
- fixed problem of "gaia armies" when a territory with an army decays.
- fixed production of pickaxes without the pickaxe tech
- lowered nordic bonus to +5 health
- lowered tropical malus to -5 health
- fixed a battlecode issue causing infinite battles
- occupied territories can only be transfered by treaty to their previous owner or a character that is also at war with the previous owner
- when a sell order is added, if 2 buy orders are competing for it, the highest order will pay second order's limit-price +1.
- fixed colonies not benefiting from city administrative policies
- fixed trade history overflow