Ymir News

This is the last 'update' before the release!
Actually it’s not really an update but more of a summary of all the successive hot-fixes that have been applied since the last patch while preparing for release.
It doesn’t add any new feature in particular, but many fixes and re-balancing of various aspects of the game.

The pre-release update

v0.1.0.x
– trade routes pricing is now fully dynamic and can go down automatically ( and not only up as before ). Minimum price is the production cost of the exporting territory.
– added more UI price details to the Resource menu
– fixed issues with market study not taking into account multiple resources competing for the same need (leads to global decrease of food prices).
– added side pannel with Resistance details in the Loyalty tab of the territory menu.
– lowered resistance growth in occupied territories by 2.
– added UI honor warning when converting an occupied territory
– removed resistance penalties when transfering ownership of occupied territories
– fixed display bug of units in high altitude ( hills or mountains )
– increased distance penalty on required cargo amounts for trade routes
– fixed purchased resources on markets not being state owned
– fixed bug with world pathfinding, rights of passages, and national armies
– auto shut down of all trade routes after an invasion
– all resources are now state owned after an invasion
– added tutorial toggle option in the main menu
– added basic camera key bindings
– fixed issue of doubled AP costs in battles
– fixed case of infinite battle
– placing some infrastructures now require profesionnal builders
– added missing income taxation to sales profits of producers whn selling resources in the market
– reduced palissade cost to 1 wood.
– reduced fuel cost to refine gold.
– reduced state power cost of subvention and state workers policies
– fixed issues with demand/ideally needed/sold in the resource distribution
– resources pricing: profit marghin is now proportionnal to production costs (+20% of production cost) instead of being always +1.
– fixed UI issues with nation names
– rebalanced resistance
– lowered resistance by 50% when transfering culturally integrated cities within a nation (cities that have been in the nation for a long time)
– adding social buttons in the main menu (porcopedia, discord)
– lowered honor penalty of losing to partisans by 60%, but still capped at 50 honor.
– improved decision making of the population to decide when they rise to help defend their territory.
– changed windowed mode to borderless to circumvent an engine issue that had no solution (glitched display espcially visible with fonts)
– fixed issue causing freezing at the end of a battle
– new mission to assist with barter transition now converts all resources to state owned as a reward.
– fixed merchant building not unlocking when adopting barter until the game was restarted.
– added auto creation of market stands when adopting barter
– fixed bug with price arbitrage and world area prices
– reduced UI flickering when opening or refreshing some tabs.

Here is the new Ymir trailer for the upcoming early access release in March!
Feel free to share and help spread the word :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alj5q7C4lBM

This quick update fixes critical gamedesign flaws in the economic simulator post-currency.

Price arbitrage
A new price factor has been added : price arbitrage. It represents the natural arbitrage that would happen between the prices of cities that are near to one another when there are big local price discrepancies between them.
Price arbitrage calculates a “world area price” for each resource of the city, by looking at the price of that same resource in all nearby territories the city has trading relations with, weighted by proximity with the city.
That includes other cities of the player, but also all foreign cities they have trading rights or rights of passage with.
Based on the difference between that world price and the current local price, it determines the price arbitrage modificator that is applied to get the final effective price of the resource.

The goal of this feature is to harmonize prices in a region, and to fix the game-design flaw that allowed players to easily manipulate prices by having a territory produce a cheap resource in great amounts, to then sell it in limited amounts in the next town where it would reach luxurious prices and make game-breaking profits that made everything else irrelevant.
With price arbitrage, price differences are now much lower and this easy strategy is no longer possible, improving the game balance.

Trade routes versus manual transfers
Another flaw was the advantages of manually transferring resources between cities via units instead of using trade routes. This resulted in advantaging repetitive tedious actions.
The cause of this was the fact waste would be applied twice in trade routes ( from the exporting city, and another time in the importing city ), while you’d only pay it once when transferring manually ( buying with no waste in the exporting city, and paying waste on state sales profits in the importing one ).
To resolve this, waste is now collected only on trade profits rather than trade raw incomes, which fixes the double waste problem for trade routes.
Additionally, buying up resources by loading them up into units is now subject to a waste penalty, meaning that manual transfer is now the one exposed to double waste.
This makes trade routes now much more profitable than manual transfers for regular exchanges of resources.



The price arbitrage update
v0.0.28.x
– lowered authority loss from militias by 50%
– lowered max effect of leader wealth on leader superiority. –> superiority from wealth now maxed at 100 at +∞, with a 1/x shaped curve.
– fixed bug with demand in the price variable of supply/demand
– increased cultural decay speed from low influence
– increased armor of wolf warriors (+2) and manbearpigs (+3)
– fixed bug of technologies costing double what was advertised
– added waste cost when buying resources to load into formations
– added new price arbitrage variable in resource prices based on a world area price, which is a price average calculated from all nearby territories.
– waste now only applies to importations and exportations profits, rather than gross incomes.
– fixed visual issues when selecting neutral nations in the world map.
– fixed resistance not decreasing after uprisings
– disabled sleeping building upkeep for buildings with no workers (ex ground storages)
– fixed an issue with sows, piglets, and olpigs access to services (ex doctors)
– price profit margin now considers the fact that the resource is distributed by merchants and is increased to +2 in that case.
– fixed memory leak in battles, on the server
– fixed tax incomes not being collected in some cases

This update adds a long-needed option: the ability to control game speed for solo and realtime games, making the solo or local multiplayer experience much more dynamic.
The game host now has game speed controls on the top right of the screen, allowing him to speed up the overall game speed up to 4 times. This allows to speed up battles, or moments when you’re waiting for resources to stock or new events.

This update also add a new “solo” game preset, with even faster speed settings than realtime, to make things even more dynamic for players who want to practice and learn the game in solo.

Another noteworthy change is the addition of all the missing UI details in the territorial menu: culture evolution, population health, life quality and intelligence now all have the proper stat breakdown to understand where these values are coming from and how they are calculated.

Besides that, Outposts have been rebalanced. Territorial status can now be tech locked or require some policies to be active: outposts now require the government tech, and fair exchange to be active.
They also are more expensive, as every productive building (that has workers) has an upkeep cost of +1.
Sleeping building also now have an upkeep cost of +1.





The speed update
v0.0.27.x
– added new “solo” game preset, with faster speed than realtime games (especially construction, research, and new ideas rate)
– added game speed controls (x1,x2,x4) for the game host, in solo and realtime game modes.
– added territory culture UI details
– added territory’s population health, life quality, and intelligence UI details.
– added territorial tech and policy prerequisites.
– outposts now require government and fair exchange enabled
– colonies now require leadership enabled
– increased population conflict in outposts +200%
– increased loyalty bonus of outposts from 25 to 35.
– all sleeping building’s upkeep +1
– outpost buildings upkeep +1 (not houses)
– slightly lowered desertion speed of armies
– lowered changing outpost penalty from -50 loyatly to -20
– lowered barbarian activity in solo and realtime
– fixed flickering units on water rafts
– fixed AI pathfinding issues an infite battles caused by water
– fixed broken tax income and added UI details
– fixed bug in state power transfer from treaties
– fixed some critical game exploits
– fixed issues with tile edge display and platforms
– fixed bug of server restarting on wrong port in daily restarts
– fixed bug resulting in incoherent health bonus from food quality
– fixed tabs of the region control pannel resetting to the formation tab all the time in world view.
– fixed bug where actions could be executed without the required AP (battle, invade… )
– fixed bug allowing for faster movement speed on the worldmap when giving successive movement orders.
– lowered density and amount of primitive tribes in solo and realtime games.
– repaired auto-shut down option for servers
– placeholder: disabled free cities

This update adds new tools to show different informations in regions, such as heights, ground fertility, or impassable edges as well as the ability to toggle the display of terrain heights allowing you to see the region on a flat plane.
It replaces the infamous “T” debug placeholder tool.


The display modes are available from a button located near the minimap.
Another button allows to toggle heights on or off at any time regardless of the currently displayed layer.

Some display layers are also specific to building placement, and are auto-enabled when placing these buildings: a fertility display when placing fields, or walls display when placing palisades.


The fortification display only shows defensive structures, and also allows you to identify fortified enclosed areas (green) and inacessible areas (red): an easy way to check the validity of your fortifications!


Height map display shows elevations in shades of grey, as well as impassable tile edges in red, practical to analyse valid paths in the region.


Disabling heights allows you to see the region on a flat plane, with impassable tile edges visible in red, allowing you to easily access areas normally hidden behind the relief.


Fertility layer is auto-enabled when placing fields.


When placing walls, the walls display layers hides everything else but walls. It allows you to see more clearly which tiles are occupied, and which edges the walls are actually blocking or how they connect to cliffs.


The display layers update
v0.0.26.x
– added new system of region layers display.
– added ability to toggle heights display on/off.
– removed “T” debug tool.
– added fertility, groundwater, heights, and fortifications display layers.
– added auto-enabling of display layers when placing some buildings (farms and walls).
– lowered state power cost of national armies from 5 to 3.
– fixed issue when disbanding a formation containing troops partially manned.
– fixed bug where battles registered as a loss when defending a territory only with allied armies.
– fixed infinite battle bug caused by problem with retreating units.
– fixed infinite battle bug caused by problem with hunting with multiple formations.
– fixed bug allowing to recruit and access resources in occupied territories.
– fixed various issues when moving nation members in the hierarchy.
– fixed issue when subjugating your own superior in a nation: now triggers an automatic rank swap within the nation.
– climate AP modificator is now disabled in cities.
– fixed bug with cancelling treaty offers
– honor commitments in treaties lowered to 50 max.
– fixed neutral armies in battle having their AP depleted as well.
– lowered VP missions reward to 1VP.
– fixed issues with the subjugation action.
– improved choice of region for retreating armies: now prioritizing adjascent controlled territories.
– if a character is dead/powerless, the nation maitnenance costs of its subordinates are now relayed upon its own superior.
– subordinates now pay no taxes/state power if their superior is dead/powerless.
– fixed “join faction” treaty term conflicting with other treaties and not causing them to be broken.