Plutocracy News

Hello!

We decided to launch a new experimental beta branch for users. It will contain content for future updates so that you don't have to wait long for upstream updates.

If you want to see a more stable version, you can wait to update the main branch of the game without downloading the beta version. We decided that it would be better to choose because the beta is updated more frequently, but it is still experimental. It may contain content that will not be presented in the main branch, that is available by default.

What's in the new beta:

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

Critical errors:

- Some game crashes that occurred in previous versions / FIXED

Vulnerabilities and balancing:

- Rebalancing character loyalty
- Rebalancing the influence of characters
- Rebalancing the economy

Minor bugs / complaints:

- Now when you are changing company parameters, there are hints if the action is blocked
- The arrows in the company statistics window now more accurately reflect what brings the company a profit and what is a loss

[h2]New[/h2]

- New character avatars and more customization
- Influence reworked. It is now spent on various actions and restored at the beginning of each quarter
- Visual overhaul of the loyalty
- Added character reputation
- Choosing a reward for fulfilling a character's ambition
- New types of companies - Mining and Metallurgical
- When you hover over the ambition icon, you can now find out exactly what the character wants without revealing ambition
- Unique trait - Selective - Characters with this trait will refuse to meet with you if your Reputation is lower than theirs.
- Game performance improvements

Besides, we are currently finalizing work on the politics, as well as a new version of the tutorial and reworking of in-game tips. We have quite a lot of new features planned for future updates since we have finally dealt with most of the optimization problems, so the next updates promise to be more fundamental.

Now we're going to tell you how to get access to the beta branch of the game.

First, go to your Steam Game Library. After that, find Plutocracy in the list of your games, and right-click on the name of the game, you will see the following menu:



Select "Properties..." from this menu and go to the "Betas" tab:



On this tab, open the drop-down list and select the available beta version of the game (names may vary):



After choosing a version, the game will start downloading a new update, and you only have to close this window and wait for the download to finish, after which you can start the game :)

It's been a while since the last dev diary but here we are again, we got some interesting changes coming that we want to tell you all about.

First of all, we’ve continued to work on optimization, older computers should have an easier time running the game now, we hope that by the next update we’ll be able to get rid of a large part of the problems in this area. Finally making us able to complete the political system.

We’ve also worked on some important changes, perhaps the most important is the reworking of loyalty and ambition rewards. You can now choose what reward you want when fulfilling a character’s ambition:



The potential rewards you can choose from range between a simple loyalty boost or unlocking an agent to government contracts or subsidies. Of course what rewards you can get depends on which character you helped.

                          

We’ve also fleshed out the relationships with other characters. It’s now a more involved process to become friends with others or conversely to end feuds.

The loyalty bar has been overhauled, there’s now 5 hearts, either in green or red to show how close of a friend (or enemy) you are with others.

We’ve also reworked how influence works, it became quite obvious to us that most players accumulate so much influence that the resource becomes trivial. We’ve tried to fix this by making more types of actions like using agents or entering negotiations cost influence. But to make sure this doesn’t become a handicap later in the game we’ve made it so that influence regenerates every quarter. The amount of actions you can make every quarter therefore has a cap which will grow in accordance to your influence.

To accompany the influence and loyalty rework we’ve also added a new resource - Reputation.

Reputation is a measure of your character's decency and trustworthiness. If it dips too low most characters will refuse to negotiate with you. Those that you can make deals with will require more influence to get a good price. Your enemies will also have an easier time finding incriminating evidence.

This works both ways though, you can only find incriminating evidence on characters with a negative reputation. The worse their reputation the higher the chance of finding something interesting.

That being said the Chief of Police can still give you a decent chance to find something good on a character with a squeaky clean record. The Journalist can also help lower their reputation by manipulating public opinion. This becomes way easier if you already have some form of blackmail, with just one article the journalist can destroy someone’s reputation.

Additionally, there’s a new trait - Shrewd. Someone who’s shrewd will see through you and will not trust you enough to negotiate if you have a lower reputation than them

Now moving on, we’ve also added 2 new company types. Mining and Metallurgical:

                                                                                     

Mining companies extract ore and various types of minerals from the earth in order to then sell these resources to Metallurgical companies.

Metallurgical companies make steel and other metals from ore. These metals are essential for laying rails or building new steam locomotives used by Transport companies.

Thus, Transport companies will no longer be able to get around companies from other sectors simply because they did not have sufficient costs. Creating a more integrated economy.

We’ve also delved deeper in balancing companies. We can now say that all companies seem to have become reasonably equal in potential losses and profitability, so that you no longer have to choose companies from the most profitable sectors.

The last thing we’d like to talk about is the rework of character portraits. It’s a large undertaking but when done the portraits will be much higher quality and we feel it will fit the game’s atmosphere better, so you can see the changes:

                         
                         

                         
                         

                         
                         

Well that was all for this time, we expect to release the next update some time in the coming weeks, until then we wish you all the best!

[h2]Fixed:[/h2]

Game Breaking bugs:

- Crash when M&A / Fixed
- Crash when changing quarter / Fixed
- Crash when double clicking exit in negotiations / Fixed

Exploits and balancing:

- Now you can not lose more than $10M in the events "Train Delay", "Bandit Attack"
- Dividends of companies at the start of the game now depend on the selected difficulty level

Serious errors:

- Incorrect calculation of income from loans / Fixed
- Selling items of other characters / Fixed
- An error with the movement of the character, which led to the inability to continue the game / Fixed
- Incorrect work of ambitions to sell items / Fixed

Minor bugs / complaints:

- Loyalty for fulfilling the "Campaign Financing" ambition was not calculated correctly / Fixed
- Some errors in layout / Fixed
- Display errors with a large number of shareholders in companies / Fixed
- Cars did not appear after 1900 / Fixed
- The menu in the game does not close according to ESC if the player has entered one of the submenus / Fixed

[h2]Being worked on:[/h2]

- Political system
- Characters being able to support or oppose the player
- Negotiations with CEO
- Rework of votes
- Negotiation redesign
- New types of companies

[h2]Fixed:[/h2]

Game Breaking bugs:

- Various rare crashes / Fixed

Exploits and balancing:

- Economy rebalancing
- Influence rebalancing
- Mergers can now only be held in the same state

Serious errors:

- During a merger, company loans were debited from the accounts / Fixed
- Error with prices when selling items through ambition / Fixed
- Error with items price on auction / Fixed

Minor bugs / complaints:

- Errors in map filters / Fixed
- Other minor bugs / Fixed
- Menu buttons are now locked until the menu is fully loaded
- Character finance window improvements

[h2]New:[/h2]

- Patronage system
- Macro indicators of state economics
- Reworked technologies in companies
- Two new states - Ohio and Pennsylvania
- Game performance optimizations
- Influence can now only be earned by collecting items, financing election campaigns and patronage
- New filters in Character rating
- The "Rating" window has moved, now it is in the "Characters" tab (the former "Agents" tab)
- Finance window in company statistics
- The skill "Trade" has been reworked
- The company statistics tab now displays the demand for the goods that the company produces (replacing the Experience card)
- Minor rework of voting, new votings in companies
- Added Chinese localization (partially, readiness ~ 80%)


[h2]Being worked on:[/h2]

- Political system
- Characters being able to support or oppose the player
- Negotiations with CEO
- Rework of votes
- Negotiation redesign
- New types of companies

Hello everyone!

It’s been a while since the last diary, sorry about that, we just wanted to wait until we had something new and interesting to share with you, which we finally do! Here’s what we’ve worked on in the last month and what’s in the next update, which is not far off.

We’ve seen frequent requests to optimize the game ever since launch and we’ve spent a lot of time doing so. Now it’s faster and more stable than ever before. This will allow us to add more content without fear that at some point the game will become overloaded. Although all this work on optimization has sacrificed time for new content we feel that it was more important as a strong foundation for the future.



There’s a new window that will be added to the company screen, “Finances”, which has been a very requested feature for a long time. It’s a detailed financial summary of the company, where you can study your income and expenses and will help you understand what could be improved upon to reduce production costs and increase the profitability of your company. This window will also let you see information about your competitors, their market share and the inner workings of their company.


We thought that simply increasing the level of technology all the time was too boring so we have substantially redesigned the research system in the game. Now the shareholders themselves will choose what technology the CEO will develop. Each quarter a vote will be held to decide which tech to develop further.
Industry leaders in any tech will receive bonuses while those lagging behind will have to constantly try to catch up with them or carry out mergers in order to achieve success.



We’ve finished working on most of the macroeconomics as well, it will become much more interesting to play with. The macroeconomic policies of the state will directly affect your company. Of course, you will be able to manipulate this, both in future updates, by passing laws and in the coming update, when a new feature will be added to the game: Patronage.

Patronage is a form of charity, but who said that charity had to be selfless? You can build buildings to increase your influence, and with it the macroeconomic policies of the state.

We have prepared several artworks so you can appreciate these beautiful buildings :)





Of course, this is an incomplete list of buildings that will be present in the game.

I’d also like to mention that we heard the prayers for better AI and while we’re not working on it now we can promise you it’s something we’ll do in the future.

Perhaps the most awaited feature is the introduction of the political system into the game. Unfortunately, we don't have time to finish it before the release this coming update, but we have done quite a lot of work on it and we can say that the politics is almost ready for release in the coming months.

As for the next update, we hope that we can release it in the first half of May. We’ve got a few important things to fix before that though however.

Anyway that’s all for now, thanks for sticking with us and we’ll see you soon!