Deer despots,
The latest conquest update really propelled the game to new heights in terms of exposure and sales. It's both good and bad, I would prefer the game to stay under the radar until I feel it's polished and fleshed out enough for no one to find any complaints and be able to have a close relationship with anyone getting involved, or playing it. And crash-free of course.
Not that I'm complaining. This is all unbelievable to me and a huge thanks to every one of you, and especially those who come back with praise/criticism/feedback. I'm just sad, I might not be able to give you the response I used to be able to do. The hours of the day just isn't enough, and I have to focus on game progression for everyone sake in the long term.
The next update will be rich in "quality of life" features, based on suggestions. For one, we'll see a bulk copier tool that allows you to select anything (rooms, jobs, roads, etc. ) of any size, rotate it and slap it down somewhere else. It also contains the possibility to save room-plans between games. Logistics within the city will be more or less finalized, with multi carry for everyone, and a new transport-room that has animal powered carts that will ship huge amounts anywhere on the map. Knowledge will also be polished and finalized.
New features includes procreation that will take place in nursery rooms. subject will visually have gender and there will be children. Immigration will now be but a second way of boosting your workforce. The benefit of procreation is that you get to educate your children in a school system. You can choose to either teach them stuff, which boosts productivity and gains you knowledge, or indoctrinate them, making them easier to control.
Tyranny will be a new term, and can be gained through indoctrination and by other means, such as statues, soldiers on active duty (I'll try to make them march around), executions, or secret police. With more tyranny, you can have lower happiness without risking riots.
I'll also attempt to balance the game. As it stands currently, I think there are many exploits there that allows you to basically skip the mid-game and tax your way to world dominance. I'm planning on making it so that you need a much bigger army presence in regions to be able to tax them without them revolting.
The game released in September last year, and I hope to release V59 before a year has passed, so that I can say I do 6 major updates per year. A year ago, I thought I'd work on the city builder part of the game for 3 more years, now I think it's closer to 2 years. This is what I'm still aiming at doing:
Religion (temples, cultists, human sacrifice, power struggles and riots between religions)
Entertainment (stage for actors, singers, maybe arenas for gladiators)
Health (pandemics and epidemics. Doctors, wards)
Nobility (Smarter, interesting nobility that has wills of their own and needs to be pleased for gains. Nobles will have their own homes and families and require some micro)
Once the city builder has all this, I will consider it to be 1.0, and move on to military related updates (which I know many of you are eagerly waiting for, sorry). And after that, I'll focus on the world map and empire management.
I hope this sound good too you, I'm here, (and now also getting payed) to serve. If you want a chat, I'm here, or at the discord. https://discord.gg/eacfCuE