I've been busy since launching the Tribes of Gaul expansion. Today im releasing a few quality of life changes to the game and introducing a few new and adjusted features!
Senate Missions Changes
In the Grand Roman campaign, once you've started each scenario you have a chance to be sent a mission from the Senate, these missions have you collect resources, have a set number of citizens in your city or have a nominated amount of currency.
In this update I've refined the system and it should be more fun and enjoyable now. For example Senate Missions will now only start when you've used up 25% of the scenarios time. This will make it easier to get your city up and running before being asked for additional things from the Senate.
Also the logic has been adjusted so that each month that passes your likelihood to get a mission increases, until you receive a mission and this chance is reset.
Senate Missions for Gaul
On launch the Gaul campaign didn't have these missions, however with this new update I've added over 40 Gaul Specific missions to the game.
Each scenario has around 6 missions. Each of which will see the Senate task you with a new mission that has to be completed in X number of weeks. These have been hand created for each scenario so they should help guide you to fulfil the outcome of the scenario.
New Senate Missions Types
The range of conditions, rewards and punishments these missions involve has also been updated. I've added a range of new options to make the missions more enjoyable.
The Senate may ask you to collected resources, have a set monthly / total currency or have selected buildings in your settlement. The rewards for completing these missions are often resources or other goods you need to complete your current Scenario, so you should try to complete these.
The punishments from the Senate can be great, including taking your resources, currency, civic service supply from your dwellings or overall making your scenario harder.
Mission Completed UI Notification
Beforehand you would just get a notification when you've failed or succeded a mission. Now this UI has been expanded to not only show you the rewards / punishments you've received, but why you received them.
These changes should help you understand that you failed because you only had X buildings or Y resources etc.
What about Rome and Africa?
The next update will see the Senate Missions for Africa. Each of these needs to be created from scratch and customised to the current scenario (so that you don't ask for resources or buildings that you wouldn't normally make etc).
Later on ill be revising the Senate Missions for Rome entirely. This will most likely happen during the pre-release stage where all of the scenarios are balanced.
New Sound Settings
This one I've been meaning to get to for the longest time. I've added sound settings into the game. Now you can turn off the sound entirely, or adjust the sound of the background music, advisor or special effect sounds. These are all in relative terms so 200% volume will be effectively twice as loud.
Settings Menu
Coming soon ill be moving the Settings UI to be accessible mid game. It's currently locked on the home screen for a technical reason, but I'm planning on bringing it into the main game.
Scenario Help Button
On selected scenarios, a secondary window appears once the advisor is dismissed. This help dialog runs you through some additional menus, settings and information so you can be better prepared.
Beforehand once it was dismissed it was impossible to get to. But now this has been added to the Scenario UI. If your scenario had this dialog it will now appear as a button on the bottom of the UI, allowing you to come back later and re-read this help.
Updated Resource Descriptions
While currently the resource descriptions are mostly flavor text, eventually they will be used in a wiki / help system. In this update I've updated all resources so that they have primary and secondary descriptions, each of which explains the resource and it's importance in the village.
Updated Steam Achievement Icons
I've been meaning to update the icons of the achievements for ages but never got around to it. Finally in this release the icon matches the achievement much more. Have a look at some of them here
Let me know how the Gaul campaign is going for you guys and ive you've got feedback. I'm very keen to polish up the game and make it even better with your feedback.