Hey everyone
With todays update comes a brand new building type for the game. The introduction of Grand Civic Projects. These multi-stage development projects require you to leverage the collective skills and resources of your settlement to see them to completion.
Grand Civic Projects
These new buildings are massive multi-stage constructions that require a range of workers, resources and dependent buildings to operate. Throughout the Roman campaign you'll be tasked with the development of a series these projects, each of which will see you create a glorious monument to the Empire.
How do they operate?
Unlike other buildings you're familiar with, these projects aren't just set and forget. You'll need to place the foundations of the project and work through multiple stages of construction.
With each stage of development the civic project requires an ever expanding list of resources, workers and building requirements to upgrade. You will need to provide wood, stone, marble, pottery and other resources in large quantities to facilitate their growth.
What projects will I be building?
Across the 3 new scenarios introduced, you'll be creating the following projects, each of which will require an extensive industrial presence to power
The Grand Arena
The first civic project, the Grand Arena. You'll be building this in Scenario #7 and will require a range or raw and refined goods. This project is the easiest of the 3 you'll build and should serve as a good intro in these projects and how to generate resources
The Pantheon
A large temple complex to venerate the Gods. You'll be building this in Scenario #10 and will take a wide range of refined goods and labour to upgrade
The Imperial Palace
Residence of the Emperor and vital administrative building for major settlements in Roman cities. This massive project is one of the hardest projects, requiring a large volume of both refined trade goods, food and luxury goods. You'll build this in Scenario #14
What's the right time to build?
Laying the foundations for these projects are expensive, costing between 1000-2000 Denari. In addition, each stage of the development process will incur a considerable monthly upkeep cost, a fee that increases as you develop the project further.
To be able to afford the outlay and upkeep costs of these projects you'll need to have considerable financial reserves and have a strong industrial and residential presence to boost your monthly income. Building the foundations of the project too early without the economy to back it up will almost always lead to failure, while leaving it too late may leave you with insufficient time to get it completed!
Start by creating all of the usual resources for your citizens and once you have a reasonable amount of monthly income you can place the foundations.
Resource needs, labour and dependent buildings
Each stage of the development process sees the demands of the project grow, getting harder and harder with each level as it grows to completion.
These projects are massive and represent the biggest public works that were undertaken in the Empire. As such the labour demands for these buildings, along with the amount of resources will increase with each stage. As you upgrade these projects you will be expected to provide not only larger quantities of resources, but more diverse refined trade goods as well.
To fuel these projects you will need several resource generating buildings, along with multiple refineries to create the goods you need. Each stage of the project will require dozens, if not hundreds of resources and it's your job to ensure they flow directly to the project.
New Scenarios
These projects take the forefront in three new scenarios in the Roman campaign. These scenarios have been mixed in with the original scenarios, being introduced once you've gotten the basics of city building down-pat.
The scenarios are in position 7, 10 and 14. These new scenarios should automatically be unlocked for play if you have completed the older relevant scenario. For example, the new scenario #7 where you build the Grand Arena will be unlocked if you beat the old scenario #7 (which has moved into the #8 spot in the list).
Along with these buildings, you'll need to grow your settlement sufficiently and generate strong financial reserves and a powerful industry!
New Features & Improvements
Along with this update comes a series of new optimisations and some behind the scenes groundwork for new features.
Financial Bailout from the Senate
If your current financial reserves fall in the negative and you have a negative monthly income, the Senate will provide a single one-off financial bailout to help get you back on track.
When you receive this payout the Senate will check back within 3 months. If you are still in debt they will relieve you of your position and you'll fail the scenario. In addition, if after this 3 month period you fall into debt the Senate will immediately remove you from office.
This mechanic should act as a 1 time warning to help you get back on track.
Faster Movement & Pathfinding
As part of the update, citizens overall should move a little faster around the city. This should help resources get to where they need to go.
Also, the pathfinding (the thing that calculates how does X citizen to get Y location) has been adjusted. Previously sometimes you might have found citizens take the long way to get to a building. I've adjusted this so delivery/collection agents should try and find the shortest path possible (without crossing through another building to get there)
Roman Industry Update
As part of the update several Roman industries have been updates to produce their goods faster. Here are some highlights
- Mason should produce Refined Stone / Refined Iron a few seconds faster
- Winery produces wine faster
- Reduced mil production time
- Timber mil is faster and produces more items
- Wool weavers speed adjusted
- Carpenters produce furniture faster
This change should help create more complex resources quicker. Many production buildings now require more raw resources, but produces more refined goods at a time. This should cut down on the wait time for resources. For example the Mason produces 2 units of Refined Stone every 7 seconds requiring 4 units of Stone.
UI Updates
Several parts of the game UI have been polished. This includes the left hand side main build menu, ensuring the font is more consistent across multiple UI panels and overall trying to adjust the spacing and layout to make the game feel more polished.
Build menu / buttons
Primary build menu items (such as dwellings / industries etc) will now toggle their background color when interacted with (the same as all other buttons in the game)
Buttons that open up other UIs (such as clicking on a resource to find more info about it) will now correctly toggle their background when the UI closes
Single Building UI updates
When clicking on a single building to get more information about it, the UI has been updated to make it more consistent.
The messages component (showing important info about the building) has been updated, it now hold 10 messages instead of 5 and the messages that are shown will highlight in gold important aspects of the message.
Changes to Achievements
Three new achievements have been added to the game for the corresponding new scenarios. Beat the new scenarios to unlock them!
Next Steps
I'm really happy with how this update and the civic projects overall have turned out. I hope some of you like these new projects and how you have to continually expand to keep up with production.
I'll be balancing and tweaking the content post launch and will be looking at the forum in case anyone finds any bugs.
Hope you all have fun!