After what felt like two days, another month is gone! This time we will talk about the upcoming beta and some bit of good news.
Upcoming Beta
As mentioned in previous update, Beta will start in the middle of December. Which turns out to be in a few days. I don't know the exact start day yet but unless something goes epically wrong during testing Beta will start next week.
My preference is 4 weeks long beta test but since this is 1.0 release it is important to end in a stable state.
Some bit of good news
Last time I explained the problem of beta start date. The choice was either too soon, or a bit later than needed. Because I chose the option two I ended up with a little more time than necessary to get the version content ready. So I did what I do in these situations - increased the scope.
I addressed some things I had in the 'optimistic' backlog as well as looked into the feedback you players have provided.
First two Civiliztions coming to 1.0
Although main update containing different civilizations is coming later after 1.0 I managed to finish up the first two civs which were sitting at ~80% completion state since last year.
Role of Civilizations
Civilizations are picked during map perk start phase. Civilizations are in fact special middle category of perks with only a single slot.
Every civilization will twist some existing map-related rule of the game. It will also forbid usage of some element of the game (e.g. Unit) and will reinforce some group of play-styles at the expense of others. They will be a 'specialization' kit.
Civilizations are not named after concrete civilizations in history but they are styled loosely as a group of civilizations either culturally or geographically (or both).
A greek or roman civilization would all now fit under the loose umbrella Civilization of Radiance now (the default 'mediterranean-styled' civilization with no special benefits or drawbacks. I hope this historical bastardization doesnt insult too many people :)
Overview of the new Perks available. Some were added based on player feedback.
Civilization of Crescent
Civilization of crescent is focused on large offensive unit buffers. It will not be able to construct Forts, but all Hero (or other) bonuses normally applied to forts are applied to Light units instead.
It will also use stone to build light units instead of wood. At the same time it will be capable of constructing quarries in lowlands.
It will also have a hyper-recharging Barracks (+100% recharge further boostable with magnification) but will need Autonomy to trigger it.
Crescent civilization is styled very loosely after the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and in later stages it steers towards Islamic architecture. But yes I know they all could build awesome forts.
Civilization of Sunset
These guys will be focus more on non-light units. Light units will be forbidden, instead all bonuses to light units will be diverted to Forts.
Civilization of sunset will be able to live comfortably in hills by constructing village tile anywhere. They will also be the one civilization best to (ab)use windmill with other wonder mechanisms since their windmill (actually a water mill) recharges faster and costs autonomy.
Sunset civilization is based on early european civilizations (later the current 'Western' civs) starting off with a bit of a William Wallace style. It will also have a slightly more difficult start versus easier late game, as opposed to Crescent Civ.
A busy civilization of sunset having fun discovering the Dark Ages
Combat Resistances
One of the earliest feedback was to look into the combat simplicity. Players have been suggesting to make some crises only attackable by specific units, creating special 'medic' abilities etc. The main concern was that everything can be destroyed too easily with the same spam of soldiers.
I have always remained careful not to introduce a too obvious system of unit and damage types from other games. But in this late phase I thought it is time to expand the system a little bit.
Crisis Hit-point types (Shields)
In the next version, some crises (depending strictly on crisis type in technological era) will have so called Crisis Shields. These work like extra hitpoints in a different color, which carry a specific Resistance or Effect with it. Once you remove those shield hitpoints, the resistance/effect is gone.
Blue Shield
Blue shield will reduce most of damage of Light, Heavy and Fort units. Your best approach is to eliminate this shield using Militia and Hero damage abilities.
Ottomans will always have a small ratio of health as Blue shield, forcing the player to come up with an effective secondary combat ability that can break through it (in case their primary ability is resisted by it).
Yellow Shield
Yellow shield is just a regenerative HP. While this doesnt have any special resistance effect, it may render builds focused on damage from unit construction (with no buffered army) less useful if the shield is too large to recover in time. The recharge works as an instant refill after X seconds since first attack.
Black Shield
Unlike blue shield which multiplies damage by a specific X% Black shield reduces ALL damage by a flat value. This value is based on the crisis level meaning a high-level crisis with black HP might be able to block off all damage from your small units (militia or light unit).
Black shield forces the Player to deal high-damage with single ability like a Barracks-boosted heavy unit or a high-power Bolster. But even light units with a good Critical Hit may be enough to break through a normal crisis shield.
Dilemma & Diplomacy Update
Based on your feedback I spent some time with the dilemmas of Tribal villages and on Civilizations.
I made some modest changes which should make the existing system more useful. It boils down to a few essential points:
Dilemmas (both tribal village and civilization diplomacy) will each have a 'Good' a 'Bad' and a 'Dismissive' option.
Good option will always provide moderate reward (not the highest) but will cost something.
Bad option will usually not cost anything, will provide the highest reward but will penalize you with Black lotus (or a similar penalty)
Dismissive option will usually cost nothing, but the reward will also be nothing special.
Good and Bad option of Tribal Villages always destroys the village - so you only have a one shot for a powerful boost per village.
Tribal Villages provide various 'permanent' bonuses to economy instead of lame temporary boosts.
Civilizations now grant a Unique Hero if destroyed, or a special Perk if allied (both can be seen on their tile details upfront)
You can now also improve ally tiles (for money) to optimize your trade and adjacencies.
You cannot infinitely interact with Civs with diplomacy. They will always end up in one of final states. Either as an Ally or a 'Forever Hostile' - a new type of hostility preventing diplomacy.
Example of new tribal village card options. The top is always the 'Good' path, Second option is the 'Bad' path and the last one is 'Dismissive' usually meaning you want to try the next card on the deck.
Disasters Localization
This doesn't mean they're translated to all languages, no sorry. What it means is that Disasters are now linked to a tile on map.
Example of a handful of Disasters in a civilization. Note that there are three Meteor disasters on three separate tiles. As usual each meteor grants a Crisis perk making every crisis attack deal extra damage. So three Meteors would make this extra damage triple.
This changes a few things in how Disasters now work:
You cannot have more disasters than tiles (they no longer stack duration, any disasters above limit instead are ignored). So one tile can only have one Disaster on it.
Some disasters only affect specific tile types (e.g. specific biome or improvement). Social disasters like Resentment typically only affect tiles where people live.
Negative Effects of the same type of disaster (on different tiles) stacks. So multiple Meteor swarms kill more people per time. More Resentments increase Thorns damage etc.
Industrial pollution now 'merely' doubles construction costs, not disables it entirely. But the old perk isnt deleted. I just have to figure out a nasty enough enemy to give it to :)
Other Disasters have also been slightly changed to be more scalable.
Tile with a disaster on it provides you no benefits (all its traits are nullified) but still improves adjacency to other tiles.
Most importantly any Disaster can now be 'Healed' using a 'Disaster Response' Quest. This Quest can be very expensive depending on the distance and level.
Various smaller changes
There is a number of other feature changes I made in the last four weeks. I will list all in the beta change log when it starts but heres a few of the most notable ones:
Economy Hero skills have been changed. The square heroes now provide more synergized economic effects instead of crisis/predicament protections.
Heroes were more distinctly reorganized to tiers. Some higher tier heroes were buffed. There's also new bundles for the new Heroes/Idols.
Unspent Secrets now also boost research by +5 +5%.
Some wonder effects were upgraded to be more useful or combat related. Some are now also boostable further through unique heroes and magnification.
Wonders can be rebuilt (with the right perk)
Spirit culture will now be granted from Combat, not over time. Vulture Idol ability now also farms Spirit (and other) culture. There's also a perk to boost culture gain overall.
Magnification is now more expensive to maintain (needing more workers)
Removing predicaments from Rat Idols now works similar to new Secret Research from Ravens - a new repeatable research project which has a growing cost with each instance finished.
Basic Crisis damage resistance perks were merged (simplified) to two Perks - Massive and Furious. Massive makes Heavy/Forts weaker but light/militia stronger, while Furious works the other way around.
Militia is now capped by Free workers and is easier to quickly recharge through various synergies.
Heavy units are now heavier. Meaning they deal a lot more damage but also cost a lot more materials. The central strategy to playing focused on Heavy is through buffering high amount of damage between crises instead of having constant DPS as with Light-unit build.
Critical hits are now more critical. Dealing 30x more damage but less % chance to happen. They're also much harder to get.
Also eight Inventory tabs now. Free for anyone because why not.
Thats all for today,
I'll be in touch next week with Beta start announcement.
Ondrej