The Beta Test for our Major Economy Update 0.14.0 Starts Now!

Dear Pioneers,

After a successful Alpha test period, we now move on to the Beta version of our upcoming major economy update!

Version 0.14.0 just went into the Beta branch on Steam for all Early Access players.

Here are some of the Highlights:

• Start from scratch with a small landing party!

• Enjoy a refined gameplay experience including 8 new buildings!

• Track your advancement with the settlement progression overview!

• Visual boost of Pagonian islands and more exciting geography.

• Beautify your settlement with a selection of decorative objects!

Please write us your feedback on Discord or in our Beta branch discussion forum on Steam.

We can't wait to read your feedback and thank you for your ongoing support!

Have fun testing and see you in Pagonia!

0.14 - Major Economy Update - Beta Update

Highlights

• As requested by the community: Start from scratch with a small landing party!
• Enjoy a refined gameplay experience with our major economy update, including 8 new buildings.
• Track your advancement with the settlement progression overview.
• The Pagonian islands got a visual boost in many areas and more exciting geography.
• Beautify your settlement with a selection of decorative objects.

Beta Disclaimer

Please be aware that this is a Beta version.

• The predefined maps 1-4 have been re-generated, but are mostly untested. Feedback is welcome. Maps 5-8 will follow soon.
• Existing save games are not compatible with the Beta version as well as the final release, as we did major changes to the economy systems. We will archive the last version prior to the Major Economy Update in a separate Steam branch for some time to allow finishing existing save games once the update is leaving Beta state.

How Does the New Game Start Work with the Small Landing Party?

• Generate a new custom map using the landing party “A new beginning”
• If you want to take your time to experiment, preferably choose no or few enemies
• You will begin with 25 Carriers, 25 Pioneers and no resources at all.
• Your Pioneers will gather wood, raise basic buildings made of Wood and occupy them.
• Start with 2-3 Resource Depots and one Forager’s Hut to harvest initial resources.
• Build a few Huts to provide a home for your Carriers so they leave the ship and start working.
• Next you need the Workshop to craft Stone Spears and Stone Picks.
• The Village Hall enables you to train your first Guards and more Pioneers.
• Build 1 or 2 Guard Posts to start expanding your territory.
• Build more Huts until you have a positive balance of homes to make room for newborns.
• Your Carriers will eat Raspberries, Mushrooms and Rabbit Meat to initiate population growth.
• Find and expand your Territory to own Copper, and place another Resource Depot nearby.
• As soon as you harvest Copper, you achieve the first important milestone, as it is the key resource to advance.
• With Copper, you can start crafting Axes for Woodcutters, Knives for Weavers and Hammers for the Wood Workshop.
• Track your advancement in the “Settlement Progression” overview, accessible with a new button at the bottom interface. You can pin objectives of any milestone to the objective section.
• Major milestones are access to Copper, Tree Trunks, Stone Blocks, Iron, Wooden Planks, Steel and Cement. The additional milestones are access to Cloth, Silver and Gold.

Good luck on your new journey!

Detailed Patch Notes

If you want to know details about all the changes, you will find quite an extensive list below.

Start from Scratch

• New landing party “A new beginning” just consists of 25 Carriers, 25 Pioneers and no commodities at all.
• The new “Settlement Progression Overview” will help you to track your progress and offers objectives to support your advancement.
  • To access it, there is a new button close to the construction interface.
  • The main view shows you the most important economy milestones which enable you to construct new building types and train new unit types.
  • If you click the checklist button of a milestone, you get a list of multiple objectives guiding you to reach that milestone.
  • There is a checkbox at the top of the checklist which allows you to permanently pin it to the objective display to observe it while playing.
  • The previous “Guidance objectives” are outdated now and have been removed.

• Whenever a new milestone of the Settlement Progression is reached, you will be informed by a message about your achievement, your people will cheer for a few seconds and next time you open the Settlement Progression window, it will highlight the new buildings and units which can be used now.
  
• New unit “Pioneer” uses a “Stone Hoe” as tool and is able to enter the island and perform multiple tasks important to establish an outpost:
  • Gather Wood from natural deposits on the ground or at the shore.
  • Level the ground and construct basic buildings made of Wood and Tree Trunks.
  • They can turn into “Employed Pioneers” by working at “Resource Depots” and the “Workshop”

Early Game Related Features

• The ship is no longer considered a “Home”.
  • Carriers are “homeless” initially and will stay on the ship and not start working until there is a residential building offering space for them on the island.
  • The same is valid for all craftspeople while all units working on construction sites (brave Pioneers as well as Builders and Diggers) start working even if they have no home yet.
  • If there is not enough space in the village, surplus units will still move back to the ship and wait there until needed.

• “Wood” replaces “Firewood” and is now used for cooking as before, but additionally to construct the most basic buildings and craft both tools and weapons at the “Workshop”
  
• New small resource deposits for Stones (“Rocks”) and Copper (“Copper Chunks”) have been added. Instead of the large boulders which need to be broken into pieces with Hammers, those are easily accessible and can be harvested by Pioneers with a Stone Hoe.
  
• The new tiny building “Resource Depot” has been added which can be raised quickly. It is a resource gathering spot where employed Pioneers drop the resources they gather: They cut small trees and collect Wood, gather Stones and Copper Chunks.
  
• New building “Hut” is smallest residential building now, offering space for 8 Pagonians including up to 2 newborns.
  • Carriers living in the hut will look for one single comfort meal ingredients, cook for themselves and eat at their house.
  • Wood will be delivered to the Huts by Carriers, up to 3 units can be stored in advance.

• The Provisioner can now also craft a Ration using Raspberries and Wood (cooking jam) or using Mushrooms and Wood (drying mushrooms). This is helpful if you are short on Rabbit Meat and Herrings initially.
  
• The Comfort Meal score requirements for population gain have been rebalanced to take much smaller landing parties into account.
  
• New commodity “Stones” is the most simple stone material to be used as border stones to extend territory and to craft the first tool and weapon type.
  
• New tool “Stone Hoe” added as most basic tool in the game made of “Wood” and “Stones”.
  
• New basic territory building “Guard Post” has room for up to 5 Guards or any other military unit and can extend the territory as usual, range limited to 100 meters (Guard Tower has 200 meters as before).
  
• “Stone Spear” replaces “Wooden Spear”, and Guards use the “Stone Spear” now.
  
• New building “Workshop” is occupied by Pioneers and able to craft several Tools and Weapons:
  • Using “Stones” and “Wood” they can craft new “Stone Picks” and “Stone Spears”
  • Using 2 “Copper” and 1 “Wood” they can craft “Hammers”, “Axes”, “Knifes” and “Pliers”
  • Using 1 “Copper” they can also craft “Bronze Swords”

• New building “Village Hall” is the first training building and able to manually train several civilian and military units: “Pioneers”, “Builders”, “Guards”, “Soldiers” and “Rangers”
  • It also automatically trains several civilian units as required by new buildings, similar to the “Guild Hall”: Woodcutter, Provisioner, Quarrier, Tailor, Explorer, Weaver, Woodworker, Hunter and Fisher.
  • The “Guild Hall” can still train all civilian units

• The default top bar settings have been modified to reflect the new gameplay modifications.
  
• Territory buildings will now explore some territory around them after construction is finished to reflect their viewpoint character. This also improves early game exploration.

More Food and Population System Features

• A meal can now also consist of a dessert only.
  • This means a meal needs at least 1 main dish or 1 side dish or 1 dessert.
  • Drink alone is not enough.

• Some meal ingredients no longer need wood for cooking (raspberries, bread and water).
  • If the meal consists of such ingredients only, no wood will be consumed.
  • If someone in a hut, cottage or tavern wants to cook but has no wood available, he/she will check only for meal ingredients that do not need to be cooked.

• Comfort Meal consumption of Carriers, which ensures availability of new Carriers by population growth, now has the same priority as priority transportation. This ensures that it is easier to solve situations with Carrier bottlenecks.
  
• The residential buildings now have more space for inhabitants. The cottage has room for 12 (before: 10) and the residence for 30 (before: 25).
  
• New building “Large Residence” has room for 60 units, needs cement for construction and the inhabitants eat at the “Tavern” as well as the inhabitants of “Residences” still do.
  
• All residence building types (Hut, Cottage, Residence, Large Residence) now have a range limit for food consumption which is also displayed if they are selected.
  • For Huts, the inhabitants take any single Comfort Meal ingredient they can find in range to cook a meal for themselves.
  • For Cottages, the closest marketplace area is important, defined by the highlighted Market Fountain. The inhabitants will fetch up to 2 meal ingredients of the market stalls associated to the Market Fountain and prepare a meal for 2 residents. Wood will be delivered to the Cottages by Carriers, up to 5 units can be stored in advance.
  • Inhabitants of all four residential building types will also visit the highlighted Taverns, if there is one in range. A cook of the Tavern will use up to 4 comfort meal ingredients and cook 4 meals at once.

More Construction System Features

• The “Construction Carrier” has been removed, the “Builders” will now pick up the construction materials themselves.
  • Note that you need no Construction Carriers anymore, but of course a lot more Builders than before.
  • The Pioneers will behave the same way and fetch the construction material for the basic buildings made of wood by themselves.

• Builders are needed to construct standard and advanced buildings made of Stone Blocks, Softwood Beams and Cement.

More Economy System Features

• The Forester got the requirement for the shovel removed. Both the Well and the the Forester’s Hut are now accessible with Stone Block Construction.
• The “Hardwood Boards” commodity has been removed, Tool and Weapon craftsmanship will directly use the “Hardwood Trunks” instead.
• The Tailor now has two individual recipes to craft “Backpacks” and “Light Armor” using either 1 Leather or multiple Cloth. The switch to en- or disable either leather or 5 cloth has been removed accordingly. This way the player has much better control about the input resources that should be used. “Reinforced Armor” and “Steel-padded Armor” can no longer be made with Cloth, they now require “Leather”.
• “Mushrooms” replace “Porcini”. Comfort meal score for “Mushrooms” is set to 4, comfort meal score for “Corn” is increased to 5. We plan to add Porcini again at a later point in time.
• The tool “Steel Chisel” replaces the “Chisel” and is made of Steel now.
• The “Tool Smith” no longer uses “Copper” to craft tools: 8 tool types use “Iron Ingot” and 1 uses “Steel Ingot”. Note that 4 tool types can still be made of copper by the “Workshop”.
• New unit “Quarrier” now occupies “Quarry”, “Coal hut”, “Iron hut” and “Silver hut” while “Miners” are still needed for subsurface mining. Both “Quarriers” and “Miners” need nutrition food supply and are displayed in the top bar if they are hungry.
• Commodity “Stone” renamed to “Stone block”, commodity “Cut Stone” removed
• The “Quarry” is now able to harvest both “Stone Blocks” and “Stones”, but no longer able to harvest Limestone.
• Each unit of a “Stone Deposit” can be turned into one “Stone Block” or into one basket of “Stones”.
• Quarriers working in the Quarry or Copper Hut also need no Nutritious Food supply if they just gather Stones from Rock piles or Copper Chunks like Pioneers do.
• New building “Master Quarry” is occupied by “Master Quarrier” who needs Hammer and Steel Chisel, able to harvest “Limestone” as well as “Stone Blocks” and “Stones”.
• The Building “Stonemason” is removed, as well as the commodity “Border Stones”.
• Buildings “Iron Smith” and “Steel Smith” replace former “Weapon Smith” and “Armor Smith” and have their recipes redistributed between them.
• The “Iron Wand” has been removed, instead it is now possible to upgrade the “Wooden Wand” with gems in the Artisan Blacksmith. The most advanced Staffs still need Steel as before.
• New building “Fort” is able to have up to 50 military units, needs “Cement” for construction and has a large maximum claim range of 300 meters.
• The Garrison, suited for up to 25 military units as before, needs less space now (3x3 squares).
• Diggers level the ground up to 4 times as fast as Pioneers.
• The Wood Worker (for the Wood Workshop) now only needs a Hammer and no longer needs a Saw.
• The Magic Torch for the Skilled Ranger now needs a Sapphire instead of an Emerald to be crafted.
• The Guild Hall can now also train Pioneers, which is mostly relevant for advanced landing parties.
• All buildings got their construction costs rebalanced according to the new Village Progression!

Gameplay

• The graphs of the Carriers have been improved and show more details:
  • The new “Homeless” state is visible-
  • “Priority storing” is now considered as a “Priority transport” (was considered “Storing” before which was misleading since they are not available for other transports).
  • The “Tavern visit” category has been replaced by “Eating” to reflect all new variants of food consumption of Carriers.
  • Some Carriers were considered “idle” even if they were not, e.g. those waiting for training. This has been fixed.

• There is now a minimum protected amount of Carriers which cannot be not trained to become another unit type. This ensures that the transport network is not deadlocked completely.
  • By default, that minimum is both 10% of your population and at least 10 Carriers total.
  • Buildings training units will show a new error state if they cannot train any more units because of this limit (like the “Guild House” or the “Military Academy”).
  • This means you can only get below these minimum values by Carriers being bitten by Werewolves.
  • Later, There will be an interface to adjust those values manually, but for now they are fixed.
  • Training buildings now show red flags if they are blocked because they cannot upgrade a carrier since the amount of carriers already reached the minimum amount

• While placing a building, you can now see the effort (“Leveling tasks”) to level the ground for the current location in the bottom right corner at the location info.
  
• Territory buildings now have a button to command the units occupying it to attack dangerous animals like wild Boars if they are encountered.
  • This enables you to secure areas endangered by wild boars much faster.
  • Keep in mind that military units can die during combat while the hunter kills them safely with the bow.

• If specific craftspeople are missing in buildings which need a team of 3 to operate, they now make sure to fill up and complete partial teams before starting to occupy new empty buildings.
  
• We improved some aspects of the transport decisions to ensure that important transports are executed earlier, especially if Carriers are scarce. Often, thousands of possible transports are analyzed about how “urgent” they are.
  • If commodities are missing somewhere, the absolute amount of missing commodities raised the urgency. E.g. 10 missing Coal had a higher urgency than 2 missing Iron Ingots, which caused the commodities with lower missing amounts to be ignored for a too long. Instead now the relative amount of “already incoming” vs. “missing” units is used. If e.g. 2 of the 10 missing Coal are already incoming (20%), but 0 of the 2 Iron Ingots are incoming (0%), the lower ratio (the iron) now has higher urgency.
  • Full output piles of production buildings have a higher urgency to get picked up to ensure that the production building can continue to operate soon. But this urgency boost was rated too high and dominated other important requests for commodities at times. We rebalanced these values to ensure other important transports are also considered.

• Fixed a bug where construction requests without priority were rarely considered more important than economy transports with priority enabled.
  
• Fixed a bug where Carriers did not consider the occupation level of residences and avoided new residences for a long time. They now prefer those with fewer inhabitants to distribute better between all residential buildings.

Map Generation Improvements

• Maps can have larger height difference now, which creates much more geographical variety.
• Cliffs and mountain transitions got a visual rework and look more beautiful now.
• Beaches have more natural shapes and variety now.
• Terrain types Dusty, Steppe, Dirt and Stony have been visually modified, improved and rearranged.
  • Previous “Desert” is now named “Stony”
  • Previous “Dusty” is now named “Dirt”
  • Previous “Sandy” is now named “Steppe”
  • Previous “Steppe” is now named “Dusty”

• Some scree has been added around most ruins and mining deposits on grassland.
  
• Improved shading on cliffs and mountains.

Landing Parties

• Six landing parties are now available for testing.
• “A New Beginning”: The landing party to start from scratch with 50 Pagonians and no commodities at all.
• “Copper Stage”: A new landing party with about 100 Pagonians and access to all buildings that require Tree Trunks for construction.
• “Stone Block Stage”: A new landing party with about 200 Pagonians and access to all buildings that require Stone Blocks for construction as well.
• “Iron Stage”: A new landing party with about 300 Pagonians and access to all buildings that require Iron to be useful as well. This landing party is somewhat close to the content of the original landing parties.
• Beside that there are extended co-op versions of the landing parties “A new Beginning” and “Iron Stage” with more units and commodities.
• The enemy behavior of Thieves, Bandits, Spectres, Werewolves and Scavs has been adjusted to the chosen landing party. If you choose a smaller landing party, they will attack later and less often for a while. Please note that the Malthorn are not yet adjusted.
• For custom map generation with templates, you can now choose any landing party. They are no longer part of the difficulty setting.

Balancing

• Most warnings about shortages of available units, unsupplied miners or missing homes have been adjusted to the modified game rules. Note that previous warnings about resource shortages are not yet adjusted and have been disabled.
• Resource distribution of procedural maps adjusted to reflect the major economy update.
• The overall iron and stone amount on the map has been increased by 50%. This has been done because Iron was too scarce and more Iron is needed (since Copper is no longer suited for some tools) and there is an increased need for Stone deposit resources for territory expansion (1 unit of Stone deposit no longer results in 2 Border Stones).
• Buildings like the “Crop Farm”, the “Forester’s Hut” and the “Explorer” are available later than before. We rebalanced some related features:
  • “Natural Flax” became much more relevant and has an increased regrowth chance now.
  • Whenever a large tree is cut, there is a regrowth chance for a new young tree nearby. This chance has been significantly increased to extend the life span of a forest without Forester.
  • The Explorer reveals about twice as much terrain now.

• Fish has an increased chance to repopulate, we had the feeling they die out too fast.

Tutorial Map Beta Version

• The Beta version of the new Tutorial map is available now, we are looking forward to your feedback!

Interface

• The construction menu has been enhanced in multiple ways:
  • Building types which cannot be constructed or operated since required materials are missing are hidden behind a single button in each category.
    • You can still access all building types by an additional click on that button. Means you can still place any building, e.g. to reserve space for it, to plan ahead and build it well in advance or to already level the ground for it.
    • There is also an option in the gameplay tab to not hide any building type and instead always show all of them.
    • The construction menu tooltips of buildings which are not yet useful show additional information in the tooltip why they cannot be used yet.

  • Building types which are related are grouped visually for a better overview.
  
  
• By default, the current active “Settlement Progression Objectives” are automatically pinned to the objective list in custom games. If a milestone is achieved, the new objectives appear automatically. This can be disabled in the “Gameplay” options.
  
• Notification highlight:
  • Newly updated game items, like new building or recipe types that become available by advancement are highlighted now with a star to ensure they are easily recognized. Clicking the button once removes the star indicator.
  • Buildings already available at map start also get the “new building” star icon.

• All buildings producing equipment (Workshop, Wood Workshop, Tool Smith, Ironsmith, Steel Smith, Artisan Blacksmith) now have “On demand” as their default production interface setup. This can be changed in the options to “Amount 0” as their default setup, as it has been before.
  
• Village Halls and Guild Halls got an additional priority setting for the training of automatically requested workers (e.g. Woodcutter’s hut, Quarry, etc.) to ensure that the player does not have to prioritize each related building if carriers to deliver equipment are short.
  
• Village Halls and Guild Halls now show which units they can train automatically in an additional tooltip.
  
• The objective section got a visual rework for easier readability and improved overview.
  • It can be minimized per small arrow button.

• The mini-map now shows small red dots for enemies and small orange dots for hostile creatures.
  
• The tooltip layout for buildings with it’s commodities and unit has been updated and is better readable, now.
  
• Residential buildings now have multiple states to better reflect their status around food consumption. This will help to better understand e.g. why Carriers are currently not eating.
  
• Quarries and Copper Huts now have additional states to reflect their work and Nutritious Meals supply status to better understand why they are working or not working.
  
• Several unit icons, commodity icons and the “hungry worker” icon were updated.
  
• New loading-screen artwork implemented.

Decorations

• Add charming, non-essential decorations to bring your world to life.
• Decorations are a new type of building that have no gameplay implications, they’re simply there to beautify and decorate your settlements with no additional cost or trouble.
• Almost all decorations have several build-in variations that will appear randomly as you place them. We currently don’t have an integrated way that let’s you pick a specific variation, but if you move your mouse cursor slightly before you place the ornament, the game will cycle through all the available variations, letting you pick which one you would like to place.
• Fences and Stone Planters
  • These objects can snap tightly to the sides of roads, buildings and fields, letting you frame your settlements and gardens in a neat, orderly manner.

• Ornamental Trees
  • A bunch of flowery trees that bring splashes of color to each new settlement - they’re in fact so pretty that Woodcutters shy away from cutting them down.

• Crates
  • A set of crates and boxes with the captain’s orders on them. They’re only here temporarily… right?

• Flower Patch
  • A variety of Pagonian flowers that have been planted in square fields, perfect to fill up some empty spaces between buildings or to upgrade your Pagonians' backyards.

• Cat Statue
  • Because we didn’t have enough cats already, here’s one more made of stone. Make sure to lay down some flowers and pay respect to our feline overlords.

• Scarecrow
  • A scarecrow that will keep all kind of birds away from your valuable crops. Does not work on bandits unfortunately.

• Small Square
  • A cute little square that invites you to take a short break and watch some leaves fall.

Visuals

• Buildings which are now made of “Wood” instead of “Tree Trunks” (Woodcutter, Forager) got their look modified.
• Visual differences between baskets with Mushrooms, Raspberries and meal ingredients for cooking have been improved.
• Roads are much better visually integrated into different terrain types, and the road texture varies depending on the terrain type.
• Swamps have been revamped in size and have a more realistic geography.
• The “Mushrooms” look more “yummy” now.
• Cutlery has been added to eating animations.
• Various commodities have been improved for better readability.
• New Pioneer unit with unique male and female 3D character models.
• New unique 3D character models for Woodcutter, Baker, Jeweler and Minter.
• A new demon cat…
• The lakes now host beautiful frogs.
• Residences can have a stork on top indicating newborns.
• New Look for the Mushrooms replacing the Porcini.
• New Border Stone look fitting the new changes with increased size.
• Several material changes on weapons and tools fitting the new changes.
• Visual quality of transitions between different sediment types has been improved.
• Ambient occlusion on the terrain and under trees has been improved.
• New plants for steppe and dusty sediment.
  • New tulips for steppe, feathergrass plants and kermek plants for steppe
  • New artemisia shrubs for dusty

• Improved shading of Wild Flax deposits and reeds around lakes and swamps.
  
• Wood Deposit is now split into branches near the forest and driftwood along the short.
  
• Various decorative props (flowers, planters) have been updated to better fit to existing foliage.
  
• Steel Smith and Garrison have updated looks to better reflect the new progression changes.

Audio

• Frog sounds
• Stork sounds
• Pioneer dig and slingshot sounds
• Added cooking sounds to hut
• Unique decoration build sounds
• Unique ambience sound around decorations
• Unique building select sounds for new buildings, adjustments to existing buildings
• Misc. improvements

What is currently missing in the Beta?

• Several warning states for low resource amounts do not yet exist, you may run into commodity bottlenecks

Bugfixes

• Balance of homes miscounted some workers which were on the ship, this has been fixed.
• Balance of homes did not display newborns; this has been fixed.
• Terrain type calculation has been improved to ensure that building placement is more accurate. and farmland placement is easier to handle.

Known Issues:

• The enemy behavior of the Malthorn has not been adjusted to the landing party choice yet. If you choose a small landing party, they are much more difficult to handle.
• There are several placeholder icons, like the Large Residence.
• Some visual issues when placing and demolishing decorations.
• The new Notification highlight feature is not fully applied to all possible updates in the game.
• Some Titles are missing correct line break.
• Some states don´t have the right wording.
• Some tooltips still need to be updated.
• Balancing is still being worked on under influence of community feedback.
• Game could crash with all ultra video settings.
• Some localization still missing.
• New objectives UI not final.