Hello! I've been writing some background music for this game for the past few months and it's finally ready to share, so I added it to the game in this patch. If it's not your thing, you can turn it down in the Options panel : )
I've also made a lot of significant rebalancing in this patch. Based on player feedback plus my own playthroughs, it seemed like a lot of the game was trivial to progress through. It could be completed in a (dedicated) weekend when it's meant to take weeks or even months. Upgrades and research could be purchased and completed without really any thought as to how much they cost. As a result, progression wasn't really rewarding.
So I've made a lot of changes to try and fix this. Mostly, upgrade and research costs have been increased to better match the available resources at various points in the game. You will likely have to choose which upgrades you want to spend you money on. Research duration has increased, and perks that sped up research have been nerfed a bit. Quest Coin rewards have also been reduced. In sum, the pacing of the game has been slowed down in a way that I believe makes the game more strategic & interesting. There should still be plenty to do while the game is open, but it won't feel as rushed.
You are definitely encouraged to make use of Turbo Mode (fast-forwarding the simulation based on Time Tokens you've accrued while idle, via F3 and F4 keys) to complete any construction or research that is bottlenecking you.
As always, the game is a work in progress so if you think I've gone too far please let me know and I'll keep working to get the balance right.
Ok here's the full patch notes:
Features / Additions
- Added 7 original background music tracks
- Added ‘Music Volume’ to settings Panel
- Added new hotkeys: Left and Right bracket for Previous / Next Song
- Added new ‘Biome Unlocked’ animation
- Increased framerate from 40 fps to 60 fps
- Added new global perk: Trading Speed (works in addition to Town Perk Trading Speed)
- Added new Research: “Enhanced Market Construction”. It is unlocked after Magic Construction Research is completed. It is now responsible for unlocking Market Construction Cost upgrades. (This was done to prevent those upgrades (which cost Purple Coins) from being made available before Purple Coins could be earned)
UI Improvements
- Can right-click on priority, production limit, pause, and auto-assign buttons to clear the setting
- Trading Post category headers (Unique Import, Metals, etc) have an additional slight indentation so they are easier to distinguish from the Trading Post building headers
- Menu panels World, Town & Global Perks, Buildings, Upgrades, and Research will block cursor from interacting with background while active
- Hovering over the ‘info’ button on a building header will show the tooltip details, instead of requiring a click
- Added tooltip when hovering pause button
- Tooltip panels for items now show full details of producing & consuming recipes
- Tooltips for Research that unlock Buildings now directly show the details of the unlocked Building
- When zero production capacity is available for a building, that number is highlighted in yellow
- Repositioned many items in the main production list panel so they can be more aligned with their headers
- Production Limit configuration is now a distinct button, instead of requiring a click on the production progress bar (which wasn’t visibly intuitive)
- Skill display region has been removed from the recipe display rows, as it was taking up lots of space for something that was minimally useful. You can view skill level & skill XP by hovering over the recipe’s production progress bar along with all its other speed modifiers & stats
- Right-Clicking on a recipe row will open a new panel with detailed access to pause / priority / production limit configuration options
- Clicking on Pause button will show a small pop-up window with options (Default/Inherit, Pause, and Play) instead of cycling through
- Upgrade costs >= 1000 coins are rounded to the nearest 2 significant digits
- Improved overall formatting on Tooltip panel
- Changed default icon when recipe not in paused state
- Clicking on Level Up Rewards after reward boxes begin shaking will cause them to immediately open (revealing their contents) instead of dismissing the reward window. Clicking after the contents have been revealed will dismiss the reward window
Balance Changes
- Aqueduct is now a Harvesting building, instead of a Support building that passively harvests water. Players will automatically be assigned maximum production capacity for any Aqueducts they have already built.
- Aqueduct Effectiveness upgrade now applies a boost to the Aqueduct Harvesting recipe
- New Omni upgrade for Aqueduct Speed
- Water Wheel and Solar Panel are now Production buildings, each with a recipe that generates power for free, instead of buildings that passively generate power in the background. Effectiveness upgrades now apply to these power recipes. Players will automatically be assigned maximum production capacity for any of these buildings they have already built.
- Reduced Quest Coin rewards from reaching new town levels
- Reduced the amount of automatically completed research when starting in new biomes, to reduce visual confusion from having lots of unlocked but not yet usable buildings
- Default trading mode for non-unique items is now ‘Autobalance’ instead of ‘Export’
- Increased cost of several Town Perks (if this increased cost would result in negative Town Perk Points, players are allocated enough new Town Perk Points so their balance is no longer negative)
- Added max production capacity for non-infinite research. The more complex the research (longer duration), the more production capacity allowed.
- Added small linear increase to building construction time based on number of buildings created, so that the Construction Time perk has more usefulness
- Increased threshold of required upgrade purchases for unlocking new levels of ‘Upgrade Efficiency’ upgrade
- Modified cost and duration of several research recipes and upgrades
- Reduced effectiveness of Research Speed Town Perk and Research Speed upgrade
- Quests to level up River and Forest to unlock Mountains and Jungle have had the required town level increased from 15 to 20
- Fish Oil is unlocked with a Recipe Quest (requires Basic Medicine as well as access to Fish) instead of being its own research
- Cash Register per-level requirements changed from “Spend X [coin type]” to “Produce X [coin type]” and requirement values greatly increased
Bug Fixes
- Building rows were not displaying recent upgrade icon, or displaying highlight if upgrades was available
- Tooltip for trading post global storage was clipped off screen
- Pinned construction details panel would remain visible when town changed, resulting in mismatch between displayed building and active town
- Research that required specific natural resources to be unlocked would always load with zero production capacity assigned
- Inconsistent scroll wheel behavior on pinned item tooltip panel
- Clicking on background of Level Up rewards panel would not advance the animation to the next phase
- Chute and Harvesting Speed perk were being applied twice to harvesting recipes
- level-up reward values would sometimes initialize at higher values before it ran the reveal animation, so it would appear to be counting down instead of up
- Claiming level-up rewards from the World Panel would earn coins for the town displayed on the main interface, not the town that rewards were claimed for
- Using ESC to dismiss a pinned modal menu would leave it in pinned state, so it would be unintentionally default to pinned state the next time it was shown
- Trading Post category headers for Unique Resources were not correctly showing label indicating whether they were unique Imports or Exports
- Changing a recipe or research’s priority when no production capacity is assigned would prevent auto-assignment of production capacity on that recipe or research
- Some requirements that involved numbers over 10 Billion were being displayed as a rounded down value (e.g. 99B instead of 100B)
- Cultivation / Prospecting tabs weren’t unlocking immediately when Farming / Quarry research completed
- Calculation error was causing first 10 skill levels to advance too quickly
- Inconsistent display of decimal numbers