Hi all!
The next update (0.7.0) has been released, this time focusing on a variety of subjects including expanding the lore, Luddites, province effects, and Cognition Engines. Below is a short summary of the changes introduced:
- Introduction events expanded
- Start date changed to 1828
- Lots of behind the scenes storyboarding and lore expansion
- More event popups
- New nation - Australian Commonwealth
- Cognition Engines more important for research and central to gameplay
- Projects (including Cognition Engines) now built in provinces
- Luddite rebels agitate against Cognition Engines
- Rebels and discontent now on province level instead of national
- Province effects mechanics added
- Countries have short descriptions in main menu
- Aesthetic changes for some menus, notifications, and the World Council
- More tooltips, especially in province box
- Buy/sell resource slider positions saved in save files
- Navies allowed to dock in foreign provinces with exiled armies
- Cleaned save file names to not have file extension displayed
- Changes to font to be more readable
- Fixed the initial calculation of World Council members
- Fixed battle boxes not opening properly when a battle starts
- Fixed blank notification bug
- Fixed occupied provinces not removing fog of war
- Fixed merging navies causing embarked armies to disappear
Lore and Flavor
So far the lore has been pretty barebones, with the primary focus being on implementing mechanics, but this will now also be a major focus going forward. this update includes the first iteration of world building, with expanding on the invention of the Cognition Engine (the cutoff where this world goes into fiction) and the events that then follow. To assist with this, the starting date has been placed 6 years further from 1822 to 1828 so that the initial invention of the Cognition Engine occurs before the game start. Originally, the world was supposed to slowly evolve from a normal industrial revolution into a Steampunk one, but I've found that placing the cutoff point from historical to Steampunk before the start of the game allows for better storybuilding and more possibilities for interesting starting situations.
Interesting starts that had a particular focus this update were the British Empire (location of the original Cognition Engine), France (experiences a disaster in Paris), and the Australian Commonwealth (Exiled Luddite rebels from Britain are sent there). The lore will continue to be expanded going forward, with more changes and country specific events.
Cognition Engine, Luddites, Research
The Cognition Engine has been given a much more central role, with it being almost essential for staying up to date with later research, replacing the central need for literacy. Having a fully upgraded Cognition Engine provides the same amount of research from a population at 100% literacy, making it so that a country can be far ahead in research while having a population with low literacy. Now that one project can be built per province, multiple Cognition Engines can also exist at the same time. However, going over the soft limit for Cognition Engines (based on year) will cause Luddites to begin to grow in a country, that will then cause rebellions. In general, proximity to Cognition Engines will also cause Luddites to grow.
Province Effects and UI
Now that more mechanics are on a provincial level instead of a national one (projects, discontent) it seemed appropriate to also implement mechanics for province-specific effects. There are only a few implemented in this update (in London, Ile-de-France, and Australia) but now that the mechanics for them have been implemented, it should be easier to create more of them in the future and associate them with popup events, decisions, etc.
There have also been a number of changes to the UI, which continues to improve. More tooltips have been added, with a focus on the province box so that a player can understand what is going on behind the scenes better. Notification badges have been improved, changes made to the main menu, and various changes to the World Council and Research UI boxes have all been made.
Wrapping Up
That's it for now, thanks to everyone following along and particular thanks to those that have submitted bug reports/feedback!