Hello Elders!
It turns out that I am becoming an elder myself, as I... err... broke my femur at a bachelor's party by playing bubble soccer (That soccer version where everybody is in giant balls!). Here is a faithful reproduction of the dynamics:
Fortunately, the surgery was swift and clean, and I am doing my rehab.
In addition, only a leg was broken, which meant I could move my rig to the hospital to complete the update while doing rehab!
So, without further ado, here are all the changes that got into the main version today:
Speed options: Fast and Slow
Through playtesting in the experimental version and a few more tweaks, we confirmed the validity of the new speed modes. Fast mode lasts 145 turns, while maintaining the same flow of the original game. Not exactly half of the original, as there are a couple more turns at the start, and a few turns to pad the Apocalypse.
So, what changes with fast mode?
- 145 turns instead of 280, with all the usual events correctly aligned to this new duration
- Research and Build costs are halved.
- Fixed resource gains (such as the Research boon) scale with the number of turns
- Visions take 3 turns to appear instead of 5
- All ailments scale with the new duration
- Threshold for increasing event levels scales with the new duration
- The player starts with a little less resources, and a little less food on the map (not much, as not halving them is a way to counterbalance the presence of 1-turn actions)
- Most 2+ turns actions are now adjusted, such as training for advanced jobs (from 3 to 2), and building or upgrading buildings
- You can now research multiple buildings in a single turn if you have overflow knowledge
Be warned, this mode feels *tighter*, even with all the balancing tweaks, due to its nature. Basically, the game plays as if you took 2 turns in the span of 1, which reduces flexibility. Some people might prefer it, while others might find it too fast. Good thing we have the choice now!
I also added a Slow mode because... why not? This mode is basically the inverse, taking 540 (!) turns, providing a much slower experience. Use at your own risk!
Persistence Bonus
This bonus is obtained by reaching Prophecy Page 2 during a run and will give you a choice of a (small) starting bonus at the next run of the same elder, and the same speed-difficulty combo.
The goal behind this bonus is to incentivize not rerolling maps, and instead embrace the spirit of adaptation of the elders. You are free to disregard it, however, and keep rerolling until you are satisfied, I'm not going to stop you!
Delirium Mode!
This one was fun to iterate on! The Delirum Mode takes the place of the older Challenge mode (and your Mastery Level is converted into a new Mastery Level, roughly half the value, to match the older difficulty increase).
This is a revision of the Challenge mode that aims to make higher level play more interesting, so instead of a fixed difficulty scaling, you will be able to customize your difficulty settings by selecting up to 16 modifiers that will increase the Delirium of the story told by the elder as his sanity disappears. The higher the difficulty, the higher the Delirium, and by winning a max-Delirium game it will allow you to reach higher Mastery Levels! Modifiers are unlocked as you reach higher mastery, and you might want to use different strategies to do that depending on the elder!
New Stats and Achievements
The game will now also register all the attempts you make at a specific elder, and list how many wins you achieved alongside your best score.
The current Stats will be taken from your local highscores, so they might miss a few attempts and the win streak will not be initialized correctly, but the max score should be fine!
At last, you will also find new achievements and a revised Records screen that shows all of your achievements. Some of the new achievements are special challenges specific to each elder and provide a new way to play them, such as doing a complete Vegan run with Shaman, or a No Swimming run with Captain!
Miscellaneous
Version 1.3 also brings a few tweaks on buildings and events, and especially tries to make the two well variations a bit more balanced, and weathers mor fair. Take a look at the complete changelog for more information!
Save System Revision
This patch also revises the save folder system, and this is reflected in the game's save files being placed in sub-folders.
For example, on Windows, the new "profile" files are found here:
C:\Users[YOURUSERNAME]\AppData\LocalLow\CKCGames\dotAGE\Steam[NUMERICSTEAMID]\ProfileA\profile0.age
And the current run can be found here:
C:\Users[YOURUSERNAME]\AppData\LocalLow\CKCGames\dotAGE\Steam[NUMERICSTEAMID]\ProfileA\GameA\game0.age
I made sure that the next time you start the game the game will transfer your saves to this new system. This will allow me to further improve it in the future, and currently allows multiple steam users on the same machine to play separate games!
Localization News
I also have some news on localization, the Spanish localization is underway thanks to a group of volunteers, and so is the Russian localization. There is no ETA, but they seem to be in good shape. You can already check them out in the Experimental version, if you want to! Come to Discord to talk about it!
TACTICON!
Let's not forget! dotAGE is also part of the upcoming TACTICON and SIMFEST and will be 25% off during the duration of both festivals, up to 29th, so tell your friends about it!
Now, back to rehab, while you have fun!
- Michele
Complete Changelog
V 1.3.0
Balance: Mechanics
- Hard: starting food decreased from 97.5% to 90%
- Harder: starting food decreased from 95% to 80%
- Removed Overpip Scaling at lower difficulties
- Reduced Overpip Scaling by 0.5 at each difficulty
- Crops cannot be planted / replanted off-season anymore (as was intended)
- You can now assign actions that require Food even if the food is being consumed by Pips. It will be recomputed after the action is assigned (i.e. Pips will become hungry, but the action can be completed)
- Pips that cannot work (like Cats) will now be considered among Busy Pips
- Weathers that have a chance to hit for each Pip will now limit the maximum number of hit Pips per turn to the chance value
- Overpip Threshold increased from 30 to 35 at Normal, 40 at Easy, and 50 at Relax.
- If you have enough Knowledge, you can now unlock a building blueprint directly, without passing the turn
New Feature: Speed Options
- Added Fast and Slow speed options which change the duration of the game, while mantaining the same challenge level
- Score values adapt to speed, reducing the score for winning or destroying Domains
- Highscore Screen has separate leaderboards based on speed
- Updated UI to handle speed mode
New Feature: Delirium Mode
- Replaced Challenge Mode with the new Delirium Challenge mode that allows adapting the difficulty to increase mastery levels
- Delirium Challenge mode is unlocked by winning a game at Normal+ for an Elder
- Existing Mastery Level is converted to the new Mastery Level: 1->1, 2->2, 3->2, 4->3, 5->3, 6->4, 7->5, 8->5
- Added new Challenge Mode screen where the player can define what challenge to play, selecting from a set of existing difficulty modifiers
- Replaced "Mastery" hint with "Delirium" hint
New Feature: Persistence Bonus
- Reaching the second Prophecy Page will now grant a starting bonus on the next run for that elder, to incentivize not rerolling to get the best map, and instead embrace what lemons the game decided to give you
- Persistence bonus triggers only for the same difficulty/speed combo you played last for that elder
- Rerolling the Map after reaching the second Prophecy Page will now grant score as if the player gave up
- Added "Persistence Bonus" icon to signal whether you have it or not
New Screen: Achievements
- Added visual Achievements in-game in the Records menus
- Added achievements for winning Harder runs
- Added achievements for special wins depending on the Elder
UX
- Added option to pan and zoom while being on UI
- Minor UI changes to the main menus
- Added a link to the Wiki in the game
- Added button to complete the current research if you have enough available surplus knowledge
- Increased visibility of fish shadows
- Added new stats tied to each elder/difficulty/speed combo
Balance: Events
- Reduced Idiot Serenity generation from 3 to 2
- Drunk ailment now lasts 6 turns instead of 10
- Added four new event scenarios with inverted primary
- Inhebriating Winds: chance reduced from 10% to 5%. Minimum threat from 2 to 3
- The Happening: now appears only as a failed Doom event
- All is Lost: Now hits 50% Pips instead of 70%
- Evolving Depression: Now hits 50% of Mourning Pips instead of 100%
Balance: Elders
- Yugong: Intensive Farming now also counts depleted Crops
Balance: Buildings
- Great Barbecue: Wood input to cook white meat increased from 1 to 2. Output Cooked White Meat from 7 to 10.
- Large Campfire: Output Cooked Fish from 12 to 14.
- Soy Field: bonus from undeground water increased from 1.5x to 2x
- Underground Water bonus to Wells increased from x2 to x3
- Pool: Water input from 4 to 6
- Fan: Output reduced from 2 to 1. Wood cost from 6 to 1, Hemp cost from 2 to 1
- Large Fan: Output reduced from 4 to 3. Wood cost from 12 to 7
- Water Shrine: Water input from 4 to 6
- Water Temple: Water input from 8 to 10
- Garden: Water input from 2 to 3
- Ice Maker: Water input from 2 to 4
- Apothecary: Water input to make Medicine from 1 to 2, Water input to make Antidote from 2 to 4
System
- Revised save/load system to allow multiple Steam users / different platforms to have separate folders, and getting it ready for future improvements
- The new save file location is the same as before (i.e. CKCGames/dotAGE in your user data), but you will now find a folder with your UserID, ProfileA, and GameA
Bugfixes
- Fixed game not being saved if quitting at day one
- Fixed day in the progress UI before load being wrong
- Fixed river stones not allowing the "fill all map" achievement to trigger
- Fixed bug with pulsing the wrong Pips when some are hungryBugfixes
- Fixed bug with connected enhancing traits sometimes generating wrong values and thus blocking some buildings from being set inactive