Hello everyone,
Thank you for being so patient with this latest update. After taking a short break, we: the game testers and I noticed many more areas to improve. So, here we are.
This update is an important milestone, we are closer now to having a fleshed out Culture system, which we promised would be the first victory condition. With that in mind, let's look at what is new, what got fixed, and what we are working towards.
New Features
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District Specializations: Once a district has Road to Capital built, you may choose to specialize the district. There are three specializations: Research, Resource, and Culture. Each unlocks unique improvements to that district. For the time being, the cultural and reserach improvements are for show only, while we work on finalizing the effect they have on the capital.
Improved Contracts: The contracts system was adjusted so that the number of long term contracts are reduced, and we also introduced a new toggle on a resource so you can mark it as not for trade with trading guilds.
Improved Resource Management: ctrl + click on a resource in the Warehouse/Granary pins it (green background), but now it will stay visible even when the granary/warehouse has been collapsed so you see only what you want to see. Additionally, clicking on a resource will now provide additional details that you may find useful. Note this is also a quick way to sell resources once you have your own trading guild established.
Beginner Quests: Starting the game can be very challenging, one of the biggest complaints we receive is that people don't know what to do. To address this, we created a small series of "quests" that give incentives/rewards. Let us know what you think of this system, we may expand it!
Culture Level: One of the "victory points" is culture. We will be describing the culture system in more detail later, but in a nut shell, culture is your way to influence other towns. On the map there are multiple points of interest, some of which are city states. Your culture affects your influence on them, so that eventually they will come under your influence. Having influence on every city state (not faction capitals), is the first victory condition. Culture points will lead to additional boosts to help you achieve this diplomatic, cultural hegemony.
Research Points: The Porcelain Tower will now unlock Innovators (Expert), as well as a new Research Point. You may use research point to help you balance out your tech sectors. For example, if you need more Agriculture tech but have plenty of Civil tech, you can trade 2 Civil tech for 1 Research Point, then 1 Research Point for 1 Agriculture tech. Point trading will not affect sector level, and therefore will not affect how much sector exp is needed for the next point.
Aesthetics Overhaul: The Aesthetics system is drastically changed. Instead of a pure average, it is now the average of the top X buildings, where X is defined by the number of people in your town. The greater the population, the greater the X.
Experts change: Expert contributions have been redesigned for some more flexibility in the development end. One balancing aspect is that expert contributions will hit a maximum, and Experts can choose to retire.
Artist Contribution change: Art comes to life! Artworks will now be displayed in their respective buildings if you open up the building instance.
New techs added to the tech tree: Ore Crusher, Advanced Lumbermills, Drilling
New Civil Policy: Prioritise repairs
Bug Fixes
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* Fixed a bug where the music keeps playing after the game goes back to main screen
* Fixed a bug where Monument cannot be built due to NaN build time
* Fixed a bug where volume control does not persist
* Fixed a bug where artist slots were not being updated when buildings were created/destroyed
* Fixed autoupgrade bug where it did not respect limits of upgrades
* Added a link from District Improvement to Tech if it is a prereq
* General performance improvements when loading busy worker screen/building screen
Future Work
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In the upcoming weeks we will begin testing the mechanism for Culture growth and Research growth from districts, hopefully we will get it right in the first few tries. As part of this improvement, we are also working on a visualization for the world map.
Thank you so much for your patience and contributions to our discussions about how to improve the game.
dSolver