Author: Ronchiporc

It’s been a while since the last update. Indeed, as the game moves closer to “release”, I’m trying to favor less frequent updates with more content and hopefully more stable instead of faster paced more experimental ones.

This update represents many months of work and focuses on a complete redesign of war mechanics with the introduction of casus-bellis, war types, war morale and war automatic resolutions.

A long lasting issue with the game was caused by human nature and the inherent multiplayer nature of the game: players almost always refused to negotiate or make peace, and every single war would escalate into a war of total annihilation as it was always considered better than leaving a potentially vengeful player around.
This however was detrimental to the game and created an effect of condensing all wars in early days then to leave the server uneventful once the initial cleansing was over.
Cleansing that was often done by veterans ganging up on anyone they didn’t know around them simply because of risk management.

The goal of this update is to add rules of war to counter the suicidal and intransigent behavior of players so that it creates more realistic conflicts and reduces the better spans war across the game’s progress instead of everything happening in the early days, as it will be harder to insta-eliminate players in a single war.

Casus-bellis

Wars now require a motive to be started. This then defines the war type, each one with its specific properties. 
The war types comes with predetermined war resolution effects which are applied when either side wins the war.

Politics Points

This update replaces Honor with Politics Points, which are now used to perform some actions and especially declaring wars or signing treaties with some specific terms such as Joining a Nation.

Politics Points are produced by having a positive Legitimacy. The higher the legitimacy the more points. 

Like Honor, Politics Points are also used as a commitment to respect treaties and it is lost if illegally breaking a treaty. There’s now also a minimum engagement for all treaties.

War morale

Winning or losing a war is now defined by War Morale: each belligerent in a war has a war morale specific to the war, and if it reaches 0 the belligerent is auto-eliminated and war effects apply.
Of course it is still possible to end a war “manually” if both sides agree to peace, but experience shows this rarely happens hence this update.

The starting war morale is defined by the war type and casus-belli. War morale mostly only decreases, like the “life bar” in a fight. 
The parameters reducing the war morale are also casus-belli dependent: for instance in an annexation war, it will be mostly who controls the target territory that affects war morale. 
In other wars, it can be the proportion of territories being occupied.
Aggressors also often suffer a passive decay which insure wars can’t last for ever.
In most wars, battle results also affect morale based on the ratio of lost troops with your total armies.

War belligerents

Each war opposes 2 main belligerents: a main agressor against a main defender.
The war resolution effects only apply to the main belligerent, and a war ends only if a main belligerent is eliminated or capitulates (or signs a manual peace).

Other States can also participate in wars as co-belligerents. They can be eliminated individually from the war if their morale falls to 0, which does not end the war. 
Co-belligerents are not affected by the war resolution effects. If they lose they are condemned to pay war reparations (pending the war resolution and only if their side loses), and are unaffected if the war is won. They participate strictly as allies of the main belligerent to help him in his goals.

Co-belligerence is mostly automatic: as a subordinate you are automatically called into the wars of your liege even if its a war where he is the attacker: a Nation king entering a war will therefore now have all its nation automatically at war with him as well, unlike before where it was only defensive.

While subordinates are forced into wars of their lieges, when its the other way around joining the war is optional for the liege: if a vassal declares war, he can chose to “call-to-arms” his liege which is free to refuse with no consequences or to accept and join the war as cobelligerent (bringing all its own vassals with him, escalating the war).
Note that nations still include a defensive pact making everyone of the nation enter as cobelligerent of the defender regardless.

Co-belligerents get a “war participation” score.
If a war ends and with a very low participation, the main belligerent can choose to publicly “denounce” them, inflicting a great political penalty.
This mechanic will allow players to punish fake allies or uncooperative vassals not fulfilling their duties.

War resolution

When a main belligerent is eliminated the war ends and its effects are automatically applied based on the war type. At any point a main belligerent can also chose to capitulate, thus triggering the auto-resolution of the war as well.

Effects generally include Political penalties and war reparations for the agressor if defeated.
For the defender the effects are more dependent on the war’s casus-belli: losing a territory in an annexation war,  being forced to pay tributes, becoming subjugated, losing Victory Points etc…
These effects come as au automatic “armistice” diplomatic treaty between the 2 main belligerents which also creates a forced cease-fire during its engagement period with hefty penalties if broken.
That engagement period also depends on the war type.

Breaking treaties

Breaking some of these more serious armistice treaties (such as breaking a subjugation treaty) can now have more interesting consequences: instead of being either ignorable (and making the agressor unable to rely on it) or unbreakable because of honor penalties (and making the defender give up with no perspectives), what it does now is that it gives a special “punishment” casus-belli to the other party.
This allows to start a second war. However, if won again, this war will KILL the treaty breaker for good as he is deemed unreliable and rebellious, unworthy of negotiating.

This creates a dynamic of allowing a player who lost a war to still try an “all or nothing” rebellion, while the agressor can see this opportunity to finally get rid of an uncooperative player for good, offsetting the frustration of having to win a war a second time.

Rivalry

This update introduces “rivalry”, a new diplomatic status which comes with special effects. Most States can only design 1 rival State at the time.

Rivals can’t merge in a Nation and having diplomatic relations with your rival hurts Legitimacy. However, rivalry gives you different perks against your rival State: a special casus-belli of “humiliation” which slashes Victory Points of your rival by half if won, protects you against subjugation, gives war morale bonus, makes your cities more resistant to occupation, and reduces political costs to fabricate claims.

The top 5 nations also get something called “forced rivalry”: they are automatically rival with their superior in ranks: nation 5 auto-rivals nation 4, which auto-rivals nation 3 etc…
This will force the leading nations to oppose one another, and prevent the classic cartel strategy of veteran groups which remain split as different pretend-nations to farm more Victory Points then to merge and instawin the game before anyone can react.
It will now be in the interest of the big allied players to merge into a nation as soon as possible to prevent the risk of ending forced rivals, thus making Nations better reflect the reality of alliances.
Not only that, but joining another nation now comes with the effect of forfeiting 75% of your victory points, which will hopefully put a definitive end to this strategy of last minute nation merging.

Raiding

Raiding is now the default casus-belli which is always available and has a low cost of Politics to be started.
Raiding wars are particular that they do not auto-resolve and can only be won by manually ending it through a treaty, much like wars before this update.
However they only permit raiding: you cannot for example occupy enemy territories with this war.

Raiding battles have also been improved to become more viable.
It’s now finally possible to loot monies from raiding buildings: raided houses or production buildings give money pillaged from the population. 
Pillaged government buildings give more money, which is taken from the enemy’s treasury as well. 
And finally, the special buildings of the Palace and the Treasury, if pillaged, will transfer 20% of the defender’s treasury to the raiders, making those critical buildings to defend against raids.

The battle “AI” for raiding has also been improved, and is now better at choosing buildings to raid and to spread more efficiently for a faster battle.

It is also now possible to specify raiding targets to prioritize: resources or coins (or slaves, not implemented yet). You can also specify a particular resource category to prioritize (ex foods).

Battle engagements

In addition to the raiding battle improvements, I’ve also added the first battle options to affect the behavior of attackers during battle: you can now filter which “siege actions” a formation can perform in a battle: disabling breaching, climbing, or embarking. 
This means you can for example send raiders with the order to do neither of these things, which will result in them only targeting things directly available in the area where they deploy instead of trying to cross a river and break in an impossible fort.
This is available for all battles: you can for example send an army only allowed to breach (gates & palisades), which will allow you to make sure that they wont be try climbing cliffs or walls, or wont try to cross water.

Pathfinding

Another big improvement of this update is the offloading of the first big game component into the Ymir c# DLL: regional pathfinding. 
This means performances gains for server battles, as pathfinding is now much more efficient and can finally take advantage of multi threading which the current engine previously made impossible.
Larger battles can now be more fluid, with less “pauses” between each battle turn.

The pathfinding between different defensive areas of territories during battles has also been improved to be more accurate as a proper nodal-pathfinding system which should result in a better navigation of troops through complex fortified cities.

World news

Main world events such as war declarations and resolutions or important discoveries now generate automatic chronicles so that all players can be more aware of what’s going on and to make the world feel more eventful.
A global world channel has also been added in the diplomatic chat.

 

Next update

I’m well aware that since the increase in server load with the addition of countryside territories, the server lag has made late-game almost unplayable. 
This update already includes some optimizations to improve things, but the next update will be one focused mostly on technical aspects to optimize the game by migrating more components to the c# dll.
It will also focus on a long list of pending “quality of life” features to reduce the time consumption of managing your State.

Servers

For the occasion of this new update, Server 5 is being restarted with a fresh new game at 18:00 Paris time.

Meanwhile, following community polls for the Server 1, its been decided to keep the Server 1 on the previous version for a few days. The server is being moved to the “previous version” branch meaning that to still play on it you must make sure to change your “beta” version to “previous version” in Steam (right click on the game > properties)

 

The Casus-belli update
v0.6.x

– reworked effect of treasury reserves on monetary unit values to lower its effect. effect is now factored by state’s total GDP.
– minimum distance of 1 tile between towers
– simplified forced distance between buildings (mine shafts, clay pits…) to be more rectangular on low distances (1 or 2) making it simplier to plan
– distance between mining shafts reduced to 1
– destroyed buildings (ex palace) no longer invalidate policies/territories relying on it
– pillaging the treasury or the palace steals 20% of the defender’s treasury each
– coins pillaged from government buildings (state power & admin) will affect the player’s treasury
– battles: optimized management of building districts for pillages
– battles: improved troops pathfinding between defensive layers
– implemented coins loot in pillage
– random territory events are now only for regional centers
– militias in invalid territory types (countrysides) now auto-disband
– added “steal tributary” casus-belli if trying to subjugate and already subjugated state (with the liedge state).
– added display of full title name in avatars of characters
– lowered max inter-state taxes to 15%
– partisans uprising odds are more likely when there’s no occupying forces on the territory or low forces compared to resistance amount
– moved “tributaries” knowledge (subjugation) after “council” instead of “governance” to be available earlier in game
– reduced base wealth of goods besides gold & silver by -25%
– increase Freetrader prices for stores of value (gold & silver) by 30%
– increased gold bar wealth to 2
– disabled speed boost event
– added politics points reward in startup missions to provided initial capital
– server save backups now auto-zip to prevent disk space overuse
– dynamic armistice durations for annexion wars based on quantity of annexed territories & importance
– non linear legitimacy penalty from political debts
– new casus belli “vengeance” if a defeated character illegally breaks its armistice treaty (ex after a subjugation) wich then kills the character if he is defeated again.
– moved techs “cuves” and ” barrel” to bronze age
– Politics points cost of fabricating claim is proportional to total population of target territory
– added averaged market sales incomes to state taxable incomes for inter-state taxes (nation & treaties)
– fixed many State income factors missing from inter-state taxable incomes
– Non capital hamlets & village are now disabled under City State policy
– movement cost on enemy territories increased by +200% (except claims)
– added ‘internal’ succession mode in nation (now default) which controls if character is available as a spawn
– implemented option to “denounce” co-belligerents that failed to honor their engagement in a war (no meaningful participation)
– harmonized stats of 4 alcohols crops: barley, sugarcane, apples, grapes
– increased & improved Free Traders prices decay from Free Traders stocks
– added war automatic resolutions and predetermined victory effects based on casus-belli type
– eliminated co-belligerents give auto rights of passage to all enemies until war ends
– new casus belli: liberate city, if a territory is lost from an annexion war
– formations in enemy territories are auto-repatriated to nearest regional center when hostilities cease.
– added global chat channel
– cleaned up and improved the “send missive” UI
– added signup political cost to “join nation” treaty term
– added minimum political engagement of 25 to treaties.
– added a confirmation event to launch military coup when ready, after completing the leadership mission.
– new sprite for potato fields
– new sprite for carrot fields
– changed apples into pleasure food
– new resource pumpkins as continental/oceanic basic food
– new resuorce turnips as nordic basic food
– potential fix for autowiped servers not changing world seed causing the same map to repeat.
– difficult techs can now require to complete innovation project multiple times before unlocking (ex Iron working)
– blocked overstacking researchers in innovation projects
– moved tavern service from social to entertainment as a placeholder measure.
– reduced work of military innovation projects to make them faster
– rustic house 4 cost +1 saw
– comfortable house 4 cost changed from 2 saws to 1 pickaxe
– comfortable house 3 cost -1 plaster -1 stonebloc -1 saw +1 life quality
– removed saws from paddock 3 building materials
– Philosophy idea easier to trigger
– added automatic chronicles for joining or leaving Nations
– blocked building platforms, walls, towers, or modify terrain heights near territory borders.
– added notification events for cobelligerants dragged into wars
– added automatic chronicles for war declarations & resolutions
– UI: improved world news menu
– added automatic chronicles for first discovery of important techs
– casus belli events can also provide a passive war morale bonus in case of war from other.
– new casus belli: breaking treaty ‘war’ clause creates a “broken treaty” casus belli for the other party instead of immediate war
– co-belligerants in a war do not trigger breaking clauses of treaties when force-entering a war (ex subordinates of the attacker)
– allow 100AP army to attack/invade adjecent tile even if total AP cost is above 100.
– changed treaties minimum duration in solo and persistant presets (increased)
– territories can only be transferred by treaty if other party has made a claim of it, or if transferring an occupation within a common war
– added “call-to-arms” request when declaring war for non-mandatory co-belligerents where they can choose to join the war or not
– cleanup UI code of event display
– distance from defender affects negatively initial war morale, based also on war type.
– added “fabricate claim” diplomatic action to gain an anexion casus belli
– new menu for war declaration to preview allies and war effects
– new war events & UI for ongoing wars to monitor belligerents, objectives, casus belli and progress.
– implementd possible timeouts for events (territory claims, choice events)
– choice events will default to 1st option if no choice is made before they timeout
– splitted armor weapon stat into 2: melee armor & ballistic armor
– heavy shield -0.5 melee armor, +1.5 ballistic armor
– wood, bronze, steel shield +1 ballistic armor
– longsword +1.5 damage +0.7 offensive skill
– battle axe reach -0.4, attack skill -1, defense skill +0.5, attack speed -5%
– characters lose 75% of their victory points when joining a different nation
– characters lose war morale when losing troops in battles, based on a ratio of troops-power lost / total military power
– partisans will now spawn as units of loyal character if that character is still at war with the region owner (instead of generic rebels)
– changed worker type of charcoal clamps and sawmills to woodcutters
– simplified design of events UI
– performances: migrated ‘bytemap’ datastructure to c# ymir dll
– performances: migrated pathfinding to c# ymir dll
– battles: removed cover bonus for non-defenders.
– added “rivalry” diplomatic action to designate another State as rival
– added “politics points” replacing honor and generated from positive Legitimacy.
– Nation leaders of top5 have automatic rivalry with nation leader of the rank above.
– trade offers of occupied territories are now disabled
– Increased resolution of flag icons x2
– fixed State ownership incorrectly changing in automated trades, making auto trade less viable and causing economic losses.
– fixed issues with meat production amounts and production skill points
– fixed bug of houses being destroyed during battles not showing up until reload
– fixed bug allowing to move ore shafts on invalid ore types
– fixed bug preventing countrysides/claims on some coastal territories
– fixed bug with administration penalty per nb of extra regions counting the capital
– fixed military actions on a tile with high AP cost leading to encampment on the territory instead of starting the action
– fixed bug of troops targeting same building in district when pillaging
– fixed bug blocking the upgrading of community hall because of Expansion Points
– fixed bug blocking disbanding entire formations directly
– fixed bug with goods price in production chains / state buying prices
– fixed glitch with brute huts in battles spawning 1 unit troops.
– fixed bug with starting mission events disapearing if losing capital or migrating
– fixed bug in state buying resources not accounting for levies rate
– fixed problem with occupation freeing after subjugation
– fixed UI bug of recruiting troops costs not considering state ownership
– fixed bug of settling on abandoned city giving empty previously attached countrysides
– fixed stored wealth not counting for population class wealth from privileges
– fixed bug allowing to change the territorial status of occupied territories
– fixed bug in events spawning ennemies where they appeared with defensive roles and retreated from battle
– fixed data refreshing issues on regional transfer routes modifications
– fixed bug with battle report cached data ending up partially corrupted if going back to world map while viewing an ongoing battle
– fixed formation events of deserting formations not deleting when obsolete
– fixed bug with population number when removing researchers from a project
– fixed bug of being able to complete the same mission multiple times
– fixed bug causing a server to be missing from the server list
– fixed bug of formation related events not disappearing (ex militia decay)
– fixed UI issue of Events menu constantly refreshing causing flickering.
– fixed bug allowing to access trading UI of occupied territories
– fixed bug of occupation actions failing on undefended territories because of combined cost of movement + occupation.
– fixed missing battle report events
– fixed glitches with event flags UI
– fixed bug causing state buying expenses in gift economy

Previous Patches:
– added military innovation to academia as a temporary gap-filler until it specific gameplay is implemented.
– rebalanced calculation of Free Traders buy price to better reflect average production costs.
– moved construction innovation to “construction” tech instead of “architecture”
– fixed error of expansion points check when trying to upgrade town halls.
– fixed bug of fish herds not loosing inventory from fishing actions
– fixed bug with scavenging cool-off not working
– lowered amount of fish resources per fish unit from 5 to 3
– national armies can no longer perform civilian actions (scavenge, woodcut, prospect, hunt… )
– fixed bug allowing to disband settlers in occupied territories
– rebalanced “plaster” idea trigger
– fixed culture conversion problem when releasing occupied territories
– reduced weight of knowledges in score calculation by 50%
– fixed bug with loyalty corruption in territories with 0 actives
– fixed UI issue needing a scroll to the government’s active policies tabs.
– fixed bug of invalid high resistance growth from occupied inactive or NPC characters
– fixed occupied territories upkeep still affecting treasury
– tile movement costs: removed “is settled” effect for enemy territories
– fixed networking issue affecting some players, especially in solo mode.
– problem with external IP not working for server listing
– State-buying does not deduct costs based on levy % for agricultural goods

This update is an overhaul of research and knowledge mechanics, adding the ability to speed-up projects with Research Points, innovation projects to trigger new ideas, diplomatic knowledge transfers (and not just ideas) and project setbacks when failing instead of having to repay & restart the project from zero.
This update also contains 2 other major features: Expansion points replacing State Power for territory maintenance, and an NPC automatic trader called the ‘Free traders’.

Infallible projects
This has been a common criticism of the game for a very long time: frustration from projects failing due to bad luck with RNG.
Now projects can no longer fail. Instead, if the success odds fail when completed, the project suffers a “set back”, losing only research progress.
This means its finally no longer required to manually restart failed projects, or to repay materials and costs.
Additionally, suffering a setback now gives a special “experience bonus” increasing the odds of success on the next trial. The bonus is proportional to the initial success odds so that if you had the bad luck of failing a high 80% success rate, it will ensure the probability to fail again further decreased.
This should make research less of a hassle and reduce the frustration from RNG bad luck.

Research Points
Population and research buildings now generate global Research Points which can be accumulated to a certain extent.
These Research Points can be used to ‘Haste’ ongoing projects at will, insta-finishing them.
The point of this mechanic is to offer a recourse when failing a critical project: now instead of having to wait another day for the second attempt to complete, you can use your stored points to finish it right away.
It also allows player to make better use of their gaming sessions: instead of having to launch the game just to start a critical project and then having to wait the next day to start using what it unlocks, its possible to insta-complete it and use it right away.
This should reduce “RNG” frustration and improve time efficiency of sessions.

Transferable Knowledges
It is now possible to transfer not only ideas, but actual full Knowledges. However these require the sender to pay for the transfer in stored Research Points.
This should help player help out allies that are far behind with many cheap knowledges missing, or to ‘sell’ valuable knowledges to others.

Innovation projects
A new kind of projects has been added as well to make technological progress more pro-active in mid/late game: innovation projects.
These projects allow you to target a global research domain and potentially earn a random new idea in that domain when successfully completed.
Most Innovation projects become available with the Academia knowledge.
Academies and other research buildings (like Libraries or Architects) now also help by generating extra Research Points, further allowing players to be pro-active in technological progress or knowledge reselling.

Expansion Points
The 2nd major aspect of this update is that territorial statuses now cost “Expansion Points” instead of State Power.
The point of this new feature is to simplify the balancing of players expansion by having a stat dedicated only to it, separating it from State Power that is used for many other unrelated things.
Expansion Points are unlocked by Policies or by new knowledges.

The exceedingly binary balance of city-state + outpost-spam followed by unlimited expansion with “regional administration” policy was also rebalanced thanks to this new stat: Expansion points are now earned much more gradually as the game progresses.
It’s possible to grow multiple regions in early game again while “Regional administrations” remains a critical policy unlocking the territorial statuses of towns and cities outside the capital.

 

Free Traders
The 3rd major aspect of this update is the introduction of the “Free traders” NPC to improve trading by boosting liquidities on the markets.
This NPC trader serves as an expensive intermediary between sellers and buyers operating with very high slippage between buy price and resell price, but whose sell offers are available to everyone regardless of trading agreements.
This NPC trader only buys resources from players that are specialized in production at least to lvl3, and buys at a very low price based on the world average ‘minimum price’. However, it’s buys are unlimited.

The purpose of Free Traders is double: providing exporting players a guaranteed output for their specialized productions (reducing the hassle of spamming trading treaties to everyone), and populating the market with large stocks of resources available to everyone (thus at a high price) so that players are less likely to be completely locked out of critical resources.

The prices of the Free Traders are also affected by the amount of resources they have in ‘stock’, and these stocks naturally decay based on the total world population. This prevents excessive exploits of a overselling a unique resource type for infinite incomes.
The free traders also allow Solo players to profit from trade and specialization of productions.

Cost of Consumption traditions reduced by half
The cost of consumption traditions has been reduced by half.
However, because costs of 0.5 wouldn’t work, it’s the earning speed of new Civpoints that had to be doubled as well as the cost of other traits.
This means cultural levels now cost half the XP (thus being gained twice as fast) and that production skills now cost 2 Civpoints per level instead of 1.
This makes adopting the consumption of new resources much cheaper than before.

The research overhaul update
v0.5.0.x
– lowered difficulty of Herbalism
– lowered difficulty of Metallurgy
– fixed bug can’t reinforce units when techs of equipment are unknown
– added retroactive civpoints bonus to compensate for the update’s effects
– blocked troop transfers when formation is encamped
– fixed bug of alcohol ideas triggering without needed materials
– upgrading townhall buildings now auto-changes the territory status as well
– it’s now possible to upgrade townhall buildings instead of building a new one
– added passive decay of free traders stock based on global world population
– added free trader price variations based on current stocks
– added NPC faction of Free Traders
– “Free traders” resell goods at 200% world average retail price, available to everyone regardless of trading agreements.
– Resource prodskill lvl3+ unlocks NPC “free traders” purchasing offers at 80% of world average minimum price
– fixed various issues with walls & cliffs connections
– fixed bug of abandonning settlements still now properly cleaning population from houses
– added abandonned building visual effects
– cancelling building demolition no longer gives free rebuild unless only 1HP was lost.
– restauring building is free if building has only lost 1HP
– outposts no longer allow for industries
– town & city statuses only available for capital unless “regional governements” policy is active
– excluded State Power & admin buildings from insolvency auto-abandonments
– outposts now require “territorial patrols” tech
– regional territories & settlers are now available pre-leadership
– implemented “Expansion Points”, replacing State Power as territory maintenance costs.
– doubled civpoints production + double prodskill costs = consumption traditions cost reduced by 50%
– fixed bug allowing to disband herds on the worldmap
– added possibility to transfer knowledges in treaties, costing Research Points to the sender.
– removed salaries from GDP
– temp reduction of the effect of treasury on monetary value
– added categories to knowledges & category filter in the UI
– added new type of project that has chances to give a new idea in a specific knowledge category when completed.
– agriculture unlocks agricultural innovation projects
– architecture unlocks contruction innovation projects
– academia unlocks innovation projects in society, sciences, economy and metallurgy
– added new “research” tab & UI to territory menu
– Elder circle, library, architect, and Academia services now generate extra Research Points.
– Failure of research projects now cause a progress setback instead of total failure.
– Failing a project gives an experience bonus increasing odds of success on the next trial.
– added bufferable “Research Points” that can be used to haste the completion of ongoing projects.
– improved project completion time prediction
– renammed “teacher” class as “wisepigs”.
– libraries now employ wisepigs instead of officials.
– removing profitability rate variations when distributed directly or by merchant: setting everything to 50% rate to prevent profitability issues with state backed industries buying ony at wholesale price.

 

This update focuses on modifying the mechanics of early income sources.

Privileges
Notably, Privileges have been completely changed as it was at the center of too many exploits: instead of generating new income derived from wealth, it now reduces some government expanses (territory & army upkeeps). This makes it now impossible to “wealth farm” and generate incomes ignoring waste.
To compensate for this change especially in the early game, other forms of income have been rebalanced as well.

Forced labor
Community work is now renamed ‘forced labor’ as it was a more fitting term.
Forced labor being historically one of the first ways of taxation, it makes sense to make it more prevalent.
Its associated penalties have been lowered, and its yield increased. Instead of a flat 60% conflict it now generates a proportional loyalty penalty like other taxes.

Agricultural levies
Tributes have been renamed ‘Agricultural levies’ to better illustrate what this tax represents and what resources are affected.
Historically it is also one of the earliest forms of taxation legitimized as a payment for land use.
It now affects all agricultural goods and not just foods, so it includes things such as flax and barley, wool and cotton etc…
Its loyalty penalty mechanic has also been modified: it now only angers farmers, which means the loyalty penalty is higher in territories with a high ratio of farmers. This means that for example, offloading angry farmers into surrounding territories can be a good way to increase your stability in your capital city.

Income Tax
The “classic” income tax is also now available much earlier since the Treasury policy instead of post coinage.

Victory Point rewards
To definitively fix the issue of last minute score manipulation to win Victory points at the end of a cycle, Victory point production is now continuous throughout the cycle.
Hegemony also now rewards not only the 1st score nation, but also the 4 other leading ones with degressive rewards. This means if the 2nd nation finally takes the lead, it wont be starting to increment towards victory back from 0 which would make the game far too long.

Administration & waste rebalances
Different values of administration have been modified to prevent exploits and improve the balance of the game especially to reduce burden in the early game.

 

The early incomes update
v0.4.2.x
– Elder’s circle workers changed from official to teacher
– bug with hegemony rewards of sub-scores
– sub-territories cannot produce local administration (scribes disabled)
– further reducing reward cycle length from total game duration
– “tributes” renamed “agricultural levies”
– agricultural levies applied to all agricultural goods (ex barley, flax, cotton ect… )
– loyalty penalty from agricultural levies is factored by the ratio of farmers/total actives
– “community work” renamed “forced labour”
– forced labour now affects loylaty proportionnally like other taxes
– forced labour 60% flat conflict lowered to 5%.
– removed gift eco negative budget causing State power penalty
– removed meat from production tributes
– changeed victory cycle into a continuous production instead of punctual rewards to prevent last-minut score exploits.
– Added degressive VP rewards for nation’s position instead of just the 1st nation
– multiplied VP rewards and goal by 10
– restored degressive VP contributions based on nation rank
– Tutorial: now using the same worldmap & spawn to make tutorial the same for all players.
– Tutorial: fix selecting herd not working
– Debt / -CW flag not being properly cleared after fixing the budget/SP
– applying log soft cap to stored wealth per resource type, factored by territory pop size
– more clay per tile + admin less clay
– increased efficiency of clay pits
– Increased productivity of paper production + reduced material cost
– increased community workforce income by 50%
– changing “privileges” and leader contribution mechanic: instead of generating coins, it will reduce government costs.
– added decimals support for state salaries
– added scrollbar to projects in research tab
– income tax policy now available with treasury tech
– Implemented server update clearing all generated non-settled territories so new resources added by an update can appear on pre existing games
– added x0 and x0.5 speed in solo. removed x40.
– barter gives -5% waste reduction
– territory status “village” +5 base admin
– price calculations: increased profit margin rates from production costs.
– lowered dominance need for officials
– lowered admin cost of population for smaller populations (below 600)
– barter, currency and coinage give +5 administration in all territories each
– lowered base admin of territories to 15.
– applying administrative overextension penalty to sub-territories as well. region center: 50 per extra territory. regional territories: 10 per extra territory
– fixed issue with debt event preventing to cancel debt.
– fixed foreign fields always appearing dead
– fixed exploit allowing to recruit formation in incorrect territory types
– fixed not being able to disband troops in territories where recruiting is not allowed
– fixed upgrading buildings in territories not using materials of parent territory
– fixed gathering livestock mission not detecting higher tier paddocks
– fix attempt of bug of missing resources (meat, fish) in territory generator
– fixed bug of Succession/Rebel starts spawning without leadership
– fixed bug of player starting as primitives on someones ruins and inheriting their culture stats
– fixed bug where new character spawned in existing faction instead of new faction
– fixed lvl 2 granaries not counting towards the granaries objective in the Thriving Agriculture mission
– fixed not being able to wake a building after puting it to sleep in a regional territory of max 5 prod buildings
– Fixed bug with invalid industry demand calculation
– Fixed terrain generator issue: shore resources spawning entirely underwater
– fixed score inertia not working
– fixed bug of industry producing despite missing material
– fixed bug of phantom tax values still affecting incomes or loyalty

This update is the biggest update since the early access release that cumulates more than 9 months of features, exploit-fixes and bug-fixes!

Capital buildings

This update adds capital buildings: some government policies -especially State power ones- now work in tandem with special unique buildings that can only be placed in the capital.
Most State power  production now comes from these buildings activity instead of intangible policies, and cities will visually reflect their importance and status: you can grow your capital government from a unique Chief’s hut to an impressive modular palace used to manage an empire whose layout you can design yourself: government buildings are designed to visually connect or to stand on their own.

Nation growth

State power transfers between nation members are entirely removed, as it was a constant source of exploits and multi-account farming.
A reworked government tech tree now also gradually limits the ability to form larger nations: techs can affect the maintenance cost of nation members and limit the max number of vassals.
From being able to ally only with a single State with the “Alliance marriages” tech in early  game, it evolves into recruiting multiple members under a same Nation leader, then forming a larger nation with each ranks having its own vassals,  and then reducing nation maintenance costs with special capital buildings, administrative techs and new services like Postal relays.
This prevents continental empires formed in the early-game while making it easier in late-game.
There is no more hard-capped limit for State power and in late-game it can be produced by expanding the Palace and employing more officials. 
For the capital of the largest Nations, the expensive Great Hall also greatly reduces the maintenance cost of subordinates, allowing for larger expansionist empires.

Regional territories

Another major change are the introduction of regional territories: cities (now ‘regional centers’) can now attach these regional territories to themselves in the same way they could claim empty territories and form regions.
These regional territories can use resources of the city directly to build, saving precious time of not having to constantly switch territories to transfer missing resources. They can also send all their production to the region center for free.
However regional territories are limited in number of buildings and cannot have industries. They are the “countryside” around cities, used mostly to farm and exploit natural resources. Because they can’t be fully exploited due to this limit, having more territories becomes important for production, putting more value to land surface.

Regional centers

Cities are no longer just ‘cities’. They are now regional centers with evolving administrative statuses. Starting with the default “hamlet”, they can grow to village, town , and city. Like how capital have unique capital buildings required to maintain policies, regional centers have unique ‘city hall’ buildings required to maintain their territorial status and producing local administration. 
These territorial statuses are notably what allow a regional center to control more regional territories and claims.

Trade routes and cargo

Trade routes and cargo, as a redundant system to market trades, has been removed and retro-fitted into the regional transfers mechanic. 
There is no more cargo, and transfers are one way between region territory to the regional center it belongs to. You no longer set a fixed amount of transfer but rather a maximum limit, and every unused production will be automatically transferred, making it less tedious to manage. No more quantity adjustments, no more breaking routes because of cargo, no more price shenanigans or manipulations as the price of the “trade route” is simply aligned to the local price.

Legitimacy and Oligarchy

A new class, Oligarchy, is introduced and at the center of important new game mechanics: Oligarchs represent all the rich, powerful and influent members of the society whose support is required to legitimize your rule.
Legitimacy factors and policies have been reworked, introducing Oligarchy support as a major factor.
Their support is determined by the effect of various policies, but mostly by their status of dominance: their wealth and life quality has to be above the average population to retain their favors. To do this the first basic way is to pay them with hefty political bribes.

Community work

Gift economy no longer allows for limitless spending, killing its associated exploits. 
It now comes with a new “community work” policy, which represents the percentage of time the members of the tribe will allocate for the tasks of the community such as maintaining huts, palissades or going on expeditions.
Now gift economy also has a budget like in post barter, including building and formation maintenances.
However because there is no storable physical form of money yet, so you have to maintain permanent balance between your available community workforce and the expenses requiring it.

Tributes

In the barter era, things are changed as well. There is no more “voluntary contributions” proto-taxation. 
Instead, there is a new “tributes” policy allowing the government to seize a portion of all produced cattle and agricultural foods (making them ‘state owned’), mimicking early pre-currency societies where food itself was taxed  by governments and then used as payments.
Actual taxation only comes later with currency and coinage.

Economy fixes

This update is filled with countless economic bug-fixes and balance changes to counter exploits such as price manipulation and waste-avoidance.
Loading resources with formations is now subject to waste even if state owned to definitively kill the advantage of having to tediously manually transfer goods to avoid waste.
Production costs are saved to prevent the old “stop production buy low, restart production sell high ” exploits. 
Prices also have strong inertia to changes to make price manipulation exploits much harder.

Officials and State employees

As unprofitability now applies to all types of buildings and as State power and administration comes mostly from actual buildings and not policies, there is now much more government employees and not paying them is not an option.
Additionally, officials behave a bit similarly as Oligarchs that they need their wealth and life quality to be above average to keep the temptation of corruption in check: a new waste modifier for “officials corruption” can add -or remove- 25% of waste in territories depending on their wealth. This will require to divert substantial wealth to them as privileges, or to pay costly salaries.

Despotism, Democracy and Republic

New policies allow players to customize their type of government a bit more and to give it more flavor.
A set of Despotic policies increase your Authority, allowing you to counter all the loyalty penalties that the high privileges and tributes generate (which you’re often forced into in the early game at least).
Later in game, players who wish to remain city-states can give up Leadership for “Democracy” in the fashion of ancient Greek cities, unlocking the special Agora government building and gaining a bit cultural boost.
The “Republic” policy allows for the Senate building, and rebalances Legitimacy factors.

City states

Everyone is now a city-state until at least the Bronze age where developments in administration and governance allow for the management of multiple regions (and thus multiple ‘cities’).
The Democracy option then gives a perk to those who wish to remain as city-states even in the later ages.
In the first age, all players are bound to their capital and its surrounding territories.

Player life-quality features

• To increase life quality for players, formations can now “prospect” tiles from the worldmap and get a list of all its natural resources. The result is also saved (although locally on the device) so that selecting the tile later on will display the list of known resources discovered on it. 
• Additionally, a new “scavenging” action permits you to directly exploit these resources with formations to immediately retrieve small quantities of it, which is especially useful to gather plant seeds for agriculture: players no longer have to make temporary settlements for it.
• Hunts now auto-resolve so that players don’t have to wait for the ‘battles’ to resolve, saving time.
• Evacuation of cities is changed to make it easier and less problematic to migrate: you now need an established outpost first, and then select the destination when evacuating. Once the event completes, all your city is evacuated: no more migrant formations causing maintenance and support issues.

New Victory conditions

Victory conditions have been simplified and reworked to prevent stale games and make future balancing easier. 
No more “victory points per score”. Instead, it works in “reward cycles” where at the end of every cycle, the players meeting victory conditions earn a Victory Point reward. 
For now, the main condition is “hegemony” where about every day (in persistent speed) the leading nation is simply awarded 1 Victory Point.
This gives players a clear deadline and visibility on the game’s progression as well as making it more feasible for competing Nations to challenge the leading one: instead of having to destroy it -and most others- to win, they now just need to close the gap and take the lead themselves which is easier to envision.
It also allows to end stale games quicker, as cycles will shorten with time and with player inactivity.

Colonies

Colonies are removed until they can be properly reworked, due to be being at the center of too many exploits and due to the new features causing too many problems with colonies.

 

The biggest update
v0.4.0.x

– reworked “market study” price factor to reduce volatility for very small distributed amounts
– replaced oceanic ambiant sounds
– bath and theater services both generate +1 culture
– Academia service culture increased to +4 culture
– school service culture increased to +2 culture
– “Capital” is no longer a territorial status but a property of a territory
– removed old policies of “governors”, “senate” and “parliament”
– added policy requirements in the policy info UI
– policies no longer meeting requirements will now auto-disable themselves.
– added new territory status of “hamlet”
– added new territory status of “village”
– added new territory status of “town”
– added new “oligarchy suppot” legitimacy factor
– rebalanced all legitimacy policies & legitimacy factors
– added new Oligarchy dominance calculation based on their wealth compared to average wealth
– added “aristocracy” policy, enabling privileges for Oligarchs
– removed colonies
– lowered loyalty from population to +/- 75 instead of 100.
– added “community work” policy, allowing for a new primitive source of ‘income’
– implemented a gift economy workforce-based ‘money’
– added possibility to cancel ongoing projects
– “insolvency” event when negative budget in gift economy: triggers auto abandon of buildings, units, policies & projects
– primitive tribe rebellions will now be of anarchic faction instead of barbarian, making it a valid spawn point if they win.
– added mechanic of buildings required to enable and maintain policies.
– added new building “community hall” required for the “village” territorial status.
– added new building “town hall” required for the “town” territorial status.
– added new building “city hall” required for the “city” territorial status.
– leadership project now triggers the leadership mission instead of knowledge, and it’s the mission that awards the knowledge.
– adding mechanic of event choices having possible conditions
– adding new event of nomad traders giving shells
– increased efficiency of water collectors but increased min range as well
– removing civilians from primitive tribe rebellions
– primitive tribe rebellions will now be of anarchic faction instead of barbarian, making it a valid spawn point if they win.
– lvl 1 fisher efficiency reduced by 50%
– more lvl1 buildings can be moved for free (ex woodcutters)
– added auto resolution of hunting actions
– updated spawning process of NPC units on the worldmap
– added prospection action to list discovered natural resources of a territory
– added scavenge action to get chances to gather a selected natural resources from wild territories
– added huntable fish formations on sea tiles
– added a cooldown time for territory exploitation actions (scavenging, wood)
– removing unclaim penalty
– increased AP cost to claim
– increased admin cost of extra claims
– claiming now requires an adjascent region-center or at least 2 adjascent territories of the same region and cannot claim diagonally
– added new territorial status of “regional territory”
– regional territories can build using resources of the regional capital directly
– rebalanced authority from stationned troops to be factored by total population of the territory
– added mechanic to limit the number of building per category based on territorial status
– removed cargo buildings (until re-implementation in future updates)
– retrofitted cargo trade routes system into regional transfers for sub territories
– reduced farms efficiency gain in level upgrades
– reducing efficiency of fields from 1 to 0.65
– tech “manure fertilizing” now gives +0.1 base efficiency to fields
– removed State power transfers in nations
– waste is now applied even to state owned resources when manually loading resources into formations.
– added nb of max regions limit (cities) and ‘regional administrations’ tech & policy that unlocks it -> forcing city-states until this tech
– added automatic territorial status regression if status conditions are no longer met (ex: village needing community hall)
– territories are now evacuated by events with a selected destination instead of spawning “migrant” formations
– modified houses building materials to make mudbricks and lvl2 comfort house more relevant.
– lowered wealth production of trading service
– added memory diagnostic tools for debugging
– all buildings can now be moved, for some cost in materials
– added new capital building “chief’s hut” required for “leadership” policy
– added new capital building “great hall” required for the “court” policy
– added new capital building “treasury” required for the “treasury” policy
– added new capital building “agora” required for the “democracy” policy
– added new capital building “lawmaker’s hall”
– added new capital building “state archives”
– added new capital building “state department” producing extra State power
– added new building “postal relay”
– added new policy “tributes” that allows to tax a portion of produced food & cattle, making them state owned.
– added new animations for buildings
– added mechanic of Nation maintenance cost being influenced by active policies.
– added new “alliance marriages” tech & policy allowing for 1 nation subordinate.
– added new “diplomatic treaties” tech & policy allowing for unlimited nation subordinates.
– added new “tributaries” tech allowing for the “subjugation” action.
– added penalty when over the maximum limit of subordinates.
– added new “republic” tech & policy
– added new “democracy” tech & policy
– added new “treasury” policy
– added new “court” policy
– added new “lawmaking” policy
– added new “council” tech & policy
– blocking contruction + UI warning for buildings missing a cultural trait (ex Baths )
– warriors damage +1 and attack skill +0.2
– added max nb of claims limit per territory status
– added auto unclaiming of territorial claims that are disconnected from their regional center
– damage bonus from height capped at +/- 3
– new victory points system now based on reward cycles
– added “internal only” trade offers to markets
– only the nation leader can have subordinates until the new “vassalage” tech is known
– increased range of chronicles
– addedfaisafe when full inventory for collecting actions (hunts)
– civilians gained in exploration events now received as a separate special “migrant” formation that costs no upkeep.
– +0.1 efficiency of woodcutters lvl 1 and 2
– increased tree clumps minimum density in spawn territories (ex arid starts)
– larger ponds on arid & desertic spawn territories
– removed “permanent” treaties: all treaties now have a duration limit after which they can be broken without penalties.
– added inertia to nation score variations to prevent reward cycle last minut exploits
– rebalanced resources per herd unit
– added missing fish unit icon
– added cosmetic dogs appearing in cities when tech “domestic dogs” is known
– disabled colonies
– increased woodcutters to 3 workers and production range
– increase lvl1 potter to 1.2 efficiency
– fields size increased to 8×8
– pastures size increased to 12×12
– removed gathering actions for “migrant” formations
– olives & grapes pleasure food quality reduced to 0.5
– olives distribution rate increased to 60 rations per unit
– removed “representative money” policy
– culture from services: reducing state power to 0.3. increasing justice to 1. increasing theatre to 3.
– modified tech requirements for road types to make it more progressive
– currency policy building efficiency reduced to +10% but now provides -15% conflict
– increasing fertility of poor ground to 2.5. decreasing fertility of fertile ground to 3.5
– added “tribal council” policy, needed for tribal councils
– added “code of laws” policy, needed for magistrates
– elephants and mammoths are now untradable in markets
– reduced wealth of leather to 0.03
– production & service buildings are now affected by unprofitability
– price arbitrage removed for services
– implemented free resources (water & some services like administration or community)
– state salaries now available since barter
– added “Officials” to the “privileges” policy
– added new waste factor of Officials corruption –> Officials wealth level now affects waste rate +/- 25%
– included treasury in monetary supply -> wealth per coin is now lowered by total treasury
– included state resource sales and exportation profits to the GDP calculation
– added decimals to population classes wealth
– added UI details about monetary unit value in Population wealth
– territory menu: ordering pop classes by wealth and removing sows/piglets/oldpigs.
– guard tech now available from Leadership
– ignored militias for military power & ‘protector of the people’
– added increased loyalty penalty from privileges (“privileges tolerance”) to the currency policy
– changed first tavern building requirements to unlock earlier
– currency and coinage now provide -10% waste effect each
– added separate salary setting for Officials in the state salaries policy
– added “banditry extortion” policy, trading authority for income.
– added “night terror patrols” policy, increasing state troops authority
– added “summary executions” policy, increasing authority
– added “Nepotism” policy, trading conflict for oligarchy support
– reduced gold in adornments by 5
– added penalty when revoking currency
– added strong inertia (about +/- 1 per eco cycle) to price changes. prices slower to move down than up.
– removing “‘importation price” influence in price calculations
– mines +2 workers per building
– worforce per tree reduced to 0.012 from 0.016
– claycamps +1 worker + increased range
– mudcamps +1 worker
– fixed issue with device ID causing a false positive device ban
– fixed bug of double taxation incomes on market sales
– fixed bug allowing to delete defensive zones in territories not controlled
– fixed calculation error in bonuses from cultural skills of annexes
– fixed exploit of selling at a loss in markets to avoid waste: wasted income set to local price instead of sold price as a minimum.
– fixed marshalls being able to unclaim territories of army owner
– fixed bugs in resource state sales calculations
– fixed selling state owned goods giving 100% of income to the state despite the 25% merchant share.
– fixed issue with lvl3 needs having incorrect satisfaction value allowing for lvl4 needs without actual lvl3 satisfaction
– fixed bug causing 0 produced wealth in territories.
– fixed bug with population service access having incorrect values (ex Health services)
– fixed issue with resource wealth is lower than the sum of cheapest materials
– fixed bug with material supply/demand having incorrect value due to other missing materials in industries
– fixed bug of war state reset as neutral after server restarts
– fixed rounding issue in “importation cost” of the Price calculation with regional transfers
– fixed bug with production costs when removing materials from city inventory -> production cost can only lower if resource in being produced
– fixed grape fields being too productive
– fixed issues in market study in regional transfers
– fixed recurrent server & client crashes due to buffers
– fixed importations going into stock not being state owned
– fixed bug in auto-distribution of goods (gift eco) being higher than max demand
– fixed bug with trade income predictions and rounding error of state ownership.
– fixed loss of mission events when spawning as a “succession” type
– fixed bug with production annexes remaining productive when building is asleep
– fixed bug of some new cultural customs missing from the UI
– fixed bugs with industry materials in gift economy (autodistribution)
– fixed bugs with auto-selection of materials for industries

This small update comes to mainly rebalance multiple things related to the price calculation of resources in order to counter price-gouging explotis used to generate easily very high incomes.

Both these factors have been modified and rebalanced to complicate price gouging.
Now, all neighboring territories will count to define the “regional price” of a resource used in arbitrage, even territories with whom the player has no trading relations (although at -75% influence), representing the influence of smuggling. The decay of a neigbor’s influence from distance has been lowered as well.

For market study, the formula has been reviewed to give less volatile results that are less influenced by the supply/demand ratio. Previous formula was defective on low volumes, causing it to give extremely high results making it easy to achieve high prices and therefore high incomes. The supply/demand was compounded, having influence in the market study and then again in the official supply/demand factor.
New market study is now much more influenced by the wealth of the different social classes.
It will now be very hard to reach high prices in cities with no rich classes.

The victory points have been simplified, now every player contributes all his Victory points to the nation instead of contributing a different share based on his rank. This was done to simplify things for player and to prevent exploits of rearranging ranks temporarily to get an instant surprise victory.
However, a nation will now need about 75% of the world scores to gain 100 victory points and win.

This is just a minor update to rebalance some urgent things. The reason its rather limited after this much time is that i’ve been working on the next major update which will be the biggest update since the early access began, changing a lot of the game dynamics.
That upcoming update will focus on governance and state power, with many new techs, capital government buildings, regional territories attached to cities, territorial statuses, more progressive growth for nations etc…
This will be a very significant update that requires all the new mechanics to be completed together, and retro-compatibility with current games on this version will not be good due to the extent of the modifications. Therefore until then things will remain quiet.

The decimal prices update
v0.3.2.x

– Added support for decimal prices of resources
– made “base price” factor affected by cultural production skills
– fixed market trade isues causing a modification of recurrent offers sizes
– fixed problems with crushing resolutions & invasion
– all nation ranks now contribute at 100% of their Victory points to the nation
– it now takes 75% of world scores to reach 100VP instead of 50%
– fixed bug in resource price calculation causing invalid market share factor (used in market study)
– reworked price arbitrage formula to increase influence of more distant neighboring territories
– regional price (of price arbitrage) now even includes the territories without any trading relations, but with an influence reduced by 75%
– fixed battle pathfinding issue