Multiple hotfixes have been applied since the last update, rather than a bigger thematic update. This is the changelog of all the cumulative hotfixes including today’s.

It includes many bug and exploit fixes, an update of the anti-cheating and new formation types.
I’m aiming to get a stable enough version so i can resume working on new features in the next updates.
Below is the cumulated changelog of all the hotfixes published since the last update, including a new hotfix today (bottom of the changelog).

Hotfixes
– locked claim action in early game until leadership
– fixed rounding issues with resources decimals
– fixed bug occasionnally causing the loss of unloaded resources when pre existing storages are full
– fixed bug causing failed settling actions (empty territory, with slums and storage not poping up)
– fixed invalid wealth production for some service buildings (like cargo and trading)
– production buildings now produce wealth proportionally to actually produced resources (and not if materials aer missing)
– fixed changing formation home not properly encamping the formation
– fixed visual bug of trees appearing on buildings
– resources from events are now state owned
– fixed battle issue of troops sometimes able to raid a building through a cliff or wall
– fixed trade routes not closing when abandonning a settlement
– fixed being able to avoid the annex nb limit for waterwheels and windwheels
– fixed bugs with retreating armies causing the army to be lost after a battle
– fixed invalid deployment location for allies of a territory or gaiag animals when hunting in a settled territory
– fixed hunting battle causing militia to be deleted in same territory
– minor optimizations for large battles rendering on client side
– Militias now can’t hold inventory
– evacuating a city now spawns a special migrants type formation and not a regular army
– primitive tribes are now “nomad” type formations and not a regular army
– fixed client battle pathfinding issue on water getting battle display stuck
– fixed bug allowing to uncamp formation below 50AP
– fixed bug in music tracks selection causing tracks to be missing ingame
– fixed tech inertia being enabled in solo mode causing some techs to be too slow to trigger
– armies and national armies can no longer perform the ‘settle’ action
– adedd ‘settlers’ formation type
– added ‘migrants’ formation type
– added ‘nomads’ formation type
– added formations decay to any homeless formation of a type requiring a home support (such as army & national armies)
– fixed battle bugs with water
– reduced combat strength of civilian units
– speed boost now only available for primitive tribe start
– fixed issues with formations encamping after battles
– battle AI: troops are less inclined to keep targetting an enemy troop if they were inactive in the previous turn (meaning they’re unable to engage that enemy, for being in a defensive zone for example)
– battle AI: troops are now more inclined to target enemy troop if its climbing or breaching defenses.
– national armies no longer trigger exploration events, but they also cannot explore new territories (from the perspective of the character giving the movement order) -> fixing the problem of national armies getting immobilized.
– fixed barbarians not despawning when back home
– chats are now ordered by last message date + added nation flags on portraits
– added ability to block characters ingame (mute messages, chronicles, and chats)
– fixed ui issue with the “marshal” button
– fixed treaty term “join nation” available despite member not having the right to recruit
– increased pre-tax voluntary contribution of people from 20 to 25%
– implemented free city upkeep for some territorial types
– doubled lvl1 granary capacity
– increased storage capacity of livestock paddocks
– slightly increased leader production of cows and buffalos but reduced meat production
– removed wealth production of buildings with no workers (water collectors)
– fixed bug when an army retreating to a tile occupied with enemies is destroyed before battle
– fixed tactical retreats registering as a defeat (ex: range army retreating when out of ammo)
– implemented minor pathfinding optimization to better solve direct simple paths
– removed state power transfers from treaties
– removed PNB breaking clauses from treaties
– fixed loyalty issue when spawning as a colony
– upgraded the automatic anti-cheat
– fixed calculation mistakes in importation incomes
– added option to disabled the anti-cheat for server hosts (in server_settings.ini and game_settings.ini )
– fixed an issue with minimum price calculation and added more UI details in the price UI
– fixed battle issue
– loyalty high-tax penalties now proportionnally reduced from its territorial status income modificator (ex -100% for outposts = no high-tax penalty)
– improved price algorythm determining the ‘profit rate’ of the ‘minimum price’ section: now fully dynamic to adapt at best to the resource’s trading activities.
– inactives no longer capped at max 10% national state power tax
– fix UI issue of servers appearing/disapearing in the servers lobby
– fixed worldmap territories not properly updating when owner switches faction
– fixed formations not updating giving/losing visibility properly on the worldmap
– fixed auto-peace not applying to all the nation members when a foreign character is subjugated by a nation member
– home distance AP regen for formations is now capped at -50% instead of -75%
– fixed bug where after a server restart all encamped units would lose some AP
– fixed barbarians not moving back to nearby barbarian territories after raids
– fixed formations not giving visibility when in battle in the worldmap
– fixed cargo from other own territories not available for trade routes unless cargo is made public
– world price average no longer considers neighbors with rights of passage only (now only considers trade rights)
– fixed rebellion of a subjugated character not triggering national defensive pacts
– rebalanced tech inertia of some critical techs being too high and causing tech lockdown
– fixed not being able to move a national army on explored territory if its owner hadn’t explored it himself

This new small update mostly changes things on the server side, thus it doesnt bring much new things visible to players, and is mostly focused on rebalancing the overall game’s tech progress rythm.

This update modifies some mechanics about how ideas are unlocked, and adds 2 new ways of discovering ideas:

• Ideas can now passively spread along trade routes and with neighboring states you are at peace with.
• You can now learn ideas from a foreign culture if present in one of your cities, which would typically happen after a conquest. This will not happen if the original invaded population is decimated and starving, and the city needs to have significant percentages of your culture and the foreign one for the cultural exchanges to happen.

Besides that, this update modifies other idea related things:

• After a character discovers a new idea, a cooldown period will reduce its odds of discovering new ideas.
• Slowed down the discovery of some pivotal techs in mid and late game.

The point of all these measures is on one side to reduce tech differences between nations and on the other to address the current problem of the game’s tech progress going usually too fast once the bronze age is reached, with some nations often quickly rushing through iron and steel and causing too many techs to come too fast.

This update also fixes multiple server-side issues that have been causing crashes on servers.

 

The ideas propagation update
v0.2.3.x
– added passive spread of ideas along trade routes and neighbors.
– added possibility to inherit ideas from cities with significant foreign culture and population (ex following occupation)
– fixed multiple issues causing server crashes in battles and pathfinding.
– added new invisible server side mechanics to better control and balance discovery speed of specific techs reducing randomness.
– slowed down discovery of some key late game techs.
– service buildings now only produce wealth for used services instead of total produced.
– The odds of unlocking new ideas is temporarily reduced every time a new idea is discovered by the character.
– fixed issue where spawning characters could inherit undiscovered techs.

This update adds 16 minutes of new original soundtrack, with 3 new tracks made by Ben Rawles and 1 track from a guest composer Levi Bond.
Thanks to incomes generated since the Early Access release i was able to commission these new tracks to add more diversity in the musics and reduce their repetitivity: for a game meant to run for multiple hours its especially important to have a soundtrack as long as possible. I’ll eventually keep commissioning additional tracks as long as i can!

Besides that this update brings various tweaks, exploit fixes and bug fixes.

• Services producing culture can now be seen in their resource menu, and they now only produce culture when consumed by the population ( in order to fix things like the exploit of building many more forums than required by the local population ).
• Treaties with inactives can now be broken without penalties, to make managing nations easier.
• When pacifying invaded territories, resistance will now decay faster but culture will decay slower. Additionally, resistance will decay twice as fast if the invaded territory belonged to NPC ( barbarians, rebels ) or  an inactive character, making reclaiming territories easier.
• Some issues with infrastructures were fixed, such as walls and roads remaining invisibly present below buildings or recycled materials missing when overriding existing infrastructures.

 

The soundtrack update
v0.2.2.x
– added 16min of new original soundtrack
– only services ‘consumed’ by population will produce cultural bonus (as opposed as total produced), so that the exploit of building more forums than necessary will be thwarted.
– “Claim” action now requires “Leadership” tech
– capped max population bonus when spawning in an existing city + added a temp 25 loyalty bonus
– breaking clauses are now disabled in treaties with inactive characters (= they can be broken with no penalties)
– increased speed of resistance decay in territories
– resistance decay speed x2 for territories that belonged to inactives or NPC
– slowed down rate of foreign culture decay in territories
– fixed issue of +/- 1 unit of resource missing/remaining when spending or adding resources in a territory due to resource decimal fractions
– fixed problem of unloading resources from a formation showing 0 in the formation’s inventory when unloading failed in the territory and was canceled
– fixed infrastructure/terrain not clearing when placing buildings on top
– fixed infrastructure materials not recovered when building a new infrastructure or building on top
– fixed misc UI issues in the Nation tab of the Government menu
– fixed bug of partisans uprisings registering as defeat despite being won
– fixed loyalty warning even not showing for colonies and outposts
– fixed problem of trade route “export” offers registering as “transfer”
– fix bug of replentishing sale offer not reducing actual resource stocks in the territory
– fixed a pathfinding issue
– improved dedicated servers to be able to initialize a game without a pre-existing save or manual setup through the server UI

Adds proper dedicated servers and replaces the broken Steam lobby with my own Master server to list existing servers.

This update finally adds proper dedicated servers to Ymir, by getting rid of the Steam lobby and its broken implementation in the Engine used by Ymir.
I’ve now made my own master server to list existing servers, allowing in turn to make servers completely independent from steam.

What does this mean for users?

• No more disappearing or obsolete servers in the “Join game” menu.
•  You no longer need a steam client opened with a valid Ymir license to run a dedicated server.

Important notes for Game hosts

• The game server settings are now moved inside the game save folders and renamed game_settings.ini. So all the games .ini files in the root Ymir appdata folder can therefore be moved & renamed, or deleted. server_settings.ini contains the default and global server settings.
• The dedicated server steam app id is 749070. This is the server that can run without requiring Steam.
• server_settings.ini now contains a url override, so you can have your server address displayed as a url instead of its actual IP.
• Dedicated servers will now cancel their auto-restart behavior after 5 consecutive crashes.

The dedicated servers update
v0.2.1.x
– switched from steam master server to an Ymir private master server for server listing
– added new dedicated server app on steam (749070) that doesnt require the steam client and accounts to run.
– moved game settings into the save folders
– added support for custom URLs for server hosts, set in server_settings.ini
– servers now cancel their auto-restart behavior after 5 consecutive crashes.
– reduced efficiency of Tavern service and alchool required for it.
– greatly reduced efficiency and intelligence bonus from school and academy services
– fixed problem of “gaia armies” when a territory with an army decays.
– fixed production of pickaxes without the pickaxe tech
– lowered nordic bonus to +5 health
– lowered tropical malus to -5 health
– fixed a battlecode issue causing infinite battles
– occupied territories can only be transfered by treaty to their previous owner or a character that is also at war with the previous owner
– when a sell order is added, if 2 buy orders are competing for it, the highest order will pay second order’s limit-price +1.
– fixed colonies not benefiting from city administrative policies
– fixed trade history overflow

The automated trading update

Trading upgrade
This update’s main focus is the improvement of the trading mechanics and UI.
The main point is the addition of a new trading menu, available from the side panel of territories but also from the resource menu of all resources as a new tab.

With this menu comes a lot of new functionalities and informations about trading, the most significant one being the addition of automatic recurrent orders. For example, you can set the order to sell 100 hammers at 4 coins every time your stock of hammers reaches 200 in the territory, and the order will activate whenever that condition is met and wait inactive when it isn’t. 

On the left, the new menu also shows you the Best offers in your trading network for every resource: it shows the best available buy price and sell price, allowing you to see immediately what interesting trades are available to you. 
A tickbox even allows you to filter unprofitable offers: it will then only list resources that have a buy price higher than your local price, or sell offers that are lower than your local price, which means offers you can generate profit from.

The menu also adds a trading history, showing you all the recent trades that you made, who purchased it, and at what price. It also displays your best trading partners based on the selected resource and time period you’re looking.

It is now possible to also place buy orders , and not just sell orders.
When placing a buying order, you must deposit an amount of coins matching the limit price and quantity you’re willing to purchase. 
If your buy order is cancelled or filled at a lower price, your initial deposit will be refunded accordingly.
For example, if you set a buy order of 100 wood at a limit max price of 4  and it gets filled at 3, you will recover a quarter of your initial deposit.

The new trading system no longer allows you to choose specific offers: instead, it creates an order book with all the selling and buying offers, and make them automatically match. 
When you buy or sell resources, it will always look for the best available price in your trading network. Therefore you can no longer choose to buy wood for 4 coins to a specific partner if someone else in your network is selling some for 2 coins.

Improved trade route UI
The UI of trade routes has also been improved. 
All trade routes between similar cities will now automatically merge into a single route for easier management and visibility.
For existing trade routes, transferred amounts can now be edited, so you no longer have to close and recreate routes. If the trade route is with a third party, you may only reduce traded amounts, but if the trade route is internal between your own cities, you can also increase it when needed.
The side pannel UI has also been improved to fix the ‘overflow’ issues, to better display operated trade routes, trade route finances, and the creation of new trade routes.

Resources base wealth rebalanced
The base wealth of resources introduced in a previous patch (contributes to the territory wealth when stored in proper storage buildings) is now displayed for each resource in its menu in the top.
It has also been lowered and re-balanced to take into account the wealth of the materials needed to craft the resource, when relevant. 

Cavalry re-balanced
Mounted units have been rebalanced to be stronger as they were too weak considering their price. They are now especially stronger vs infantry of low reach such as swordpigs.

 

The automatic trading update
v0.2.0.x
– Reworked trade routes UI
– It is now possible to modify traded amounts of existing trade routes without having to cancel and remake them
– trade routes between similar cities will now auto-merge into one
– resource lists are now sorted by alphabetic order
– fixed missing UI for “operated trade routes” in the trade route side pannel
– removed control of price for trade routes (obsolete) as it is dynamic and automatic
– removed cargo price for now
– fixed UI overflows in the trade route side pannel
– new trading menu, available from the trade side pannel and the resource menu of each resource
– placing buy orders require an instant deposit of coins matching the quantity and limit price set in the offer.
– wooden shields cost less wood and leather
– light helmets faster to produce
– laminar armor upkeep +0.2 and armor -0.25
– heavy shield armor -0.5, defense skill -0.25, upkeep +0.1
– horses and camels reach +0.5, attack skill +1.75, damage +1, mass +100
– resources base wealth now takes base wealth of required materials into account
– added display of base wealth in the resource menu
– reduced base wealth of resources by 50%
– added persistent orders, triggered automatically by the current stocks of the territory
– added trading history
– added buy orders
– fixed empty battle reports issue
– fixed memory leak in battles
– fixed display issue with flags in some menus
– ordered resource lists by alphabetical order
– fixed feedback loop of leader salary and priviledges: only wealth from priviledges can now contribute to treasury
– fixed priviledges reducing wealth of non-capital cities
– exploration events can now happen on tiles with herds
– deserted occupied territories can now decay
– fixed custom worldmap settings not working when creating a new game