Author: Ronchiporc

This update adds Action Points for armies: from now on, moving and performing actions such as attacks costs Action Points.
Action Points recovery is slow, but a new action has been added: “encamp”, that increases the recovery speed greatly but locks the Army until it has at least 50 AP.
Being in a friendly city, or even better in its home, also provides a significant bonus while being far away reduces it.

The terrain is also now much more strategic, as tiles cost different amounts of “Movement Points” ( boot icon ): mountains, hills, or rivers, are now really costly to move across.
Territorial claims now play a more important role as enemy terrain doubles movements while friendly territories reduce it (any territory with right of passage). 
Also, cities have a fixed movement cost regardless of the terrain, allowing to create strategic mountain passes.

Each army has its own AP movement cost, depending on its content. Armies made fully of mounted units get a significant bonus while army size increases the cost proportionally: a small “scouting” formation of 10 horsepigs will be among the fastest moving formations while a large army of infantry will be very slow.
If your formation has a movement cost of 10AP and you move across a terrain costing 3 Movement Points, then it will cost 30AP to complete the movement.

The reasons for this new system are multiple :
– It increases the feeling of distance and world size, making it much harder to go far away.
– It makes war more tactical with movements and terrain playing a more important role.
– It prevents exploits and unfair-play behaviors such as an attacker waiting 4am to move his huge army across the world, spam Raid all of a player’s cities 8 times in a row to raze them, and move back to the safety of his castles all in an hour and before the defender even realizes it.
– As attacks will deplete the AP of armies, they will be effectively “locked” encamping in the neighboring territories after the battle, giving a chance to the defender to organize a counter-attack.
– This system allows to limit and slow down movements of large armies during wars without penalizing too much day-to-day movements between your own cities close to each other, such as transferring resources with carriers.

A new movement UI also allows you to see the available actions and preview the AP costs of movements.

This update also includes a re-balancing of Resistance and Loyalty mechanics to counter multiple new exploits recently used by hostile griefers (yes, they’re already here!).
Resistance is now much higher and proportional to the city’s population, while authority given by armies is now based on both numbers and “military power”. 
The “military power” of civilian units is also greatly reduced, so that civilian armies can no longer be used to provide easy loyalty bonuses.
Resistance is no longer a unique value, but multiple, saving resistance vs each player so that exploiters can no longer game the system to “clear” it artificially by transferring the invaded cities among them.

 

 

 

The Action Points update
v0.0.20.x
– added Action Points for formations, required to perform actions such as movements or attacks.
– added Encamp action, locking the unit until 50% of AP are restaured but increasing the AP recovery speed.
– new movement UI, with movement cost previews and a new ‘buttons wheel’ listing available actions shortcuts.
– formations will auto encamp when they can’t complete a movement or action.
– enemy territories cost double mouvement.
– friendly or owned territories cost reduced movement. Cities cost 0.5 movement no matter the terrain.
– moving close to a formation’s home cost reduced movement.
– Armies and National armies now cost 5 state power each to maintain.
– Added a few new exploration events
– fixed exploits allowing to cancel resistance level in a newly invaded city.
– changed resistance calculation when a region is changing ownership: now takes in consideration both loyalty to previous owner but also cultural influence of the new one + now proportionnal to the city’s population. resistance in large cities is now likely to be much higher.
– changed calculation of loyalty bonus/malus from armies and militias: now takes both military power & numbers in consideration. weight of it is globally decreased.
– fixed bug with merchants having an invalid supply.
– fixed bug with range covers not working.
– fixed national armies not providing authority to other players of the same nation.
– reduced “power” stat of civilian units.
– fixed exploit used to avoid exploration events: its no longer possible to disband/recruit in formations that are immobilized (by events).
– fixed bug where defensive troops’s autodelpoy would deploy them directly on top of incoming enemies.
– fixed multiple display issues with lower resolutions.
– fixed issue with formation’s status not updating correctly on the worldmap
– fixed comments displayed out of screen for UI elements at the bottom of the screen.
– increased distance factor cargo cost in trade routes
– a formation whose path is blocked by an hostile unit will auto-cancel its mission and movement (unless that world tile is its target).
– defeated units in battle no longer attempt to retreat to their home.

 

This update focuses on many gameplay changes to fix balancing issues and exploits.

Elephants
Elephants and Mammoths have been a consistent source of exploiting,  used by some players to become pretty much unbeatable and making this unit too central to military gameplay.
A number of new changes have been made to counter these flaws associated with them: 
– To counter players storing all their livestock -including hundreds of hoarded elephants and mammoths- in their army’s inventories (to avoiding having to maintain labor intensive paddocks), animals may now escape and be lost from the inventory via an event, especially if kept in large numbers relative to the units guarding them. The only way to keep them safely being with proper paddock buildings.
– To counter players keeping hundreds of elephants as resource and only insta-recruiting them for war (avoiding the high upkeep of these units), elephants can now only be stored in a special Elephant pen building (they cannot go into regular cheap paddocks anymore) that costs high maintenance and can only store 1 elephant.
These 2 measure should help avoid that a few players monopolize hundreds of elephants, and to counter exploits allowing to escape the high cost of maintaining a few elephant units, as it should remain an elite and expensive unit.

Inacessible areas
To counter players deploying troops or placing buildings such as defensive towers in inaccessible areas on purpose ( building a staircase to access a hilltop/wall > building there > deleting the staircase afterwards ), any building in an inacessible area will now be auto-abandonned. Troops deployed into inacessible areas will also auto-redeploy to default positions.

Spawn griefing
To counter players using a second account (or their own) to repeatedly spawn as colonies of a target enemey in order to sabotage them from inside, or to spawn in a nearby inactive player as its successor before using all its resources to suicide against that enemy, the spawning rules have been modified.
– The basic cooloff period is now exponential and increases at every new character made in that same game.
– Colonies and successions are now “Precious starts” with their own cooloff period of 15x the default one ( that’s 15 days in persistent ) regardless of the player’s main cooloff and affecting all the Precious start types as soon as one is used. Therefore a player starting as a colony will not be able to restart in another one for 15 days even if its his first character with a 1 day cooloff.
– To prevent players using the “spawn close to” feature to spawn near their enemies in order to sabotage them by suicide and griefing, all characters now have a unique “invite code” which must be communicated to the new player willing to spawn close, ensuring that this feature can only be used between consenting players.

State power
Many exploits involving the milking of inactive/dead characters to provide high amounts of extra State power to Nations in order to allow them to grow bigger have been countered.
That includes auto-removal of dead characters from nations, limitation of the transferable State power via treaties, and freezing of state power and tax transfers from inactive characters.

Representative money
Representative money proved itself too problematic for the game balance as it trivialized all the other mechanics and difficulties of the economy by being too powerful and easy, making some players infinitely rich.
Until it can be better modeled by the addition of some gameplay mechanics, its effects have been mostly disabled. 
As a placeholder solution and to keep Gold and Silver relevant in the meantime, these 2 metals are now a attributable resource that fills the need for Luxury of the population.

 

 

The anti-exploits update
v0.0.19.x
– fixed decimals not working for trade route amounts
– fixed 3rd party operators in your trade network not being available in the trade route menu.
– added various extra warnings and ‘first time’ tutorial messages.
– added ‘Invite codes’, which are codes specific to every character and now required when trying to spawn near a specific one. This ensures a player may now only use the ‘spawn close to’ feature with the other player’s agreement, as he must have his invite code.
– respawn cooloff is now variable and increases at each respawn
– added a ‘precious start’ attribute to colony and succession start types. they have a x15 cooloff (so 15 days in persistent) once used, regardless of the player’s spawn cooloff.
– fixed animal resource icons
– elephants/mammoths now have their own ‘paddock’ building that can only store 1 elephant and costs high upkeep. They can’t be kept in regular paddocks anymore.
– animals kept in formation’s inventories can now escape, especially if kept in large numbers relative to their keepers.
– fixed recycled materials not being state owned
– fixed bug when demolishing fields of recovering wheat instead of the field’s food
– fixed the number limit of some annexes (ex: windwheels per mills) not working
– fixed barbarians targetting territorial claims
– fixed building tab displayed in territorial claims
– decreased score cost of victory points.
– subordinates now contribute to the score. players receive a fraction of their subordinate’s scores.
– territories now requires <10 of resistance to be made a colony: it is no longer possible to immediately make colonies out of invaded resistant territories
– slowed culture decay of foreign cultures in regions
– some armors now cost additional leather to be crafted
– gold and silver can now be distributed to the population and fill the need for “luxury”
– greatly reduced wealth gained by gold and silver stocks (with the representative money policy)
– increased ‘cover’ of all battlements
– added more tutorial messages
– fixed a bug where recycling planned constructiosn of platforms gave back materials
– buildings in inacessible areas are now auto-abandonned
– fixed exploits with deploying troops in inacessible areas
– max transfered state power by treaties is now 25%.
– active characters with no territories are now ‘powerless’.
– inactive characters with no cities are now auto-abandonned from their owning player, and therefore becoming directly “dead”.
– dead characters with no subordinates are auto-expelled from nations
– dead/powerless characters have 0 production of state power.
– dead/powerless do not transfer taxes or state power in nations.
– treaties with dead characters are auto-ended
– transfer of coins or state power in treaties is frozen for non-active characters
– fixed an issue with resistance when liberating your own cities
– added support for decimal material costs
– recycling infrastructures like roads, fences or walls now recovers 50% of its materials
– small fences now cost only 0.5 of wood or stone.
– fixed purchased resources on markets not being state owned.
– WARNING: fixed calculation errors of income from state-owned resources. the error generated extremely high income in some cases, allowing for exploit.
– fixed incomes from state resource sales not being subjected to waste
– added server the option of enabling a daily autorestart at a specific time
– fixed state purchases not counting in supply/demand price factor
– light helmets cost less metal
– increased upkeep of heavy shields, cuirass and heavy helmet
– increased attack skill and damage of battleaxes
– increased armor of armored elephants
– fixed issue with mass bonus in melee charges
– bows cost less materials
– silver is slower to produce
– slightly reduced the city-size malus affecting breeding willingness of porcos
– slightly reduced additionnal health bonus from mutiple foods above 4
– fixed state ownership loss when transfering resources from different warehouses
– fixed recycled resources from demolishing building not being state owned
– you now recover 50% of the previous building’s materials when upgrading it

After the last update added “profitability” to buildings, adding depth to the economy and making it much less forgiving, this new update adds “State resources”, which will alleviate the issue of having to use heavy subventions on buildings producing resources mostly used by players such as tools and weapons. 
Since profitability was added, these buildings became really difficult to maintain active and players had to use overkill subventions to make sure the workers would have enough income no matter what their production was. This method was really wasteful and impractical.

Now i’ve added proper State-owned resources : you  (the state) can own directly a portion of the stocked resources of a territory.
This amount is now clearly shown in the resource menu.
You don’t pay for resources you already own when using them ( ex for building new stuff ).
You can also set it to auto-buy a specific amount of resources, or more interestingly to buy the whole production continuously, making it a “State resource”. 
This option will be really interesting for strategic resources mentionned above, as you can now make it that the whole production of tools or weapons is automatically bought when produced, ensuring a regular profitable income for the producers without the need of subventions, while not having to pay for these resources later on when using them to build or recruit units as they’ll already be yours.

 

Besides that, Trade routes now have dynamic prices. The price initially set serves as a minimum limit.
If the local price at the destination is high, the price of these goods will increase in the trade route itself as a consequence.
Because the price in these trade routes also influences the local price in the exporting territory, it means prices are now more likely to spread across regions and something worth 50 in a territory is less likely to be worth 1 in the other territory producing and exporting it.

Also, lots of other minor modifications and fixes, including some improvements in the battle code regarding range units and melee units in defensive zones.

 

The State resources update
v0.0.19.x
– added state-owned resources: a portion of the stocks that belong directly to you (the state) and do not require buying when using
– added state auto-purchasing of resources production, allowing you to autobuy strategic resources (like weapons and tools) thus facilitating the management of their industries profitabilities.
– trade routes now have dynamic prices. price can increase above its initial minimum if the goods are highly priced in their destination.
– fixed bug of corrupted invisible subvention policies
– fixed issue with Marshals not getting visibility from national armies
– increased scale armor upkeep from 0.2 to 0.3
– increased battleaxe damage from 3 to 4
– tavern service consumes less alcohol
– melee troops assigned to defensive zones may now exit their zone if enemies outside of it are in the same area and actively engaging allies (ex firing at other toops in the defensive zone)
– improved behavior of ranged units in battles: better range detection and they react to enemy charges by firing at least once before being engaged into melee
– fixed issues with raiding and pillaging buildings not working properly
– resistance when taking over a region is now limited by total number of actives in it so that an almost empty territory cannot generate full resistance levels anymore.
– fixed issue of resistance disapearing when transfering invaded regions to other players and allowing for an exploit.
– fixed mounted archers not requiring composite bows tech
– fixed difficulty not resetting when spawning as successor of an existing character
– plaster consummes less limestone
– plans consummes less paper
– reduced clay material cost of justice and school services.
– fixed issue causing clogging of the auto-placement of buildings on the servers.
– dismantling territories (of inactives in nations) now transfers ownership without any penalty: no resistence and auto converts culture.
– fixed servers being delisted from steam lobbies after a while (new attempt).
– lvl 2 hunter efficiency slightly reduced. lvl 3 increased.

The price algorithm has been rewritten from scratch to get more accurate dynamic prices, especially its market study component.
Luxury and rare resources should now be priced much higher as a result, as they should have been.
The price UI has been redone to facilitate understanding the different factors influencing pricing of resources. Each element now also provides tooltips with more details and explanation of what it represents.

The prices update
v0.0.18.x
– new market study algorithm that finds the right prices more accurately than before
– removed state consumption factor from prices, for now
– added ‘work price’ , increasing prices depending on the amount of workforce required to produce a unit of resource
– new price UI with more details and reorganized to offer better understanding of the different factors influencing a resource’s final price
– fixed various issues with “new leader” types of spawn
– added a new round of server optimizations to reduce issues on larger games
– armies whose home regions do not have enough population to maintain troops will now decay and gradually lose units.
– some advanced state power policies now require fair exchange.
– added a new “army marshal” status in Nations. Marshals can control all the National armies regardless of their position in the nation’s hierarchy.
– reduced efficiency of pastures

This update brings drastic changes to the economy, by adding the concept of ‘unprofitable’ buildings: if a building in functioning at a loss ( making no positive income for its workers ), it becomes flagged as unprofitable and its efficiency will gradually decrease while being avoided by new workers.

Trade balance is now effective on your treasury balance, and trade incomes are subject to waste!

Also noteworthy: workers priority has finally been implemented, as requested for a while by testers.
And it can be set on a per building basis which allows you to make sure your critical buildings ( like wells and food production/distribution) remain functional even if your population decreases!

The unprofitable update
v0.0.17.x
– greatly increased storage capacity of hier tier warehouses and granaries
– trade incomes now subject to waste
– trade incomes now subject to treaty taxes and nation taxes
– added employment priority per building
– added ‘unprofitable’ state to buildings, if the building operates at a loss for its workers (prod cost > incomes )
– efficiency of unprofitable production buildings now decreases with time.
– unprofitable buildings are flagged with a special icon, similar to sleeping or abandonned buildings.
– fixed issues with multiple policies UIs
– fixed bug where subventions where not being taken from the state’s finances balance
– fixed bug where non producing industries still consummed materials
– added vital needs bonus for providing higher quality food (overall increase in vitalneeds satisfaction)
– reduced sows fertility from 10 to 8
– fixed issues with needs satisfaction and life quality calculations
– added details to the UI of population needs satisfaction: you can now see the life quality awarded by each satisfied need
– fixed bug with formation’s upkeep
– reduced cost of claims, but increases exponentially with distance
– reduced colony requirement to 65% vital needs
– rebalanced some techs and project costs
– Misc bugfixes
– In the deployment tool, its now possible to toggle deployment per formation.
– In the deployment tool, you can now see deployment of other troops controlled by other players of your same nation.
– You can now deploy troops in foreign regions.
– Trade balance from all territories now applied to the player’s treasury balance.
– Import costs now taken into account by the rentability price factor (the price modificator ensuring minimum rentability for sellers of a resource). Before was only the local production costs.
– Fixed issues with battle objectives.
– Added new battle action to eliminate all enemy forces in city without invading it, pillaging it, or sacking it.
– Increased max number of defensive zones to 6.