After many years of work, and more than a year in closed testing, i’m proud to announce that i will finally be releasing Ymir on Steam, in Early Access, on March 15th!
Pricing will vary depending your region. It will be available for 30€ in the EU!
The walls update
This update adds 2 community requested features : the annex management tool (finally!), and manual distribution limits for merchant buildings.
The annex management tool allows you to see all annexes and their owner at the same time, and to reassign them by click-&-drag.
Walls, gates and stairs have been improved. Issues and bugs were fixed regarding their path-finding logic.
Walls now connect with cliffs, making their placement more intuitive. Gates can be placed freely and on their own: for instance you can now place a single gate to block a 1 tile wide platform wall in a castle of a bridge.
New stairs and walls were added.
Stairs now have a custom orientation that can be chosen when placing them (and the placement UI was improved), allowing for more control in the design of fortifications.
WARNING: stairs are not retro-compatible. All stairs placed in previous version will disapear in the new one.
The walls update
v0.0.24.x
– added annex management tool allowing to see and modify the ownership of all annexes ( fields, markets, mining shafts etc… )
– fixed issue of disapearing buttons in the producer’s bdg UI
– added ability to limit distribution of merchants
– fixed various issues of broken logic and display of platforms and walls.
– walls will now snap with cliff edges as expected.
– gates can be freely placed.
– stairs now have 4 possible orientations.
– reduced odds of revolts when low in loyalty so that it happens less instantaneously.
– added stone stairs.
– roads and fields can now be placed freely on slopes.
– added 3 new simple walls: stone, bricks, stoneblocs.
– animal capture now requires farmers instead of hunters.
– increased efficiency of builders.
– added region dropdown menu that allows to jump directly between a player’s cities.
– fix issue not being allowed to settle on territories occupied by other units.
– fixed UI scrolls
– fixed treaty icons not updating correctly in character’s profiles
– fixed missing chat PM channels with other nation members
– AP regeneration of units now benefits from the speed boost when starting a new game
– events no longer auto-close other menus when poping up ( such as contact menu or chat )
The chronicles update
This update took a while!
Unfortunately, it took a long time as i had to work on time consuming UI functionalities that don’t change much to the game itself but where necessary to do nonetheless.
Chronicles
This update however still adds a few new things, including chronicles.
Players can now write and publish news and stories ingame. Depending of their cultural influence and diplomatic relations, the news then reaches the player’s neighbors. Each player receiving a new story can ‘upvote’ or ‘downvote’ it, and upvoted stories and then relayed by the receiver’s own cultural network, propagating to more players.
This system will hopefully help players feeling less isolated and more aware of events happening in the world around them, improving the multiplayer experience.
Ingame chat
Additionally to this, this update also adds a basic ingame chat system, allowing players to finally discuss directly with all the other players they have diplomatic relations with (peace treaty).
This basic chat system also includes a special room for every nation, so all the members of a same nation can share a common chat room.
The nation chat has 3 sub-rooms, one being reserved for rank 1-2 members, another one for all members, and eventually a 3rd one that will allow guests of allied nations to be there (not supported yet).
Pending treaties
The new chat menu also serves as the long-needed “diplomacy” menu, listing all the other characters a player has relations with, allowing to see active treaties and sending new missives without needing to click on their region.
Each character profile now also lists not only active treaties, but pending offers or renegotiations, allowing the sender to cancel them if need be, and also providing feedback to confirm that a new treaty offer has been properly received by the server and isnt lost.
Improved performances
Some shaders have been slightly optimized, which should increase performances of the game.
UI engine improvements
This update also contains big updates and fixes related to the UI.
A major change is the transition to a new font system loading external font files. This was critical to allow for future localization in all languages including Chinese or Russian as now each language can be set to load its own custom font with all the characters needed!
Fonts display should also appear sharper and more comfortable to read than before.
The text editor has been improved as well, fixing many of its bugs.
Another UI update concerns ‘ui containers’ : a UI box that can contain UI elements larger than its own size, and display only some of it with scroll bars.
This element was re-written from scratch, as the previous one was pretty broken, especially for things like Battle Reports. These should finally display properly, even for the larger ones.
This update also fixes many issues related to 4k display.
The chronicles update
v0.0.23.x
– added “custom servers”
– added moderation tools as an option for game hosts. enabling them will ohwever make the server listed as custom and no longer in official game modes.
– added player ban to moderation tools.
– desertion speed is now proportionnal to the army size, and not just to illegitimacy.
– desertion is very slow when illegitimacy is very low (legitimacy >= -5).
– band society now provides 5 of legitimacy by default.
– it is now possible to settle directly on a claimed territory
– fixed issue where ‘reclaim’ action was available instead of ‘claim’
– fixed bug with the dismantle sub-menu not loading
– fixed bug with buildings having invalid annexes
– lowered honor penalty from resistance by 50% when partisans win the battle, but it remains capped at a max of 50 (it will now take 100 of resistance to reach max penalty of 50 honor ).
– increased band society’s state power by 10
– increased leadership’s state power by 10
– fixed bug with “mining tools” tech not triggering
– fixed many issues with high resolution displays (4k).
– optimized main rendering shaders, improving overall performances of the game.
– camera zoom is no longer tied to resolution, making it consistent regardless of resolution. Zooming in above 1:1 pixel ratio is now allowed.
– replaced font rendering with a new system using external font files customizable for each language, allowing localization in all languages. Fonts rendering also improved and sharper ingame.
– improved UI engine: replaced ui containers with a new one allowing to scroll smoothly through its content instead of turning contained elements on/off –> should improve display of large battle repports.
– changed UI of scroll bars.
– pending treaty offers are now visible and can be cancelled by the sender.
– added a basic ingame chat with a room for each nation and a channel with every character the player has relations with.
– added a basic chronicle system, where players can publish chronicles that will spread organicaly depending on their cultural reach and relations.
– when a chronicle is liked by a player, it gets relayed to others depending of the player’s own cultural reach.
– added new option to disable animated vegetations.
The multi-servers update
This update makes it easier to run multiple server instances on a same device, by making config and log files specific to every game thus avoiding the problems of conflicts when running multiple servers on a same PC.
Thanks to this i’ll be able to run multiple official games to accommodate more players.
Besides that, this update focuses on various re-balancing to fix gameplay flaws and exploits.
As with previous updates, this is still monopolizing most of my time and sadly it keeps delaying new features and more interesting updates.
The multi-servers update
v0.0.22.x
– modified logs and config files to allow running multiple server instances on the same machine: each game server now has its own sub-config file and logs folder, to avoid them colliding with each other.
– resistance is no longer fully cancelled when dismantling a territory, but its not generated either: it remains unaffected.
– storage policies are now resetted when a region changes ownership.
– colonies now count as a friendly city for AP recovery.
– state ownership is reset to 0 if in gift economy.
– fixed bug causing pillage loot to be doubled.
– fixed retro-compatibility patches applied by mistake on new games.
– claiming and unclaiming territories is now performed by formations as an Action and it costs Action Points.
– unclaiming a territory now costs 2 of Honor.
– it is now possible to reclaim territories claimed by enemies when at war.
– going back to gift economy now costs a penalty of loyalty.
– territories of inactive nation members can’t be dismantled anymore if the territory joined the nation recently.
– honor is no longer capped at 100 and -100.
– players with negative legitimacy now suffer desertion of their troops (effect similar to over-draft but faster the more illegitimate you are).
– max tax and state power transfer in nations lowered to 25%.
– “leader superiority” legitimacy from the leader’s wealth is no longer linear -> it’s now tends to a max of 160 around 300 of wealth.
– increasing taxes (when above 25%) now causes an immediate loyalty penalty when passing the reform (-2 per %).
– increased high taxes loyalty penalty. now starts gradually at 25% taxation instead of 50.
– reduced peat tiles productivity & work by 2.
– increased range of mudcamps and clay exploitations.
– reduced cost of taxation policy from 10 to 5 state power.
– removed the “seize materials” policy.
– underwater tiles are no longer exploitable by production buildings.
– fixed bug where encamping and moving actions where missing in enemy territory.
The Partisans update
This update adds Partisans, a different type of rebellion now specific to “resistance” from invaded cities. Partisans uprisings can happen regardless of the loyalty level of the city, as long as there is resistance.
Each uprising however lowers the level of resistance.
This update also adds limited ammo for ranged units in battle, and increases the cover provided by defensive walls and battlements.
This should fix the problem of range units being the best offensive unit as they could wipe out entire defenses not matter the fortifications, provided they had the highest range. Now, range units will deal much less damage, and once their ammo is depleted they will retreat and leave the battle.
Lastly, Nations now provide automatic right of passage, trading agreement, and defensive pact: if a member is attacked, all other members will automatically declare war as well, with the breaking closes being on the side of the initial aggressor.
This will help national armies to become relevant as they’ll be immediately usable in case of attack, unlike before where each nation member would have to declare war manually once online, so that his national armies could be used.
The Partisans update
v0.0.21.x
– reduced home distance malus of AP recovery from 5 to 3% per tile.
– changing home of a formation now depletes all its AP and auto-encamps it.
– it is no longer possible to renounce control of a region that has an active resistance mouvement
– removed honor penalty when renouncing control of a region
– removed honor penalty when losing a region to rebels
– added a different event for rebellions caused by resistance: partisans uprisings. They can happen independtly of the region’s loyalty and tend to be better equiped than rebels.
– partisan uprising events lower the level of resistance in the city proportionnally to the strength of the uprising.
– losing a city to partisans has an honor penalty proportionnal to the amount of resistance in the city
– removed auto-encampment when ordering a movement or actions with insufficient AP for it
– removed AP cost of disbanding troops
– doubled AP cost of transfering troops
– fixed an error causing battles to be invisible in the region view (and potentially other battle related bugs).
– increased coal output of coal terrain tiles
– rebel regions rejoining their legitimate owner now get a free restauration bonus
– added ‘ammo’ to units in battle -> attacking range units with depleted ammo will retreat from the battle, defensive units will idle.
– defending armies in cities get a x5 ammo boost.
– increased cover from palissades and defensive battlements.
– cover (when >0) is now displayed next to troop banner flags, when deploying them and during battles.
– fixed palissades not providing cover for the tile on the other side of the wall.
– It’s no longer possible to abandon buildings in resistant cities.
– It’s no longer possible to respawn on a character/city you were the last player to control.
– fixed issue with missing events of “crushed” battle resolutions
– nation members now get automatic right of passage and trade agreement
– nation members now get automatic defensive pact (if one member is attacked, all others auto-declare war legally)