IMPORTANT: due to the extent of this update, retro-compatibility is not supported. To continue games started on the previous version, move to the "previous_version" beta branch of the game. This also applies to ongoing games on Official servers.
Official Server 1 will be restarted on this new version on June 23rd 18:00 Paris time.

This update is the biggest update since the early access release that cumulates more than 9 months of features, exploit-fixes and bug-fixes!
It adds capital buildings, an overhaul of Governance techs and policies with more complex Legitimacy gameplay, new mechanics to make the growth of States and Nations more gradual, new economic systems in the early ages, and regional territories attached to cities which can send their production to the cities.




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.


A Palace combination, with the main palace, a treasury, a lawmaking hall and a ministry.


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.


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.


The new regional territories make the regions clearer and the map easier to read with only regional centers standing out.


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.


The new "City Hall" building, required for the "City" territorial status.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


A Palace complex with a Great Hall, State departments, and the Agora


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.


The first capital building: the Chieftain's hut


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 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 8x8
- pastures size increased to 12x12
- 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

Its been a while since the last updates, and that's because the next update is a big one with a global overhaul of many game aspects that all needed to be completed to become functional.

After more than 6 months, this update's planned content is now completed and beginning public testing.
Because of the extent of the changes, its not going to be applied to ongoing games, and for now it is live only in the Test "beta" branch.
A unique official server, the Test server, has been restarted and is running on this branch where this new version of the game can be tested until its ready to be applied on the normal branch.

You can participate by switching your game to the Tester branch, which will allow you to join the Test server or to try it on local games.
Even when this update is ready for the main branch, ongoing official games will remain on the previous version until they're finished.

This new version changes many core aspects of the game: new victory rules to reduce stale games, state power overhaul with new techs, government and municipal buildings, more gradual expansion capacity of players and nations with city states until the bronze age, regional territories attached to cities, QOL actions to prospect & scavenge resources with formations, reworked government and legitimacy policies and more...
The changes are currently listed in the "completed" column of the Game's Trello table, until the update is applied to the main version.

The duration of the testing phase will depend on the amount of issues and rebalancing necessary, and this version is subject to potential drastic changes.

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

This update focuses on polishing the previous update that introduced the Cultural system with Civilization Points.
Based on community feedback and experience from the ongoing games, it rebalances many aspects of the Cultural system.

Traits can now be revoked, but it requires a significant time to do so and it can only be done one at a time.
The bonuses given by production skill levels have been rebalanced and are now specific to each resource to ensure each resource is more worth specializing into.
Military units no longer require the equipment techs to be recruited, allowing for more weaponry trading and specialization (ex: archers can now be recruited out of bows even if you don’t have the bow production skill or knowledge)
The formula for progress towards new Cultural levels has been changed. Instead of being simply the total of produced State Culture, it is now the total of State Culture produced per habitant *100. The reason for this is to eliminate the population amount of this equation, as it favored too much players with lots of city vs players playing with only one or two. Now both can earn new Civpoints at the same rate, and average life quality in their city is what will differentiate them.
Cultural traits are now reset when spawning in a colony or as a new leader, and automatically reassigned based on the city’s contents.
This update also sees the introduction of the Official Test Server, that will be running in the Tester branch to test upcoming patches before they are applied to the Main branch.
To play on the Tester branch, you need to go into the game steam properties, in the beta tab, and select the branch “tester”.
This will allow less frequent and more stable updates on the main branch, and therefore the rest of the servers, but it does require players willing to play in a more unstable test version of the game. I had tried this before when the early access started but the Test server couldn’t maintain enough active players to be worth it. As long as this one remains active, it will allow for more stable and smooth game updates.

Improving the Civilization Points Update
v0.3.1.x
– cutural traits are procedurally reset and reassigned for colonies and new leader spawns
– added confirmation popups before making cultural point changes
– added ability to revoke cultural traits one at a time (about 48h for persistent games)
– progress of cultural level changed from ‘total produced state culture’ to ‘total produced state culture per habitant x100’
– fixed culture intelligence feedback loop: culture generated by population is now affected by Life quality rather than intelligence
– fixed issues with bloomery tech idea
– agricultural food skills now provide a much bigger productivity bonus (about +20% per level)
– made custom productivity/materials bonus per resource instead of 1 single value for all resources
– updated wealth production of buildings to account for productivity bonus of cultural skills
– units can be recruited out of available equipment even if the techs to produce these equipments are not known
– all consumable related techs now auto enable consumption trait as well as production (when these are required)
– free production skill for pottery, cloth, and leathercloth
– wooden battlements are now unlocked by ‘construction’ knowledge (same time as wooden platforms)
– production skill of meat only unlocks with ‘Animal capture’ knowledge
– increased range of flint collectors, mud camps, woodcutters
– free production skill for flour resource

Previous hotfixes
– fixed empty chat notifications at every restart
– fixed “my games” tab not working
– fixed armies retreating voluntarily (ex out of ammo) from not auto encamping
– fixed crushing victories not giving loot to winner
– added failsafe to prevent invalid nb of used civpoints
– fixed missing recruitable units: wolf warriors, bearserkers, elephants
– fixed but with hunting mission not completing if first attempt failed
– fixed nations names not updating when game is over
– fixed UI issue with GDP exceeding value limit in territory menu
– fixed UI issues in the trade orders text inputs
– fixed another issue in battle pathfinding between defensive layers causing battle issues
– fixed bug where production skill levels don’t provide correct bonuses (lvl3 is lvl2)
– fixed bug where civpoint monopolized by ongoing projects is not freed before trying to auto-enable trait, causing it to fail
– fixed bug causing migrants resettling to generate too much local culture in small settlements
– excluded workmarkers (building platforms & terrain) from inaccessible self destruction
– fixed NPC factions having 0 skills/consumptions
– fixed problem with state ownership costs when combined to an export trade route
– implemented max values for trade offers
– paused auto-destruct of infrastructures if there’s an ongoing battle
– fixed bug causing erratic movements of units in battles leading to server crashes and stuck battles.
– theater, baths, washing and tavern services don’t require production skill

This update adds a significant new long-time planned gameplay mechanic to the game: Cultural Traits.
Cultural Traits are like Policies but for Culture. Unlike Policies, they are - at least for now- permanent once enabled, and they require "Civilization Points" to be enabled.
Civilization Points are earned in 2 ways: one can earn them by completing the early missions or by levelling up your culture.
This happens in a similar way as an RPG game: the 'XP' is the State Culture all your cities are producing and everytime the XP bar is filled you gain a new level and unlock an additional Civilization Point.
As with RPGs, with every new level it requires more State Culture to be produced before reaching the next one.

This update comes with 2 cultural traits: consumption customs and production skills.
- Consumption customs represent the adoption of a resource by your population and the cultural custom to consume it.
Indeed, from now on, distributable resources are no longer automatically consumable by the population. Each resource needs to be adopted with a custom costing 1 Civilization Point, although some common resources have the special property of not requiring a cultural custom (ex: the Doctor service).
- Production skills unlock the ability to produce a resource. From now on, like the consumption of resources, a cultural trait is required to enable their production. Like Customs, some common resources also have the property not to require a cultural skill to be produced (ex: tools).
However, unlike consumption customs, production skills have up to 5 levels: the first level enables the production while investing additional Civilization Points will increase the productivity of the resource and reduce its material costs or increase the natural sources productivity (depending on the resource type).
The result is that it now costs a minimum of 2 Civilization Points to enable both the consumption and production of a resource, and it is also possible to choose to only adopt the consumption or production of resource types, or to invest mode points to specialize in the production of a specific one.

The reason behind this system is to favor specialization, trading, and teamwork against players trying to do everything by themselves.
It will now be much harder to hoard all food types right at the game start, and players working together to specialize in complementary resources will be necessarily more efficient than someone spreading Civilization Points to produce everything.

Besides this new system, this update brings significant fixes and improvements to battles balance and server performances.
It aims to fix the recent overused practice of making many troops with only a few units instead of a single maxed out troop, as it turned out to provide an absolute advantage versus the bigger troops.
It also aims to improve the resolution of larger battles that, combined with the practice of using many small troops, have caused huge strains on the servers (and even causing Server 5 to be shut down unable to resolve a giant battle taking place there).

Many things have been modified to re-balance big troops versus smaller ones, especially for range units who now get a ballistic malus below 5 units, and extra attacks for larger troops. 
All troops in general now cost 1 extra coin of upkeep, so that using multiple small troops comes at as more expensive as well.
Cavalry has been significantly buffed with the addition of a special "melee mobility" property that makes them considered as 'in movement' even when engaged in melee. This gives them an extra advantage against range units, because moving units benefit from a bonus proportional to their moving speed against missile attacks (harder to hit). The ballistic range of mounted archers was also increased, and a bug causing their attack rate bonus to be ignored was fixed.
On top of that, troop mass now plays a significant role in melee combats at every turn and not just during the initial charge. This also strengthen the melee advantage of larger troops versus smaller one, as well as cavalry units in general.
Mounted archers should now be a much better anti-archer unit  (although they still lack a skirmisher movement ability to avoid being engaged in melee).

Least but not last, infrastructures such as walls are no longer allowed on inaccessible tiles and will self destruct on inaccessible tiles.
This will put an end to the practice of the ugly 'grid wall' forts made with walls stuck together without any spacing or access.
Yes, this will cause counter intuitive issues in some specific cases of placing walls on cliff edges, but its a price i'm willing to pay to put an end to the practice of these forts which were common due to their cost efficiency.

 

The Civilization Points Update

v0.3.0.x
- Introducing Civilization Points, used to enable Cultural Traits
- Implemented Cultural Level, which levels up from total produced State Culture and where each level unlocks a new Civilization Point.
- Added new Culture tab in Government Menu for Cultural policies
- New cultural trait: consumption custom, needed to unlock demand of a resource by population
- New cultural trait: production skill, needed to unlock production of some resources + allows for production specialization
- added self-destruction of infrastructures on inacessible tiles (ex walls)
- added visual icon to tag inacessible buildings & infrastructures + delay before making it effective
- penalty of ballistic skill -6% per unit for range troops below 5
- range units +1 attack per 5 units in troop
- +1 upkeep per troop in a formation
- adding ballistic skill malus to range units firing at an enemy that is engaged in melee (-50%)
- improved behavior of range units in open field defensive zones and collisions with enemy troops
- fixed pathfinding bug causing units to sometimes ignore stoping at x distance from path target (ex for range units, causing them to run into melee)
- fixed bug where formation redeploys on territory edge if a 2nd battle happens after it moved into it in a battle
- fixed bug causing some units to have incorrect attack speed (ex mounted units missing extra attack)
- increased ballistic skill of mounted units
- adding "mobile attacker" property to mounted units, so that they benefit from moving cover against range attacks even when in melee
- added melee skill modificator based on the ratio of attacking troop mass to defending troop mass: gives a strong melee bonus to larger troops vs smaller troops.
- added random anim offset for siege rams to prevent all sounds from adding up at the exact same time
- fixed battlecode issue where troops navigating between defensive layers would not see existing wall and gate breaches, causing them to make more useless breaches.
- fixed battlecode bug where stairs on cliffs would have a very high pathfinding cost in siege, causing units to alway climb instead
- fixed battlecode bug where troops have incorrect siege priorities in forts with more than 2 layers (gates)
- server optimization: battle pathfinding avoids calculating same path twice if 2 troops share the same exact path
- server optimization: refreshment of light regions improved to reduce loading/unloading region data frequency
- server optimization: reduced frequency of light regions refreshing and reducing it when there's ongoing battles
- fixed bug allowing to accept a treaty twice in a row
- fixed a possible server crash happening during a rebel leader spawn if multiple rebel armies are present on spawn location
- colonies income modififactor increased from -75% to -85%
- fixed bug with loyalty not being reset in secondary cities in a succession spawn.
- made separate project and trigger to allow for horseback riding tech out of camels only
- fixed bug causing issues with Goldsmithing tech
- fixed bug causing some hidden resources not to show up when having the idea for it (ex: pearls)
- removed inventory control of national armies for anyone but the formation owner.
- fixed passive troops (civilian units) still doing pillage when part of an attacker's formation
- fixed UI issues in nation hierarchy of large nations
- fixed logic problems with combinations of gates + cliff + stairs
- fixed edges display glitches when building while heights display is also disabled
- fixed issues with wall logic connections with cliffs causing incorrect tile edges to get blocked or not.
- fixed issues with tribal rebellion event
- battle deployment: improved choice of region border when an army is deploying from the edge but not coming from any previous tile
- reducing adornments need to 25 for leadership mission

In previous hotfixes:
- investigate unusually low or oddly located ressources in terrain generation since last patch
- fixed issue causing invalid resource placement in terrain generation
- fixed issues with "copper age " mission
- fixed battlecode error causing infinite battle
- fixed bug of black flags missing their amblem
- randomized order of events when inspecting events to trigger
- fixed solo game server not auto closing
- fixed bug with neutral formations registering as main defender in battles
- added mission for animal husbandry
- reduced max wood collection action to 30
- made collecting action unit number based and not strength based
- made formation collecting actions only possible on empty tiles

As a small side project, I've decided to launch an experiment by introducing the Hog coin: an Ymir community token that can be interacted with through a Discord Bot i created called "The Hogbank".

Every Discord user will be able to own and transfer Hogs through the Hogbank, but not only. For those who know what Ethereum is, the Hog coin is actually an ERC20 token that can be withdrawn or deposited to the Hogbank at any time.
This means Hogs actually exist on an independent and decentralized network outside the Ymir Discord and that players can also store the coins and exchange them at their own discretion independently of the Hogbank and benefit from all the existing tools of the Ethereum ecosystem. Yes, it is gloriously useless and nerdy!
If you don't know what Ethereum is you you'll be able to simply use the Hogbank without having to worry about any of this.

Absolutely nothing, at least for now.
Hogs will just be an item to measure your game achievements and your participation in the Ymir community.
However the introduction of Hogs is an experimental first step for a long term plan i have in mind that will aim toward multiple important goals:
- incentivizing players to stay active until the endgame and to win the servers.
- incentivizing players to be more committed to their spawns to reduce server hopping and players giving up as soon as they don't get optimal starting conditions.
- further incentivizing players to join ongoing servers in need of new players.
- giving players meta-game objectives and progression by unlocking new cosmetic content.

For now Hogs will only be distributed manually by myself.
The principal way to earn Hogs will be to win Official Server games.
- From now on, the Nation leader of the winning nation of any Official Server will be manually awarded 50 hogs upon claiming his prize on this Discord and confirming his ingame identity.
The redistribution of this loot will be left at his entire discretion, so you better join a Nation with a Leader you can trust! Polish your daggers and get ready for some fun backstabbing :)...
- Hogs will also be given to reward general participation in the Ymir Discord community.
- Hogs can be earned as a bounty for reporting any new game-breaking exploit or cheats in multiplayer games.
- Hogs being an Ethereum token, they may also be stored, traded, and exchanged outside the Hogbank at the own discretion of its owners.

So the way to interact with Hogs will be through the Hogbank, a bot i made that will be introduced in the Ymir Discord.
By talking to this bot, you can do 4 operations: get your current Hog balance, transfer it to other Discord users, withdraw it outside of the discord to an Ethereum wallet, and deposit it back from an Ethereum wallet.

Like everything in this game, this is highly experimental and motivated mostly by curiosity to see what happens.
Because i had to learn a lot of new things for this small side project, its potentially (probably) going to be buggy and the Hog rewards will start low until the system is more tested.
If this is successful then it can later on be integrated more with the game itself, and developed with more features. As of now its just the bare minimum and manually managed for simplicity.
Also, in case it needs saying: don't take Hogs too seriously! Remember these are totally useless vanity tokens, and that in the end its all just a game.

This update focuses on improving the experience of solo/realtime games, especially to fix issues caused by the previous update that added the mechanic of hidden natural resources making it much harder to progress alone.
To fix this, new early game missions have been added to better scenarise the discovery of the first critical techs of agriculture, leadership, and metallurgy.
Therefore these techs no longer rely on randomly triggering their ideas, ensuring their discovery and preventing being blocked in solo mode.

To further improve the rhythm of solo and realtime games, game speed controls have been improved and split in 2 different controls: one for game speed now up to x40 to make sure players are never stuck waiting, and another one affecting only the speed of units and battles still limited to x4.

Additionally, this update introduces the production chain of Jewelry (luxury need resource) with new natural resources of pears and shells and a new building of jewelry making producing adornments (early stone jewelry) and jewelry (made of gold or silver).


New pearls natural resource, found sometimes on sea shores.


Primitive jewelry makers crafting Adornments out of precious shells collected on the shores.

To also reduce waiting times and dynamize the early game, this update introduces a first step towards more formation actions with a new woodcutting action that allows a formation to collect some wood on forest tiles in exchange for APs. This should help giving players more options instead of being typically stuck waiting for a few wood units in early game.
Depending how this is received, i’ll keep improving on this system.

As always this update includes its fair share of bugfixes and server improvements.
Notably, a key algorithm used for building placement as been greatly optimized, allowing the server to be much faster and efficient at placing automatic buildings such as slums or storages.
I’m not forgetting about the endless fight with exploiters and cheaters, and this update includes an upgrade of the anti-cheating to detect the use of multi-accounts. However it will remain for now in ‘silent’ mode and thus is not in effect yet.
Numerous infamous UI issues with the policies menu have also been fixed.

The Jewelry update

v0.2.6.x
– added missing display of resource rewards in projects UI
– added Pearls and Shells natural resources
– added Jewelry and Adornments resources
– added Jewelry maker buildings
– added Jewelry techs and projects
– added new early game missions to direct the discovery of agriculture, leadership, and metallurgy (which no longer rely on random discovery)
– added wood cutting action for formations
– added better game speed controls in solo & realtime games, with game speed now up to x40 and separated from battles speed
– fixed server crash causing loss of time for timed events
– optimized algorithm for free space detection (AI building placement) –> server much faster at auto placing buildings like slums or storages
– anti-cheating upgrade for multi-account detection (silent for now)
– fixed settling action not working on some claimed territories
– fixed problem of some ideas triggering despite lack of natural resource (ex fishing)
– fixed problem of some critical resources sometimes missing from starting region (ex missing meat source)
– fixed issue on server regionmap files
– auto converts nomad form types in a non-NPC owner controls any city
– fixed UI issues with policies in government menu where policy settings would reset to 0
– moved “treasury contribution” parameter into the “privileges” policy
– simplified and cleaned up leader wealth privileges & contribution calculations + added more UI feedback
– fixed problem of troops all deploying around the same camp when 2 formations already in territory start a battle
– fixed building workers income bug from state owned resources
– fixed city ambient sounds from considering inactive buildings as active
– fixed invalid ruins sprite for 4×4 buildings
– improved automatic placement of formation camps
– fixed issue where event-triggered battles would register an attack instead of a defense, depleting AP
– fixed bug of wildlife presence when visiting a region with wildlife after having visited a region where wildlife had left
– networking improvements to fix a case of connection loss during initial worldmap loading for some players

This new update adds a long-needed small feature: the hiding of undiscovered resources.
This has been needed for game balance for a long time. The problem was that all resources being visible from the start, all territorial conflicts would occur mostly in the beginning of the game as every player would naturally try to secure all the needed strategic resources, then turtling for the rest of the game.
Now, multiple resources are hidden until the tech associated with them is discovered: for example, iron ore only gets revealed once Iron working is discovered.
With this, new conflicts will arise as techs unveil resources throughout the game’s progression and thus re-balances the strategic desirability of territories. It will also make it harder for experienced players to optimize and game the tech discovery mechanics.

Besides that, this update contains many fixes for reported issues as usual, and notably a few improvements of the battle AI.
The behavior of troops seeking the shortest distances when travelling through water had been broken by previous patches and was fixed in this update but also improved so that they will now also seek the embarking point closest to their predicted point of disembarking instead of embarking from the closest point of their final target (as in some specific cases these can be rather different locations).
On top of that, proper support for combined siege points as been added: water shore + palisade, water shore + cliff or cliff + palisade will now be properly accounted for. The issue of palisades on shores being ‘ignored’ by disembarking troops is therefore fixed as they now have to breach it from their embarkations.



The resource hiding update
v0.2.5.x
– Resources related to undiscovered techs (ex iron ore to iron working ) are now invisible until the tech is discovered.
– Added encryption to some client side cached files (-> in case of retroactivity issues, clear your AppData\Local\Ymir\cache folder)
– fixed issue with barbarians present on a primitive tribe location during player spawn & triggering a battle
– fixed issue with the wildlife leaving event.
– fixed buildings not being destroyed during pillage
– fixed troops retreating on a tile occupied by enemies not triggering a battle
– battle AI: improving behavior when retreating to stop ignoring everything else no matter what.
– battle AI: improved pathfinding to further minimize travelling distances through bad layers (ex water)
– fixed battle AI issue where range units in defensive mode kept trying to target out of range units instead of in range ones.
– check global banlist immediately when registering new character to prevent banned accounts from exploiting the grace period on new servers
– unconfirmed fix of odd issues with corrupted territory claims unclaiming or changing ownership for no reason
– decreased construction time of builder buildings
– fix bug being able to recruit troops during ongoing battles
– fixed issue with claims of evacuated cities
– fixing calculation issue in leader contributions from privileges
– fixed owner-less annexes not showing up in red in the annex tool
– fixed server issue with exe arguments when auto-restarting
– fixed problem with treaties being sometimes ineffective (trade, passage… )
– fixed issue causing deployments to still fail in some cases
– fixed being able to claim sea tiles

Here is finally another update with miscellaneous bug fixes, exploit fixes, and general rebalancing!
As always, this news also includes in its changelog all the previous hotfixes that were published since the last news.

Notable changes:
– Wild animals now leave territories of growing cities above 800pop after a small grace first because it was absurd to hunt animals in the middle of a city, and also because it will make meat more scarce and thus valuable.
– Waste was slightly reduced but it now applies on market sale’s profits as well (and not just trade routes) to counter exploits taking advantage of this.
– Many issues regarding the infamous strategic tool have been fixed and improved to prevent mistakes and strategic changes not being effective.

What is going on besides that since all this time?
Besides these fixes that constantly come up, I’m working in the background on multiple long term new features, none of which is completed now unfortunately.
There is the “end game event” for a start, but i’m also working on a weather system and on a new Culture tab which will work in a way similar to government policies.
With cultural traits players will be able to specialize their people and therefore they’ll have make choices about things like what resource they can consume and produce, but more on that when these new mechanics are completed! This new cultural mechanics will in turn allow to finally add many more new resources and industries into the game.



Another Multifix update
v0.2.4.x
– fixed resources not in alphabetic order in the “allow” button of storage permissions
– fixed claim action being available on tiles occupied by enemies
– fixed pacific actions not cancelled when target tile turns out being occupied by enemies
– reduced waste from total population to +1% per 65 hab. instead of 50.
– applied waste to market sales profits
– strategic tool: fixed issues with default defensive zones around formation camp
– strategic tool: fixed not being able to deploy in neutral territories
– strategic tool: fixed UI problems when deleting a defensive zone.
– strategic tool: fixed being able to assign a troop to a defensive mode when deployed outside of it, leading to deployment being ignored.
– strategic tool: deploying troop in a defensive zone will now auto set it to defensive mode by default.
– fixed problem with destruction tool that could trigger destruction on invalid coordinates.
– increased research speed in realtime mode (doubled)
– fixed problem with trading agreements and market trades allowing trades between 2 parties not having a trade agreement.
– fixed trading bug where new sell offers wouldn’t auto adjust price to match the best buy offers if the inputted sell price was lower.
– fixed Migrants formation troops no being able to be disbanded independently (empty action menu)
– fixed free claims not working when administration is negative
– new event of wild animals leaving cities above 800pop after a 48h period
– cities and capitals now get 8 free claims
– added possibility of free claims to territory statuses
– fixed not beign able to build height 2 stone platforms
– fixed bug with construction speed of platforms
– restored ability for buildings to modify the grass density around and below them
– improved field graphics to better reflect their current state
– migrants will now spawn at 100AP when territory evacuation is completed
– only occupied territories may now be “renounced”
– increased AP regen in cities by 2
– reduced home distance malus for AP regen from 3 to 2% per tile
– fixed bug with annex tool locking up the UI
– fixed problem on client side battle pathgrids having incorrect values leading to wacky movements through fields
– Representative money wealth no longer provides a linear amount of wealth, but provides a % bonus applied to the produced wealth of every territory. 10 gold = +1% produced wealth.
– fixed crash when exiting region view with the annex tool opened.
– fixed state ownership problem when cancelling trade offers
– fied missing 25honor commitment in colonial treaties on the colony side
– fixed exploit of bypassing building’s minimum distance
– added failsafe for animal spots: unbuildable & undestroyable
– fixed instaresearch exploit
– Migrants now transfer local culture when settling in a city
– Overall redesigning of ideas triggering mechanics to fix tech stagnation on servers
– increased resistance decay speed
– decreased foreign cultures decay speed
– excluded salaries and subventions from deductible expenses in territorial statuses
– fixed dismantling causing crash when applied
– fixed exploit with rounding prices in market orders
– fixed battle pathfinding bug causing occasionnal server crashes
– fixed problem with market offers depleting state owned resources
– slowed down the evolution of intelligence of population classes

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 leather 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