Hey all,
In this update we’ll be going over what additions have been made to the game the past few months. The todo list is shrinking rapidly and the light at the end of the tunnel very much in sight. The next project milestone in early September is “feature design lockdown”, which basically means all of the game’s gameplay features are in, and only need iteration, balance, and bugfixing before we’re ready to roll. At this point I’ll be looking for a lot of playtesting feedback again, so if you’re in the alpha and looking to help out that’s probably the best time to jump (back) in. There will likely be a couple more tweaks made after the next milestone, but nothing that’ll take more than a few days to implement. The few months after this milestone will include further work on the AI and diplomacy, and then aside from smaller stuff like improving the tutorial and adding some screens (e.g. settings, clan management, game setup) we’ll have pretty much reached the finish line.
What’s New
Professions/Tech Tree
Although this isn’t a new feature it’s probably the most noticeable change to the game given that clan professions are one of the two fundamental elements of the game’s economy (resources being the other).
To summarize what’s new, the old design had a lot of issues where professions would often not seem very useful, e.g. if the tier-1 version of a blacksmith turns 1 iron into 1 tool each turn the tier-2 version might convert 6 into 6 and tier-3 10 into 20. The problem was that getting to the point where you could even produce the 6 iron per turn required by tier 2 was pretty hard to reach, and so most of your research options felt pretty unexciting. This issue was solved in a couple ways.
First, I did a pass on the whole tree, switching to an approach that looks more like 2-for-2 in the first tier and then 8-for-4 in the second, with the third being replaced by a system where it’s now possible to research a couple different “upgrade techs” which allow you to spend resources (e.g tools or boards) to improve the output by ~50% each. The ability to upgrade is fairly cheap to acquire, but the upgrades themselves require a fair number of resources, ensuring there’s always something you want to A) research and B) spend your resources on. It’s hard to understate how much of an improvement this provides the game, as while playtesting I’m now constantly confronted with tough trade-offs where I have several exciting options to choose from, rather than several equally uninteresting ones. Much, much better.
Additionally, “global upgrades” have been added to the game. These are techs not linked to any particular profession, instead offering an expensive way to acquire a tribe-wide, permanent bonus of some kind (e.g. increased food production, or a morale boost to your entire army). This provides an additional incentive to improve your research rate, especially when the RNG throws a unique starting location at you and making more specialized strategies particularly lucrative or essential.
The new tech tree is a huge improvement over the old one.
