2.0 Progress Update #10


Progress

No picture this week, but things are coming along nicely. The remaining structure upgrade work is done (houses can be upgraded now!), and I've just finished off rivers and mountains. I'm not entirely happy with the results, but I think they're good enough for now. I'm aiming for a release sometime Friday. 

Most of the items left for 1.4 Feature Parity are low priority enough  that I would feel comfortable letting them slip to 2.1. Of the items I really want to get done, only error reporting and sprite layering are left to do.

Bronze Age Post 2.0

Once 2.0 is out the door I've reserved time to work on bugfixes and tweaks. The code-base has been more or less totally rewritten, and even though it's been very stable in testing I expect all sorts of weird corner cases to be hit once it's out in the wild.After that the next two items are capturing/abandoning settlements, and citizen happiness. 

Capturing and Abandoning Settlements

Unlike 1.4 warriors don't blindly attack structures they run in to. Instead they will be able to capture a central "town center" structure. For the Masklings that structure is the Totem, a giant mask central to their religion. For Humans that structure is the administration center, which currently looks like a bunch of tents.

The "town center" structure will also tie into abandoning settlements. You will be able to demolish the town center to  abandon the settlement. The remaining structures will remain, but the entire population will become migrants. That abandoned settlement could then be claimed by anyone settling the region, creating their own "town center" in the process.

Citizen Happiness

It's quite easy to get very large populations in Bronze Age, all you need is enough wealth (in 1.4) or enough housing and food (in 2.0). The goal of Citizen Happiness is to make large populations more challenging to manage, so you have to work to maintain your metropolis. This will be accomplished through an escalating resource sink. Each individual citizen will gain base unhappiness as a settlement grows. The total unhappiness will grow quadratically with population. To combat this you can provide luxuries to your citizens. These luxuries will provide happiness at a fixed rate. So, as the settlement grows the needed luxuries per capita will also increase. This should have the effect of a soft cap on settlement size. The more luxuries you can funnel into the city, the larger it can grow.

The luxuries themselves will be geographically scattered, requiring expansion and trade to continue to grow. In the future, some features will be tied to population. A noble caste, for example, can only exist on a large population base, and armies of charriots require idle nobles who can dedicate their time and wealth.

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Comments

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Will we be able to bulid ofer light blue bodies of water? If so would we need to construct bridges?

It would be cool if you could upgrade bridges to tower bridges that masklings would need to capture to cross

I would like to add bridges, but I'm not quite sure when they'll be.

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I'm honestly really excited for the update. I've been having a less-than-stellar week because of asshole doctors, so I'm really looking forward to being able to play this.

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I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Hah, I'm sure it won't disappoint. Don't put too much pressure on yourself; you're an excelent developer and I'm sure that whatever you have is going to be excelent. Hell, even if it's not, I'll be excited to play it anyways.

Wow, I am really excited about this new update!

Maybe one day you'll add plagues and doctors. I think it would be really awesome looking to see some little plague doctor guys running around. And maybe after that chemical warfare and fighter jets...Just joking, but the plagues and doctors would be cool.

Are you thinking of adding any sort of alcoholic beverages to increase citizen happiness, or maybe for nobles? I thought I read something about that a while ago, but I'm not sure.

Thanks for the updates!

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Alcohol is probably going to be the first luxury item, as it was heavily consumed throughout the bronze age. There will probably be two variations, beer (which can be produced from wheat), and wine (which can only be produced on special terrain). Beer will be easier to produce, but less effective than wine.

Plagues might make an appearance, but doctors won't. The iconic plague doctor is really a product of the middle ages, in the bronze age people still attributed disease to demons, or bad spirits.

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Does that mean there will be some "deconstructed" settlements for the player to find throughout the world? That would be cool to come across a ruined village in need or repair and colonizing!

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I've been toying with the idea of some ancient ruins, perhaps of an old Atlantean colony, or the like. You could reclaim those ruins , and gain access to buildings you otherwise couldn't build.

Yes please! That sounds awesome

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That's great, I can't wait to try it out.