Empire Architect
Update 1.42: Brick Road Upgrade, and UI additions
Im a day late on this patch, but I wanted to get more done than I had at the end of yesterday... Anyways there are some UI elements that go over buildings now. I hope they help you guys to gather more information about your city at a glance. If there are more things that you guys want to see in this fashion please let me know, and I will think on it :)
Past that there is a road upgrade, that is pretty expensive, but it can help to stream line you city a bit. And also now clicking on a building a 2nd time will try to select a building or road behind it. This will help as I have not yet gotten around to rotating the screen.
Patch Notes:
- New Upgrade: Brick roads, This upgrade costs 2 brick, and 20 denarii. The upgrade will increase travel speed by 10% over dirt roads.
- Added icons over buildings when employees are needed.
- Added icons over buildings if it needs a resource, in order to produce another.
- An icon has been added to unit portraits to show when they are resting.
- Slightly reduced the amount of food people eat, This should make it slightly easier to deal with starving.
- Added German and French text for the new buildings (thanks for the help!).
- Resized a bit of text.
- Clicking a 2nd time on a building will attempt to select buildings (or roads) behind them. So if a road goes behind a granary, the first click will select the granary, but clicking again where the road is, will select the road behind it. I know this is not a perfect solution, but it does allow you to selected all the roads to upgrade ;)
- The Roman empire had a food stipend for the poor. To emulate this Unemployed people will now receive a 3 denarii wage in order for them to buy food. This should help reduce the number of starving people in well planned cities with a few unemployed people.
- Fixed a bug where some people who were unemployed were not acting as they should
- save files should be a bit smaller now.
Also,
I put in an order for more sounds, and I am hoping to have those in the next 2-3 weeks. As well as more art (then again that has been pretty constant).
Lastly,
If you are enjoying the game (or at least like the direction it is going), please put a review up for the game as it really helps me out. Positive reviews causes steams algorithm to send more traffic to the game, which in turn allows me to spend more money on assets and sounds for the game.
Update 1.41: Stone Quarry
Today I have the Stone Quarry for you, it produces Stone, and Stone is a trade resource for now. I will add it to buildings as a build requirement but I am still deciding which buildings to do so with so I have held off on that for now. Eventually stone will be able to be cut into marble, but I am waiting on art for that building. Past that there is a bit of balance changes in this patch, as well as trade quantities now varying :)
I hope you guys like the additions, I will get more in next week!
Patch Notes:
- New Building: Stone Quarry, Stone Quarrys produce stone. They must be built by Mountains.
- New Resource: Stone, Stone is slow to produce, but has a higher value than other base resources. Eventually I will add it as a requirement to build different things.
- The "Undesireable Home" debuff has been increased from -3 to -4.
- Slightly decreased the likelyhood that Muggings will occur in general.
- Negative Entertainment now increases the likelyhood of Muggings.
- Trade Quanities will now vary (they use to all be 35).
- Trade Menu now shows quantity traded.
Lastly I could use some help translating the last 3 building texts into French and German if anyone has the ability to do so an wants to help. I think its about 5 total sentences :)
Update 1.40b: Ease of use and Bug fixes.
Most of this patch is just trying to address feedback, and fix some bugs. I have tons more to get to but this should be a step in the right direction. I will try to have some new content for you guys on Friday. Thank you all for the feedback, it really is helping to get the game to a better place!
Patch Notes:
- New Build Priority: Halt, This setting will stop the building from being built until the setting is changed. Anyone currently building that building will stop.
- Now if you hold the shift key you can change your reserve by 10 at a time.
- max reserve is now 250.
- Added resolution option for 1920x1200
- Added Resolution option for 1500x1000 (for surfaces)
- Fixed a bug where level 7 would crash for non-english translations (sorry guys!). I believe this bug was also manifesting in other ways as well.
- Building roads now has a button on screen, and a hotkey of "Z" (you can change the keybind if you want to).
- Rubble piles now have a portrait.
Update 1.40: New Level - Virunum
The next peaceful level is up (Im going to do a hostile level next), this level has higher requirements than before, and space is a little tighter than in the past. Along with that you can now demolish trees, and some UI changes. I really hope you all like the patch!
Next week I would like to get to working on some events, as well as continuing to get to feedback that has been (and will be) provided.
Patch Notes:
- New Level, Virunum This is a peaceful city in the province (I will do a hostile one next). With a tighter build space, a higher happiness requirement, and a requirement of full health care coverage.
- New Achievement, Beat virunum.
- You can now demolish trees.
- Resources on the left of the screen now go under data windows.
- Objectives for levels are now displayed in the top left corner of the screen. Objectives highlight green when they are fulfilled.
- Some edits were made to the new font (more to come probably).
Lastly,
If you are enjoying the game (or at least like the direction it is going), please put a review up for the game as it really helps me out. Positive reviews causes steams algorithm to send more traffic to the game, which in turn allows me to spend more money on assets and sounds for the game.
Update 1.39: New Font, accent marks, ease of use.
So I did some much needed work on the text in game. I have created a font switcher that should yield much more accurate text (less fuzziness and pixels lost at low resolutions). I also had accent marks added (the buttons in game dont use this font yet, but I will be changing that soon. So no accent marks on buttons yet). If you notice any spots where the font get wonky let me know, and I will get it fixed. I tried to go through the game and add the font everywhere but if I missed somewhere let me know. Also if you dont like the font speak up now (I am still having it tweaked, for instance the space character is getting enlarged soon).
There are other ease of use things like right click and drag to scroll, and listing what resources you need for a building if you dont have them, etc...
Patch Notes:
- New Font: This font should be thinner and allow text to fit in a more spaced out manor without losing readability. The font may have some small issues to get fixed, but it does contain accent marks :)
- If you cant build a building due to not having enough of a specific resources it will now tell you on screen.
- Aqueducts are less likely to travel down roads than previously. To completely fix this I will need to write a custom piece of pathing for Aqueducts, and this will take some time...
- Now when dragging roads or Aqueducts, right click will only cancel the dragging not the building itself. This should reduce the number of times you need to go into the menu in order to build paths of roads and aqueducts.
- You can now right click and drag in order to scroll around the level :)
- Added names to the units.
Now on to getting level 7 in ;)
Update 1.38: Sandbox Mode!
Well I promised I would do it, and here it is ;) To play in sandbox mode just select sandbox in the AI players drop down. Past that Aqueducts and roads now play nice, and I fixed a few bugs :) The list may be small but those are 2 items that took quite a bit of work... Have a great weekend everyone, let me know if you find any bugs and I will get them squished...
Patch Notes:
- SandBox Mode! To turn your custom game into a sandbox, just select the sandbox option in the AI Player drop down. Sandbox mode is just free play, and has no win condition.
- Aqueducts and roads now play nice with eathother. You can not have 2 roads going under aqueducts in adjacent grid locations.
- The building buy tooltips now tell you how many (if any) educated workers the building needs.
- Fixed a bug that allowed Level 1 warehouses to store to many goods.
- Doctors office Portrait has been added.
- Added new art for a locked character slot.
- reduced the amount of mountains on small custom maps.
- Raised custom game starting gold.
Update 1.37: Doctors Office
Today I added the Doctors Office, which is a small building that gives out health services. Doctors require education. Most of the the patch however is bug fixes and balance changes. The game should be quite a bit easier on lower difficulty levels now, and everything (including the Doctors Office) that is in this patch either came directly from your feedback OR I found and fixed while working on your feedback issues.
I have not made it to all of the feedback/bugs/issues yet. It took me most of the day to work out why level 5 was having so much lag about 25 minutes into the level. I think I have fixed that, and I also reduced the overall CPU usage of the game by about 8% in larger cities. I will have another patch for you guys on Friday!
Patch Notes:
- New Building: Doctors Office, Doctors Offices provide better health through healing sick people. Doctors do require a basic education (which will be raised to a secondary education when I get that in). Doctors offices are a 1x1 building with a short range.
- New Overlay: Health Overlay, this overlay will help you see how your health services are doing at a glance.
- I added more info to the building info menu of houses. This should help to clearify what the house desires and what it is getting.
- Trade routes now have real names :)
- Trade routes now have differing costs (this only affects custom Games).
- Thread maker now makes 8 thread per sheep, up from 1.
- Reservoirs how have 7 range up from 5.
- Reservoirs no longer have the working animations play.
- Fixed a bug in the bath house that made its spread not accurate.
- Mints and most trade goods now yield more money on lower difficulties.
- Farms now produced 10% more food.
- I spent Spent some time optimizing the game for larger cities, overall the game should use about 8% less resources when cities get large (I will do more in the future, but this shoudl help smooth things out a bit).
- Fixed a bug where the AI was continuing to increase its population even when it did not need to (I believe this is what was causing the level 5 lag).
- The tooltips no longer state a level number on the campaign levels, instead they now state if the level is Peaceful or a Battle.
Lastly,
If you are enjoying the game (or at least like the direction it is going), please put a review up for the game as it really helps me out. Positive reviews causes steams algorithm to send more traffic to the game, which in turn allows me to spend more money on assets and sounds for the game.
Update 1.36b: Bug fixes, and balancing
I wanted to get an extra patch in this week as I try to address the feedback that is coming in. For anyone that doesnt know, I read it all and try hard to consider it all carefully. I try to fix any bugs, and also adjust and balance systems that are working as intended but are causing issues. This does not address all of the feedback and/or bugs, but it does address a chunk of it and I will continue to do so.
I will probably push tomorrows patch to Wednesday, and keep Friday's patch where it is.
Patch Notes:
- New Upgrade: Granary, This upgrade costs 150 gold and 10 Lumber (rather expensive), but it gets the Granary an extra cart pusher, and 100 more storage.
- New Upgrade: Warehouse, This upgrade costs 150 gold and 10 Bricks (rather expesive), but it gets the warehouse 1 extra cart pusher, and 75 more storage.
- Warehouses now have 2 cart pushers.
- Granarys now have 2 cart pushers.
- Fixed a bug that would not allow Bath Houses to spread their Health service.
- Right aligned the mood values on the unit info menu.
- The chance of Muggings occurring has been reduced by about 20%
- Demolish will no longer click through the information windows.
- Fixed a bug where "Wants clean water" was still -4 when they had well water (it should be -2 when there is access to well water, but not fountain water).
- Added an alert that tells you that you may not want to upgrade any more houses until you have more good jobs.
I will try to get to most of the rest of the feedback by the next patch, so that I can spend some time later in the week getting to some new things :)
Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/batholithentertainment/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BatholithGames
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BatholithEntertainment
Update 1.36: Launch Day!
I am really proud (and quite nervous) to launch Empire Architect today! The game is in a good place, and overall the feedback is getting better and better. I want to thank you all for that feedback!
That being said there is still quite a lot more that I want to do with this game :) I hope to have 2 levels a month come out for the foreseeable future, as well as game modes (sandbox is coming later this month I hope), more buildings, more resources and of course bug fixes :)
If anyone finds any bugs or crashes please let me know. And feedback is king so please let me know if you have feedback for the game.
I really hope you all enjoy the game!
Patch Notes:
- Mints produce a bit more money
- Fixed some issue with the German translation.
- There will not be a bit less resources used by AI's
- Reduced building decay by 10%
Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/batholithentertainment/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BatholithGames
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BatholithEntertainment
Update 1.35: Localization German & French
So the German Language is up, and you can switch to it in the options menu (I will work on getting it to auto-detect your windows setting soon but its not in right now). The way it works is that it trys to find the text in German(whatever language other than English), and if it cant find it, then it prints out the English as a fall back.
I do need to mention that the accent marks for both languages were not supported by my font(s). I will get that fixed most likely next week. I mean no disrespect for them not showing up. I just didnt think about it until it was to late to get if fixed in time for release.
I have tested just about everything I can think of to test on these, but if you guys find any issues please let me know. Also I have no ability to speak or write German or French, so if there are issues with the way the text reads please tell me and I will fix them. Most of the text was sent out to a translator, but on small phrases I did use some bing translate and I know that can but a bit spotty...
Patch Notes:
- New Language: German.
- New Language: French.