Hi everyone, we just released our 4th major post-launch update with lots of improvements and a new DLC map: Sahara Desert. Please remember how it works with your multiplayer games, they are now in a branch in Steam so don't worry, they are not lost! See the info at the bottom of the changelog for how to find them.
New DLC map: Sahara Desert. Everyone can play this in multiplayer, if someone who owns it creates the game.
Loading screen added to the game with tips to improve your play (in 9 languages).
AI empires now make better decisions about when to build cities.
Rebalanced costs of growing cities in different terrain (FAQ entry updated to match)
Great Lighthouse requires fewer hexes to complete.
Pyramids requires more city population to complete at most levels
Some other wonder levels slightly tweaked.
Improved DE translations from community member, Dunkelziffer.
Swords To Ploughshares now gives 120 food instead of 100 and may be offered slightly earlier in games.
Legendary General now requires you to threaten 8 hexes instead of 10.
Catastrophe now requires you to have 8 threatened hexes instead of 10.
Java (Indonesia) difficulty from Hard to Medium.
Maya (Mesoamerica) difficulty from Medium to Easy.
Zapotec (Mesoamerica) difficulty from Hard to Medium.
Zhou (World) difficulty from Medium to Easy.
Inca (World) difficulty from Medium to Hard.
Minor updates in the credits.
Multiplayer games from before the update will no longer appear in the lobby but can be played in a new compatibility branch in Steam (you need the old build to see these games). Sorry for the inconvenience, this is how we keep everyone in a game on the same build, to avoid desyncs. The branch is called v1.3.x.x-multiplayer-compatibility To switch to this branch, R-click Ozymandias in your library, select Properties > Betas and choose the branch from the drop-down. You may need to reboot Steam to make it update but usually it does it straight away. Any questions, let us know!
Click the banner below to join the merry band of 1000+ other Ozy players in our Discord :)
Server issue fixed
Order restored and less painfully than first thought. During a routine server update 4h ago, the server decided to switch to a region which had outdated data. We switched back to the right region and the server is back online now and the issues are fixed. If you played multiplayer in the last 4 hours, you will have lost this progress, sorry for the inconvenience. I expect very few people will be badly affected but let me know if you are and we'll see what we can do.
Server Issue Fixed
Order restored and less painfully than first thought. During a routine server update 4h ago, the server decided to switch to a region which had outdated data. We switched back to the right region and the server is back online now and the issues are fixed. If you played multiplayer in the last 4 hours, you will have lost this progress, sorry for the inconvenience. I expect very few people will be badly affected but let me know if you are and we'll see what we can do.
Server Offline Temporarily
A recent maintenance update to the server has caused a problem, where at least some players can no longer see their async multiplayer games. We are turning the server off temporarily, while we fix it. Your games should survive this change but it will cause a little weirdness. If anyone suffers a bad loss in treasure as a result, let us know, we can manually add your treasure back. I will post again, when this is resolved. For more detailed updates, see Discord: https://discord.gg/PkmuSmudKG
Hotfix for rare opportunity bugs
v1.3.0.10 - Fixed bugs resulting from two opportunities being completed in the same end turn sequence and one requiring a player choice but being stuck behind the other. - Fixed bugs resulting from an opportunity being chosen too quickly. - Fixed games of 1000+ turns not being loadable from save files. - Fixed city sprites sometimes being slightly blurred after resetting turn. - Fixed issues with the app icon on Mac OS.
Server maintenance complete
At 8pm UK time, we pushed a server update, which took about 30 minutes. In that time, nobody could log into multiplayer, sorry for the inconvenience. The aim was to improve mutliplayer stability as we've had issues this weekend (see previous post).
The update took a little longer than usual due to it failing on the first deployment but we fixed it and now the game does appear to be performing better. We will continue monitoring it but, at the moment, we have ~130 people online and no issues.
Since we're waiting to hear back from our server provider, Fly.io, we don't have a clear idea of what the issue was. They announced their own issues at the same time as our server was crashing but we can't be sure it's related without their input.
We felt we should try some experimental changes in the meantime, chiefly turning off various logging functions and also multiplayer notifications. We will turn this stuff back on soon, one by one, and check what, if anything, is at fault.
Predictably, turning stuff off has reduced load on the server so that probably explains the improved stability. We will be keeping a close eye on it. When we speak to Fly.io, we'll also ask about any hardware upgrades, which might help in future, if player numbers keep going up.
Thanks for bearing with us!
Our multiplayer server provider has reported issues
Sorry to anyone who had trouble connecting to our multiplayer server this evening. At the moment, the server is fine but at various points over the last 4 hours, people have been booted out of multiplayer or been unable to connect to the lobby.
We are not yet sure what the cause is but our provider, Fly.io, has reported ongoing issues at their end: https://status.flyio.net/ We haven't pushed new server code this week or had many issues recently so an external cause does seem likely. We will investigate more to be certain though.
99% of our connection issues since launch have been both short enough to not disrupt ongoing games (less than 5 mins downtime) and rare enough to not become a serious problem. This evening was different; it was hard to finish a multiplayer game without a problem occurring, which we know is maddening. We will solve this one way or another, if the problems continue, but hopefully, our provider sorts their issues out and everything returns to normal.
If you experience connection issues, you should reboot the app and try logging in again. Failing that, please post in our Discord and we'll do what we can. You are welcome to @ Jeremy, one of the developers, for a quick reply (if he is awake).
DLC #3, Multiplayer Notifications & New Opportunities
Hi everyone,
Our 3rd DLC map, The World, is on sale now and you should see it in your game already if you own the Season Pass.
Along with this latest map, we released a free update including multiplayer notifications! 🎉
Check out the full patch notes:
v1.3.0.3
Our latest DLC map, The World, is now available to everyone in multiplayer. You need to own the map to create a game with it but then anyone can join.
Steam multiplayer notifications will now alert you, when your multiplayer game is waiting for you. They will also let you know if you won or lost, if the game ended, when you were offline. Translations are coming soon for these.
Two new opportunity cards, Invasion & Vengeance, will reward you for losing spaces on the map. Never waste a good crisis ;)
Changed a river into an inland sea (lake) near Mayans in Mesoamerica.
Adjusted a few empire difficulty ratings to better reflect how challenging players find them to win with.
Fixed a mislabelled terrain under Java capital city.
Fixed a typo in an empire description in FR.
Fixed a missing full stop in Oxus description in EN.
⚠️ Multiplayer games from before the update will no longer appear in the lobby but can be played in a new compatibility branch in Steam (you need the old build to see these games). Sorry for the inconvenience, this is how we keep everyone in a game on the same build, to avoid desyncs. The branch is called v1.2.x.x-multiplayer-compatibility
Have fun!
How to access multiplayer games after our update
Hi folks, we’ve got a major update dropping early next week, along with our new DLC map. Each time we move from v1.1 to v1.2 and now v1.3, we have to keep everyone in a multiplayer game on the same version to avoid desyncs.
When you get our v1.3 update, you will no longer be able to see you v1.2 games in the lobby. You can see these games by switching back to v1.2, via the multiplayer compatibility branches, which we explain here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1768280/discussions/0/3772364949840929839/
This should only affect people, who play 'asynchronous' multiplayer. Sorry for the inconvenience, especially for those, who didn't know last time, that this is how we do it. It's been our system for a long time but we didn't do a good enough job explaining it, outside of our Discord (do join! https://discord.gg/PkmuSmudKG ).
In order to make the transition smoother, you may prefer to switch now to our multiplayer compatibility branch for the current build, which exists already to facilitate this, it's called:
v1.2.x.x-multiplayer-compatibility
You can switch back to the default branch any time - see how in the forum post linked above. Steam will update the app right away so it's easy to switch between them. Any questions, let us know!
Hotfix fixed
v1.2.0.16 (same changes as v1.2.0.15 but without bugs) - Fix for rare opportunity bug, which could lead to a card appearing, when it shouldn't, in a number of ways. - Fix for multiplayer games being temporarily hidden, in the lobby, if you left/cancelled a game.
