- Can place Watchtower on top of existing Wall (like you already could with Gate) - Putting a rally point on a building in fog of war will no longer reveal that there is a building there
Balance changes
- Swordsman consumes 3 food (from 2) - Swordsman has 7 movement speed (from 6) Developer notes: this elite unit had a hard time in most match-ups due to its slow speed, rarely making it worth its price. With the movement speed on par with most units it should be able to engage in battles more efficiently.
Bug fixes
- Fixed a problem with random number generator once a Palace was constructed that could desync a multiplayer game shortly after - Fixed a case for placing neutral settlement Outpost that could potentially desync a multiplayer game - Fixed a problem with placing Gate on top of Wall that could later crash the code and break the revolting mechanics so that you could still control your own units after being defeated - Fixed a problem in multiplayer with displaying missing resources while multiple players were placing a building that they could not afford at the same time - Fixed a problem that could crash the game when the Clay Pit that a Villager was moving towards to construct was constructed before the Villager reached it - Fixed a problem with pressing a production hotkey that could crash the code - Fixed construct building button order and hotkeys - Putting a rally point on a building in fog of war will no longer cause unit(s) to move back to trained at building after a certain distance - Fixed correct multiplayer loading panel colors
Balance and hotfix update 07087
We've been investigating a cause of Out of Sync problem that affected some multiplayer games.
It's been challenging to track down the cause of this as we have struggled to reproduce this problem ourselves. However, our best theory is that it's a cross-platform problem. We did find a problem in our code that is very likely to cause desyncs in cross-platform games, and this has been fixed here.
We also found a seperate issue that could cause the code to crash for one client, which could potentially cause desyncs for the remanining players in a multiplayer match.
We don't know 100% if these are the main causes, but we hope this update sorts everything out.
We'll be monitoring analytics and community comments moving further as well, to make sure the problem has been resolved.
Change Log 07087
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a potential cause of Out of Sync in cross-play multiplayer games - Fixed a problem with making the palace before barracks that could cause the game to stop - Horde Mode UI no longer overlaps with other HUD when screen is 1280x800 or smaller, or when big UI is enabled for large resolutions
Balance changes
- Villager ranged attack speed is 1.5s (from 1.25s) - Outpost costs 50 clay, 50 wood, 25 food (from 50 clay, 50 wood) - Swordsman costs 60 food and 15 metal (from 70 food and 15 metal) - Swordsman consumes 2 food (from 3) - Each base neutral settlement villager training speed is 25% of Village Center (from 30%)
General Improvements II
Important regarding save games!
We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, older saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience!
In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any older save files anymore.
We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.
Dev Update - Progress on Milestone 3
We started working on Milestone 3 in 2022 and are making good progress.
We can't wait to share more about what we have in store for Milestone 3 and the new civilizations. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, here's a small teaser:
UPDATE 07085 - General Improvements II
By completing and releasing Milestone 2, we've met some internal goals for the game's foundation. Most standard modern RTS features, like unit stances, select multiple buildings and define your own hotkey scheme, have now been implemented into TFC.
However, we still have a lot in store for TFC. Since we released Milestone 2, we have paid attention to feedback, and we wanted to add a General Improvements update after Milestone 2, as we did with Milestone 1, to address some of it. An example is the community request to allow dead bodies to persist for longer, and that is included here.
Early Age building designs
We're introducing further visual feedback about the state of your village! Before constructing the Palace, your village will give the vibe of being rural and crude. Apart from adding variety to the visuals, it also provides quick feedback as to whether your opponent has constructed the Palace or not.
How your village changes after the Palace has been constructed.
Performance Improvements
We've written a new Animation System from scratch, and one of the advantages of this is the performance boost added to the game. With other performance improvements that we implemented as well, we saw our performance improve from 60-80 fps to 100-120 fps in our test case. This means that the game supports more units on the screen before the fps drops, which should be most notable for users on low-end machines.
Target unit type once
When ordering units to target an enemy unit, those units will now keep finding new units of the same type (e.g. Slinger) to attack until there are no more within their vision range.
This means that when you target one of a bunch of enemy slingers, your units will continue to pick off those slingers until they are all dead, even when there are other unit types within range as well. It works for both melee and ranged units against either.
This was a community request that further streamlines the game. Now you only have to order the attack once to kill all enemy units of the type, whereas before, you often had to manually re-target the enemy unit type every time an enemy unit died.
Dead bodies persist
Fallen units will stay on the battlefield for 60 seconds to show the onslaught that happened.
Clay Pit disappears upon depletion
Once a Clay Pit is constructed, the tiles it occupies immediately turn into Plain. Once it's depleted, the Clay Pit will automatically disappear. This means that a Clay Pit won't block the tiles for the rest of the game, but there's still a consequence for constructing it since it damages the soil quality.
Changes to Code of Law technology
This technology is now named Hammurabi's Code of Law and has changed to the following:
Villager training speed bonus from Food Surplus Level increases to 20%/40%/60% (from 10%/20%/30%). Your people starve for 100% longer before revolting.
New sprite showing outpost construction sites
We updated the tile sprite art that shows where you can place an Outpost near neutral settlements by increasing the contrast to the ground.
Skirmish AI
- Ranged units which are standing outside the engagement area and attacking a building will now move towards any unit being attacked to help out with enemy units instead (only on Skilled or higher difficulty levels) - Skirmish AI is better at researching Plough once starting to farm
Other improvements
- Updated art assets for Babylonian Wall, Gate, Watchtower, Palace, and Archery Range
Balance changes
- Elite Battering Ram now gains +3 ranged armour
Bug fixes
- Fog of war no longer persists on metal ore tiles if it spawns in the player's field of view at the start - Hotkey for raze building works for a control group with a single building - When Palace is destroyed villager will no longer keep militia status as long as they stand still or are garrisoned - Palace hotkeys now work if Palace was selected automatically as the last villager in selected group entered it - Neutral Settlement rally point gets correctly saved and loaded - Fixed that nomads or Skirmish AI units could try to target owned neutral settlements which aren't attackable so units would keep running in circles
Hotfix update 07075
Current development status
We're busy at work with the next General Improvements update, as well as Milestone 3, which we're making great progress with. Stay tuned for more!
In the meantime, we're releasing this hotfix update so that these issues get addressed sooner than later.
Change Log 07075
Improvements
- All players can see the Wonder upgrade progression bar below health bar while Wonder is visible (and not just local player)
Bug Fixes
- Boars no longer lose target and idle aftwerwards whenever their target moves while the boar is attacking it - Fixed a problem with spectators that meant that any spetctator's ping would not affect turn times, and this could cause a game that was running fine to seemingly lag, as well as cause any game with 2 or more spectators and no players (spectating skirmish AI) to seemingly lag - Fixed numerous problems that would happen if joining a multiplayer room that already had one or more spectators, like causing the game to go out of sync - UI will correctly reset when an enemy building that is selected gets destroyed - Fixed potential rare crashes that could happen when a unit was killed - Toggle analytics button in settings work - Pressing ESC in game over screen no longer causes problems
- Skirmish AI on easier difficulty levels progress slower early-game and it takes longer for them to become aggressive - Skirmish AI on easier difficulty levels are less likely to starve early-game - Fixed a case where Skirmish AI defensive forces would move around in circles and not reset after an attack that was successfully defeated (which could easily lead to the Skirmish AI starving if villagers were part of the defensive force) - Fixed a bug that caused training speed of military units for easier Skirmish AIs to slow down significantly
Settlement building
- Neutral Settlement building villager training speed is no longer affected by the number of villagers that the owner has (so it will only be affected by the owner's Food Surplus Level and Code of Law technology, and otherwise the training speed stays constant throughout the game) - Neutral Settlement building villager training speed is no longer affected by the Skirmish AI difficulty level when the Skirmish AI is the owner
Hotfix update 07071
- Stances buttons reset when selecting or changing control group - Construction view is not visible when selecting enemy buildings - Fixed a few rare crashes
Milestone 2 released
Important regarding save games!
We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, old saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience!
In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore.
We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.
About Milestone 2 (update 07070)
This is the second of five major milestones that we're planning to release during our Early Access journey.
We hope you're enjoying TFC and the improvements we're adding to the game! If you haven't already, please consider leaving a review on Steam. We'd love to know what you think!
New features
Neutral settlements
In previous versions of TFC, you rarely needed to split up your army. Most players would generally keep all units in one army, whether defending or attacking.
In this milestone, we're introducing Points of Interest (POI) that can be contested. We've named these neutral settlements. By claiming these, you gain various bonuses.
This adds another reason to fight for map control and defend multiple areas. And, as an attacker, you might split up your army to attack multiple points of interest as well. So these POIs add more depth, as there are more strategies to consider.
Ancient Temple
Provides knowledge generation.
Orchard
Provides a bonus to farming.
Settlement
Provides new villagers.
Outpost
To take over a neutral settlement, you must construct an Outpost nearby.
Updated Resources Panel
Many new and old players alike have been confused about some aspects of the game. We saw that the Food Surplus system could be communicated better.
Food stock circle: we've turned the food surplus bar into a circle that fills up around the food stock icon. The filled circle changes color depending on starvation or Food Surplus Level.
Food Surplus Level: the number of arrows indicate a Food Surplus Level that gives you various bonuses. These bonuses are now shown in a "buff panel" (more on this below).
We've also improved the tooltips. For example, your food consumption will show if you hold over the food stock icon.
Buffs and debuffs panel
The effects of starvation and food surplus have been largely hidden. We have made attempts at making these effects much more clear.
For example, in the image above, you can see the speed of Knowledge Generation, and the tooltip shows where the Knowledge Generation comes from.
The buffs and debuffs will change color based on your Food Surplus Level to make it more clear which Food Surplus Level you're at.
Stances
In previous versions of TFC, most units would always attack any enemy on sight and follow them to the end of the world. This would create some annoying situations. Like, why are my villagers in the middle of the map!??
We're rectifying this by adding unit stances, of which there are 3.
Hold ground: unit will never chase enemy targets on sight.
Defensive: (default stance) unit will chase enemy targets on sight within a radius and move back to the guard position once the target moves outside this radius.
Aggressive: unit will continue chasing enemy targets on sight until there are none.
Customizable hotkeys
We've added the option for you to assign hotkeys to most commands in the game.
General improvements
Select multiple buildings of the same type
This means you can, for example, select multiple watchtowers and order all units in these watchtowers to exit them at the same time. Or, you can select multiple archery ranges and task them all to train a slinger each.
See missing resources when attempting to place building
See who owns farms
Crops now have the same color as your population use to dye their clothes.
Enemy AI improvements
- Enemy AIs will focus more on destroying a Watchtower target with their melee units instead of changing target before it's destroyed - Enemy AIs will no longer target irrelevant wall segments - Enemy AIs will now attempt to penetrate a Watchtower that is completely surrounded by wall segments
Other improvements
- Added animation for Open Technology Tree button that plays after gaining a Knowledge Point - Added an animated arrow above valid delivery points that shows when hovering over a resource with at least one selected villager - After losing in Horde Mode, the game over screen will show how many waves you reached - Incoming horde skulls in minimap will bounce to nudge you - Babylonian buildings are rendered with the correct color shading - Wonder production button is now visible in the construction menu when playing Tutorial (but locked) - Palace is no longer locked in the Tutorial - Improved tooltips for the counts showing how many villagers are currently gathering each resource - Swapped positions for 'Repair' and 'Go back to gather resources' villager command buttons - When swapping between production buildings and if the mouse cursor is still hovering over a production button, then the tooltip will show immediately instead of you having to exit and enter the button with the mouse - Selection box is disabled while pressing SHIFT - You can add units to selected group by holding CTRL + drag selection box - Fruit Trees won't border any trees after map generation - Added an error indicator that shows above buildings with any production issues
Balance changes
- The amount of Knowledge required to accumulate a Knowledge Point has increased by 25% - Each tree has 30 wood (from 20) - Palace costs 75 food to construct (from 150) - Palace requires 150 manpower to construct (from 75) - Elite Slinger has +20% attack speed (from 15%) - Scribes increase the amount that Priest generate Knowledge by 50% (from x2) - Mining technology increases villager mining speed by 30% (from 60%) - Wall (segment) costs 4 bricks (from 2) - Wall (segment) requires 5 manpower to construct (from 3)
Bug fixes
- Saving the game before placing the Village Center would cause the Tribe Unit to count into the population after loading causing an incorrect (too high) population count - Saving the game at any moment after the Village Center construction has been started would result in the currently produced unit not counting into the total population on the next load. That way, you could have 11/10 units just by reloading the game - Fixed hotkeys for Furnance equipment production buttons - Population counter shows correct values in Tutorial - Fixed a problem with skirmish AI not finding more farmland to clear, which would cause the game to crash - Fixed that the wall building preview remained on the screen after returning from the construct building menu to villager commands - Fixed save and load issues with revolting units - Scribes apply increased Knowledge generation from priests correctly - Fixed some minor issues with not displaying the villager militia indicator correctly - Removed the 'stop construction' button from Village Center - Unit health regeneration would incorrectly happen after executing the attack (should not happen until the unit is completely out of combat for 5 seconds) - No incoming horde skulls show on minimap when the game is over - If an ally is defeated and attacked, an attack notification will no longer display - ESC doesn't open the menu if a tile is selected - Fixed a few cases of other rare game crashes - And more...
PAX AUS 2022
Dear, The Fertile Crescent has already been shown around the world, but now it will appear in the most important place for us - Australia. Yes, you will be able to play TFC during PAX Aus - you can find us in the Indie Zone in booth 23.
It’s no coincidence that we write "us" because there will be no one else but André and Anders from Wield Interactive! We'd love to see you in Melbourne, so come by and chat with us. And, of course, play TFC! Who knows, maybe we'll share some details about the future news for The Fertile Crescent!
See you at PAX Aus!
General Improvements
Important regarding save games!
We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, older saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience!
In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any older save files anymore.
We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.
About 07040
Releasing Milestone 1 was a big test for us! We have learned a few things, and we think the next Milestone release will be smoother, thanks to this experience. Thank you for your feedback - it's greatly appreciated!
Since we released Milestone 1, we have paid attention to feedback, and we are making some tweaks here based on that, like balancing the co-op Horde Mode difficulty and improving the Skirmish AI further. We have also worked through some tasks lingering in our backlog, like making some improvements to the notifications system. Furthermore, we have implemented a few minor balance changes to make Light Axeman a better option early-game against Slingers.
Co-op Horde Mode difficulty
We have made co-op Horde Mode a bit easier since the scaling made it too hard compared to the single-player experience. When playing co-op, wave strengths are now scaled at 140%, 150% and 160% for the three tiers of nomad hordes (from 200% for all these tiers in the previous version). This means, for example, that Brutal is still "brutal", but it's beatable!
In addition, we added some extra time for the first wave to spawn (+20 seconds on all difficulty levels) to reflect the movement change along the y-axis and the buffs to early Nomad units that were introduced in the last version.
Notifications system
- Added a new notification for not having enough housing to train additional units - New notifications instantly override old ones - Overriden notifications will stay intact in a queue and show for their full duration once it's their turn again - All notifications have a fade in animation to grab your attention more (including the starvation notification) - Notification nudge animation plays more often - Notifications no longer overlap (thanks to a new design for the 'Received Resources' notification)
Skirmish AI
- Skirmish AI will only defend outside its immediate territory if it thinks it can roughly match the attacking force - Skirmish AI will only defend with villagers inside its immediate territory - Skirmish AI will not flee with its attack force against a superior army if having < 0 food in stock - Skirmish AI will flee with its attack force slightly earlier from a superior army on higher difficulty levels - Skirmish AI will no longer create an attack force while actively defending its base or territory - Fixed some problems with the AI behavior when an enemy constructed one or more buildings inside or close to its base - Fixed a problem that could cause AI Battering Rams to idle instead of finding a new region to attack
General
- There is now an indicator '...' above villagers who are trying to reach a destination but are blocked - The starvation bar now fills up gradually instead of instantly disappearing once food stock is no longer negative - Changed position of equipment in Furnace production menu - The manpower requirements in unit production tooltip will now update after Organized Warfare is researched to reflect the faster training speeds - Wonder title now describes the construction level - Wonder level upgrade construction progress is now always visible for all players (including spectators) as long as Wonder is visible on the map (and not in the fog of war)
Balance changes
- Digging clay is 16% slower - Masons now improve clay digging speed by 30% from (20%) - Light Axeman has 1 base ranged armor (from 0) - Elite Light Axeman upgrade no longer provides +1 ranged armor - Slinger deals 4 melee damage (from 5) - Copper Helmet and Copper Spear are no longer available to produce before Palace is constructed
General Bug fixes
- Fixed elite Slinger attack speed being applied correctly - Fixed elite Slinger attack speed being correctly applied when garrisoned in a watchtower - Fixed problems with nomad units that were "left over" from previous waves - Fixed a case of building production tooltip getting stuck on the screen - Fixed problems with fog of war and game over screen that could happen if a player disconnected while a multiplayer game was still loading - Fixed the wrong description in How to Play for how to add units to an existing control group - Fixed population counter increasing when cancelling unit training - Fixed colors not updating after re-entering a multiplayer room - Fixed game window size being incorrect after launching in windowed mode - Fixed UI Scaling and wrong position of TFC logo after setting windowed mode - Finishing construction of Village Center before Tribe unit enters it no longer yields an additional villager - Clicking and dragging on buttons no longer disables highlighting
The Fertile Crescent will be on TactiCon!
We proudly announce that our The Fertile Crescent will be part of TactiCon. TactiCon is an online event celebrating the tactical and strategy genres, hosted on Steam. The event features both recently released hit games as well as promising upcoming projects. When? September 22nd to 25th, 2022!
During this time, you will see many phenomenal games, including TFC. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the event, and we invite you simply... to play. Especially that during the TactiCon you will be able to buy TFC in a special promotion!
