Beauty and the Beast

Today's upgrade is a radical attempt to fix the food issues once and for all - which has been plaguing us since this alpha launch. A lot of things have changed so read the details thoroughly. Oh, and we have a sneak peak about 20 new hairstyles coming soon as well.

Since the beginning of Alpha 5 there has been a food issue that has mixed origin. Players have been pointing this out and we have tried to fix it more than once by altering population in different buildings. Unfortunately, those fixes had limited effects and a proper solution required drastic changes. Back then we had no time to do it, so I decided to postprone it until Alpha 6. But instead I decided to do it before the end of the current alpha stage, to see it in action.

Balance Changes

1. Food production buldings starting from Classical Age provide more income (including food as the most valuable resource). Renaissance Age production buildings now provide twice as many resources. As you can see, this is an extreme change and required tweaking other things:
   • Population of many buildings was increased. This starts with Classical Age and higher
   • Food consumption of units was increased (mainly later ages)
   • Some building prices increased here and there. Report if some of them do not fit the maximum storage of the corresponding age.
2. Increased resource income means higher science spending, so we had to increase tech prices from Classical Age and onward. However, even with increases the science should be easier to learn now since the resource income increase is  still much bigger. The science increase also triggered a couple of other changes:
   • Museum efficiency increased 10 times.
   • Science speed-up items now provide 10 times more points.
3. Increasing the  population in buildings to offset the increased food production resulted in a critical penalty to construction speed. To deal with it we did the following:
   • Increased the effect of 1 level of the hut from 1% to 2% reduction. This is a huge boost - especially in early ages, so it will result in a more comfortable start.
   • The increased bonus made the huts too good so we reduced the culture bonus from them as a compensation. This is not very noticeable at early ages, but Renaissance players may see the shrink of domain if they had many huts.
   • To compensate for culutre loss just a little bit, we have increased culture in some of the "culture booster" buildings like the Well, Fountain, etc.
4. Some other changes related - and not so related -  with this rebalance, such as traders capacity, increased to match up to the increased resources usage.
   • Rig Trader capacity increased from 500 to 800
   • Coach Trader capacity increased from 600 to 1000
   • Trade Ship capacity increased from 1000 to 1500
   • Dirigible capacity increased from 500 to 1000
   • Main buildings protection from capture decreased (Still too big, but not impossible. This will be reduced even more later).
   • Basic advisor quests now should not only be able to accept buildings from Classical and Medieval Ages, but also the ones in other towns. This needs to be tested thoroughly.
   • From now on, Stained Mask Trophy does not require you to kill enemy spies. (The players who tested this out but were too lazy to submit the report or even PM me should be ashamed)

New Hairstyle

There will be a vanity update which will allow you to visually customize your character. While we are working on it, we need your help with the hairstyles:

New Female Hairstyles

New Male Hairstyles

Unfortunately, the artist had no idea what she had been drawing so we need you to give names to those hairstyles :) Oh, and also rank them to your personal preference.

Please post in the comments below how you like them - the numbers of the hairstyles ordered from best to worst will do. Also give them names - if a particular one resembles a real haircut with a real name, that would be preferred. But if not - making up something works too!

Beauty or the Beast?

There is an upcoming hairstyle update and today's massive game balance update. It's up to you to decide, which one is the beauty, and which one is the beast ;-)