Road To 1.0

Trade Server Stability

Recently, when I wake up in the morning, I’m greeted with 30~40 server load warning emails. After some investigation, it appears that there are often huge bursts of player trades happening within a short period of time. Player trades are quite expensive to run: they require the server to perform pathfinding, calculate tariffs, and notify the trade tile owner about incoming tariff revenue. The recently introduced trade/tariff merging features only add to the server load.

A short burst of trades can cause the server to become stuck at 100% CPU usage for a while, which impacts overall stability and results in a negative experience for other players. About 60~70% of these trades involve accounts without a Supporter Pack. It is possible that a large percentage of them are “alt accounts,” but it’s impossible to know for sure - and impossible to ban alt accounts either.

The trade server has been kept afloat by the generous Supporter Pack owners (around 1% of all players), and it's not financially viable to upgrade the server to accommodate the all these trade bursts. To ensure trade server stability, I am adding a rate limit on player trades.

• For Accounts with Supporter Pack: 1 trade per 5 seconds

• For Accounts without Supporter Pack: 1 trade per 60 seconds

The rate limit only affects the number of trades (including add and filling a trade, but not claiming a trade) and does not affect the trade value, so it shouldn’t cause a significant gameplay difference. This will help smooth out these bursts over a longer period of time, mitigating the 100% CPU issue, and thus improve the trade server stability and sustainability.

Now enjoy the draft patch notes for 1.0 (Currently in Beta)

New Civ: Australian

Unique Effects

A random Natural Wonder from other civilizations is spawned on the map

Unique Buildings

Fusion Fuel Plant (Software): Nuclear Fuel Rod x10 => Fusion Fuel x1

Fusion Power Plant (Genetics): Fusion Fuel x2 => Power x1140

Sydney Opera House (Television): This wonder can be upgraded and each level increases the map size of the next rebirth by 1

Sydney Harbour Bridge (Hydroelectricity): This wonder can be upgraded and each level provides +1 Production Multiplier to all power plants

Great Ocean Road (Rocketry): This wonder can be upgraded and each level provides +1 Building Level Boost to Trade Tile Bonus buildings

Natural Wonders

Great Barrier Reef: Each happiness provides +0.2*X Science Per Busy Worker and +0.1*X Science Per Idle Worker. X = Current Age (Stone Age = 1, Bronze Age = 2, Information Age = 10)

Uluru: All buildings that do not produce workers within 2-tile range gets +0.5*X Production Multiplier. X = number of different great people from this run

Unique Great People

Steam post image John Bradfield (World Wars): +1 Level to Sydney Harbour Bridge

Brian Schmidt (Information Age): +1 Production Multiplier, Storage Multiplier for Fusion Fuel Plant, Fusion Power Plant

Festival

Moomba: Great Ocean Road also provides +1 Production Multiplier per level to Trade Tile Bonus buildings. Increase the range of Uluru to 3-tile

New Achievements

Waltzing Matilda: Rebirth with at least 1 Extra Great Person when playing Australian (Reach 64M Empire Value when rebirth)

More Tiles More Fun: Rebirth with at least 2 extra tiles from Sydney Opera House

Rush To Future: Reach future with <= 200 Extra Great People At Rebirth

Are We There Yet?: Rebirth with the game's patch >= 1.0

Map Size Change

Map size has a lot of legacies: back in the days when Civilization was still called City, the map size roughly matched the size of the city. However, this is no longer true anymore. In this patch, the map size has been changed so that it roughly matches the country size. If you are in the middle of a run, the map size will stay unchanged until your next rebirth.

• Roman: 40 -> 45

• Greek: 40 (no change)

• Egyptian: 50 -> 40

• Chinese: 50 (no change)

• American: 30 -> 50

• Babylonian: 35 -> 40

• Japanese: 35 -> 40

• German: 40 (no change)

• English: 40 (no change)

• French: 50 -> 40

• Ottoman: 50 (no change)

• Brazilian: 50 (no change)

• Indian: 40 -> 45

Wonder Changes

• Matrioshka Brain: Now the production multiplier affects Clone Lab

• Golden Gate Bridge: Now requires Reinforced Concrete instead of Steel

• Swiss Bank: Now appear in trade tile bonus. Swiss Bank can now move Koti from Tradable Resources into Swiss Bank (i.e. choose Koti as the input resources for Swiss Bank)

Bigger Storage

The following tech will now provide +100% Base Storage for Market, Warehouse and Caravansary:

• Enlightenment

• Railway

• Assembly

• Globalization

• Robotics

Level Boost now affects Warehouse/Caravansary's import capacity

New Wonder: Port of Singapore (Globalization) - This wonder can be upgraded and each level provides +1 Production (affects Resource Transport Capacity) and Storage Multiplier to Market, Warehouse and Caravansary

Better Exploration

Exploration technology (Renaissance) will unlock cartographer - sending a cartographer cost Science and will explore all tiles on the map. Explorer Range upgrade has been moved into earlier techs:

• 2 Range (Geography -> Writing)

• 3 Range (Steam Engine -> Construction)

• 4 Range (Aviation -> Democracy)

Faster Performance

• Player Trade Map: view culling has been implemented for the player trade map, and now it should be much smoother when panning or zooming in.

• Player Trade Pathfinding: pathfinding is very CPU-intensive. Before it is done on the main thread, which causes UI to freeze. In this patch, it has been rewritten to be done on a Web Worker, which is JavaScript's way to utilize multi cores. The total time to find a path will not change much, but it will no longer freeze the UI.

Holiday Specials

It's holiday seasons again and holiday themed wonders are available again!

When completed, a great person of the current age is born. This wonder can be upgraded and each additional upgrade provides an extra great person. When choosing great people from this wonder, 4 choices are provided. This wonder can only be constructed in December

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree: +3 Happiness for each unlocked age. This natural wonder can only be discovered in December

Lapland: When discovered, reveal the whole map. All buildings within 2-tile range get +N Production Multiplier, N = number of unlocked ages. This natural wonder can only be discovered in December

Server Backups

In this patch, I've added a server backup option that will backup your permanent great people and age wisdom to server when you rebirth. When you recover from server backup, your current run will be reset (including Center Pompidou). So you should only use it when you don't have access to local backups (like on mobile devices). You can access this feature in Options -> Gameplay -> Server Backup

More QoLs

Now you can watch resources in Statistics Office. Your watched resources will appear on a dedicated Tab on the top left. Mouse over the tab will show more details.

Manage Great People has been revamped:

• Add a filter for "adaptive" great people in "Manage Great People"

• Add a button that upgrades all great people eligible for age wisdom

• Add a button that undoes all upgrades for great people eligible for age wisdom

• Add a button that upgrades all great people that can be upgraded

Add "Destroy all resources" feature to destroy the resources in a building

Add "EV Impact After Tariff" when filling a trade. This will show the actual net EV impact after filling a trade

Add a feature to destroy Player Tradable resources

Add "Quick UI Mode" for Warehouse/Caravansary: when you select or deselect a resource, the per cycle and max amount will be redistributed among the selected resources automatically. This will be the default option for new players

Progress Towards Next Great Person and Warp now shows estimated time on hover

Add Trade Map Stats that shows players by flag, civilization and age. It replaces the old side panel

Allowing customization of top bar sections. You can hide sections that you don't use so that it fits into a smaller screen