Folk Emerging Demo - Update, February 21st

NOTE: this is a larger demo update that may break older demo saves.

This update includes the following changes:

Design

• Happiness & Risk of Disputes:

  • Removed Band attribute "Risk of Disputes", everything that used to modify it now modifies Band Happiness/turn instead (e.g. population, malnourished, captives).

  • Happiness levels now determine probability of triggering positive and negative internal events (which now include the dispute events that used to be triggered by Risk of Disputes).

  • Added positive events that can trigger from positive Happiness levels.

  • Chief's baseline bonus of -50% Risk of Disputes is removed, Chief's Reputation now boosts Happiness/turn, Chief's Discipline now gives extra Movement Points

  • Fire Rituals bonus to Happiness/turn increased from +5 to +10.

  • Every newly discovered sea tile now grants +1 Happiness

  • Seers Clan bonus is now +10 Happiness/turn if adjacent to a Spiritual Site

• Clans:

  • Removed Tribe attribute "Clan Tensions", which used to be the sum of all negative Opinion between Clans and used to increase Risk of Disputes.

  • Added Clan attribute "Influence", representing their overall power within the Tribe. It is modified by Clan Head Reputation, number of Bands led by Clan, and number of Specialists from Clan.

  • Added Clan attribute "Relative Influence", representing the percentage of total Influence each Clan has.

  • Differences in Relative Influence between 2 Clans now lower their Opinion of each other.

  • Negative Opinion between two Clans directly lowers Band Production for those Clans' Bands.

  • Clan Relative Influence below 33.3% lowers Culture/turn for that Clan's Bands.

  • Clan Opinion has a new baseline of +10, to prevent small differences in Relative Influence from causing significant Production maluses right from the start.

  • Council cultural norm now gives extra Happiness/turn for all bands, equal to the lowest Clan's Influence. This incentivizes a Clan-focused playstyle, as a strong alternative to Chiefdom.

  • Clan Opinion boosts from Mediation actions now expire after 10 turns.

    • Cultural norm costs are lowered a bit, to compensate for the now more frequent need to spend Culture on mediating Clan relationships

• Events:

  • Post-hunt dispute events now involve and modify Reputation of Clan Heads, not random Clan members.

  • Clan dispute events impact on Clan Opinion now smaller, from -20 to -10.

  • Added stalemate events when battles end in a tie

  • For more frequent events, made it less likely that only 1 outcome is available (e.g. due to cultural norm requirements)

  • Predator Trophy events now include probabilistic outcomes

• Band Production is now clamped at minimum 1, as there are now more things that can lower it. 1 is low enough to feel like a serious obstacle, while keeping the game playable.

• Baseline Food Forageable for all species is increased by +5. This rebalance aims to open up more opportunities to spend fewer turns foraging in the early game.

• Added new Band state "Cornered", which gives a +100% Morale boost to any isolated band that is completely surrounded by impassable tiles and foreign tribes. This should help players (and AI) get out more easily when trapped somewhere on the map.

• The cultural norm pair Agriculture VS Gathering is now included in the demo, swapping places with Pride VS Modesty, which is now locked. This should let demo players experience more of the potential power of different subsistence strategies.

UI

• Clans menu is overhauled, with a new pie-chart at the center showing Relative Influence, streamlined sections for each Clan relationship, and improved tooltips.

• Clan instance summary tooltips now shown when hovering over a Clan hyperlink, rather than just their Clan type info.

• Modifiers in attribute breakdown tooltips are now red if negative and green if positive

Programming

• Prevented happiness accumulation at start of first turn, to ensure happiness starts at 0.

• Reduced repetitiveness of events within each event category. The total number of events in the demo is still limited, but the selection mechanism is a little more sophisticated, in preparation for adding more events.

• AI bands now take more factors into account when deciding whether to split, and split less often.

Bugs

• Fixed rare critical bug that could arise due to multithreading.

• Fixed Food Forageable for some species going negative occasionally, now clamped to minimum 0.