Folk Emerging Demo - Scarcity & Abundance Update

This is a larger update that includes a new demo map seed and the following changes:

Design

• Species in ecoregions uninhabited by Bands now slowly gravitate towards approximately equilibrium populations

• Resource costs for all structures and tile improvements is now halved

• Spiritual Site Devotee bonus now also gives +10 Victory Points

• Excess Science/turn now overflows to next turn when completing a tech

• Cordage tech now unlocks a Nets amenity, which gives passive Food from adjacent rivers and coast

• Norm switching is now enabled, at 3x the norm's normal cost

• Some Cultural Norms now give extra Influence to certain Clan types

• Studying Nature production focus is now unique to the Sages Clan

• Food and Fertility rework:

  • Added Band states based on current level of Food availability: Minimal/Adequate/Comfortable/Abundant Food Stockpile

  • Food availability states boost Fertility (+0/0.05/0.1/0.15) and Happiness/turn (+1/2/3/4)

  • Hedonism norm now gives +30% Fertility if Food Stockpile is Adequate (1x population) or higher, but also gives +0.2 Food Waste rate/turn and -20% Production

  • Reliable Freshwater no longer boosts Fertility, but its Health/turn bonus is increased from +5 to +10, and it now lowers Risk of Disease by -25%

  • Pressured by Wildlife/Exposure/Discontent band states now also give -30% Fertility

  • Modesty norm now also gives -20% Fertility

• Pastoralist playstyle rework:

  • Herding production focus is removed

  • The passive Food/turn from various Livestock items now gets aggregated into a Food From Livestock modifier of Food/turn

  • Pastoralism norm and Herder trait now boost Food From Livestock

  • Pastures no longer equip Livestock items, instead they boost Food From Livestock for adjacent Bands, and are much cheaper to construct

  • Livestock items now reduce Production by -0.1 each (stackable)

• Trade:

  • Trade Value of all items and resources is rebalanced

  • Trade Value is doubled for the last item of each type

  • Non-player bands now insist on keeping a minimum of Stone and Wood when trading

  • Improved balance of deals offered by non-player bands

• Combat:

  • Watchtower now gives Attack Strength instead of Morale, and no longer only when defending

  • Health/turn malus from Injured In Battle lowered to -40 from -50

  • Baseline Risk of Injury from Battle lowered to 0.6 from 0.8

• Festivals:

  • Renamed Fire Rituals production focus to Festivals.

  • Festivals and Medicine Rituals both now also give -50% Training/turn

  • Artists Clan no longer gets passive +20% Culture/turn, instead gets +50% Culture/turn while producing Festivals

  • Honoring Chief production focus removed, instead Festivals now give +1 Reputation to Chief for 10 turns each time they're completed

• Added difficulty settings:

  • Easier: 100 starting Happiness, +5 Happiness/turn, lower risks, slower development & less aggression for non-player factions

  • Standard: 50 starting Happiness, standard development & aggression for non-player factions

  • Harder: 0 starting Happiness, -5 Happiness/turn, faster development & more aggression for non-player factions

• Added game speed settings:

  • Faster: -50% cost of techs and norms

  • Standard: normal cost of techs and norms

  • Slower: +50% cost of techs and norms

• Some visible changes related to full game content (lots more behind the scenes):

  • Added various late-game military units

  • Proto-Vedic and Proto-Slavic civs are replaced with Proto-Indic and Proto-Kurgan

  • Fortifications tile improvement added

  • Last tier of cultural norms now replaced with Taxation vs Redistribution, Law vs Shame, and Matrilinality vs Patrilineality

  • Nets tech renamed to Intensive Fishing and unlocks a new Fishing Weir structure

Programming

• Enabled units special abilities to target themselves

• Refactor of production & construction progress and availability tracking

• Added separate volume controls for ambience sound effects (e.g. nature sounds)

• Enabled remappable controls (for now starting with a couple basic actions, expecting to add more)

• Added setting for muting game audio when app is not in focus

UI

• Made UI interactions and updates juicier

• Added unit categories: infantry, mounted, melee, ranged

• When a unit doesn't have an item equipped, empty item slot is highlighted red

• Moved tooltip for 'Run Trials' button to be in the bottom-right of the screen so it doesn't block units in Proving Grounds

• Top-left tribe icon tooltip now also directly shows player's tribe summary

• 'Completed Wonder' acknowledgement added when player completes wonder

• Added some missing info to Potential Modifiers lists

• Added cultural norm icons

• Movement Points renamed to Moves, Training Points renamed to Training

• Training production focus renamed to Practicing

• Fire Rituals renamed to Festivals

• Person > Relationships > All sub-page is deactivated

• Reworked and streamlined various tutorials

• Pressured by Wildlife/Exposure/Discontent notifications are now red

• Various other UI tweaks and improvements

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed various bugs related to construction projects progress & completion

• Fixed potential debt calculation sometimes being done based on wrong band's evaluation

• Fixed first tech starting with some progress already made

• Fixed some UI elements from specialist assignment panel showing up in specialist transfer panel

• Fixed acknowledgements (e.g. Under Attack) between turns sometimes showing up empty

• Fixed potential visual bugs due to staging/unstaging conflicts between movement, scouting, splitting, and construction

• Fixed newly split offshoot Bands not being able to open Opportunities on the same turn they split

• Fixed ESC key not closing diplomacy view

• Fixed Delete button in Save/Load menu not working

• Fixed autobattler unit tooltip triggers

Known Issues

• Sometimes number of assignable fighters shows a negative number in the numerator

• Sometimes prey cluster 'hunt' action isn't available when it should be (its button remains grayed out). Haven't been able to recreate the issue, please reach out if you encounter it

• Linux: game sometimes gets stuck during autosave (seems to be due to dual-boot setup with storing game files on external NTFS drive; works fine when files are moved to EXT4 drive)

• NOTE: This is a larger update that may break older demo saves!

News

• Folk Emerging will be in Next Fest next week! If you're able to play the demo on the 15th-16th of June, that would help increase the game's visibility in the fest. Thank you for your support!