Dev Diary | HEARTS OF MALTA!

Malta focus tree

Hello everyone!

So this is a first for me, my brand own dev diary! Well... in fact, I am in a bit of an odd situation. I fell asleep one day in the office about a year ago and no one came in the next morning. The building was put in lockdown during COVID so I haven’t been able to get out and I cannot contact anyone from the team.

I am running low on cash and the only way I can afford to eat is by having uber eats delivered takeout via drones, so I need you to buy this otherwise I have to resort to hunting spiders in the office.

First of a bit of a backstory since this might come as a surprise for some of you, it sure did for me. At first I thought it was a data anomaly but I have to finally admit...that it's not.

Ever since Malta was introduced as a playable nation in MtG we have seen a steady increase in players who are real hardcore about playing the island state. In fact most of you reading this are, 84% in fact.

Why are you all so crazy about Malta? I have no idea and I am no data guy but to me this signal is pretty clear and I can no longer ignore it. As such I have decided to completely shift gear from our 5 year plan to a huge Malta focus tree. You heard it right here folks, I am finally delivering what you want and no longer will you be bound by your shackles of torment!

Obviously I cannot detail everything in one single dev diary. I need to hurry up to check out my spider traps for food, but there are some new unique features that are implemented specifically for Malta, so broad strokes will be covered in this diary, with more in depth path walkthroughs next time!

Economy 2.0

Malta now begins as a proper colony of the UK ingame instead of being annexed by them. While the domestic industry will be limited by physical size the country can establish shipping lanes between other countries which trades sandstone. This was a brilliant invention of mine where I realized that Malta was pretty much completely void of industry and needed something that everyone wanted!

Everyone? Yup, to make sure Malta gets the proper starting economy every construction and building you make now will require sandstone, which you have a monopoly on. It will therefore be very important to establish close ties with Malta, or your industry will hit a (sand) stone wall.

As more shipping lanes are established and countries buy more of your sandstone you get IC output in return. More sandstone can be mined via events, focuses, decisions and by scuttling your own houses to mine their stone, at the cost of taking a stability hit.

Beware though, if you push your trade routes to everyone at once too fast you risk getting the worst malus of all, tourists. They will arrive in great hordes and block your island, making deploying divisions impossible, and slowly erode all your precious sandstone as they walk around to take in the island’s sights.

With the power of blockchain technology and adaptive AI I have tied the amount of tourists arriving to real world tourism data, so you better get all achievements before summer!

Repeatable focus sets and building vertically

As you know, Malta has limited