- The most obvious change is probably the new city happiness calculation (morale/wealth/control), which even seems to be a major change to the rules, but it's not. It's mainly a different way of presentation. The only small substantial change in this regard is that, when using luxury, it takes one point of luxury less now to prevent disorder in a city with an odd size. The new interpretation of the formula is more straight than the old, which makes it possible to make it clear within a small space on the city screen -- yes, it's visible now!
- The city tile management seemed to be a hopeless case to me. I didn't see another way to make this clear and easy than to spare the player with it - which means to automate it. Unlike the other means of macro management, this one is not an option that needs to be turned on, it's the default. You have to turn it off if you don't like it. To my surprise, I quickly appreciated the function and played my test games with the automatic activated most of the time. The playing experience has definitely changed a little with this tool. I was almost scared to turn it off in the end. I bet even most of the experienced players will play stronger with it. Maybe it's imperfect in some regard, but it makes up for that with diligence. It's always there.
- I rearranged the main screen mainly to bring everything related to the currently selected unit close together, with less need for explanation.
- The nation screen was rearranged and clarified, too.
- A warning when a battle is going to be lost, including a visualization of the combat calculation. You'll never see something like that in a non-deterministic game, at least not with the exact outcome!
- There's several new information messages and warnings all over the game, helping the novice to understand what's going on.
Now the list of rule changes:
- The deepest rule change is connected with the city tile optimization - I'm afraid this explanation is going to take a couple of lines. It was clear that the intended automatic would usually prevent troubles like civil disorder and losses due to support shortage. If something can be done to prevent them, the automatic should do it. So if they still appear, it wouldn't be the player's fault - but then it's nonsense to annoy him with that. The automatic he relied on would seem to have failed. Hence, the goal for the implementation should be to almost remove civil disorder and other city mismanagement consequence from the game for a player who leaves the automatic turned on. Now the question was: When should the optimization happen? With the C-evo 1.0 rules, the turn execution order was [turn x]->[enemy moves]->[process cities]->[turn x+1]. Now if the optimization is done before the enemy moves, the goal is failed because any careful city adjustment might be overthrown by enemy activity. The automatic couldn't prevent anything reliably. On the other hand, if the tiles were optimized after the enemy turns, i.e. in the beginning of the turn right before the city processing, the goal could be reached. But then a player using the automatic would have a technical advantage over one who does not. In special situations, the automatic would perform tasks that an old-style player couldn't do by hand. The solution was to split the city processing, where the first part is only the collection of the ressources and nothing more. Now the execution order can be changed to [turn x]->[collect resources]->[enemy moves]->[process cities]->[turn x+1] (that's the change this is all about!) and the optimization can be done before the resource collection (and doesn't even have to be part of the server). A nice side effect of the new order is that it's possible now to plan the next turn exactly, because every number predicted will fulfil. Please note that the collected values in the cities might exceed the target now during the enemy's turns.
- A nation can't cancel more than one treaty with a single other nation within 3 turns. (Except for old AIs, so don't be surprised...)
- No movement with zero MP, Shinkansen doesn't help. (Again, except for old AIs.)
- Effect of 3 wonders changed: Lighthouse, Oracle, Michelangelo's Chapel. The former Michelangelo effect is now the effect of the Statue of Liberty.
- Tribute is no longer part of the game, because it was too complicated, I think. (Tribute deals of old AIs are still being processed but the tribute has no effect.)
- Computing Technology can now be researched 100 times. The other future techs remain with a maximum of 25.
- Movement points now have a base of 1 instead of 100, but that's purely cosmetic.
Of course, I used the chance to do some improvements to the user interface also:
- The currently researched advance is shown on the main screen.
- The choice of the advance to research can be canceled and delayed until the end of the turn.
- Terrain improvement progress is shown (select settler).
- A new presentation of the buildings in a city which is not motivated by art but by usability: You know where to look for a certain building now.
- A more detailed unit movement display setup, e.g. separate settings for allies.
- A new texture concept with large JPEGs instead of the tiny old lossless shipped.
Future plans: For version 1.1.x, I'm planning some graphical improvements with the help of the community. Coming soon on this site! There might also be some AI improvement and maybe a development kit for .NET, depending on my progress in COM interop. (I'm extremely disappointed by the little success of the Delphi development kit. The only AI programmer I know to use it is Jean. Maybe I overestimated the spread of Delphi.) Plans for 1.2: none yet.
Enjoy!
Steffen