Full tech tree, roads and railroads, siege units

Posted by Oleksandr on June 24, 2017

June 2017 development update (v1) brings new gameplay features and changes. These features are available in newly created game sessions and in the demo.

Technology tree has been expanded, and now covers all eras from ancient times to modernity. New technologies provide access to new units and buildings. For now, only ground units are available, and most of the buildings are stubs (do nothing). That will be expanded upon in later releases. Currently useful buildings are: Granary (saves food), City Walls (improves defense), and those related to science (Library, University, Research Lab) and production (Factory, Manufacturing Plant).

Some of the units added in this release (Catapult, Cannon, Artillery) make use of a new siege mechanic. Siege units do a lot of damage, but have to spend one turn preparing before attacking. These units are fragile and can be easily destroyed, so make sure to guard them. AI is not yet smart enough to utilize them effectively, that will have to be improved later. Fortified units and ready-for-attack siege units use distinct icon shapes for visual clarity.

Workers can now construct roads and railroads (when Railroad tech is available). Roads make unit movement 2x faster relative to their normal speed. Railroad on player-controlled tiles allows any unit to move 8 tiles per turn, regardless of original speed of the unit. On non-player-controlled tiles railroads behave like regular roads. Road increases tile's trade yield by 1 unit. Railroad increases all yields by 1/3 of a current yield (rounded down), so a tile producing 3 food will produce 4 with a railroad, but a tile producing only 2 food will not be affected. Improvements on tiles that are not worked by a city now decay over time, and have to be redone if needed.

The game still requires experimental JavaScript option (SharedArrayBuffer) to be manually enabled in the browser. This feature is expected to be enabled by default in Firefox 55 and Chrome 60 (both scheduled for August 2017). Afterwards, Statebuilder will work out of the box on these browsers.

All important changes since v0 release (April 2017)

• Technology tree covers all eras up to modern times.
• Ground units available from all eras.
• City buildings available from all eras (only some are functional though).
• Siege unit mechanics: powerful attack, but have to set up.
• Fortified units are rendered with a different shape for visual clarity.
• Rough terrain slows down movement (but not for Scouts).
• Pathfinder shows the number of turns it would take for selected unit along the path.
• Workers can build roads and railroads, for improved tile yields and unit movement speed.
• Workers can chop and plant forests.
• Unattended tile improvements now decay over time.
• AI has learned how to build science-boosting buildings.
• AI tries to avoid placing cities too close together.
• AI is more active in exploration.
• Network protocol is more efficient (TCP_NODELAY on, messages combined when possible).