Hi,

i've just released a little hotfix. Mainly for a couple of regression issues caused by the big patch 0.10.11

• 'Obsoletion lock' of Taj Mahal Should no longer crash the game when displaying first warning dialog and has a correct icon
  
• Babel tower should no longer generate Locks in the tech tree after loading a game
  
• Game should no longer crash when multiple ascension boosts are active (defeating multiple era bosses in short time)
  
• Game should no longer crash in some corner-cases with Storm debuff
  
• Game should no longer crash when having Autonomy higher than max 32-bit number.

Hello,

this update I want to reveal a bit about Tier 3's ancestral era Map. Also since this goes back to 'ancient history' I thought it would be fun visiting the history of Microcivilization as well.

So let me show how our present Quest system evolved since the game's beginning and in the end I'll show you how it will evolve further in Tier 3 and beyond.


In one of the older updates I've shown you how the project started. But it doesnt show the actual first concept. That first concept was this:

This is the Microcivilization's first idea, picture in mspaint created September 8th 2021 8pm. Simple clicker, research tree and a miniature civilization glass ball with little people running around and autonomously building a little city inside. Nothing else, there were no Quests or Map. Simplicity itself. Four-months project maybe?But we know now that this concept was not what happened. I quickly realized that there's a plenty of ways to make this into a more complex game that nobody has made before (I don't know if that was true, but to my past self's ignorance wisdom it was). So features started appearing very fast.


Quests were the first 'extra' feature I've added (i.e. besides research and construction/growth). Their role was to provide source of chaos to the game. Quests were meant to be a choice to speed up progress in your game at the cost of problems. But I didn't yet know what the problems would be. There were no Crises there at that time.

Version as at early October 2021 about 98 hours of total development time. Quests were just timed resource buffs. Notice that quests 'reserve' population. This was meant to be the limiting mechanism way before units and workers were added.The idea about quests mechanics was quite simple .... you either send your population to quests, or you keep them in your workshops. How you distribute this would define your 'strategy build'. Quests would be flexible - so you had a slider that allowed you to send whoever was 'idle' to the mines or wherever. Neat....


It soon became clear that in order to justify any 'strategy' the game needs to have some dynamic combat. Otherwise players would have no real problems to solve. My inspiration here was the Clicker Heroes and I always imagined that the level of complexity would never go beyond that game.

December 2021 about 300 hours in the making of Microcivilization (that name did not exist back then). First Crisis was added around this time. Notice that the combat was done via Clicking Sword and Shield and by constructing a Fire brigade. Units did not exist at this time. Crisis also did not have any 'attacks'. Instead it was reducing your population over time. You can also see a new background style - I was learning pixel art here while re-doing the first conceptual graphics. Crises added the core concept of combat. With that it quickly became apparent that Risk management needs to be added as a bridge between Quests and Crises.


Existence of Crises implied how to structure quests. I had to split between high-risk and low-risk quests. Those that required strong military and those that would be used after exhausting combat to replenish the economy.

Also I realized that using individual population slider for quest did not scale very well. While workshops have consumed percentages of population, quests used actual people - that didnt really work. Player had to do a lot of math and when numbers didnt add up, it felt really stupid and frustrating.

So I ditched the individual population constraint on Quests and decided to keep using Percentages of population as a kind of single resource. At this point I realized this will need some specific 'new resource' but decided to postpone such decision.

This is pretty much how the next version of Quest system looked like:

Bunch of starter quests. You can see there is a concept of 'limited' quests (which you could simply exhaust) and infinite quests. Also you can still control how many people you send. But only in 5 percentage options.


Believe it or not, this quest system felt more than sufficient. At that moment I knew I would like the quests to be represented with some kind of 'map-like' background. I also knew I will need to add more dynamics to how quests change over technological progress. But virtually all parts of the game needed more attention and prettification of quest system would not move me any closer to a playable version.

To put this into more context, during this stage I had maybe a 30-60 minutes of gameplay (semi-idle clicker). There was no Hero system, no Ascensions, no presentable visuals.

Early 2022 was about adding actual content. Crisis types, Inventory screen, UI graphics, workshop animations and more variation of the buildings.

This phase had one objective: The gameplay must be good enough end-to-end to turn it into a Trailer. No more 'fake' graphics or missing core features. 30 seconds of video must be able to tell the whole story what this game is about (and why it should be worth any real-world money).

So quest system stayed intact for maybe 8 months, with minimal changes.

Screenshot from June 2022 version. You can still see the old combat system except we now have fists on Yin Yang button. The idea here was that Food automatically converted into Damage during crisis. So the Wheat icon just turned into Fist. Completing the Growth bar dealt damage. We still had percent Idle people instead of workers. We still didnt have military units. But we had Mammoths alright.


In November 2022 first Teaser video was made and I started marketing the game publicly. Which meant I was done making the game look pretty and had to make it play well.

Geek Note: In November 2022, after about 840 hours spent on the game almost all my backend code was a single class. That class was holding all the game logic as well as save data and was about 3300 lines of code (separated to 10 files). It wasnt until november 2022 that I split it into a more structured architecture. It was really fun to work with in this first stage. I definitely recommend YAGNI [en.wikipedia.org] approach in case you are building something very volatile and you're not at all sure what it will become.

This upgrade of the quest system added visual map. And because I didn't want to be a cliche and have a hex grid, I used this yin/yang approach with tiles being linked to two individual quests. The map was technically still a hex grid, but didn't betray that fact so obviously.

First 'Playtest' version of Microcivilization in April 23 used the top-right map. This was the first quest system players could actually see. Full-size map came later for the Demo.

Along this version, Worker mechanism and Military Units were added and the whole Idle % reservation system removed.

With this third system I went live in November 2023. And I thought it would be all. I'd do a bunch of major updates during Early Access, finish up the ascension tree tiers, and in a year or so call it a 1.0. End of story....


But thanks to the success on Early Access launch day I realized I have to change plans. Players really like the game. So what the hell. Let's finish this the best way I can...

You can pretty much see what followed. After Purple Faction major update and Research/Autonomy update the new World Map was added into the game. So in the end I decided to go with the cliche and added a hex grid.

The map as it was done in version 0.9.

This fundamentally changed not only quests but also the entire economy of the game. I consider this change to be the most invasive in terms of game design and has catapulted the difficulty of game design to a new level. Not only do we have tile improvements generating resource, there's also tile adjacency mechanism, fixed critters on the map, other civilizations and diplomacy.

So where do we go from here.


As mentioned previously, Tier 3 will be a dark place. After finishing Tier2 the player's civilization will be thrown down to literal abyss of history. They will lose all they had until now until they can prove worthy to regain it.

Current Tier 3 map with some of the new features explained. With endless mode and expanding hostile civilization it will effectively be a rogue-lite battle-royale

• You will be fighting an enemy far more advanced than you. You will have no diplomacy, no culture, no city.
  
• The enemy will be actively hunting you. A 'Conquistadors' Nemesis will be unleashed right from the beginning and the Hostile Civilization that controls it will be expanding its territory over time until it takes up the entire continent. You will be able to move your 'camp' on the map to pospone your inevitable fall.
  
• You'll also be missing your Neolithic technology tree. Basic technolgies will have to be re-discovered in a similar manner as Tier 2 future era - navigating around dangerous dead-end paths. So your tech tree will be 'endless' right from the beginning.
  
• Your ability of doing Research from population will be gone. You will need to actively explore Ancestral ruins to gain research production.
  
• You will have no heroes. All heroes you had will be un-equippable for the length of Tier 3. (more on this topic in a future update)
  
• You will have no workshops. Most of the time you won't even have any territory.
  
• You will end the run if your civilization dies (same as during Future era).

But not all is bad. For all your suffering there's a couple of new features that will uplift your poor civilization.

In Tier 3 there will be a few new mechanisms that will allow acquiring more Secrets. The price will not be small. But it will be there.

You will be able to adopt any technology you find in the 'endless' tree. That means you can pay a certain price and you will permanently gain that technology for the future runs. In this manner by exploring the 'endless' tech tree you will be slowly 'rebuilding' the Neolithic tree. When you reach Future era again (in Tier4) you will be able to apply this on Future era technologies too.

I know, you are asking 'like how permanently'. Like really permanently. Every Nemesis will have a specific scenario which can be played (like babel tower, but shorter and simpler). After winning it, the nemesis will be completely defeated and will never-ever appear in any game.

Critical features for your survival and ultimate victory in Tier 3. More on this another time.

Yes. Finally.

But leaving the 'lore' behind, Tier 3 is meant to be a little refreshment. Unlike jump from Tier 1 to Tier 2 it is not intended to step up in difficulty or make things more complex. It should instead provide some brand new mechanisms and a simpler flow taking you again back to brute-force start.

It shouldn't also be very long. I expect Tier 3 to take maybe 50-75% of Tier 2 playtime length (depending on how many ascensions you buy). New Hero type and different Lotus mechanisms will change the pace of the game as well until the player re-emerges on Tier 4.

This is all for today. I'll see you in four weeks.

Ondrej