What did the update add

[The Gaming Master]

I'm just overridden with information, soooo what did the update add overall? How do I find and change DNA, what is this monolith capable of? How does it work? I'm just kinda confused and most importantly, WHY IS ONE KINGDOM'S POPULATION FALLING SO FAST WHEN NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

[steely111]

The game is now a lot more complex. It's actually a really impressive update, but might need some rebalancing.

anyways, what I've figured out so far:

New Races:

There are now like a dozen or so new races. Actually, if given the right neurological traits, almost any subspecies can turn into a civilization now. Click on the subspecies icon and manipulate the species traits - feel free to experiment.

Monoliths:

Monoliths are how you turn animals into humanoid races. If you spawn a bunch of turtles and place a monolith, you might eventually 'evolve' the turtle-people. Note that sometimes the animals stay the same form even after becoming sapient. You just need to keep trying and wait for RNG to do its thing.

DNA:

DNA seems to be the way to increase traits like offspring limit, birth rate, health, longevity, etc... I think there might be more too it, but just click on each node in the DNA string and then pick a trait you have unlocked.

Population:

Population is now more complex to maintain. Species traits like gestation/development length and reproduction method are important now. If sexual reproduction is used, you have to consider balance between male and female. A village with three males and one female is likely to stagnate.

For a village to have a chance to grow, you probably want a minimum of 3-5 of each sex.

Culture: Culture is more dynamic. New cultures arise on their own within the same kingdom. People also can adopt new cultures from outside civilizations. Cultures can sometimes die out before a civilization does - leaving cultureless civilizations in their wake. I don't know yet if new cultures eventually arise to fill the void when this happens.

Culture/Language/Religion are all now separate features with their own traits to manipulate.

Religion:

Religion now gives practitioners powers.

[steely111]

Essentially the simulation now requires more active involvement from the player to balance. If you want a civilization to grow, you need to pay attention to their needs. Checking on towns will give you hints at what they require to grow. The town tab will tell you if your village needs food, stone, wood, etc...

It's borderline a different game now, in a mostly good way. I wish they'd ease up on locking content behind achievements, though. The game's way too complex for that, now. In my opinion, at least.

[Zielski99]

Originally posted by steely111:

Essentially the simulation now requires more active involvement from the player to balance. If you want a civilization to grow, you need to pay attention to their needs. Checking on towns will give you hints at what they require to grow. The town tab will tell you if your village needs food, stone, wood, etc...

That's not a feature, it's an issue with the current beta. Civilizations are still supposed to be autonomous, devs just didn't account for all the new content making extinction much easier.
There are now at least 10 different events that are guaranteed to kill all civilizations in the world if they occur even once, and there's almost nothing god powers can do to stop them unless you're willing to pause the game and micromanage units for 3+ hours before resuming.

[steely111]

Originally posted by Zielski99:

Originally posted by steely111:

Essentially the simulation now requires more active involvement from the player to balance. If you want a civilization to grow, you need to pay attention to their needs. Checking on towns will give you hints at what they require to grow. The town tab will tell you if your village needs food, stone, wood, etc...

That's not a feature, it's an issue with the current beta. Civilizations are still supposed to be autonomous, devs just didn't account for all the new content making extinction much easier.
There are now at least 10 different events that are guaranteed to kill all civilizations in the world if they occur even once, and there's almost nothing god powers can do to stop them unless you're willing to pause the game and micromanage units for 3+ hours before resuming.

Fair. There's a reason this is a beta, though. I'm intrigued by the idea of the game being more complication, but I also agree there's some gamebreaking issues that can arise. A big issue is the DNA RNG that can make species with super high birth-rate pop up and just take over.

I find I can try to correct the issue if I completely nerf the problematic subspecies, remove their method of procreation, etc... but you might not notice the map is overtaken with rats/garlic critters until there's like 10000 of them.

Also really wish cultures wouldn't vanish without civilizations replacing it with something else. If civs lose their culture, sometimes they just go on without one. Doesn't make sense.

[steely111]

On the other hand, I think there can be something fun in leaning into the chaos and frequent destruction. There's something downright brilliant here. It just needs a lot of work. I say that as an amateur critic, not a demanding consumer.

On the other-other hand, a ton of labor has been and continues to be poured in this project. And they might never get it 'exactly' right. The scope is huge. There's a ton of little details. And the fanbase is very vocal, with a lot of youngsters who may not always appreciate that developers are real people. There's a ton of mutually exclusive demands from different sections of the fanbase.

Sometimes it's better to listen, sometimes it's better to tune us out.

As of now, I'd just be happy to with a simple toggle for unlocking all the content at the expense of earning achievements.

[Zielski99]

Originally posted by steely111:

Originally posted by Zielski99:

That's not a feature, it's an issue with the current beta. Civilizations are still supposed to be autonomous, devs just didn't account for all the new content making extinction much easier.
There are now at least 10 different events that are guaranteed to kill all civilizations in the world if they occur even once, and there's almost nothing god powers can do to stop them unless you're willing to pause the game and micromanage units for 3+ hours before resuming.

Fair. There's a reason this is a beta, though. I'm intrigued by the idea of the game being more complication, but I also agree there's some gamebreaking issues that can arise. A big issue is the DNA RNG that can make species with super high birth-rate pop up and just take over.

I find I can try to correct the issue if I completely nerf the problematic subspecies, remove their method of procreation, etc... but you might not notice the map is overtaken with rats/garlic critters until there's like 10000 of them.

Also really wish cultures wouldn't vanish without civilizations replacing it with something else. If civs lose their culture, sometimes they just go on without one. Doesn't make sense.

There's a myriad of serious issues that make the game unenjoyable for people who just want to watch. Just to name a few things that can wipe your world out in an instant:

1. If any war results in empty buildings existing on the map, rats will spawn. All rats are plague carriers. If your world develops any rat population, it becomes completely uninhabitable and all civilizations die out from disease within one decade. For some reason, the ability for units to be born with immunity during plague outbreaks has been removed.

2. Religion is a frequent cause of mass extinction. Orcs, following the tradition of being overpowered, always start with summon meteor in all their religions. They will spam it repeatedly on any kingdom they're at war with, usually wiping it out in less than a year. Elves are also capable of ending the world via religion, as they come packaged with the ability to turn plants into hostile creatures (something only the player was previously able to do). They will spam this ritual when they're at war, and the aggressive plantlife will eventually kill even the kingdom that summoned it.
Angle/demon/undead summoning rituals also tend to end wars by instantly wiping out enemy kingdoms.
TL;DR religion is overpowered and most civs that have access to religious magic will quickly destroy all life if not constantly edited by the player.

3. Hostile wildlife. Predatory animal species seem far stronger than before. The REGULAR FOREST BIOME is now one of the most dangerous to have in a world. Why? Wolves. Wolves spawn there, and if their population spikes, it becomes a murder wave that's capable of wiping out fully developed kingdoms. This also happens with s'mores and garls, but wolves are by far the most common world ender. It's absurd. Even adamantine armor can't stop them.

[steely111]

I have had entire civilizations die out because of wolves. Which doesn't make sense. The plague rats makes sense to me though.

I don't necessarily mind the destruction, but I prefer it to make sense. Disease has destroyed civilizations for millennia. There's never been a real case of a people being wiped out by wolves? That I can think off the top of my head? Maybe. like. isolated villages surrounded by wilderness, but idk.

The idea of religions bring on destruction works for me. However, if a trait is locked behind an achievement, you can't remove it. So sometimes it's literally impossible to nerf apocalyptic cultures/religions even if you're actively engaged in the details.

[Zielski99]

Originally posted by steely111:

I have had entire civilizations die out because of wolves. Which doesn't make sense. The plague rats makes sense to me though.

I don't necessarily mind the destruction, but I prefer it to make sense. Disease has destroyed civilizations for millennia. There's never been a real case of a people being wiped out by wolves? That I can think off the top of my head? Maybe. like. isolated villages surrounded by wilderness, but idk.

The idea of religions bring on destruction works for me. However, if a trait is locked behind an achievement, you can't remove it. So sometimes it's literally impossible to nerf apocalyptic cultures/religions even if you're actively engaged in the details.

It gets worse. Deleting harmful religion elements is often futile, as if you have a large number of towns, people will be making new religions CONSTANTLY, and they will ALWAYS bring back the destructive rituals you're trying to remove.
The civilizations of betalith YEARN for suicide.

[The Gaming Master]

I don't understand the rat thing much but i did have like a 100 rats spawning, AND some were humanoid and sentient. i tried experimenting with the DNA thing and when i hover my mouse over a darkened trait it glows up again, so I'm not sure if i activated it just by moving my mouse over it. Pretty cool though, i do like that i have more involvement in helping races since before the beta all i did was sit and watch. I'll figure out the population thing, it's just weird. I look at the culture and it says that there are zero births, but no one is starving, most people have a lover, but my kingdom's population is rapidly shrinking. Other kingdoms don't got the problem, though. Guess i gotta do some more experiencing with the beta! I actually like finding new races :D

[Eqqsquizitine Buble-Schwinslow]

Originally posted by The Gaming Master:

I don't understand the rat thing much but i did have like a 100 rats spawning, AND some were humanoid and sentient. i tried experimenting with the DNA thing and when i hover my mouse over a darkened trait it glows up again, so I'm not sure if i activated it just by moving my mouse over it. Pretty cool though, i do like that i have more involvement in helping races since before the beta all i did was sit and watch. I'll figure out the population thing, it's just weird. I look at the culture and it says that there are zero births, but no one is starving, most people have a lover, but my kingdom's population is rapidly shrinking. Other kingdoms don't got the problem, though. Guess i gotta do some more experiencing with the beta! I actually like finding new races :D

Some reproductive traits are way, waaaaay better than others.

For instance, I have never seen a creature with the "spore" reproduction trait reproduce, even once. Pretty sure it's just broken.

On the other hand, "evolved" slimes will just keep dividing forever if you don't do something about them.

Some reproductive traits depend on circumstance, some don't seem to work as intended, and some will be active pretty much constantly because they enable reproducing at any time so long as the creature in question isn't actively dying.

[The Gaming Master]

Originally posted by Eqqsquizitine Buble-Schwinslow:

Originally posted by The Gaming Master:

I don't understand the rat thing much but i did have like a 100 rats spawning, AND some were humanoid and sentient. i tried experimenting with the DNA thing and when i hover my mouse over a darkened trait it glows up again, so I'm not sure if i activated it just by moving my mouse over it. Pretty cool though, i do like that i have more involvement in helping races since before the beta all i did was sit and watch. I'll figure out the population thing, it's just weird. I look at the culture and it says that there are zero births, but no one is starving, most people have a lover, but my kingdom's population is rapidly shrinking. Other kingdoms don't got the problem, though. Guess i gotta do some more experiencing with the beta! I actually like finding new races :D

Some reproductive traits are way, waaaaay better than others.

For instance, I have never seen a creature with the "spore" reproduction trait reproduce, even once. Pretty sure it's just broken.

On the other hand, "evolved" slimes will just keep dividing forever if you don't do something about them.

Some reproductive traits depend on circumstance, some don't seem to work as intended, and some will be active pretty much constantly because they enable reproducing at any time so long as the creature in question isn't actively dying.

Oh, thanks! i'll experiment with that!