Hi,

as I mentioned in monday's regular update, I am releasing a minor update for Experimental Beta branch. It contains a number of important changes - mainly based on what has been found during last 3 weeks of beta.

We now have exactly two weeks until go-live to stabilize it. Any defects you find, please be so kind a let me know about them either here on Community forum, email me on microcivilization@gmail.com or join our Discord https://discord.gg/DrMN7YQG

1.0.4 minor update

Crises & Combat

• Updated Crisis health calculation. Crises should be significantly easier to kill early on on all difficulties. Late game is a little closer to the previous version (but also noticeably easier)
• You can now trigger Crisis' attacks prematurely if the attack is Shielded (by Fort or any other block rate ability) by clicking the Attack symbol itself. This makes Fort-based builds faster to use in combat.
• Fort units are now more expensive.
• Fort unit block percentages flattened. Higher values on early forts and lower on later forts.
• Fort unit base damage rate reduced to 10% from 15% effectively reducing damage by a third.
• Defensive Perk now reduces fort block efficiency but grants more fort damage than before (compensating the previous nerf).
• Hard to block crisis perk was merged into Massive perk to simplify things. As a result it is now also present on more crises making Forts build less universal.
• Block inefficiency on Massive Perk scales down to -95% on high level (around level 100) making more realistic effect to fort usability in late game compared to the original -75%
• Fast was merged with Furious (obviously) with similar consequences as above.
• Both Massive and Furious perks effects now scale with Crisis levels - their negative percentages grow up to a certain threshold on about level 100. Their positive feats (double damage from X & Y) remains unchanged through levels though.
• Because of perk merge both Massive and Furious now spawn on Elite (and rarer) crises (where only the Fast and Hard to block originally spawned).
• Risk reduction reward dropped from Crises increased to -25% from -5% to all risks, but duration reduced to 2 minutes from 5.
• Heavy crisis attacks should no longer generate in first 30% of the attacks.

Secrets & Research

• Reduced Tier 1 and 2 research costs
• Secret technology Cost scaling increased (polynome degree increased). Should now be far more costly to reach over 200 secrets.
• Ravens now only grant up to -85% cost reduction to Secret tech instead of -95% on level 10.
• Secrets only grant 2% research bonus per secret (flat research bonus increased to +10 from +5 per secret to compensate Tier 3 research performance)

Badges

• Fixed Classicist and Lawmaker badges - they now correctly grant new effects Hero drop rate and Risk reduction. (Quest speed and Research power was already moved to separate Unique-Crisis Badges)
• With heavy heart I had to nerf Gods of Old and Ambition badges and replace recharge reduction with a non-economical boosts (reduction to wonder costs and Gold lotuses).
• Fixed description on Future era nemesis Badges (only the Idea Pathogen's Badge removes need to accomplish White lotus pledges to make nemeses mortal)

Hero/Idol abilities

• Autocracy ability can now auto-click food button if needed. It will always use the last-pressed half of the yin-yang button.
• Pigs now grant Max Click Heat along with vagabond boost.
• Heroes no longer drop in Scenarios.
• Some hero traits now only drop from certain levels (most start to spawn at level 7+)
• Reduced some Leadership and Economy abilities scaling from Ability power multipliers (bonuses affect their values less)

Unique Hero abilities redesign

• Saladin now only kills 1 population per 10 damage instead of 1 per 1.
• Tokugawa now boosts Barracks recharge by unspent workshop charges (1% per charge) instead of by inactive workshops
• Moses now automatically generates housing for half of gained vagabonds instantly
• Adam smith now boosting All caps (including units) by +100% instead of workshops-only by +200%.
• Marduk's negative trait reduces Research and Autonomy production by 50% instead of causing Brittle effect (double attacks received). His positive ability remained unchanged
• Gengis now affected by Red and Green heroes instead of only Green
• Shaka's ability now gives a flat Block chance instead of conditional death reduction
• Hammurabi now granting Click heat cooling per festival instead of 2% risk reduction
• Nyx workshop recharge nerfed to +100% (which due to incorrect label was previous version's actual value anyway)
• Pasteur's ability now nullifies Vagabond disease risk instead of blocking crises.
• Elizabeth's hero drop bonus increased to +50%
• Gandhi now increasing ability power (but also costs)
• Added new Augustus hero who reduces costs of festivals.
• Changed various non-unique traits on Unique heroes for slightly better synergy

Map & Perks

• Silk now grants instant 50 Secrets instead of trade route costs bonus
• Chocolate's festival now grants +5 workers per instance (also its Food price was matched with other festivals). It will still override your pre-existing festival ability (though it should benefit from festival-enhancing abilities from heroes and techs)
• Disaster emergency quest no longer requires workers
• Disaster Emergency will be executed automatically by Autoexplore ability (if Extermination toggle is active).
• Quests can now be hurried from main screen by shift-clicking the quest-in-progress button (when you have money)
• Diplomacy quest cost and duration is no longer affected by distance. The cost and duration are slightly rising with Tech Era but they are generally faster and cheaper.
• Arrogant perk only increases crises by 3 levels

Wonders/Workshops

• Granary sustainment bonus scaling reduced on higher tech eras (so that magnified granary doesnt have so massive effect)
• Oracle now boosting +75% autonomy instead of +100%
• Statue of zeus gives +1 per 500 metal instead of 250 (to be closer to conversion rate from market/colossus)
• Quarry and Blacksmith workshop now needs wood to construct the first level instead of stone
• Great lighthouse no longer costing 0.05 workers (a 4 year old bug)

Final Scenario

• You can now play the Final Scenario and finish the main 'story'.

Bug-fixes

• Fixed Cows (again) to correctly reduce Heavy unit cap as stated and also reduce correct number of heavy units per worker.
• Crisis fight estimation on map should now correctly take the crisis rarity into calculation
• Fixed Massive and Furious damage multipliers (they didnt work)
• Loading a save from 0.12 where barricade boost was active should no longer crash the game.
• Meta powers are correctly used when having Honor pledge
• Locusts should now have correct starting level. Starting levels of other nemeses were also re-adjusted.
• Added a hard minimum to all multipliers (0.01%) to prevent value conversion issues and crashes.
• Bolster no longer applies to each Fort/barricade and is fired only once.
• Fixed a bug causing a crisis attack to succeed if it kills a crisis via fort damage regardless of block roll.
• Fixed Theater random roll to make all Cultures drop with equal odds.
• Civilization of Sunset should now correctly Autoexplore and Autoexterminate with militia
• Civilizations of Sunset and Crescent should no longer have their forbidden units showing on Locks or Dilemma options.
• Qin Shi 's ability fixed (didnt work at all!)
• A few small code optimizations.