Important regarding save games!
We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, old saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience!
In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore.
We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.
About Faction Update (update 08000)
This is the third milestone that we've released during our Early Access journey.
We hope you're enjoying TFC and the improvements we're adding to the game!
If you haven't already done this, please consider leaving a review on Steam. We'd love to know what you think!
3 Bronze Age Civilizations
Whereas TFC so far has only offered one faction to play, that's about to change! We're finally adding 3 Bronze Age civilizations for you to pick between: The Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians.
The Bronze Age civilizations have a unique look for all their buildings and military units. They also cater to different playstyles, with 4 unique technologies and a unique Wonder bonus each.
Select Civilization Mid-Game
In most RTS games, a faction is picked before starting the game. This is not the case in TFC. Instead, every player has an even starting field. To select a Bronze Age civilization, you need to research 3 Early Age technologies. From there on, you can select the civilization from the new Technology Tree at any point!
Assyrians
The Assyrians were military pioneers, known for their organised armies and being the first to develop a system for conscripts. During the Bronze Age, they grew wealthy from setting up trade colonies and controlling important trade routes.
Conscripts
Villagers within any Neutral Settlement influence range gain melee damage, ranged damage, armour, and ranged attack range (does not stack with Militia). Outpost gains hitpoints, vision and influence radius.
Logistics
All military units consume less food.
Organised Warfare
All military units gain melee attack damage. Faster military training speed for every Food Surplus Level.
Trade Colonies
Each claimed neutral settlement Improves all villager resource gathering speeds.
Babylonians
Babylon was the world's largest city during the Bronze Age, renowned for its gardens and as a Holy City. They had to fortify their city since its location was without many natural barriers to keep enemies at bay.
Code of Law
Villager training speed bonus from Food Surplus Level increases. It also reduces the penalty to villager training speed from having a larger population of villagers.
Renowned Gardens
Gives access to unique building: Garden, which can be worked by a villager to provide knowledge and faster villager training speed. The gardener does not require housing and reduces food consumption. Must be placed on fertile soil.
Fortifications
Adds siege armour to all buildings and hitpoints to Watchtower, Wall and Gate.
Defensive Tactics
All military units within the influence range of the Village Center or Palace have extra armour.
Egyptians
The Egyptians were known for their many grand monuments and mythologies, and for their rich agriculture, thanks to inventions like the sickle. They were also keen innovators in areas like cosmetics, hygiene and medicine.
Medicine
Plus health regeneration for any units within the influence radius of the Village Center, Palace, or Temple. Adds hit points to villagers.
Monument Builders
Plus construction and repair speeds for each Food Surplus Level. Unlocks the Temple, a unique building for the Egyptians that can be worked by priests and provides an influence radius.
Sickle
Improves farming speed.
Papyrus Scrolls
Priests generate more Knowledge. Each priest improves farming speed.
Civilization Information Panel
From the Technology Tree, you can click to see information about each Bronze Age civilization.
New Soundtrack
We've added a totally new soundtrack for the Skirmish Mode!
Now, what does this entail?
Every faction has unique music, and multiple tracks each.
Not only that, but the music now reacts to gameplay! As your village develops, so will the music. As you enter a battle, the music will react to this.
General Improvements
Redesigned Technology Tree
We have made space for more technologies and the Bronze Age Civilization Picker. All the technology buttons have been redesigned for this purpose.
New Early Age Technology: Potter's Wheel
This technology is required for constructing Outposts to claim neutral settlements.
Wonder Is More Important
The Wonder is becoming more important for a few reasons:
- Every Wonder Level constructed provides a unique bonus to your village based on the Bronze Age civilization that you pick in the Tech Tree
- Even when Wonder Victory is disabled as a setting, you can still construct the Wonder and all its Wonder Levels to gain the bonuses
- The Wonder is now available to construct in Horde Mode as well (but will not grant Wonder Victory)
Because it's more important, the top-left UI now always shows the Wonder Level you have constructed:
Unique Wonder Bonuses
Assyrians
+10% attack speed for all units per Wonder Level constructed (up to 40%)
Babylonians
+25% villager training speed across your empire per Wonder Level constructed (up to 100%)
Egyptians
+10% farming speed per Wonder Level constructed (up to 40%)
New equipment
We've added new weapon equipment so that weapons don't upgrade multiple units at the same time, which would cause balance issues.
Heavy Axe
The heavy axe equipment upgrades attack damage for Heavy Axeman.
Javelin
The javelin equipment upgrades attack damage for Javelinman.
Light axe and spearhead now only upgrades attack damage for Light Axeman and Spearman.
Range Displayer
You'll now be able to see the Influence Range of buildings like the Village Center and Palace. This is handy to see how far away your villagers can venture before losing their Militia status.
It also works on a building like the Watchtower to see the attack range of garrisoning units.
Improved Descriptions
Almost all descriptions in the game have been updated with glyphs.
Below is an example: these are little icons to help make connections between terminology and UI elements. In this case, this elite unit technology description, it also shows the icons of the unit being upgraded and what it will upgrade into.
Steam Achievements
We've started adding some of these! For now, there are 8 to achieve, one for each of the difficulty levels in Skirmish Mode and Horde Mode.
Skirmish AI
- Skirmish AI will only save up to expensive units that require wood and metal if they have sufficient villagers gathering those resources
- Skirmish AI produces units more efficiently late-game and will make an additional military production building to train more units at once
- Skirmish AI might target any enemy outposts (not just the one closest to its own base)
- Skirmish Skilled and Brutal will now send priests into their Palace to generate additional Knowledge
- Optimised Skirmish AI build orders
- Skirmish AI generates knowledge slower on all difficulty levels except Master (previously Brutal)
- Skirmish AI doesn't see enemy villagers as such a threat anymore so that higher difficulty levels will be more aggressive in trying to destroy the enemy economy before deciding to flee with offensive army
- Generally improved AI defensive behaviour
- Improved how AI deals with Watchtowers in certain situations (so it's harder to "tower rush" it, for example)
Map Generation
- Added threshold to how close to any player tribe that metal deposits can spawn
- Regions that are empty (no tribes spawned there) no longer have extra fertility generated around their potential spawn points
Other improvements
- Early Age military units have new art and animations
- Horde Mode on Beginner and Familiar is slightly easier to better accommodate new players
- Clicking on the base of the building or resource will now always select the controller occupying it, even if there are other static controllers (building or resource) in front of it
- Updated research icons for Archer, Elite Spearman, Swordsman, and Javelinman, so that they represent whether these units are affected by the helmet equipment or not
- Updated art assets for Babylonian Wall, Gate, Watchtower, and Archery Range so it matches historical references a bit better
- The vision range circle for units and buildings has been improved
- The militia indicator no longer changes direction with the parent unit
- Delivery point arrows take 0.25s longer to show over delivery points after hovering over the resource
- When holding over the Wonder title or icon, the tooltip shows a description of the Wonder bonus currently accumulated
- The building production panel now shows missing resources for training the next unit or equipment in the queue
- Minor performance improvements
- Villager indicators always show above buildings in placement mode
- Updated art for priests indicator above Palace
- Renamed hardest difficulty level to Master (from Brutal)
- Knowledge Generation in buffs panel also shows while starving
- Technology tooltip closes after clicking to research a technology
- In unit info panel title will now begin with "Elite" if unit has elite upgrade
- Villagers are easier to select (especially when they build, farm and skin animals)
- Changed double-click unit to select all of the type time to max 0.25s (from 0.4s)
- Added an additional zoom in level
Balance changes
Units
- Villager ranged attack rate is 1.5s (from 1.25s)
- Slinger attack range is 12 (from 18)
- Slinger consumes 1.5 food (from 1)
- Light Axeman consumes 1.5 food (from 1)
- Spearman has 7 move speed (from 6)
- Spearman has 220 hitpoints (from 210)
- Archer costs 45 food and 35 wood to train (from 35 food and 35 wood)
- Swordsman has 280 hitpoints (from 190)
- Battering Ram consumes 2.5 food (from 3)
- Battering Ram has 6 base ranged armor (from 1 standard and 3 ranged)
Buildings
- Palace costs 150 clay and 125 wood to construct (from 150 clay, 150 wood, 75 food)
- Outpost costs 50 clay and 25 wood to construct (from 50 clay, 50 wood, 25 food)
- Wall has 1 base siege armour (from 2)
- Farm has 75 hitpoints (from 150)
Technologies
- Elite Battering Ram adds +2 ranged armor (from 3)
- Elite Archer adds +4 attack ranged (from 8)
- Bronze Smelting costs 4 knowledge points to unlock (from 5)
Other
- Digging clay base speed is 15% slower
- All Wonder stages cost more clay and less of any other resources
- Constructing wonder stages no longer rewards technology points
- Default health regeneration is 66% slower
- Priests generate 0.3 knowledge each (from 0.4)
Bug fixes
- Pressing 'M' no longer desyncs a multiplayer game
- Fixed building hotkeys
- Fixed problems with hotkeys that could happen after playing one session without restarting the application
- Fixed a problem that could happen when selecting a group of units, and all these units were garrisoned in a Watchtower or the Palace
- Fixed problems that would occur when swapping between groups of multiple buildings
- Fixed issues with showing rally point positions when adding and removing buildings from selected buildings using CTRL
- All Leave command button no longer shows after selecting a unit while multiple Watchtowers were selected
- Fixed a problem with Skirmish AI never attacking "insignificant" wall segments
- Fixed a problem that could make horde groups stuck and infinitely circle around a neutral settlement
- Fixed a problem that could lead Skirmish AI defensive forces to follow your units fleeing to the other side of the map
- Fixed a problem that could lead to AI units getting stuck when attacking walls
- Fixed a problem caused by selecting a group by NUM when all units in the group were garrisoning buildings
- Fixed a problem with selecting multiple neutral settlements
- Villagers foraging no longer trigger chop sound once
- Fixed a problem that could break Skirmish AI and cause performance problems if AI unit was hit by a ranged units from a completely walled-in area