Update 1.3 - The Urban Renewal Update is now available on the main branch for all.
New Features
🐓 Corruption reworked. A nationwide corruption rate is now solely a product of implemented policies, particularly in the Ministries of Finance, Justice, and Foreign Affairs. This rate can be positive or negative, so players can even commit to campaigns of decorruption at the policy level. Corruption does result in reduced output from resource producers, but players no longer need to address this with a facilities inspector. Now, all resource producing buildings have a SPECIAL INSPECTION action which eliminates all corruption at that building at a cost of $20 and 5 Intelligence.
🐓 The Facilities Inspector is now a Journalist. Journalists are optional units that travel from city to city and trigger instant events which are generally positive for the player, in many cases, they yield Minister loyalty and favors. Each city can only be visited once, and cities are marked after they have had a Journalist visit. This also means around 15 new events have been added to the game. Journalists become very expensive in games at higher difficulty levels.
🐓 Building capture mechanics reimagined. Units no longer are consumed when capturing a building. Buildings are now captured when a unit is positioned adjacent to it and are recaptured when there are no adjacent units. The AI has been reworked to "take and hold" buildings of perceived strategic importance.
🐓 Land fertility added. Not all fertile terrain is treated equally, and farms will produce more food on terrain with high fertility and less on more arid land. Tile greenness will signal land fertility, and detailed numbers are visible in the lower right detail bar.
🐓 Tier Two Nature Preserves (Zoos) and Tier Two Markets (Souks). Nature Preserves can be converted into Zoos, which reduce their environmental impact but dramatically improve regional entertainment. Tier Two Markets become Souks and further improve prosperity as well as increasing entertainment and tourist attractiveness.
🐓 Two new policies: "Tax Faith Organizations" in the Ministry of Finance and "Open Reservoirs" in the Ministry of Natural Resources.
🎵 A new music track!
Minor Mechanical Changes
🌍 UNESCO sites produce a small amount of education.
🌍 Tier one nature preserve effects reduced.
🌍 All ground-based units except for mechs can move through tunnels. Units inside a tunnel can't attack and can't be attacked. So you can "hide" your units in tunnels. The AI takes that into account and won't target units that are currently inside tunnels.
🌍 Qarifii stay-decision threshold reduced to 58%.
🌍 Tier 3 drones have increased loyalty.
Quality of Life Features
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 All reds in the UI made far less severe in vibrancy.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 A new UI element in the Demographics menu will show how the people perceive your current political alignment.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 Tax policy tooltips show the exact predicted tax income next month.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 Minor redesign of spaceport UI to better communicate mission options and status.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 Hotkeys can now be configured for all your most important actions, including upgrading roads.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 A warning comes up before you launch those WMDs.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 Right-click map dragging is now an optional setting that defaults to off.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 Construct walls tooltip explains how walls work and reminds players that they don't need them on mountains.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 Players are now notified when rebels destroy a building.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼 Players reminded about the retirement option at month eight and when the budget gets particularly bad.
Bugfixes
⚙️ Crashfix. Rare crash during map generation.
⚙️ Crashfix. Loading a saved game no longer crashes when the mouse hits a faith tile.
⚙️ The tutorial text can no longer be affected by the game settings.
⚙️ Edict discovery visual glitch addressed.
⚙️ Neighbour-themed events don't occur when you're at war with that neighbour.
⚙️ Total restructuring of the nuclear enrichment code.
⚙️ Cleric edict affecting aridness has been scaled back.
There we have it! We hope you're enjoying the game so far and that these updates add even more quality to your experience as the President of Basenji. To access the beta branch, right-click on Rogue State Revolution in your Steam library, select "Properties", then "Betas", and choose Beta Test Branch from the drop-down menu. If all goes well, we expect to push this update to the default branch very soon.
As always you can join other players in discussing the game over at our Discord and we'd be very grateful if you could take the time to leave a review here on Steam.
Good luck out there Your Excellency!