The clearest feedback from our players was this: finishing the tech tree and beating the game by upgrading infrastructure, all without ever leaving your home base, was too easy. This update ties growth to spreading across the world and fixes many reported issues. Thank you for your feedback!
Balance: Research
- The first tier of each branch keeps its old price; tier 2 now costs 2x and tier 3 costs 4x.
- Every feature you have researched or are researching raises the Data and Crypto cost of later research by 2%. Starting several at once does not make them cheaper.
- The branch holding your origin's starting technologies (your home branch) is 40% cheaper.
- Capacity resources such as CPU and RAM cost the same as before. Cancelled research is refunded at the price you paid.
- Completing the whole tree now costs about 10 times more.
Balance: Infrastructure
- Building levels are now capped by the technology of the country they are in, with +2 extra levels at your host. To grow further, you need to capture new countries.
- New network bonus: each additional country running the same building makes every copy of it 10% stronger, up to +100%.
- Building buttons show the level as "Lv x/max" along with the cap and the network bonus. A building at its cap cannot be upgraded, only repaired; clicking it shows a notification explaining what to do next.
- In older saves, buildings above the new cap keep their levels.
Balance: Other
- Top game speed is now 3x instead of 5x. Games saved at 5x load at 3x.
- The 2D Art and 3D Modeling skills had no effect because nothing used them. They now boost related productions and attacks (e.g. Virtual Influencer Agency, AI Animation Studio, Viral Game Development, Kinetic Strike, Trojan Injection).
- Animation, Video Editing, AI Image Generation, Deepfake and Sound Effects now also boost more of the productions and attacks they relate to.
New Settings
- Pause on decisions: time stops while a window waiting for your decision is open and returns to your previous speed when it closes. On by default; you can turn it off in the Gameplay settings.
- New VSync switch. While VSync is on, the FPS list is disabled.
- The unlimited FPS option was removed; you can now choose 30, 60, 75, 120, 144, 165 or 240 FPS. The default is 60 FPS. Old "unlimited" settings move to 60 FPS.
- ESC now closes the topmost open window; if nothing is open, it opens the settings.
- The game's version number is now shown in the main menu and in the settings.
Bug Fixes
- Returning to the main menu from a game could leave a black screen. Fixed.
- FPS and quality settings could reset on their own. Fixed.
- Mouse wheel scrolling was very slow in some lists. It is now faster.
- Tutorial tasks did not complete while the game was paused. They now do.
- Auto-scrolling in the tutorial now centers its target and no longer overshoots into empty space.
- Auto-production stays off until the tutorial is finished, so it no longer gets in the way.
- The auto-production switch could get stuck halfway and its tooltip flickered. Fixed.