Hello, Builders!
Today we come to you with an important post. This is because we want to summarize the most important changes you will see in the upcoming Playtests! We know you can't wait, so be sure to read on and sign up for the playtests. Be sure to share your thoughts!
We also invite you to follow us on our other social media: https://bit.ly/m/buildersofegypt
Economy Balans
Trading and Stockpiles
You pointed out the marginal chances of coming out ahead financially, even realizing the minimum requirements of the mission. There were several reasons why this was happening. First of all, proper rebalancing is a long process that requires a fair amount of effort. And such a process is best done if one has already changed nothing or almost nothing in the game in a fundamental way.
In the case of Builders of Egypt, the balancing was done at the early Prologue build stage, and then as a result of dynamic changes in the behavior of the Trader and even minor adjustments in the behavior of buildings and Stockpile workers, the balance was upset to such an extent that completing the mission was very difficult. In addition, launching and fixing the tax system, under which payments to employees enter, did not improve this situation either.
As you can easily guess this has all been fixed in the new version and in the upcoming playtests you will have the opportunity to test this. The number of goods that a neighboring city can buy has been significantly increased. The Trader himself moves much faster to compensate for the distance he has to cover on the map and exchanges his goods more efficiently. Stockpile workers also move much faster, by almost 80% (while still maintaining a realistic appearance) which dramatically improves overall production efficiency. In Stockpile itself, the order queuing system for goods has been improved, and as a result, everything runs more smoothly.
Building - monuments and pyramids
The construction of the Monument, while impressive, may have bored you with its slowness of progress. Here, two major changes have been made - the Stockpile has priority for supplying the Monument with the goods it requires. That is, if you build a Stockpile that handles only the goods required to build the Monument then the shipping and transport of these goods is lightning fast.
The second change relates to pyramids, as they are mainly where the second problem occurs. You know those ramps that wind around the pyramid to the top? Unfortunately, while this is somehow realistic and looks cool, measuring the time with a stopwatch, it turns out that it takes an eternity to deliver one piece of goods from the Stockpile to the very top of the monument under construction. And, after all, such a worker still has to return before taking another order. In view of this, we proposed a compromise - an additional feature was introduced in the options to be able to choose the behavior of Stockpile workers: a realistic mode, i.e. the same as before, and a simplified mode, i.e. workers leave goods at the base of the Monument in the same way as they leave them at all other production buildings. The difference in the time it takes for the pyramid to be built is downright incomparable, but it was hard to come up with any other solution here besides taking shortcuts which would be to reduce the number of construction stages or the number of goods the player has to deliver. After all, it's a pyramid! It's the result of years of hard work by tens of thousands of skilled workers!
Missions
As you already know, there will be 5 missions available to you during playtesting. There is no need to dwell on them again, but the most significant change concerns the objectives to be fulfilled, the resources on the map, the introduction of animals (which were also there before but were decorative at the time), a change in the list of buildings, a change in the number of neighboring cities, etc. That is, a lot of small qualitative changes that will strongly diversify the gameplay and make the world more lively. All this makes the game experience even better!
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Better start for new players
We are committed to making Builders of Egypt a game where there is something for everyone - both veterans of the genre and novice players who are just taking their first steps in city-builders.
Example of the first step of Mission 02
So another big change is the way the player is introduced to the game. While the tutorial in mission 01 is fine and has been slightly corrected with the addition of two buildings, without which the player will not meet the objectives of the mission, the tutorial also appears in later missions but in a different form. We call it such a semi-tutorial because, although strict restrictions are imposed, but the player can build freely in the designated area, which is heavily scripted and checks the correctness of the construction of the resulting city. In this way we want to let the player decide for himself what and where he wants to build, but at the same time provide him with all the necessary information for this. It is important to realize that our game is not simple in general and there are quite specific rules that the player has not encountered anywhere before, such as the need to build a road to the "gate" on the board for the Trader to want to come (the lack of this road is additionally informed to the player in a scripted hint), the need to build the Stockpile as a hub for reloading all goods, what function the bazaar has, and so on. For experienced players with such games, all these rules are obvious, while for anyone less experienced quite a lot of information they need to possess before they start playing seriously. That's why these changes are so important - so that everyone can get the best out of the game!
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Bug fixes
Of course, in addition to the aforementioned changes, there have also been plenty of fixes for smaller and larger bugs that you may have encountered during gameplay. We try to eliminate as many of them as possible, but the process of creating the game is so complicated that it is impossible to remove ALL bugs at this stage. We believe that during the playtests you will help us catch new bugs that we can remove and provide you with a stress-free gameplay :)
As always, we thank you for being with us and supporting us. We are constantly working on the development of the game, so you will not be disappointed!
