Dev Diary 64 - Rain and Knowledge

This was an important time for Colossal Citadels: multiple playtest sessions revealed some great opportunities to streamline gameplay and improve the learning curve. Besides that, there were a bunch of content additions!

Minimalism

Like with some other mechanics previously, I decided to delay bombarding players with the explanation of Elemental Gems and Understandings mechanics until later turns. This adjustment makes the beginning of the game much more simple and minimalistic than before, while preserving depth. Previously, the abundance of Understandings and Gems at the start diminished their value significantly. Testers were excited only about the first 1-2 purchases, and then proceeded doing something else. That was an unreasonable design decision (even though you were able to “set up” your starting settlement). Now, tutorial appears only when you acquire the resource first, which might happen at turn 3 or 4 or 5.

Now, first-time players experience a much smoother learning curve, with successful learning outcomes considerably higher than a year ago — let alone two years ago, haha! On the latest playtest it was 100 percent players, but I think we just were lucky.

I also try to prioritize players by the target audience, looking for hardcore strategy/roguelite/4x players.

Knowledge

To remind you, in Colossal Citadels, Knowledge is an equivalent of science/research in 4X games, but you buy technologies (Understandings) after you have enough knowledge, not before.

You can get Knowledge by leveling up your creatures, exploring the world, doing productions from laboratory category, and several other ways. I just added another, simple way to acquire knowledge:

Knowledge now can be produced as a resource, using writing materials, which are now resources too. I debated if there should be this very specific extra step between wood and knowledge, but I already have books and spellbooks, so they fit!

Elemental Gems

Now the early game is more challenging for an experienced player too, as they can no longer acquire powerful spells with starting Elemental Gems - now you get 0 instead of 6! To mitigate that, I reworked several aspects (like passive effect generation, creeps, and world elements) and introduced new ways to obtain gems in the world. For instance, players can now crack open Spell Monoliths to acquire gems instead of getting the spells.

Before extracting the gem:

After:

Also, now all creep packs in the world, including the invaders, have guaranteed elemental gem drops. Unfortunately, I can’t explain this narratively yet (why would a deer have a gem?), but gameplay-wise, it works so well! Do you have any ideas for the lore here? :D

As a result of this, factions don’t have a domain selection available anymore - you were able to slightly tweak gameplay bonuses AND obtain specific gems.

There surely will be a faction that can do this - it’s work in progress. But the domain selection that hinted at some of the mechanics for the new players was quite good - so it might come back without the gems.

Rain

Another thing that was implemented is an event/world state system to support world conditions such as Rain. After all, you really have a roguelite without rain? 1 2 In this game, the rain will affect some elemental defenses, food production, and a few other small things. There are plans for more cool world events such as Blood Moon, Eclipse, Snow, and so on, as well as some events triggered by player.

Changelog

After (and before) each big playtest at Game Habitat, there was a tremendous amount of bug fixes - I don’t list them in these changelogs, but if I did, this it would be four times longer:

• Rain visuals and status effects, affecting different aspects of gameplay
• Rain event with notification on timeline
• Rain-related understandings
• Starting knowledge is now 1 instead of 10 - initially you can buy only 1 Understanding instead of 3
• Starting cost of acquiring an Understanding is 1 instead of 3
• Monument structures (different variations) for gaining knowledge and Understandings
• Some of random-rolling choices (such as gaining random understanding) are delayed to the next turn to prevent undo- and save-exploiting
• Moved around some indicators around ui
  • Food and resource numbers now are on top left instead of bottom left
  • Worker count is now on the bottom left. Added free worker count
• Resources global summary window, it can be opened when you click the resources number
• Knowledge production
• Writing materials resources and related productions
• Wandering neutral creeps won’t randomly attack player anymore
• Wandering neutral creeps AND invaders now drop elemental gems
• Simplified spell monolith - they select a creature to enchant automatically. Added an option to extract an elemental gem from them, turning them into just rocks.
• Balancing creeps next to player starting positions, now they can’t be too strong
• Now starting position can’t have any other structures other than exactly one tree
• New tutorial messages, improved tutorials a lot
• Removed starting elemental gems. Now they are introduced gradually as you find them
• WIP faction that has starting elemental gems
• Improvements to random generation of ores, trees, items, and passive abilities
• Fixed some weird world generation cases (such as edges of objects spawning in water)
• Now it’s possible to right click all creatures to see what you can do with them (for example, “Move in and attack” for enemies)
• Allied units are now highlighted with green when in battle
• Using morale/spirit doesn’t affect morale/spirit of allied creatures around anymore (experimental)
• Big balancing changes
• Fixed over nine million bugs
• New bugs
• Slightly updated steam page description