Absurdly Challenging City-Builder Ymir Receives Its Biggest Update Yet

Indie developer Thibaud Michaud has announced his absurdly challenging city-builder game Ymir receives its biggest update yet, drastically changing how you manage and grow your pig people civilizations.

Chief among the updates now that Ymir receives its biggest update yet include new capital buildings, new government and state power policies, an overhaul of governance techs and policies with more complex legitimacy gameplay, mechanics to refine the growth of states and nations, new early-age economic systems, and a complete overhaul of how outposts worked.

The new update includes over nine months of features, exploit-fixes, and bug-fixes by the sole developer of what I honestly believe is the most challenging city-builder I have ever played. Seriously I’ve put hundreds of hours into the game and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Here’s the full patch notes:

reworked “market study” price factor to reduce volatility for very small distributed amounts
replaced oceanic ambiant sounds
bath and theater services both generate +1 culture
Academia service culture increased to +4 culture
school service culture increased to +2 culture
“Capital” is no longer a territorial status but a property of a territory
removed old policies of “governors”, “senate” and “parliament”
added policy requirements in the policy info UI
policies no longer meeting requirements will now auto-disable themselves.
added new territory status of “hamlet”
added new territory status of “village”
added new territory status of “town”
added new “oligarchy suppot” legitimacy factor
rebalanced all legitimacy policies & legitimacy factors
added new Oligarchy dominance calculation based on their wealth compared to average wealth
added “aristocracy” policy, enabling privileges for Oligarchs
removed colonies
lowered loyalty from population to +/- 75 instead of 100.
added “community work” policy, allowing for a new primitive source of ‘income’
implemented a gift economy workforce-based ‘money’
added possibility to cancel ongoing projects
“insolvency” event when negative budget in gift economy: triggers auto abandon of buildings, units, policies & projects
primitive tribe rebellions will now be of anarchic faction instead of barbarian, making it a valid spawn point if they win.
added mechanic of buildings required to enable and maintain policies.
added new building “community hall” required for the “village” territorial status.
added new building “town hall” required for the “town” territorial status.
added new building “city hall” required for the “city” territorial status.
leadership project now triggers the leadership mission instead of knowledge, and it’s the mission that awards the knowledge.
adding mechanic of event choices having possible conditions
adding new event of nomad traders giving shells
increased efficiency of water collectors but increased min range as well
removing civilians from primitive tribe rebellions
primitive tribe rebellions will now be of anarchic faction instead of barbarian, making it a valid spawn point if they win.
lvl 1 fisher efficiency reduced by 50%
more lvl1 buildings can be moved for free (ex woodcutters)
added auto resolution of hunting actions
updated spawning process of NPC units on the worldmap
added prospection action to list discovered natural resources of a territory
added scavenge action to get chances to gather a selected natural resources from wild territories
added huntable fish formations on sea tiles
added a cooldown time for territory exploitation actions (scavenging, wood)
removing unclaim penalty
increased AP cost to claim
increased admin cost of extra claims
claiming now requires an adjascent region-center or at least 2 adjascent territories of the same region and cannot claim diagonally
added new territorial status of “regional territory”
regional territories can build using resources of the regional capital directly
rebalanced authority from stationned troops to be factored by total population of the territory
added mechanic to limit the number of building per category based on territorial status
removed cargo buildings (until re-implementation in future updates)
retrofitted cargo trade routes system into regional transfers for sub territories
reduced farms efficiency gain in level upgrades
reducing efficiency of fields from 1 to 0.65
tech “manure fertilizing” now gives +0.1 base efficiency to fields
removed State power transfers in nations
waste is now applied even to state owned resources when manually loading resources into formations.
added nb of max regions limit (cities) and ‘regional administrations’ tech & policy that unlocks it -> forcing city-states until this tech
added automatic territorial status regression if status conditions are no longer met (ex: village needing community hall)
territories are now evacuated by events with a selected destination instead of spawning “migrant” formations
modified houses building materials to make mudbricks and lvl2 comfort house more relevant.
lowered wealth production of trading service
added memory diagnostic tools for debugging
all buildings can now be moved, for some cost in materials
added new capital building “chief’s hut” required for “leadership” policy
added new capital building “great hall” required for the “court” policy
added new capital building “treasury” required for the “treasury” policy
added new capital building “agora” required for the “democracy” policy
added new capital building “lawmaker’s hall”
added new capital building “state archives”
added new capital building “state department” producing extra State power
added new building “postal relay”
added new policy “tributes” that allows to tax a portion of produced food & cattle, making them state owned.
added new animations for buildings
added mechanic of Nation maintenance cost being influenced by active policies.
added new “alliance marriages” tech & policy allowing for 1 nation subordinate.
added new “diplomatic treaties” tech & policy allowing for unlimited nation subordinates.
added new “tributaries” tech allowing for the “subjugation” action.
added penalty when over the maximum limit of subordinates.
added new “republic” tech & policy
added new “democracy” tech & policy
added new “treasury” policy
added new “court” policy
added new “lawmaking” policy
added new “council” tech & policy
blocking contruction + UI warning for buildings missing a cultural trait (ex Baths )
warriors damage +1 and attack skill +0.2
added max nb of claims limit per territory status
added auto unclaiming of territorial claims that are disconnected from their regional center
damage bonus from height capped at +/- 3
new victory points system now based on reward cycles
added “internal only” trade offers to markets
only the nation leader can have subordinates until the new “vassalage” tech is known
increased range of chronicles
addedfaisafe when full inventory for collecting actions (hunts)
civilians gained in exploration events now received as a separate special “migrant” formation that costs no upkeep.
+0.1 efficiency of woodcutters lvl 1 and 2
increased tree clumps minimum density in spawn territories (ex arid starts)
larger ponds on arid & desertic spawn territories
removed “permanent” treaties: all treaties now have a duration limit after which they can be broken without penalties.
added inertia to nation score variations to prevent reward cycle last minut exploits
rebalanced resources per herd unit
added missing fish unit icon
added cosmetic dogs appearing in cities when tech “domestic dogs” is known
disabled colonies
increased woodcutters to 3 workers and production range
increase lvl1 potter to 1.2 efficiency
fields size increased to 8×8
pastures size increased to 12×12
removed gathering actions for “migrant” formations
olives & grapes pleasure food quality reduced to 0.5
olives distribution rate increased to 60 rations per unit
removed “representative money” policy
culture from services: reducing state power to 0.3. increasing justice to 1. increasing theatre to 3.
modified tech requirements for road types to make it more progressive
currency policy building efficiency reduced to +10% but now provides -15% conflict
increasing fertility of poor ground to 2.5. decreasing fertility of fertile ground to 3.5
added “tribal council” policy, needed for tribal councils
added “code of laws” policy, needed for magistrates
elephants and mammoths are now untradable in markets
reduced wealth of leather to 0.03
production & service buildings are now affected by unprofitability
price arbitrage removed for services
implemented free resources (water & some services like administration or community)
state salaries now available since barter
added “Officials” to the “privileges” policy
added new waste factor of Officials corruption –> Officials wealth level now affects waste rate +/- 25%
included treasury in monetary supply -> wealth per coin is now lowered by total treasury
included state resource sales and exportation profits to the GDP calculation
added decimals to population classes wealth
added UI details about monetary unit value in Population wealth
territory menu: ordering pop classes by wealth and removing sows/piglets/oldpigs. guard tech now available from Leadership
ignored militias for military power & ‘protector of the people’
added increased loyalty penalty from privileges (“privileges tolerance”) to the currency policy
changed first tavern building requirements to unlock earlier
currency and coinage now provide -10% waste effect each
added separate salary setting for Officials in the state salaries policy
added “banditry extortion” policy, trading authority for income.
added “night terror patrols” policy, increasing state troops authority
added “summary executions” policy, increasing authority
added “Nepotism” policy, trading conflict for oligarchy support
reduced gold in adornments by 5
added penalty when revoking currency
added strong inertia (about +/- 1 per eco cycle) to price changes. prices slower to move down than up.
removing “‘importation price” influence in price calculations
mines +2 workers per building
worforce per tree reduced to 0.012 from 0.016
claycamps +1 worker + increased range
mudcamps +1 worker
fixed issue with device ID causing a false positive device ban fixed bug of double taxation incomes on market sales
fixed bug allowing to delete defensive zones in territories not controlled
fixed calculation error in bonuses from cultural skills of annexes
fixed exploit of selling at a loss in markets to avoid waste: wasted income set to local price instead of sold price as a minimum.
fixed marshalls being able to unclaim territories of army owner
fixed bugs in resource state sales calculations
fixed selling state owned goods giving 100% of income to the state despite the 25% merchant share.
fixed issue with lvl3 needs having incorrect satisfaction value allowing for lvl4 needs without actual lvl3 satisfaction
fixed bug causing 0 produced wealth in territories.
fixed bug with population service access having incorrect values (ex Health services)
fixed issue with resource wealth is lower than the sum of cheapest materials
fixed bug with material supply/demand having incorrect value due to other missing materials in industries
fixed bug of war state reset as neutral after server restarts
fixed rounding issue in “importation cost” of the Price calculation with regional transfers
fixed bug with production costs when removing materials from city inventory -> production cost can only lower if resource in being produced
fixed grape fields being too productive
fixed issues in market study in regional transfers
fixed recurrent server & client crashes due to buffers
fixed importations going into stock not being state owned
fixed bug in auto-distribution of goods (gift eco) being higher than max demand
fixed bug with trade income predictions and rounding error of state ownership.
fixed loss of mission events when spawning as a “succession” type
fixed bug with production annexes remaining productive when building is asleep
fixed bug of some new cultural customs missing from the UI
fixed bugs with industry materials in gift economy (autodistribution)
fixed bugs with auto-selection of materials for industries

Ymir has been available for Windows PC (via Steam) on Early Access.

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