Beady eyed readers may have noticed that the earliest start age is now "0" for a new age prior to the Prehistoric age. Ice age now represents the absolute earliest of human development, and the basis for everything that comes after it. In addition to this the Prehistoric age has been renamed to "Paleolithic Age", and I have intentions to include a few more options of research too to flesh these two ages out a little more.
With the Ice age, this brings two (at least to me!) obvious exclusions currently in the game. First, migration. In reality, before we had settlements we had wondering clusters of people. To this effect there is now a new research to open up migration for your starting town. The location it moves to is currently random, but may add more control over this later. This feature is removed when you learn Permanent Settlement, so its an early game limited feature to try and get a better starting position.
A picture of a nation with migration researched. The option is in the resources panel above the building display. The button will likely get repurposed for other features for post-permanent settlement gameplay - just not sure what yet!
The other thing that is missing is the lack of cold climate tiles in the game. This too has now been included! The current options essentially allow for "polar cap" style terrain but I will try and add some options so it only coats one side of the map before release. In addition to this there is some new presets in the map generation, Tundra (cold focus), Alpine (Cold and Mountainous) and Steppe (Flat and grassy).
An example of a Tundra landscape, note the distinct lack of food supply outside a couple of squares and the sea - Taiga tiles (cold woodland) also appear significantly less around the caps.
In addition to this, I've included a new feature: Global Warming or Cooling. Taking full advantage of the new tiles, and recognising that the existing tiles can also fit quite neatly into categories I've included temperature as a tile variable. These are generated at the start of the game, and (subscriber only feature right now) you can choose to either cool or warm the planet gradually in the game settings. The next extension to this will be phases of cooling and warming which I will make subs only and open the current feature to all users. A desert tile for example will become grass, and eventually tundra in a cooling scenario.
Here is the current game option screen with the inclusion of the global warming/cooling slider bar, and an indication of how many turns the temperature goes down. Each tile generates a Celsius value and once it hits a certain number, tiles will convert to their relevant new biome. Mountains stay the same in every situation.
This is most of the features I wanted to highlight before I release, this version prioritises extending backwards to the ice age, and features relevant to it. But another thing I want to do is increase Wargames2 appeal for single player and diversity given it has been 5 years since the last update. Currently, the game support 3 types of "ai". The first doesn't do anything and just acts as a free city to capture. The second seeks to defend itself by having an armed force. The final one also goes to the trouble of settling land to increase its territory, but doesn't do so militarily.
There is ultimately three more layers I think I need before I release, one will have to go to some trouble to attack other players (a military bot essentially), another is to actively research new technology and use it appropriately (use new units for example), and finally, one that does all of this but also actively uses units like traders and workers to improve its resource generation. This is going to be quite complex, because my technology tree is always in free flow, and I haven't taken into account the computer having to work out these routes yet.
Once these are done, I think I'm due for a release!
One day soon, perhaps.
