Week 4 Update: City population rework!

Previously is was possible to finish game having 0 houses at the end. The only reason to grow population was to get outposts to expand your territory. This update introduces population as modifier for production-related buildings. Now each building of this type require workers to operate at 100%, and if there is not enough workers, building will reduce it’s output up to 100% if there is no available workers. This mechanics is making game more challenging and interesting, because now you have one more indicator to control. To get better control over population, you have to build employment center. This building is unlocked by “Logictic” research at stone age, together with logistic center. Note that this is preliminary change for population, as this feature will get improvements and tweaks over time. And, as always, new game is required, old saves will not work properly.

Changelog:

Gameplay:

• Reworked population. Now each producing building require workers to operate. If there is not enough workers, buildings will gradually stop producing resources.
• Added employment center. This building, starting from stone age, allows you to control distibution of the workers between buildings and amount of working buildings.
• Changed “Logictic center” research to “Logistic” (now opens both logistic center and employment center).
• Fixed not all upgraded buildings can be unlocked (now unlocked by respective “<Epoch> buildings” research).

UI:

• Added popups for produced items in city hall building menu.
• Added required amount of workers display for buildings.
• Fixed missing translations for stone and brick barns.
• Added separate icon for brick blacksmith unlock to “Brick buildings” research.

Internal changes:

• Added 20+ tests to cover production algorithm taking into account population rates and production speed.

Known bugs:

• [PC] Sometimes text might be truncated in borderless/fullscreen mode. This is engine-related bug (https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/81624). Once it will be fixed in engine, it will be automatically fixed in game.
• In rare cases removed objects can block buildings. Quit to menu and loading back frees place. I’m searching for a way to consistently reproduce this issue.
• In some extremely rare cases game can permanently freeze when entering any building. Use autosave feature (enabled by default) to avoid loss of huge amount of progress. I’m searching for a way to consistently reproduce this issue.