Balance - Sapper has 1 base ranged armor (from 3) Other - Fixed that saving a game with a Level IV Wonder (that didn't win the game) would crash the game on loading this save - Minor performance improvements to pathfinding - Fixed a rare potential case for desyncs in multiplayer - Removed 1.0 released panel from main menu

[ 2025-01-26 23:55:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed error that could happen when trying to place Gate on Wall in fog of war - Fixed that the building placement tool showed that Gate could mistakenly be constructed on top of trees and other objects when attempting to place part of Gate on a wall segment - Fixed two rare causes that could cause desyncs in multiplayer - Minor performance improvement

[ 2024-11-04 02:36:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update attempts to fix the most common feedback from the 1.0 release, by implementing some general improvements, balance changes and bug fixes. Hope you enjoy it! - Team Wield Interactive

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it and add new features; thus, old saves are not compatible with this version. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

Change log 1.1000

General

• AIs are much better at bouncing back from starvation
• Added the option to enable or disable Wonder Victory for offline Skirmish games
• Improved the tutorial milestone that requires you to complete construction of Village Center so that it's less confusing

General balance

• When in starvation mode all units consume 50% less food
• Swordsman has 0 base ranged armor (from 2)
• All civilizations' War Chariots have 25 more base hitpoints
• All wonder stages require 25% more man power to construct

Assyrians

• Organised Warfare now also grants +1 ranged damage to military units

Babylonians

• Babylonian Defensive Tactics provides Spearman with an additional +1 ranged armor
• Babylonian Garden reduces food consumption by 4 (from 3)
• Babylonian Fortifications reduces siege damage taken by 50% (from 40%)
• Fixed that Babylonian Defensive Tactics didn't provide units with +1 ranged armor like description said

Egyptians

• Temple costs 75 clay and 75 wood (from 125 clay and 75 wood)
• Temple requires 60 man power to construct (from 100)

Bug fixes

• Fixed crash that could happen in Hordes and Campaign mission 2 and 8 when a nomad wave spawned
• Fixed a case where nomad wave never spawn in Hordes and Campaign mission 2 and 8
• Fixed causes for multiplayer desyncs
• Mini map works on ultra wide screens
• Fixed replays not always loading correct map type
• Fixed cases where you couldn't scroll to the end of the map horizontally on certain zoom levels and resolutions
• Showing correctly in tooltips that the amount of food consumed happens in 15 second intervals and not 10
• Fixed macOS player freezing when re-focusing or changing resolution
• Fixed health bar positions for battering ram and war chariots
• Fixed typo in Hordes description tooltip
• Replay files folder path corrected

[ 2024-08-15 04:19:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today, we are just reverting one of the changes we patched yesterday. General - Our best players want a real challenge and so in Campaign on Master difficulty level the NPCs will primarily target you again

[ 2024-06-18 23:31:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! Today we are addressing some difficulty level feedback. General - In mission 3 the two enemy tribes are no longer allies and will attack each other as well (this applies to all difficulty levels) - Skilled AIs will no longer only attack you if you do well later in the game in both Campaign and Skirmish - Master AIs will no longer always attack you in both Campaign and Skirmish until later in the game and only if you are doing well

[ 2024-06-18 05:35:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

General - Technology Tree pauses game in Campaign missions and single player Hordes - AIs are less likely to starve when transitioning from foraging to farming as they prioritise making farms around Village Center more than other granaries to begin with - Big groups of ranged units are less likely to get stuck behind each other when trying to reach the same target to attack - You can assign hotkey for buildings to the same as for placing a Village Center in customisable hotkeys settings - Changed full screen mode for macOS Bug fixes - Can no longer put Battering Ram and War Chariot in Watchtower - Hotkeys don't trigger while game over panel is open - Hotkeys don't trigger while saving replay panel is open - Open Replays folder is hidden like intended on macOS and Linux versions - Fixed some typos in Campaign dialogues - Reloaded Campaign missions play music - Reloaded Campaign missions don't cause error upon opening menu - Can no longer keep researching after game has ended

[ 2024-06-17 06:05:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Great Kings and Queens of the Bronze Age! We are thrilled to announce that TFC: The Fertile Crescent has officially reached its 1.0 release! After months of dedicated development, rigorous testing and invaluable feedback from our amazing community, we are excited to present the most polished and feature-rich version of our real-time strategy game yet. Watch the Release Trailer: [previewyoutube=9xTerpBjG2Q;full][/previewyoutube]

Whats New in 1.0?

• Campaign Mode: Dive into 10 missions that will test your strategic skills across diverse challenges.
• Overhauled Artwork: Experience revamped pixel art graphics, showcasing a fresh new look for environments, as well as an enhanced user interface.
• New Map Types: Explore new terrains with our newly added map types, each offering unique strategic challenges. Expect map obstacles, rivers, and fish to add depth and variety to your gameplay.
• War Chariot Units: Unleash the power of the war chariot, a formidable new unit that can turn the tide of battle with its speed and strength. The war chariot has different stats for each Bronze Age civilization.
• New Technologies: Enhance your civilization with cutting-edge Bronze Age technologies: Master of Siege Warfare for the Assyrians, Improved Watchtower for the Babylonians and Hieroglyphic Networks for the Egyptians.
• Enhanced Game Mechanics: Prepare for deeper strategic gameplay with improved starvation mechanics. Keep an eye on the food trend indicator to anticipate shortages and plan your resources accordingly. Plus, enjoy a more visible counter system. These improvements and others offer a more immersive and rewarding gaming experience for seasoned tacticians and newcomers alike.
• Improved AI: Battle it out against a smarter opponent with our improved skirmish AI in Skirmish and Hordes modes.
• Quality of Life Improvements: Enjoy a smoother and more intuitive gameplay experience with a host of new quality of life (QoL) enhancements.
• Replays: Analyze your strategies and improve your skills with the new replay feature, allowing you to review past battles in detail.
• Balance Changes: Experience improved gameplay dynamics with carefully implemented balance changes, ensuring fair and engaging battles.
• Bug Fixes: Weve fixed all known bugs to ensure a more stable and enjoyable gaming experience.

Change Log 1.0

The full change log for 1.0 is too long to post here or in the Steam Discussions, so click this link to read it.

Community Highlights

Your feedback has been instrumental in shaping TFC: The Fertile Crescent into what it is today. Weve integrated numerous community suggestions and bug reports into this release. Thank you for your unwavering support and contributions! See you on the battlefields of The Fertile Crescent! - The Wield Interactive Team

[ 2024-06-13 11:18:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's been over 7 years since we started development on TFC: The Fertile Crescent! However, in actuality, this is a game that has been 20 years in the making. Andr has been dreaming of making an RTS for the majority of his life, and it has all resulted in this moment, which we are excited to share with you all! After many false starts and attempts at making an RTS that brings new ideas to the RTS space, 7 years ago a set of different mechanics and systems finally presented themselves to Andr. Soon after, I met Andr and was super excited to jump on to help out in any way I could. As a big, but very different type of RTS fan, it was a dream to contribute to TFC. With Andr's sense of numbers, balancing and symbiotic game mechanics, and my more casual approach to RTS games, we truly believe that we have made something special. TFC brings new ideas to a genre that in recent years has seen a bit of a revival, and we are exalted to be part of what is hopefully a long and healthy wave of quality RTS games for anyone who wants to check them out! Come join us on the stream, where we'll talk more in-depth about the trials and tribulations of the development of TFC, what we have learned, what we wish we had learned sooner and anything else you might think to ask us! Cheers! Andr and Anders

[ 2024-06-13 08:35:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

The 1.0 release date is fast approaching! If you didn't get to watch the 1.0 Release Announcement Trailer, watch it here: [previewyoutube=W3C16_qRD-8;full][/previewyoutube] Key Features of TFC 1.0:

• Strategic Options From The Beginning: Inspired by the giants of the genre, TFC looks to expand on the mechanics of classic RTS in interesting ways, giving you several strategies to explore from the very beginning of a match.
• Authentic Bronze Age Setting: Settle your people in the Ancient Age, where everyone starts on equal footing. As you advance, a pivotal moment awaits: choose one of three legendary Bronze Age civilizations to lead your people to glory!
• Expanded Content: Experience the new Campaign Mode, as well as new units, technologies, map types and more, offering hours of additional gameplay.
• Improved Mechanics and UI: Enjoy a smoother and more intuitive gaming experience with updated interfaces and refined game mechanics.
• Community-Driven Enhancements: Benefit from numerous tweaks and improvements based on player feedback during the Early Access phase.

To get a notification once the game releases. wishlist now!

[ 2024-06-10 04:27:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear TFC Community, We are thrilled to announce that the highly anticipated 1.0 version of TFC: The Fertile Crescent will be launching on 13.06.24! To mark this occasion, we're releasing an announcement trailer that tells the story of the culmination of our seven-year journey, leading to the completion of our dream RTS game and its upcoming 1.0 release: [previewyoutube=W3C16_qRD-8;full][/previewyoutube] With the release of 1.0, we're introducing exciting new features that will take your TFC experience to the next level:

• Expanded Content: Experience the new Campaign Mode, as well as new units, technologies, map types and more, offering hours of additional gameplay.
• Improved Mechanics and UI: Enjoy a smoother and more intuitive gaming experience with updated interfaces and refined game mechanics.
• Community-Driven Enhancements: Benefit from numerous tweaks and improvements based on player feedback during the Early Access phase.

We want to express our gratitude for your support and enthusiasm. Your feedback has been invaluable in shaping TFC into the game it is today, and we can't wait for you to experience everything we have in store. Thank you for being part of this incredible journey with us. We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield! - Wield Interactive Team

[ 2024-06-04 02:09:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there! In this post, we're posting our Discord Developer Updates from Mars 2024.

Mission dialogue

Our very first sneak peek into the upcoming Campaign mode! This is Ninsun, a mysterious priestess, that will provide guidance.
Thanks to our pixel artist, Campaign missions will have dialogue, and various characters will play their part.

Solving technical issues

On to something more technical! We're currently working on fixing some performance issues. For battering rams, there are some edge cases in the public build that can severely drag down performance. As an example: in the image attached, a nomad battering ram is trying to find a path to a wall target, and the target node is indicated by the blue circle. The green nodes are valid pathfinding nodes (they have enough space for battering ram to move through). Since the battering ram can't get all the way to the target wall node, indicated by the blocked path by an X, the pathfinding looks through the entire map without any success. Just one of many examples of the "behind the curtain" stuff we're sorting out that isn't neccessarily visible to users (only when it fails) but that will make the overall game experience better.

Snaphot!

Just a quick post showing an idyllic spot in The Fertile Crescent.
That's it for now! Stay tuned for more updates on TFC: The Fertile Crescent.

[ 2024-03-26 04:56:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there! In this post, we'll update you on our current whereabouts. We have some exciting news to share!

Screen Queensland Support

For starters, we are now supported by the Queensland Government through Screen Queenslands Games Grant program. We're very excited about this support!

Expanding Team

We've hired a professional pixel artist to help us get TFC to v1.0. The artist is an experienced pixel artist who was part of the team behind the amazing and successful game Unpacking.

Discord Developer Updates

Recently, we started sharing snippets of improvements coming to the game for our Discord community more regularly. However, we know that not everyone prefer to use Discord, and so we're sharing it with our Steam community as well here.

Arabian Ostrich

2024 kicks off by showing some more hints at what's coming. The Arabian ostrich was an important subspecies of ostrich in The Fertile Crescent. Sadly, it went extinct around 1966, but will be featured in the game.

Buldings seperate into Civilian and Military buildings

We're also busy implementing general improvements! As an example, we've ran out of space for building icons in the construction menu. Therefore, we have split construction into two categories: civilian and military buildings, and drawn some new art for these.

Rivers

"For seven years, my feet have wandered, traversing endless plains, with only flat horizons stretching before me. Land, both fruitful and arid, offered the sole variety. The vast openness seemed unending!!! Yet today, a revelation unfolded. My eyes beheld something unfamiliar. A glistening, flowing substance. 'Is it a river? And a path to traverse it?' I marveled. Have I truly arrived? Will there dawn a day when walls need not encircle our entire village for protection?"

Food Trend Indicator

The food trend indicator is making a comback!
In the past, TFC used to show if your food gathering was higher than your food consumption in general. This way (in theory) you would get a better idea if the amount of foragers and farmers were enough to sustain your population or not. It hasn't been easy to provide a good representative for this, since it keeps varying based on villager walking distances, etc. The previous solution didn't work as well as we wanted, and so we ended up abandonining it altogether. Since then, we've given it another attempt to implement this, and we're much happier with the new solution! There will be up to 3 arrows up or down based on the speed of increasing/depleting your food stock.

Visible Counter System

We'll talk more about new modes and features at some point, but for now, here's another "general improvement" that we've been working on.
There's a few things to notice here! For one, we've seperated melee armor and ranged armor in this panel, whereas now this panel just shows if a unit generally has good or bad armor. The reason for this change in 1.0 is that the disctinction between melee and ranged armor will become more important. Another is that you'll get hints about what units it generally counters and gets countered by. These are not VERY hard counters like in comparable RTS games, but they are a good guide, and there will be further balance changes to make these counters slightly more profound. The last thing to notice is the ?. What's this unannounced unit that counters slingers? Stay tuned!

Improved AI

Another area that will see some improvements is the AI. As an example, AIs on higher difficulty levels will now make additional granaries when farms are not close to any delivery points. This will boost their late game economy and make them a more formidable foe.
That's it for now! Of course, these snippets are just a small taste of everything that is to come. Stay tuned for more updates on TFC: The Fertile Crescent!

[ 2024-02-15 02:49:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, old saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

About General Improvements Update 09000

This update mainly addresses concerns from the last tournament. We're giving the game over screen an overhaul, significantly improving performance (which hasn't actually been a major concern, but we did it anyways!), and added some general improvements, a healthy chunk of balance changes, as well as some minor bug fixes. This will be the last substantial update during Early Access. Yes, you read that correctly. The next significant update will be 1.0. We hope you're enjoying TFC and our improvements to the game. If you haven't already done this, please consider leaving a review on Steam. We'd love to know what you think!

Working on 1.0

We'll tell you more later, so stay tuned! In the meantime, here's a few sneak peaks that we also posted on our Discord channel.
TFC has always only offered one map type, "Open Terrain", but that's not gonna be the case anymore in 1.0.
As we're adding more map variety, this includes more details like flowers for grassland and water lillies for wetland.

Change Log 09000

General

Game Over Statistics

- Overhauled titles with icons instead of text (holding over the icon shows tooltip) - Now showing the peak population of villagers (as well as the total villagers count) - New columns for food consumed, food gathered, wood gathered, bricks gathered, and metal gathered - Removed total resources gathered column

Rally Point and Waypoint

- Rally point has new art, animation and placement effect - Rally point command button has new art - Waypoint has new art and animation - Waypoints set on units (and animals) will now follow unit movement after being set

General Improvements

- Several significant performance improvements (especially for pathfinding and updating unit vision) - Holding CTRL while clicking stop production for selected building button will now cancel all production in the building (updated tooltip to reflect this) - It's easier to click on individual animals to see info about them or order villagers to hunt them - Input binding for opening the technology tree is now set to close the Technology Tree as well (ESC still works as before) - Multiplayer lobby now shows the current region that you are connected to - Improved Villagers and Housing tooltip and added information about how the training speed of villagers slows down as your population of villagers grow - Improved How To Play section about settling your tribe, and added information about how the training speed of villagers is dependant on factors like Food Surplus Level, plus that it will slow down as your population of villagers grow - Updated description of siege damage stat - Windowed display mode sets resolution to full-screen resolution, and window can be resized by the user - Revolting units will no longer destroy their own Village Center before randomly attacking remaining players

Skirmish AI

- Skirmish AI is more likely to wait longer to gather a bigger army to attack after a previous offense failed - Skirmish AI will now consider chopping wood in areas with at least 1 tree instead of what was a much higher threshold (which caused the AI to occasionally ignore trees much closer to the base) - When a Skirmish AI villager is attacked, the villager will ask other villagers nearby to flee back to base as well (unless they are defending or farming)

Balance

General

- Village Center generates (0, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5) Knowledge based on Food Surplus Level (from (0, 1, 2, 2.5, 3)) - Building Wonder stages will provide Knowledge Points as a reward (3, 4, 5, 6 for the four construction stages) - There is one less wetland animal spawned per region on Large maps

Units

- Slinger attack speed is 1.5s (from 1.75s) - Slinger costs 30 food and 15 wood to train (from 25 food and 15 wood) - Archer attack speed is 1.75s (from 1.5s) - Archer base ranged damage is 10 (from 9) - Javelin Thrower attack speed is 2s (from 1.75s) - Elite Javelin Thrower needs to be out of combat for 1.5s seconds to gain special bonuses (from 3)

Assyrians

- Trade Colonies: improves all villager resource gathering speeds by 5% (from 6%) - Conscripts: provides any villager with Militia status with an additional +1 melee damage and +1 ranged damage

Babylonians

- Defensive Tactics: now provides +1 armor to all military units, and they are no longer required to be within influence range for this bonus to apply - Defensive Tactics: it now also provides +1 armor to villagers who are militia - Defensive Tactics: no longer affects Scout unit - Fortifications: no longer increases health and siege armor of selective defensive structures. Instead, all Babylonian buildings receive 40% reduced damage from any siege attacks (buildings with this upgrade shows siege armor icon in selected building UI like before) - Garden: has 350 hitpoints (from 300) - Garden: must be placed on very fertile soil - Garden: reduces food consumption by 3 (from 1)

Egyptians

- Medicine: increases villager hitpoints by 50 (from 25) - Papyrus Scrolls: each priest improves farming speed by 5% (from 6%) - Sickle: upgrades farming speed by 15% (from 10%)

Neutral Settlements

- Potter's Wheel is no longer required to claim neutral settlements with Outpost - Researching Potter's Wheel will now double neutral settlement bonuses granted - Orchard provides +5% base farming bonus (from 10%) - Ancient Temple now provides +0.3 base knowledge generation (from 0.5) - Settlement now provides +10% base villager training speed (from 25%) - Settlement now increases villager training speed at Villager Center and no longer spawns extra villagers at the settlement itself

Siege Warfare

- Buildings no longer have default siege armor stat, and so walls no longer start with 1 base siege armor - Heavy Axeman deals 5 siege damage (from 6) - Light Axeman deals 4 siege damage (from 5) - Spearman deals 3 siege damage (from 4) - Javelin Thrower deals 2 siege damage (from 3) - Swordsman deals 1 siege damage (from 2) - Most Mountain Nomad units deal less siege damage

Battering Ram

- Costs 75 wood, 25 food, 15 metal (from 50 wood, 50 food, 25 metal) - Base move speed is 3 (from 2) - Improved Elite Egyptian Battering Ram die animation - Improved Elite Egyptian Battering Ram dead sprite

Bug fixes

- Fixed out-of-syncs that could happen when a player disconnected from multiplayer game - Fixed a problem for newer Macs with m1 where the game resolution was set wrongly - Egyptian Battering Ram UI icon portrait no longer always shows blue player color even if your player color is a different one - Fixed typo in Palace description - If Wonder Victory is off and Wonder level IV is constructed, the notifications about this will be displayed correctly - Fixed wrong Wonder upgrade tooltip descriptions - Fixed wrong description of Conscripts technology - Fixed wrong description of Garden technology - Fixed a case when an enemy building was partially visible to local player but holding mouse over would not show attack symbol - When villager can no longer find any resources to gather and asked to continue gather resources the idle icon indicator no longer quickly switch on and off - Fixed a case where the stop production button would show wrong picture

[ 2023-12-18 09:46:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

The final games of the 1vs1 Civilizations Wars were played between veterans Nown0 and Sigh. We are pleased to announce the winner of the tournament: Nown0 Nown0 retains the title of the Revered Leader of The Fertile Crescent. Congratulations! Find the games that were streamed and commented by the tournament organiser HeavyBeber here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4dKriMQfaskz-G3CqqOZfzn3_HZ230d0 Sigh, #2 in the tournament, uploaded replays from his POV which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrTZiAMTETJ1e7FVPZHESsP7L_aN2zqEk A special mention for this game between Andrej and Dragevann during the rumble stages, which was a game of epic proportions: https://youtu.be/Vc-uy3LYoY0 See you next time!

[ 2023-08-07 22:57:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

If you forgot to sign up for 1V1 Civilization Wars, there's still time! You only have a few days to sign up though as the deadline to sign up is the 2nd of August. The tournament will be played between 4th-8th of August. Learn more and sign up for the 1v1 Civilization Wars tournament here! For more questions, join our Discord! See you in the arena!

[ 2023-07-28 10:22:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update addresses some of the feedback we received after releasing the Factions Update. It will be the Tournament Build for the upcoming 1vs1 Civilizations Wars tournament, which you can read more about here. Of course, if any game-breaking bugs appear, we will address these, but there will be no more balance changes before the tournament.

Improved unit AI targetting

- Improved targetting system so that if a target unit is behind a walled in area and can't be reached the unit chasing it will find another target instead of just potentially standing there forever - If a unit is blocked for a while chasing a target behind a big group of units it will reconsider and find another target if it finds any closer

General improvements

- While holding SHIFT to set waypoints the mouse cursor will now show cursor changes similarly to when not holding SHIFT - Ranged units distance to buildings take into account that buildings have different sizes, so a ranged unit like the slinger don't have to move so close to a large building as a Palace as before, and it will be able to attack Wonder with ranged attack - Increased the distance of buildings of same type to select on double-clicking building by 100%

Skirmish AI

- Offensive Armies on higher difficulty levels will stay longer in fights before fleeing against larger armies - Reduced threat level for Watchtowers so that AIs will make a bigger effort fighting them before fleeing - Battering Rams will no longer count as part of the defensive force and will not be used as part of defensive operations - Fixed a problem that prevented the Skirmish AI from researching all the technologies it should research - Substantially reduced how much AI counts Scout unit as a threat - Battering ram has 24 vision range (it was 16, which caused it not to find nearby walls to attack in some scenarios)

Horde Mode

- Horde strength increases slightly more for each wave on higher difficulty levels - When reaching the last wave the game over screen on defeat will show correctly that the last wave was reached

Unit Balance changes

- Heavy Axeman has 8 base move speed (from 7) - Slinger vision range is 24 (from 26)

Other Balance Changes

- Gazelle flock has 8-10 animals (from 6-8) - Boars will no longer spawn next to any player starting locations

Bug fixes

- Assyrian technology Trade Colonies now works as it should for farming gathering rate - When a clay pit is constructed, villagers who were initially tasked to construct the clay pit but were then commanded elsewhere before it was fully constructed, will no longer move back to it to dig clay when clay pit construction is completed by other villagers - Fixed wrong pixels in Egyptian Gate under construction sprites - Clicking production buttons (like produce equipment) has no effect after game has ended - When selecting single building from control group the rally point position for that building will show correctly - It is possible to select enemy units behind your walls to see their information

[ 2023-07-13 03:03:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Brave warriors, listen closely to the call echoing through the Fertile Crescent! Destiny awaits, seeking a true leader. It's time to ignite your passion, sharpen your swords, and rise to claim the throne! Embrace the rich legacy of the ancient Egyptians, with their majestic pyramids and mystical pharaohs. Or delve into the formidable might of the Assyrians, known for their advanced warfare and vast empire. Alternatively, unlock the secrets of the Babylonians, renowned for their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and law. Yet be forewarned, brave warriors, the path ahead is strewn with challenges and trials. The battlegrounds will test your skills, strategy, and leadership. Only the most courageous and skillful among you will emerge victorious, etching your name into the annals of history. Now, champions, embrace the call to greatness and embark on this incredible journey. The time has come to prove yourself worthy of being the next Revered Leader of the Fertile Crescent. The tournament will be played between 4th-8th of August. Learn more and sign up for the 1v1 Civilization Wars tournament here! For more questions, join our Discord!

[ 2023-07-07 10:46:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug fixes

- Fixed that co-op Horde Mode would crash the game when the first wave spawned.

[ 2023-06-22 23:10:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, old saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

About Faction Update (update 08000)

This is the third milestone that we've released during our Early Access journey. We hope you're enjoying TFC and the improvements we're adding to the game! If you haven't already done this, please consider leaving a review on Steam. We'd love to know what you think! [previewyoutube=rX0YOZw4G7A;full][/previewyoutube]

3 Bronze Age Civilizations

Whereas TFC so far has only offered one faction to play, that's about to change! We're finally adding 3 Bronze Age civilizations for you to pick between: The Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians. The Bronze Age civilizations have a unique look for all their buildings and military units. They also cater to different playstyles, with 4 unique technologies and a unique Wonder bonus each.

Select Civilization Mid-Game

In most RTS games, a faction is picked before starting the game. This is not the case in TFC. Instead, every player has an even starting field. To select a Bronze Age civilization, you need to research 3 Early Age technologies. From there on, you can select the civilization from the new Technology Tree at any point!

Assyrians

The Assyrians were military pioneers, known for their organised armies and being the first to develop a system for conscripts. During the Bronze Age, they grew wealthy from setting up trade colonies and controlling important trade routes. [previewyoutube=o330rNrR4VQ;full][/previewyoutube]

Conscripts

Villagers within any Neutral Settlement influence range gain melee damage, ranged damage, armour, and ranged attack range (does not stack with Militia). Outpost gains hitpoints, vision and influence radius.

Logistics

All military units consume less food.

Organised Warfare

All military units gain melee attack damage. Faster military training speed for every Food Surplus Level.

Trade Colonies

Each claimed neutral settlement Improves all villager resource gathering speeds.

Babylonians

Babylon was the world's largest city during the Bronze Age, renowned for its gardens and as a Holy City. They had to fortify their city since its location was without many natural barriers to keep enemies at bay. [previewyoutube=Ypxo2THdVVk;full][/previewyoutube]

Code of Law

Villager training speed bonus from Food Surplus Level increases. It also reduces the penalty to villager training speed from having a larger population of villagers.

Renowned Gardens

Gives access to unique building: Garden, which can be worked by a villager to provide knowledge and faster villager training speed. The gardener does not require housing and reduces food consumption. Must be placed on fertile soil.

Fortifications

Adds siege armour to all buildings and hitpoints to Watchtower, Wall and Gate.

Defensive Tactics

All military units within the influence range of the Village Center or Palace have extra armour.

Egyptians

The Egyptians were known for their many grand monuments and mythologies, and for their rich agriculture, thanks to inventions like the sickle. They were also keen innovators in areas like cosmetics, hygiene and medicine. [previewyoutube=lNuTzOFeRn4;full][/previewyoutube]

Medicine

Plus health regeneration for any units within the influence radius of the Village Center, Palace, or Temple. Adds hit points to villagers.

Monument Builders

Plus construction and repair speeds for each Food Surplus Level. Unlocks the Temple, a unique building for the Egyptians that can be worked by priests and provides an influence radius.

Sickle

Improves farming speed.

Papyrus Scrolls

Priests generate more Knowledge. Each priest improves farming speed.

Civilization Information Panel

From the Technology Tree, you can click to see information about each Bronze Age civilization.

New Soundtrack

We've added a totally new soundtrack for the Skirmish Mode! Now, what does this entail? Every faction has unique music, and multiple tracks each. Not only that, but the music now reacts to gameplay! As your village develops, so will the music. As you enter a battle, the music will react to this.

General Improvements

Redesigned Technology Tree

We have made space for more technologies and the Bronze Age Civilization Picker. All the technology buttons have been redesigned for this purpose.

New Early Age Technology: Potter's Wheel

This technology is required for constructing Outposts to claim neutral settlements.

Wonder Is More Important

The Wonder is becoming more important for a few reasons:

• Every Wonder Level constructed provides a unique bonus to your village based on the Bronze Age civilization that you pick in the Tech Tree
• Even when Wonder Victory is disabled as a setting, you can still construct the Wonder and all its Wonder Levels to gain the bonuses
• The Wonder is now available to construct in Horde Mode as well (but will not grant Wonder Victory)

Because it's more important, the top-left UI now always shows the Wonder Level you have constructed:

Unique Wonder Bonuses

Assyrians

+10% attack speed for all units per Wonder Level constructed (up to 40%)

Babylonians

+25% villager training speed across your empire per Wonder Level constructed (up to 100%)

Egyptians

+10% farming speed per Wonder Level constructed (up to 40%)

New equipment

We've added new weapon equipment so that weapons don't upgrade multiple units at the same time, which would cause balance issues.

Heavy Axe

The heavy axe equipment upgrades attack damage for Heavy Axeman.

Javelin

The javelin equipment upgrades attack damage for Javelinman. Light axe and spearhead now only upgrades attack damage for Light Axeman and Spearman.

Range Displayer

You'll now be able to see the Influence Range of buildings like the Village Center and Palace. This is handy to see how far away your villagers can venture before losing their Militia status.
It also works on a building like the Watchtower to see the attack range of garrisoning units.

Improved Descriptions

Almost all descriptions in the game have been updated with glyphs. Below is an example: these are little icons to help make connections between terminology and UI elements. In this case, this elite unit technology description, it also shows the icons of the unit being upgraded and what it will upgrade into.

Steam Achievements

We've started adding some of these! For now, there are 8 to achieve, one for each of the difficulty levels in Skirmish Mode and Horde Mode.

Skirmish AI

- Skirmish AI will only save up to expensive units that require wood and metal if they have sufficient villagers gathering those resources - Skirmish AI produces units more efficiently late-game and will make an additional military production building to train more units at once - Skirmish AI might target any enemy outposts (not just the one closest to its own base) - Skirmish Skilled and Brutal will now send priests into their Palace to generate additional Knowledge - Optimised Skirmish AI build orders - Skirmish AI generates knowledge slower on all difficulty levels except Master (previously Brutal) - Skirmish AI doesn't see enemy villagers as such a threat anymore so that higher difficulty levels will be more aggressive in trying to destroy the enemy economy before deciding to flee with offensive army - Generally improved AI defensive behaviour - Improved how AI deals with Watchtowers in certain situations (so it's harder to "tower rush" it, for example)

Map Generation

- Added threshold to how close to any player tribe that metal deposits can spawn - Regions that are empty (no tribes spawned there) no longer have extra fertility generated around their potential spawn points

Other improvements

- Early Age military units have new art and animations - Horde Mode on Beginner and Familiar is slightly easier to better accommodate new players - Clicking on the base of the building or resource will now always select the controller occupying it, even if there are other static controllers (building or resource) in front of it - Updated research icons for Archer, Elite Spearman, Swordsman, and Javelinman, so that they represent whether these units are affected by the helmet equipment or not - Updated art assets for Babylonian Wall, Gate, Watchtower, and Archery Range so it matches historical references a bit better - The vision range circle for units and buildings has been improved - The militia indicator no longer changes direction with the parent unit - Delivery point arrows take 0.25s longer to show over delivery points after hovering over the resource - When holding over the Wonder title or icon, the tooltip shows a description of the Wonder bonus currently accumulated - The building production panel now shows missing resources for training the next unit or equipment in the queue - Minor performance improvements - Villager indicators always show above buildings in placement mode - Updated art for priests indicator above Palace - Renamed hardest difficulty level to Master (from Brutal) - Knowledge Generation in buffs panel also shows while starving - Technology tooltip closes after clicking to research a technology - In unit info panel title will now begin with "Elite" if unit has elite upgrade - Villagers are easier to select (especially when they build, farm and skin animals) - Changed double-click unit to select all of the type time to max 0.25s (from 0.4s) - Added an additional zoom in level

Balance changes

Units

- Villager ranged attack rate is 1.5s (from 1.25s) - Slinger attack range is 12 (from 18) - Slinger consumes 1.5 food (from 1) - Light Axeman consumes 1.5 food (from 1) - Spearman has 7 move speed (from 6) - Spearman has 220 hitpoints (from 210) - Archer costs 45 food and 35 wood to train (from 35 food and 35 wood) - Swordsman has 280 hitpoints (from 190) - Battering Ram consumes 2.5 food (from 3) - Battering Ram has 6 base ranged armor (from 1 standard and 3 ranged)

Buildings

- Palace costs 150 clay and 125 wood to construct (from 150 clay, 150 wood, 75 food) - Outpost costs 50 clay and 25 wood to construct (from 50 clay, 50 wood, 25 food) - Wall has 1 base siege armour (from 2) - Farm has 75 hitpoints (from 150)

Technologies

- Elite Battering Ram adds +2 ranged armor (from 3) - Elite Archer adds +4 attack ranged (from 8) - Bronze Smelting costs 4 knowledge points to unlock (from 5)

Other

- Digging clay base speed is 15% slower - All Wonder stages cost more clay and less of any other resources - Constructing wonder stages no longer rewards technology points - Default health regeneration is 66% slower - Priests generate 0.3 knowledge each (from 0.4)

Bug fixes

- Pressing 'M' no longer desyncs a multiplayer game - Fixed building hotkeys - Fixed problems with hotkeys that could happen after playing one session without restarting the application - Fixed a problem that could happen when selecting a group of units, and all these units were garrisoned in a Watchtower or the Palace - Fixed problems that would occur when swapping between groups of multiple buildings - Fixed issues with showing rally point positions when adding and removing buildings from selected buildings using CTRL - All Leave command button no longer shows after selecting a unit while multiple Watchtowers were selected - Fixed a problem with Skirmish AI never attacking "insignificant" wall segments - Fixed a problem that could make horde groups stuck and infinitely circle around a neutral settlement - Fixed a problem that could lead Skirmish AI defensive forces to follow your units fleeing to the other side of the map - Fixed a problem that could lead to AI units getting stuck when attacking walls - Fixed a problem caused by selecting a group by NUM when all units in the group were garrisoning buildings - Fixed a problem with selecting multiple neutral settlements - Villagers foraging no longer trigger chop sound once - Fixed a problem that could break Skirmish AI and cause performance problems if AI unit was hit by a ranged units from a completely walled-in area

[ 2023-06-20 02:14:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Finally! The time has come for us to announce that the Factions Update will be released on 20th of June 2023. The update took longer than planned, but we hope it will be worth the wait, as this will be the biggest update that we've ever released!

Here's a sneak peek

- Select one of 3 Bronze Age civilizations during the game: the Assyrians, Babylonians or Egyptians - A new soundtrack for skirmish mode with unique music for all the civilizations that react to your play - A re-designed Technology Tree - Total technologies in the game grows to 29 - Unique wonder bonuses - Improvements to Skirmish AI, balance changes, bug fixes, and more!

[ 2023-06-12 01:56:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there! While we work on the last bits and pieces for Milestone 3, we're releasing a video series about the upcoming 3 Bronze Age civilizations. In this third and last video of the video series, we introduce the Egyptians. Who were they, and what will be unique about them in TFC? [previewyoutube=lNuTzOFeRn4;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2023-05-23 01:01:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is a small notification to announce that we have officially added Steam Cloud Saves support to the game. Buying a new computer, or playing the game on different platforms? No problem! Your save files will now automatically synch across any device.

[ 2023-05-16 23:03:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there! While we work on the last bits and pieces for Milestone 3, we're releasing a video series about the upcoming 3 Bronze Age civilizations. In this second video of the video series, we introduce the Assyrians. Who were they, and what will be unique about them in TFC? [previewyoutube=o330rNrR4VQ;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2023-05-11 04:19:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

We'll stream a game of us playing 2 of the upcoming new civilizations in multiplayer against each other, and try to answer all your questions! Link Wield Interactive on Twitch

[ 2023-05-08 04:50:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there! While we work on the last bits and pieces for Milestone 3, we'll be releasing a video series about the upcoming 3 Bronze Age civilizations. In this first video of the video series, we introduce the Babylonians. Who were they, and what will be unique about them in TFC? [previewyoutube=Ypxo2THdVVk;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2023-04-28 05:19:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

The 90s... the 'Golden Age' of RTS games. After being introduced to behemoths like Age of Empires, Warcraft, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, there was no turning back for us. Base-building RTS became our favourite game genre. The obsession became so strong that we dreamed about making our own RTS game one day! But then, somewhere in the mid-2000s, the number of RTS games released each year started to dwindle. What happened?

The Research

We spent about 10 years thinking about making an RTS game before TFC. We made a few attempts. It turned out that they are notoriously hard to make. So we hacked away at other projects, hoping that one day we would become competent enough to make one. Another thing we did during this period was trying to figure out what made big publishers steer away from RTS games. Was it MOBAs? Too little innovation? Maybe 3D graphics are too hard for the brain to process when so much is happening at once? We looked up discussions about what players like and dislike about RTS games. Maybe the learning curve is too high for most casual players? Maybe it's too niche? After doing all this research, we decided we wanted to go back to the roots of what made the classics so fun. However, they are still masterpieces. Theres no need for us to remake them. So we wanted to make something different that stands on its own. We also wanted to make a few changes that could streamline the genre a bit.

Humble Beginnings

In 2017, we started our next attempt at developing an RTS game, and we decided to merge our love for RTS games with our interest in ancient history. We knew that there is little attention paid to the Bronze Age in contemporary media, and with our fascination for that era, we decided it would be a good fit and a unique setting for the game. Knowing how challenging it can be to make an RTS game, especially for a small team, we initially developed it for a small scope. We didn't actually have a grand vision for the game at this point. The plan was just to make something. To tick off the fact that we were able to make an RTS game! Saying that, we also wanted to see if we could make a small game that includes the best bits of what makes RTS games fun to play while also trying to innovate it somehow.

Pixels

Our first choice for the game was for the art style to be in 2D and with isometric tiles. This would ensure that TFC has that 'classic' feel. Next, we decided to draw the game in pixel art. And we'll be honest about the reason here: we are not (or at least didn't see ourselves as) artists! Pixel art is something we could do. Also, we thought it would be a bit unique for an RTS. We saw that games like Stardew Valley and Terraria had major success, being in pixel art, so why not try the same for an RTS? To make sure it would work, we produced a mockup image to showcase what it could look like:
You can see our inexperience as artists here: there is limited shading, and the environment is completely flat. However, we received good feedback from an art director we had previously worked with, and we thought it looked cool.

Prototyping Interconnected Food Mechanics

After defining the art style, we went straight to work! We made a few crude design documents, but mostly we just wanted to enjoy playing around with different ideas to see what was fun and would stick. The screenshot below is the first we took during development. You can see a lot of random ideas in the top UI.
As we started implementing basic RTS mechanics, like a villager moving to a construction location to construct a building, we pondered on what would be the main focus of the game. We read history books about the Mesopotamian Bronze Age, seeking inspiration for game mechanics. Back then, even after metallurgy was invented, the economy was largely a barter economy. Coins werent a thing until the Iron Age. It was a food surplus that was the main driver of the first large-scale urbanization in human history, and food surpluses were used as a sort of currency. Empires often thrived or declined on the basis of their food stores.
Above: landscapes with different soil fertility were one of the first features we prototyped. Thus, history books inspired us to prototype interconnected food mechanics. We wanted land to have soil fertility so that it matters how you lay out your base, and people should consume food, so that a village can crumble by starvation. You need to continuously maintain your army. Like barbarians pillaged the lands of civilized people back then, having your farms pillaged in TFC means you might lose even if your army is the strongest. And just like how food surplus led to specialization back then, in TFC it leads to increased village growth and knowledge generation. As we continued prototyping, the food mechanics became closer to what you can play in the newest version of TFC. You can see different variations of the top UI as we progressed:
After a few months of prototyping, we finally landed on Food Surplus Levels that would affect knowledge generation and villager training speed:

Iterative Development

Its worth mentioning that at this point in development, TFC was a hobby project. We had day jobs, and so we worked on TFC at night and during weekends. We have also never completed an RTS prior, and so there has been a lot of new concepts that we had to learn. This is part of the reason the game has been in development for so long (since 2017), in addition to us being a small team with (now) large ambitions. We also make sure we spend adequate time experimenting with different mechanics and features, that what we end up implementing is fun and works well with the rest of the game, and that we keep iterating upon those mechanics. It is a meticulous process and has been a long (and at times painful) grind for us. However, we think it has been worth it!
Above you can see an early version of the Technology Tree. As you can see, if we stopped at the first iterations, TFC would be a very different game! We have learned a lot from working on this project. Weve become better game designers, better artists, and most importantly, we keep getting better at making RTS games!

Itch.io and Community Feedback

One of the most valuable lessons of developing TFC, has been how valuable community feedback is. The best decision we made was to release early builds on itch.io. This meant that we received feedback early on what worked and not. It also provided us with confidence that players enjoyed playing TFC and that there was huge potential.
Above: yet another iteration on the UI. You can try out an early version of TFC on itch.io still here: https://lincread.itch.io/the-fertile-crescent

Multiplayer Came First

A Discord was quickly requested. So we created that: https://discord.com/invite/9nGpUe2 Thats when we held a community vote: should we focus on multiplayer or single-player content first? Multiplayer won by one vote! Thus, we released playable multiplayer all the way back in September 2018, which is a decision we do not regret. It means that the game is built for multiplayer from the ground up, and that we could add a feature like online co-op Horde Mode per community request. However, since refining the core gameplay loop through multiplayer games and various tournaments up until recently, the time has come for us to focus more on single-player content. We cant wait to release TFC with a Campaign Mode!
Several amazing artists from our publisher The Knights of Unity, have helped refine the art style. This is what the game looks now! Did you enjoy learning about the origin of TFC? Let us know in the comments! - Team TFC

[ 2023-04-13 22:37:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! It's time for a quick update on the development of TFC, specifically the Milestone 3 (M3) update!

The M3 release is delayed

Unfortunately, for several reasons, we will have to delay the release of M3. Chief among them is that we want to get it right. We want to make sure it works well and fits with our vision for this update and the "TFC DNA". Those who have followed TFC for a while know that integral to our process is the careful and meticulous iteration on features and design ideas. This means that we can't release M3 by the end of Q1 2023, despite the roadmap, and we apologise for any disappointment. Having said that, we are confident that this will benefit the release when it is ready and that you all will be happier for it long term! We cannot commit to a release yet, but we will let you know that we have most of the work done already. In fact, we've been working on M3 since before M2 was released last year. In the meantime, here's a little bit of info on M3:

An important update for TFC

For us, M3 is a very important update, as it's when we finally introduce multiple playable factions. Multiple playable factions are often one of the pillars of RTS games, as it provides asymmetrical gameplay, added variety and depth, and more content to learn and master. It's a moment we, as developers, have waited patiently for a long time ourselves! It's also a chance for us to implement an idea we've had for a long time, which has to do with how you select your playable Bronze Age civilization. We'll talk more about the specifics later, but at least we can say that we're very excited about this! It's a feature that we think fits perfectly with the "TFC DNA".

3 Playable Bronze Age Civilizations

In the next milestone update, there will be 3 playable Bronze Age civilizations. Each of these will have unique looks for all their military units and buildings.
One of the new playable Bronze Age civilizations. Exactly what these Bronze Age civilizations are named and what are unique to them will be revealed closer to the M3 release. However, we can tell that they have unique technologies, buildings, and wonder bonuses, that benefit them in a focused direction, like growing and defending a large population or expanding and taking map control.
A unique building for one of the new playable Bronze Age civilizations.

New Technology Tree

We're implementing a new Tech Tree from the ground up that, while still looking familiar, will provide us with more space in the UI for additional technologies. We're also improving in-game descriptions to make it easier to make connections between terminology and UI elements.

New and re-designed technologies

• 8 completely new technologies
• 5 existing technologies are being completely re-redesigned

The Wonder is more important

In M3, the Wonder will provide unique faction-based bonuses that increase for each stage you construct.
You'll be able to construct the Wonder in Horde Mode as well to utilise these bonuses. Reaching the last stage won't win you the game, though, but it does increase the bonus further.
Since the Wonder becomes more important, how many stages you've constructed will be a part of the resources UI in M3.

And more...

Expect the usual compilation of general improvements, improved Skirmish AI, balance changes, etc. We're grateful for the excitement around M3. Please know that we're not taking it for granted. We can't wait to share with you the rest of all the new ideas, designs and improvements that we've created for M3! - Team TFC

[ 2023-03-15 23:02:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug fixes

- Fixed a problem that could cause problems when going back to main menu from a game.

[ 2023-03-03 22:49:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Improvements

- Can place Watchtower on top of existing Wall (like you already could with Gate) - Putting a rally point on a building in fog of war will no longer reveal that there is a building there

Balance changes

- Swordsman consumes 3 food (from 2) - Swordsman has 7 movement speed (from 6) Developer notes: this elite unit had a hard time in most match-ups due to its slow speed, rarely making it worth its price. With the movement speed on par with most units it should be able to engage in battles more efficiently.

Bug fixes

- Fixed a problem with random number generator once a Palace was constructed that could desync a multiplayer game shortly after - Fixed a case for placing neutral settlement Outpost that could potentially desync a multiplayer game - Fixed a problem with placing Gate on top of Wall that could later crash the code and break the revolting mechanics so that you could still control your own units after being defeated - Fixed a problem in multiplayer with displaying missing resources while multiple players were placing a building that they could not afford at the same time - Fixed a problem that could crash the game when the Clay Pit that a Villager was moving towards to construct was constructed before the Villager reached it - Fixed a problem with pressing a production hotkey that could crash the code - Fixed construct building button order and hotkeys - Putting a rally point on a building in fog of war will no longer cause unit(s) to move back to trained at building after a certain distance - Fixed correct multiplayer loading panel colors

[ 2023-03-02 04:18:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've been investigating a cause of Out of Sync problem that affected some multiplayer games. It's been challenging to track down the cause of this as we have struggled to reproduce this problem ourselves. However, our best theory is that it's a cross-platform problem. We did find a problem in our code that is very likely to cause desyncs in cross-platform games, and this has been fixed here. We also found a seperate issue that could cause the code to crash for one client, which could potentially cause desyncs for the remanining players in a multiplayer match. We don't know 100% if these are the main causes, but we hope this update sorts everything out. We'll be monitoring analytics and community comments moving further as well, to make sure the problem has been resolved.

Change Log 07087

Bug Fixes

- Fixed a potential cause of Out of Sync in cross-play multiplayer games - Fixed a problem with making the palace before barracks that could cause the game to stop - Horde Mode UI no longer overlaps with other HUD when screen is 1280x800 or smaller, or when big UI is enabled for large resolutions

Balance changes

- Villager ranged attack speed is 1.5s (from 1.25s) - Outpost costs 50 clay, 50 wood, 25 food (from 50 clay, 50 wood) - Swordsman costs 60 food and 15 metal (from 70 food and 15 metal) - Swordsman consumes 2 food (from 3) - Each base neutral settlement villager training speed is 25% of Village Center (from 30%)

[ 2023-02-08 01:19:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, older saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any older save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

Dev Update - Progress on Milestone 3

We started working on Milestone 3 in 2022 and are making good progress. We can't wait to share more about what we have in store for Milestone 3 and the new civilizations. Stay tuned! In the meantime, here's a small teaser:

UPDATE 07085 - General Improvements II

By completing and releasing Milestone 2, we've met some internal goals for the game's foundation. Most standard modern RTS features, like unit stances, select multiple buildings and define your own hotkey scheme, have now been implemented into TFC. However, we still have a lot in store for TFC. Since we released Milestone 2, we have paid attention to feedback, and we wanted to add a General Improvements update after Milestone 2, as we did with Milestone 1, to address some of it. An example is the community request to allow dead bodies to persist for longer, and that is included here.

Early Age building designs

We're introducing further visual feedback about the state of your village! Before constructing the Palace, your village will give the vibe of being rural and crude. Apart from adding variety to the visuals, it also provides quick feedback as to whether your opponent has constructed the Palace or not.
How your village changes after the Palace has been constructed.

Performance Improvements

We've written a new Animation System from scratch, and one of the advantages of this is the performance boost added to the game. With other performance improvements that we implemented as well, we saw our performance improve from 60-80 fps to 100-120 fps in our test case. This means that the game supports more units on the screen before the fps drops, which should be most notable for users on low-end machines.

Target unit type once

When ordering units to target an enemy unit, those units will now keep finding new units of the same type (e.g. Slinger) to attack until there are no more within their vision range. This means that when you target one of a bunch of enemy slingers, your units will continue to pick off those slingers until they are all dead, even when there are other unit types within range as well. It works for both melee and ranged units against either. This was a community request that further streamlines the game. Now you only have to order the attack once to kill all enemy units of the type, whereas before, you often had to manually re-target the enemy unit type every time an enemy unit died.

Dead bodies persist

Fallen units will stay on the battlefield for 60 seconds to show the onslaught that happened.

Clay Pit disappears upon depletion

Once a Clay Pit is constructed, the tiles it occupies immediately turn into Plain. Once it's depleted, the Clay Pit will automatically disappear. This means that a Clay Pit won't block the tiles for the rest of the game, but there's still a consequence for constructing it since it damages the soil quality.

Changes to Code of Law technology

This technology is now named Hammurabi's Code of Law and has changed to the following: Villager training speed bonus from Food Surplus Level increases to 20%/40%/60% (from 10%/20%/30%). Your people starve for 100% longer before revolting.

New sprite showing outpost construction sites

We updated the tile sprite art that shows where you can place an Outpost near neutral settlements by increasing the contrast to the ground.

Skirmish AI

- Ranged units which are standing outside the engagement area and attacking a building will now move towards any unit being attacked to help out with enemy units instead (only on Skilled or higher difficulty levels) - Skirmish AI is better at researching Plough once starting to farm

Other improvements

- Updated art assets for Babylonian Wall, Gate, Watchtower, Palace, and Archery Range

Balance changes

- Elite Battering Ram now gains +3 ranged armour

Bug fixes

- Fog of war no longer persists on metal ore tiles if it spawns in the player's field of view at the start - Hotkey for raze building works for a control group with a single building - When Palace is destroyed villager will no longer keep militia status as long as they stand still or are garrisoned - Palace hotkeys now work if Palace was selected automatically as the last villager in selected group entered it - Neutral Settlement rally point gets correctly saved and loaded - Fixed that nomads or Skirmish AI units could try to target owned neutral settlements which aren't attackable so units would keep running in circles

[ 2023-01-31 11:43:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Current development status

We're busy at work with the next General Improvements update, as well as Milestone 3, which we're making great progress with. Stay tuned for more! In the meantime, we're releasing this hotfix update so that these issues get addressed sooner than later.

Change Log 07075

Improvements

- All players can see the Wonder upgrade progression bar below health bar while Wonder is visible (and not just local player)

Bug Fixes

- Boars no longer lose target and idle aftwerwards whenever their target moves while the boar is attacking it - Fixed a problem with spectators that meant that any spetctator's ping would not affect turn times, and this could cause a game that was running fine to seemingly lag, as well as cause any game with 2 or more spectators and no players (spectating skirmish AI) to seemingly lag - Fixed numerous problems that would happen if joining a multiplayer room that already had one or more spectators, like causing the game to go out of sync - UI will correctly reset when an enemy building that is selected gets destroyed - Fixed potential rare crashes that could happen when a unit was killed - Toggle analytics button in settings work - Pressing ESC in game over screen no longer causes problems

Balance changes

- Bronze Smelting technology costs 5 Knowledge Points (from 6) - Elite Swordsman technology costs 5 Knowledge Points (from 6)

[ 2023-01-13 03:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Skirmish AI

- Skirmish AI on easier difficulty levels progress slower early-game and it takes longer for them to become aggressive - Skirmish AI on easier difficulty levels are less likely to starve early-game - Fixed a case where Skirmish AI defensive forces would move around in circles and not reset after an attack that was successfully defeated (which could easily lead to the Skirmish AI starving if villagers were part of the defensive force) - Fixed a bug that caused training speed of military units for easier Skirmish AIs to slow down significantly

Settlement building

- Neutral Settlement building villager training speed is no longer affected by the number of villagers that the owner has (so it will only be affected by the owner's Food Surplus Level and Code of Law technology, and otherwise the training speed stays constant throughout the game) - Neutral Settlement building villager training speed is no longer affected by the Skirmish AI difficulty level when the Skirmish AI is the owner

[ 2022-12-23 02:24:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Stances buttons reset when selecting or changing control group - Construction view is not visible when selecting enemy buildings - Fixed a few rare crashes

[ 2022-12-13 05:59:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, old saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

About Milestone 2 (update 07070)

This is the second of five major milestones that we're planning to release during our Early Access journey. For the full road map, click here! We hope you're enjoying TFC and the improvements we're adding to the game! If you haven't already, please consider leaving a review on Steam. We'd love to know what you think! [previewyoutube=e7vpkCzfQ_g;full][/previewyoutube]

New features

Neutral settlements

In previous versions of TFC, you rarely needed to split up your army. Most players would generally keep all units in one army, whether defending or attacking. In this milestone, we're introducing Points of Interest (POI) that can be contested. We've named these neutral settlements. By claiming these, you gain various bonuses. This adds another reason to fight for map control and defend multiple areas. And, as an attacker, you might split up your army to attack multiple points of interest as well. So these POIs add more depth, as there are more strategies to consider. [h4]Ancient Temple[/h4]
Provides knowledge generation. [h4]Orchard[/h4]
Provides a bonus to farming. [h4]Settlement[/h4]
Provides new villagers.

Outpost

To take over a neutral settlement, you must construct an Outpost nearby.

Updated Resources Panel

Many new and old players alike have been confused about some aspects of the game. We saw that the Food Surplus system could be communicated better.
Food stock circle: we've turned the food surplus bar into a circle that fills up around the food stock icon. The filled circle changes color depending on starvation or Food Surplus Level. Food Surplus Level: the number of arrows indicate a Food Surplus Level that gives you various bonuses. These bonuses are now shown in a "buff panel" (more on this below).
We've also improved the tooltips. For example, your food consumption will show if you hold over the food stock icon.

Buffs and debuffs panel

The effects of starvation and food surplus have been largely hidden. We have made attempts at making these effects much more clear.
For example, in the image above, you can see the speed of Knowledge Generation, and the tooltip shows where the Knowledge Generation comes from. The buffs and debuffs will change color based on your Food Surplus Level to make it more clear which Food Surplus Level you're at.

Stances

In previous versions of TFC, most units would always attack any enemy on sight and follow them to the end of the world. This would create some annoying situations. Like, why are my villagers in the middle of the map!?? We're rectifying this by adding unit stances, of which there are 3.
Hold ground: unit will never chase enemy targets on sight. Defensive: (default stance) unit will chase enemy targets on sight within a radius and move back to the guard position once the target moves outside this radius. Aggressive: unit will continue chasing enemy targets on sight until there are none.

Customizable hotkeys

We've added the option for you to assign hotkeys to most commands in the game.

General improvements

Select multiple buildings of the same type

This means you can, for example, select multiple watchtowers and order all units in these watchtowers to exit them at the same time. Or, you can select multiple archery ranges and task them all to train a slinger each.

See missing resources when attempting to place building

See who owns farms

Crops now have the same color as your population use to dye their clothes.

Enemy AI improvements

- Enemy AIs will focus more on destroying a Watchtower target with their melee units instead of changing target before it's destroyed - Enemy AIs will no longer target irrelevant wall segments - Enemy AIs will now attempt to penetrate a Watchtower that is completely surrounded by wall segments

Other improvements

- Added animation for Open Technology Tree button that plays after gaining a Knowledge Point - Added an animated arrow above valid delivery points that shows when hovering over a resource with at least one selected villager - After losing in Horde Mode, the game over screen will show how many waves you reached - Incoming horde skulls in minimap will bounce to nudge you - Babylonian buildings are rendered with the correct color shading - Wonder production button is now visible in the construction menu when playing Tutorial (but locked) - Palace is no longer locked in the Tutorial - Improved tooltips for the counts showing how many villagers are currently gathering each resource - Swapped positions for 'Repair' and 'Go back to gather resources' villager command buttons - When swapping between production buildings and if the mouse cursor is still hovering over a production button, then the tooltip will show immediately instead of you having to exit and enter the button with the mouse - Selection box is disabled while pressing SHIFT - You can add units to selected group by holding CTRL + drag selection box - Fruit Trees won't border any trees after map generation - Added an error indicator that shows above buildings with any production issues

Balance changes

- The amount of Knowledge required to accumulate a Knowledge Point has increased by 25% - Each tree has 30 wood (from 20) - Palace costs 75 food to construct (from 150) - Palace requires 150 manpower to construct (from 75) - Elite Slinger has +20% attack speed (from 15%) - Scribes increase the amount that Priest generate Knowledge by 50% (from x2) - Mining technology increases villager mining speed by 30% (from 60%) - Wall (segment) costs 4 bricks (from 2) - Wall (segment) requires 5 manpower to construct (from 3)

Bug fixes

- Saving the game before placing the Village Center would cause the Tribe Unit to count into the population after loading causing an incorrect (too high) population count - Saving the game at any moment after the Village Center construction has been started would result in the currently produced unit not counting into the total population on the next load. That way, you could have 11/10 units just by reloading the game - Fixed hotkeys for Furnance equipment production buttons - Population counter shows correct values in Tutorial - Fixed a problem with skirmish AI not finding more farmland to clear, which would cause the game to crash - Fixed that the wall building preview remained on the screen after returning from the construct building menu to villager commands - Fixed save and load issues with revolting units - Scribes apply increased Knowledge generation from priests correctly - Fixed some minor issues with not displaying the villager militia indicator correctly - Removed the 'stop construction' button from Village Center - Unit health regeneration would incorrectly happen after executing the attack (should not happen until the unit is completely out of combat for 5 seconds) - No incoming horde skulls show on minimap when the game is over - If an ally is defeated and attacked, an attack notification will no longer display - ESC doesn't open the menu if a tile is selected - Fixed a few cases of other rare game crashes - And more...

[ 2022-12-12 10:19:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear, The Fertile Crescent has already been shown around the world, but now it will appear in the most important place for us - Australia. Yes, you will be able to play TFC during PAX Aus - you can find us in the Indie Zone in booth 23.
Its no coincidence that we write "us" because there will be no one else but Andr and Anders from Wield Interactive! We'd love to see you in Melbourne, so come by and chat with us. And, of course, play TFC! Who knows, maybe we'll share some details about the future news for The Fertile Crescent! See you at PAX Aus!

[ 2022-10-06 13:23:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, older saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any older save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

About 07040

Releasing Milestone 1 was a big test for us! We have learned a few things, and we think the next Milestone release will be smoother, thanks to this experience. Thank you for your feedback - it's greatly appreciated! Since we released Milestone 1, we have paid attention to feedback, and we are making some tweaks here based on that, like balancing the co-op Horde Mode difficulty and improving the Skirmish AI further. We have also worked through some tasks lingering in our backlog, like making some improvements to the notifications system. Furthermore, we have implemented a few minor balance changes to make Light Axeman a better option early-game against Slingers.

Co-op Horde Mode difficulty

We have made co-op Horde Mode a bit easier since the scaling made it too hard compared to the single-player experience. When playing co-op, wave strengths are now scaled at 140%, 150% and 160% for the three tiers of nomad hordes (from 200% for all these tiers in the previous version). This means, for example, that Brutal is still "brutal", but it's beatable! In addition, we added some extra time for the first wave to spawn (+20 seconds on all difficulty levels) to reflect the movement change along the y-axis and the buffs to early Nomad units that were introduced in the last version.

Notifications system

- Added a new notification for not having enough housing to train additional units - New notifications instantly override old ones - Overriden notifications will stay intact in a queue and show for their full duration once it's their turn again - All notifications have a fade in animation to grab your attention more (including the starvation notification) - Notification nudge animation plays more often - Notifications no longer overlap (thanks to a new design for the 'Received Resources' notification)

Skirmish AI

- Skirmish AI will only defend outside its immediate territory if it thinks it can roughly match the attacking force - Skirmish AI will only defend with villagers inside its immediate territory - Skirmish AI will not flee with its attack force against a superior army if having < 0 food in stock - Skirmish AI will flee with its attack force slightly earlier from a superior army on higher difficulty levels - Skirmish AI will no longer create an attack force while actively defending its base or territory - Fixed some problems with the AI behavior when an enemy constructed one or more buildings inside or close to its base - Fixed a problem that could cause AI Battering Rams to idle instead of finding a new region to attack

General

- There is now an indicator '...' above villagers who are trying to reach a destination but are blocked - The starvation bar now fills up gradually instead of instantly disappearing once food stock is no longer negative - Changed position of equipment in Furnace production menu - The manpower requirements in unit production tooltip will now update after Organized Warfare is researched to reflect the faster training speeds - Wonder title now describes the construction level - Wonder level upgrade construction progress is now always visible for all players (including spectators) as long as Wonder is visible on the map (and not in the fog of war)

Balance changes

- Digging clay is 16% slower - Masons now improve clay digging speed by 30% from (20%) - Light Axeman has 1 base ranged armor (from 0) - Elite Light Axeman upgrade no longer provides +1 ranged armor - Slinger deals 4 melee damage (from 5) - Copper Helmet and Copper Spear are no longer available to produce before Palace is constructed

General Bug fixes

- Fixed elite Slinger attack speed being applied correctly - Fixed elite Slinger attack speed being correctly applied when garrisoned in a watchtower - Fixed problems with nomad units that were "left over" from previous waves - Fixed a case of building production tooltip getting stuck on the screen - Fixed problems with fog of war and game over screen that could happen if a player disconnected while a multiplayer game was still loading - Fixed the wrong description in How to Play for how to add units to an existing control group - Fixed population counter increasing when cancelling unit training - Fixed colors not updating after re-entering a multiplayer room - Fixed game window size being incorrect after launching in windowed mode - Fixed UI Scaling and wrong position of TFC logo after setting windowed mode - Finishing construction of Village Center before Tribe unit enters it no longer yields an additional villager - Clicking and dragging on buttons no longer disables highlighting

[ 2022-09-27 02:03:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

We proudly announce that our The Fertile Crescent will be part of TactiCon. TactiCon is an online event celebrating the tactical and strategy genres, hosted on Steam. The event features both recently released hit games as well as promising upcoming projects. When? September 22nd to 25th, 2022!
During this time, you will see many phenomenal games, including TFC. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the event, and we invite you simply... to play. Especially that during the TactiCon you will be able to buy TFC in a special promotion! ~TFC team

[ 2022-09-21 07:06:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=74cfsbKMP10;full][/previewyoutube]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it; thus, old saves will NOT be compatible. You will not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

About Milestone 1 (update 07025)

This is the first of five major milestones that we're planning to release during our Early Access journey. For the full road map, click here! In this update, we've added more options to offline Skirmish Mode, computer players to online matches, and co-op Horde Mode. In addition, we've added general improvements like colour picker, password-protected games and a new unit production tooltip, to name a few, as well as bug fixes. Check out the video below or read on for more details! [previewyoutube=OIYptG_v4F4;full][/previewyoutube]

The team is expanding!

Thanks to the extra developer who has joined us full-time throughout this update cycle, this update is the biggest we've ever released since the game was just a small prototype on itch.io. We'll reveal more about this later, but we've recently also added a full-time artist to the project! He's already drawing assets for the next two milestone releases.

New features

Online co-op Horde Mode

This was perhaps the most requested feature from our community. Whereas Horde Mode used to be a single-player affair, it is now possible to play this mode through online multiplayer with a friend!
When creating a multiplayer room, you will now be asked to select the game mode.

More options in Skirmish Mode

Previously, you could only fight one computer opponent on a small map, and the only option available was to select a difficulty. We've remade the Skirmish Mode UI in this update and added more options.
You can pick between small and large maps, and define computer players by setting their individual difficulty settings and teams. This means you can now set up Skirmish Mode to play 2on2, FFA, 3on1, etc.

Add computer players in online multiplayer

The same options for Skirmish Mode offline are also available in online multiplayer.
This means you can, for example, team up with a friend and take on 2 computer players.

Player color pickers

Finally, you'll be able to select your player's colour! We've added 4 additional player colours, so there are 8 to select from.
You can select your preferred player colour in any of the game modes.

Password protected games

Multiplayer games can now be password protected. This is handy when creating a Horde Mode room and you only want your friend to be able to join.
Games that are password protected will show a lock symbol in the lobby.
We've added two additional buttons that will be available to all players in the password-protected room:
1. Copy password to clipboard. 2. Reveal the password.

Kick players from the multiplayer room

If you are the host of a game room, you can kick any player from the room, including spectators.

Number of villagers gathering resources

You'll now be able to see how many villagers you have ordered to gather each resource type and how many villagers/military units you have trained.
This feature also extends to the allies and spectator panels.

Ping allies

We've added the option to ping allies. Maybe you want to make allies aware of where you want to attack? Just ping at your planned location of attack!
All allies will see a ping banner at the location of the ping.
All allies will see a ping animation on the minimap.

Send resources to allies

The Marketplace now has an extra option of sending resources to allies, which is handy if you want to help your ally recover from starvation!

General improvements

New unit production tooltip

For new players, only seeing a description like 'Ranged unit with good attack range. Weak in close combat', didn't really tell the full story of a unit's strengths and weaknesses. To get the full picture, you had to wait for all the different units to be trained and then look at all their stats to compare them. In this update, it's easier for new players to assess which unit to train as the unit descriptions have become more visual.
The green cylinders indicate upgraded stats from gaining the elite status.

Skirmish AI

We've made several improvements to the skirmish AI. First of all, we've fixed a few bugs that would "stop" the AI from continuing to progress normally. Secondly, skirmish AI understands team or FAA games, since it now has the ability to switch between multiple enemy targets. Thirdly, we've continued to improve it in general, so that it will make better decisions throughout the game. But lastly, and most importantly, the AI can now select a more focused strategy to execute.

Skirmish AI strategies

In previous versions, the skirmish AI was always the same to play against. It didn't have a focused plan and could, for example, upgrade units that it didn't really use. Its build order and which order it unlocked technologies were always the same. Also, its unit rooster was always completely randomised. This has changed! Now, the skirmish AI will execute one of several focused strategies. Its build orders, unit roosters, equipment upgrades, as well as its technology unlocks, will vary between each of these strategies. It will no longer unlock irrelevant technologies and equipment. Brutal AI, therefore, now poses a more dangerous threat. Countering the AI is more relevant to winning the game.

Side note: the Skirmish AI does not cheat

Want proof? Start up a multiplayer room and spectate your friend playing against them. Since our goal is for the skirmish AI not to cheat, we develop it step by step. Expect more improvements to the skirmish AI in future updates.

Horde Mode

- End screen is now the same as for Skirmish Mode so that you can see the same game statistics - Hordes groups will no longer pick a random delivery point but will always aim to find the closest to their starting location - Timer starts immediately (was once a building was placed)| - Mountain Nomad Warrior has 120 health (from 100) - Mountain Nomad Slinger deals 5 melee damage (from 4) - Mountain Nomad Slinger deals 3 siege damage (from 1)

Other improvements

- Unit movement along the camera's y-axis is corrected so that it takes equally long for a unit to move left-right as it takes top-bottom of the map - Battering Ram moves more smoothly within a group of units - Resign button is disabled if you are a spectator - Your Tribe Center building will no longer automatically get selected once your Tribe unit reaches it - Added shoulder armour to Swordsman animations - Sappers prefer building targets - Updated elite unit descriptions to make them potentially less confusing

Bug fixes

- Multiple players having the exact nickname no longer causes problems with the following player dropdown in the spectator panel - Double-clicking an animal or enemy unit will no longer deselect it - Spectators who select a building of the player followed that trains an elite unit would see the correct icon for the unit trained - When loading a game, all meat icons will show the correct dead animal - Fixed problems with skirmish AI hunting boars - Fixed problems causing skirmish AI to stop progressing naturally - Razing a Wonder in construction no longer causes problems - Razing a Wonder that is being upgraded from stage 1,2,3 into 2,3,4 will now actually raze the building (instead of cancelling the construction work) - Villagers deal correct siege damage - Fixed a problem with siege units stopping to attack buildings if the building was in the process of being repaired - Fixed a problem that caused units to remove themselves from their group without reason - Horde mode nomad units no longer occasionally get stuck on the edge of the map - Fixed problems with Battering Ram getting stuck - Elite Battering Ram gains 150 hitpoints like the descriptions says (instead of 200) - Swordsman is included in Bronze Shield description - Long player names no longer overflow spectator follow dropdown - Health bars of units in Watchtower unit buttons are no longer displayed wrongly on click - Fixed a bug that could enable the Wonder building in Horde Mode - Fixed a problem with garrisoned units after saving and loading the same game multiple times

[ 2022-09-06 05:49:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all! This is just a short post to let you know that the release for Milestone 1 will be a little bit delayed. This is the biggest update weve ever delivered for the game to date, with many improvements as well as the big milestone features. However, we still want to spend a couple more days bug testing and making sure the gameplay experience is on par with what we know people expect from TFC. So please bear with us while we double check everything. We are really excited and eager for everyone to get their hands on the Milestone 1 update! Cheers Andr, Anders and The Knights of Unity

[ 2022-09-01 09:10:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Milestone 1 is ready to be released next week! Here we go through some of the most exciting changes: [previewyoutube=OIYptG_v4F4;full][/previewyoutube] We can't wait to release this Milestone and see your feedback!

[ 2022-08-26 10:12:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it, and thus old saves will NOT be compatible. You will therefore not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam, and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

About 06995

We just released a new update with balance changes. We've changed the passive abilities for several elite units, with the goal of cementing their roles further and make them more fun to use. In addition, we've fixed some known bugs as part of our continuous effort into making sure TFC is a bliss to play! We want to give a big thank you to the winners of the last Crescent Cup tournament, nown0 and Sigh, for helping shape these changes and help us test it out! These are currently some of the most active and definitely the most decorated TFC players. So far multiplayer has been more fun with these changes implemented, and we believe this will be your experience as well! Check out the video below where we explain some of the unit changes: [previewyoutube=QHaBKuvbQIo;full][/previewyoutube]

General

- Updated descriptions of all elite unit upgrades in the technology tree - Spamming RMB no longer resets attack animations - You can now queue another resource to gather after ordering villager to deliver resources

Balance changes

General

- All melee attacks slow down target unit's move speed by 1 for 1.5 seconds

Elite Light Axeman

- Has a new passive ability: attack slows down target unit's move speed by 3 for 1.5 seconds

Slinger

- Deals 5 base melee damage (from 4)

Elite Slinger

- Gains +2 siege damage - Has a new passive ability: when attacking a watchtower each projectile damages a garrisoned unit and the watchtower itself in the same hit - Projectile no longer slows target unit's movement speed on hit

Javelin Thrower

- Costs 30 food and 25 wood (from 30 food and 20 wood)

Elite Javelin Thrower

- Gains +1 base ranged attack damage - Has a new passive ability: while 5 seconds or more since last attack gains +2 movement speed and 40% evasion of all attacks - No longer gains +1 base movement speed - No longer deals x2 damage to units with full hp

Archer

- Costs 35 food and 35 wood to train (from 30 food and 45 wood)

Sapper

- Costs 25 food and 35 wood to train (from 25 food and 25 wood)

Elite Swordsman

- Has a 30% chance of evading any melee attacks (from 25% chance of evading all types of attacks)

Bug fixes

- Attack move for ranged units is no longer broken and they will now always attack the target they spot first immediately - When a group of villagers try to skin meat at the same time some of the villagers will no longer occasionally get stuck on the side idling - If any units in a group have their move speed changed by unlocking a a technology then the group of units will have its group move speed updated to reflect this - Fixed some minor issues that would occur if a ranged unit firing a projectile would finish its die animation before the projectile reached its target - Fixed a problem where you could get a large amount of food stock by error if reaching a large negative number of food stock - Priests garrison slots show correct health of villagers working as priests - Loading a save skirmish game correctly sets furnace produce equipment buttons - When a furnace is destroyed with an equipment in production the equipment can be produced in another furnace - Skirmish AI will no longer be able to produce equipment that has already been equipped after loading a saved game

[ 2022-07-15 01:55:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all! Happy summer to you northern hemisphere folk, and happy winter to everyone in the south! Its been a busy couple of months for Andr and me, with both of us taking some personal time, doing some travelling, spending some time with family and generally recharging our batteries before getting started on the next year of TFC!

More hands to work!

The unfortunate thing with being such a small team is that things grind to a halt whenever we take some time off. Well, no more! We are excited to share that we have gotten some development help from our publisher, and we believe the next year will have substantial updates coming out at shorter intervals. In fact, there has been a fair amount of work done already while Andr and I have been away!

Get ready for stuff!

As you might have seen, we have released the roadmap for the next year of TFC content updates! We are very excited about this roadmap, and we think you all will be as well. Some of the ideas we have for implementing the new features will be fairly original and perhaps not something youve seen elsewhere, hopefully helping to drive the genre forward a little bit.
Theres plenty to talk about regarding this, but we will keep the suspense a little longer and get more into detail about it as we are getting ready to release them. There is, of course, a focus on the quality of life and general usability features as well, and these will be rolling out as part of the larger milestones.

Battery charged!

This next year of TFC will be a lot of fun for us, and we hope for all of you as well. Keep an eye out for future blog posts :). In the meantime, and instead of new screenshots to show, here are some photos of where I have spent some time recently, including the beautiful city of Wroclaw and the mountains and lakes of southern Norway. As per usual, feel free to reach out with any questions you might have! -Anders

[ 2022-07-12 09:52:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! It's been a while since TFC appeared in Early Access. Our beloved community has had a tournament organized, and we have released a bigger update based on your feedback! So thank you for being there, and we assure you that it will be worth staying with us for a longer time. In order not to be groundless, we would like to share our plans for the future!

Roadmap - what to expect in the near future

TFC is constantly evolving, and we want you to know what to expect from our game. That is why we have prepared a roadmap divided into individual quarters. Each of them will have a big update full of new features (e.g. new civilizations, naval warfare) that will extend the TFC even more. You yourselves have asked for some of these things, and we read all the comments carefully and arent blind to them. Besides our ideas, we will add any tweaks TFC needs. Just take into account that the roadmap has no final form, and some elements may shift in time. This is what you can expect in the coming year of time, and even more! What next? You'll find out later - we can't reveal everything right away, right?

Its time for STEAM SUMMER SALE!

On the occasion of showing the roadmap, we also wanted to invite you to the Steam Summer Sale. The sale starts on June 23, and what can we add - we will also be there! TFC will be 35% OFF, so this is a unique opportunity to grab the game and join our community. On Discord, you will always find people willing to play together, and with the Horde Mode co-op coming soon, you will be able to compete in PvP and PvE! Therefore, we happily invite everyone to join The Fertile Crescent!

[ 2022-06-21 14:00:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

We released a new beefy update yesterday with balance changes. However, after some player reports that slingers + towers still seemed too strong offensively, we took a deep dive into our crunched numbers and analysed them, plus conducted battle tests. After doing this, we discovered that we had made a few errors, of which we had forgotten to add some correct values to the game. This update corrects this. These changes might seem neglicable, but they do have a big impact on the early game for high-level players.

Balance changes

- Slinger costs 25 food and 15 wood to train (from 20 food and 15 wood) - Watchtower costs 50 clay and 25 wood to construct (from 40 clay and 20 wood) - Javelinman costs 30 food and 20 wood to train (from 25 food and 30 wood)

Bug fixes

- Dwellings in fog of war don't show as in construction anymore if they're not

[ 2022-06-09 02:17:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to make certain improvements to the game, and thus old saves will NOT be compatible. You will therefore not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam, and wait to update the game until you are confident that you won't need to load any old save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

About this update!

This is the second "general improvements" update since we launched TFC into Early Access. Your feedback has been fantastic! We're very excited about this update. Of course, we can't get through all the feedback at once, but we decided to take some extra time to go through as much as possible, before moving on to new content. We try to respond to most feedback, and if we haven't looked at your suggestion yet in this update, we still take notes. We'll keep making these types of general improvements even as we shift more focus towards new content.

What's the plans for new content?

At the same time as we've worked on this update, we've also been laying out a comprehensive road map for future Major Content Updates, which we'll upload during Early Access as well as past 1.0. You think we've included all our best ideas already into TFC? Think again! It's safe to say that we'e thrilled to start working on it all! Expect a much heavier focus on new features and content moving forward from this update. We're not quite ready to share our plans yet, but stay tuned for more on this!

General improvements

Now, let's get into the nitty gritty of this update!

New high-level pathfinding written from scratch

The high-level pathfinding worked well for the most part. Until it didn't ... the red arrow in the image below shows what could happen in certain cases.
What's more important than decent pathfinding in an RTS game? Therefore, we decided to completely rewrite the high-level pathfinding. The new system is more robust, generally leads to more optimal paths, and it even comes with performance improvements. The green arrow in the image above shows the path a villager will take in this version.

Fixed an ugly performance bottleneck

This problem could make the game constantly hick. The high-level pathfinding system would be told that a battering ram could get through to the watchtower in the walled-in area, and so it would proceed to find a path. This meant that the pathfinding would continously search the entire map for a path that would never be found, using up a lot of uneccessary resources. This would happen with battering rams against partly walled in areas, so it was fairly common for example against the last hordes in Horde Mode, after they successfully sieged down some of your walls.
In this version, the pathfinding will be correctly told a path doesn't exist straight away, and so the game will handle this thereafter; only using minimal resources to take care of these cases!

Units exiting Palace or Watchtower spawn towards the correct direction

Before, garrisoned units always spawned at the bottom of the building, even if the rally point was set eg. to the north. Now, units correctly spawn towards the direction of the rally point.
The red arrow shows what would happen in 06970, whereas the green arrow shows what will happen in 06990.

Smoother resource deliveries

Another side-effect of the new pathfinding is that villagers will walk more optimised paths to delivery points. Villagers had a tendency to deliver resources to the bottom side of buildings, which is no longer the case. This improvement might seem negligible, but we've found the difference makes such an impact on resource gathering speeds that we did some re-assessments of these!

Fixed a problem with ranged units changing attack focus

If an attack animation was interrupted by changing focus to another unit, and the projectile was yet to be launched, this would make the unit idle for the rest of the attack animation, which meant losing almost an entire attack. In this version, the attack animation will reset immediately if the attack trigger (firing the projectile) has not yet happened. This generally makes changing unit to focus much smoother. Overall, this makes ranged units more fun to use!

Animals in Fog of War (community feedback)

This has been a long-awaited community request, as previously you would have to remember the placement of animal flocks after scouting the map. Now the game remembers for you, adding another mechanic to the game that helps you stay on top of things.
Here you can see a mouflon flock in fog of war. When assigned to hunt for the mouflons, the villagers will automatically move to the flock and look for meat to skin or animals to hunt. If there are none left, the villagers will move to the flock position and idle.

Under attack notifications (community feedback)

If you click on it, the camera will move to the battle location. We said we would figure out a hotkey for this, but we haven't found a good solution yet that doesn't break the current hotkey scheme. We'll aim to tackle this as we rework and add customisable hotkeys in a future update.

Cleaned up the resources panel

We've changed the position of all the elements in this panel, such that all the resource stock boxes are next to each other. This should make it somewhat easier to read.

Population and housing numbers have merged into one panel (community feedback)

Meat icon (community feedback)

Since meat can, and fruit cannot, be delivered to a resource camp, we needed to add a distinction between meat and foraged (or farmed) food. The new meat icon indicates if your villagers have been hunting for food and are therefore carrying game.

Zoom in further with the mouse wheel (community feedback)

We've added an additional zoom in level. To achieve this, we've seperated the zoom in and zoom out buttons. And! You can now use the middle mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

Building foundations show which player it belongs to

Villagers drop off resources after constructing and taking over a farm (community feedback)

This change is part of our goal to streamline the game. When looking for a new farmer, you don't have to make sure he or she drops off any resources at a delivery point anymore. Just order him or her to make the farm, and the game will no longer penalise you by removing all the resources the villager was carrying. This will only work for the villager actually constructing the farm. Other villagers helping out but not becoming a farmer will not have their resources automatically delivered.

Attack move is confirmed with Left Mouse Button (community feedback)

It used to be RMB, but we decided to swap this, in order to align the controls more with traditional RTS conventions. RMB is now used to cancel attack move. The same is the case for the 'Repair' command.

Escape cancels actions and closes menu panels (community feedback)

ESC now cancels all command actions like placing a building, and resets selection of tile, building, resource, unit and units. In addition - Can close in-game Settings panel by pressing ESC - Additional hotkey for closing Technology Tree is ESC - ESC is no longer a hotkey for opening in-game menus

Multiplayer and skirmish end screens show total resources gathered

Instead of only food gathered. Also, villagers and warriors count titles have changed to "Villagers trained" and "Warriors trained" to make it more clear what these numbers mean.

Other general improvements

- Showing error message in building view when there is no space around a military training building for a unit to spawn - Skirmish AI is even more aggressive on gathering food during starvation - Skirmish AI will now attempt to protect resource camps outside its immediate base - Skirmish AI will no longer make any buildings that don't contribute to gathering resources while starving - If a Village Center rally point is set to a farm then newly trained villagers will automatically find the closest empty farm to take over - In-game chat box opens on key down instead of key up - Description of Elite Heavy Axeman in tehcnology tree is more precise - Save games are ordered by creation date instead of alphabetically - Enemy buildings show in fog of war in the minimap - Spectators can see all player chats

Balance changes

This is the first update since the EA release with substantial balance changes. We've played lots of games, talked to the community, and followed the last 2on2 tournament closely: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1674820/view/3228530086577059201 Even before the tournament started, we saw clear indications of a meta emerging: all-in on slingers early and never any Palace being constructed! This update attempts to fix the lack of variety caused by this meta.

Main focus areas for balance

- Nerfed all-in Slinger rush as it turned out to be overwhelmingly hard to hold out against - Nerfed Sappers as they could just bulldoze themselves into the enemy base and take out Village Center - Nerfed Watchtowers as they are cheap and were too overpowering as an offensive construction - Adjusted movement speeds so it's harder to kite Heavy Spearman - Reduced Palace costs so it's easier to transition from early game when opponent all-ins pre-Palace units - Fixed "broken" Marketplace

Archer and Javelinman no longer have access to helmet upgrades

In addition, we've made it clear exactly which units benefit from the Copper Helmet and Bronze Helmet furnace upgrades.

Other unit changes

- Slinger base ranged attack damage is 6 (from 7) - Slinger training time is 15s (from 12s) - Slinger has 2 base siege damage (from 3) - Lead bullets no longer provide slingers with extra ranged attack and vision ranges - Lead bullets provides +1 siege damage to Slinger (from +2) - Sapper deals 12 base siege damage (from 15) - Sapper has 6 base movement speed (from 8) - Elite Sapper gains 4 extra damage against defensive structures (from 6) - Javelinman has 6 base movement speed (from 7) - Heavy Spearman has 6 base movement speed (from 5) - Heavy Axeman has 170 hitpoints (from 160) - Battering ram has 3 armour against ranged attacks (from 4)

Technologies

- Improved Woodcutting increases villager wood cutting speed by 30% (from 60%) - Bronze Smelting costs 6 knowledge points to unlock (from 5)

Buildings

- Palace costs 150 food, 150 clay, 150 wood (from 200 food, 200 clay, 100 wood) - Watchtower has 225 hitpoints (from 250) - Watchtower has 0 base siege armor (from 1)

Gathering rates

- Foraging gathering rate is per 2.3s (from 2.4s) - Skinning animal rate is per 2.5s (from 2.3s)

Animals

- Gazelle has 10 hitpoints (from 20) - Mouflon has 20 hitpoints (from 30)

Marketplace

- Trade 10 food for 15 metal (from 15 food for 10 metal) - Trade 10 metal for 20 food (from 10 metal for 25 food)

Bug fixes

We haven't fixed any game-breaking bugs, as we didn't find any, apart from the pathfinding issues described earlier. We have therefore tried to fix as many minor ones as we could. - Description of Resource Camp now mentions bricks as a resource that can be dropped off there - Fixed that "lack of housing" could show even though a unit was successfully in training - Attacking an animal from a garrisoned Watch Tower no longer sets rally point - Logo fades in correctly after leaving multiplayer lobbies in all resolution setups - Toggling idle villager hotkeys no longer work while in attack move, place building or similar states - Unit shadows render on top of farms - Scout deals full damage to animals - Clicking anywhere in multiplayer room will no longer submit chat text - Joining a multiplayer room at the same time as the host starts the game no longer leads the game to crash, and an error message will say "Game has started!" - Fixed graphical glitch that happened when a projectile like an arrow hit Battering Ram - Removed several memory leaks - Ordering villagers to construct village center very soon after placing the building no longer causes issue - Fixed a crash that could happen late game in rare cases in Skirmish Mode - Selecting an empty control groups deselects the bottom HUD correctly - Can no longer select Tribe unit if added to control group with SHIFT+NUM and if tribe is moving towards Village Center - Palace starts with 10 hitpoints upon placement (from 1) - Elite Sapper deals correct damage to walls - Fixed a rare crash that could happen when villagers delivered resources - After hovering building production tooltip and then pressing NUM to select a saved group of units, the tooltip will disappear - Holding SHIFT while placing Palace or Wonder no longer lets you place multiple of these buildings - Fixed issues with "go back to gather resources" command - Units will no longer in some odd cases reach target "one node early" - Fixed that in rare cases the Tribe unit would not disappear but move to the bottom side of Village Center and idle after placement of Village Center instead - Unit selection circle shows when unit is standing on a farm - After saving a game buildings will no longer show as in construction after rediscovering them and then moving away

[ 2022-06-08 14:11:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

The first community tournament since the start of Early Access is behind us. What an spectacle it was! We would like to thank everyone for participating in the game and watching the clashes on Twitch. We also thank HeavyBeber for arranging everything. You are the best! [previewyoutube=ElB0ezRlgzU;full][/previewyoutube]

And the winners are

But who was on the podium? We are pleased to announce that Nown0 and Sigh took first place! Their opponents, ZertoN and RecoN, faced them bravely and caused quite a lot of trouble but eventually succumbed, taking second place. Both teams will receive rewards for their efforts. Congratulations to everyone, and good luck in future tournaments! We are glad that you are so eager to participate in such competitions. We will also have some surprises for you in the future to make your game experience even better! So stay tuned!

[ 2022-05-23 14:28:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Crescent Cup 2v2 Tournament is fast approaching and we'll soon find out which duo rules in TFC: The Fertile Crescent. You can still join the fun, but hurry up - time is short! The tournament is limited to 16 teams, so secure your spot as soon as possible! The TFC Crescent Cup will take place from 14 to 22 May. You can sign up for the game here: https://forms.gle/4tfLpHfH2TkiBToj7 Even if you arent interested in taking part in the competition, we invite you to watch our players! All broadcasting will be on Twitch by designated streamers, so you can't miss it. And most importantly, let the best team win and good luck to everyone!

[ 2022-05-10 14:04:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Important regarding save games!

We were forced to rewrite parts of the saving and loading system to fix bugs related to it, and thus old saves will NOT be compatible. You will therefore not see unsupported save files in your list of games to load. We apologise for the inconvenience! In the future, if you want to avoid this problem, you can always turn off automatic updates of the game through Steam, and wait to update until you are confident that you won't need to load any save files anymore. We will do our best to inform you when new updates break old save files.

Crescent Cup 2v2 Tournament

This update will be the tournament patch for the upcoming Crescent Cup 2v2 Tournament! Read more about and sign up to the community tournament: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1674820/view/3224023791138934645

General improvements

Whilst we are planning new content for the game (and we will be talking about this at a later point), this first patch is designed to address the most concerning issues, as well as some of the community feedback and suggestions!

Beginner is more... beginner friendly (community feedback)

Did you rage quit after playing TFC for the first time? Don't feel bad. You were not alone! We happily admit that we failed to balance the game for beginners. In retrospect, we were too focused on making the AI challenging for seasoned players. Just to be clear, the AI doesn't cheat, but it does know how to play the game and make good desicions. One of our goals is for TFC to be a great entry point for RTS games. So in this update, we have tried to move closer to this goal, and thus we've attempted to make both Skirmish and Horde Mode less stress inducing (however, Brutal difficulty is still brutal!). We can't promise it's still not a challenge, and we might have to fine-tune its balance further. However, this update should be a good step in the right direction!

More readable font

We have swapped the old font for a font that is more readable. In addition, we have changed the default font color as well as increased font sizes throughout the whole game. This should make the game easier to read. Lastly, the font supports more language specific characters that were previously not supported.

New dwelling sprite (community feedback)

All dwellings are now two stories to make sure they are more distinct from the one storey Resource Camp.

Re-arranged unit stats (community feedback)

The feedback we received was that it was a bit messy, and we agreed. We have re-arranged so that all attack stats are in row 1, and then armor starts on row 2. This should make it easier to read.

Performance improvements

Both detailed pathfinding and updating unit vision is now 3-20x faster, which added up should provide a nice boost for most players when the last wave of hordes amass against your prosperous village, or during 2on2 multiplayer matches.

Other general improvements

- New pomegranate fruit tree sprite (community feedback) - While holding shift you can now double click any unit to add all nearby units of the same type to group of selected units (community feedback) - Units in groups move immediately in the correct direction (community feedback) - Under attack symbol on mini map lasts for 9 seconds (from 6) - Chat messages stay for longer (25s, from 15s) - Notifications show for 60s before automatically disappearing (from 30s) - Spectator panel occupies less screen space - Improved several tooltips

Balance changes

- Tribe unit (the one you settle with) has 3 movement speed (from 5) - Walls have 350 hitpoints (from 250) - Dwellings have 175 hitpoints (from 225) - Resource camps have 250 hitpoints (from 300)

Skirmish Mode

- Added production and research handicaps to Beginner, Familiar and Skilled Skirmish AIs - Easier AIs attack slightly less often - When AI is in starvation mode it will focus much harder on food production to avoid completely starving and losing the game - Beginner and Familiar AIs no longer flee with villagers that are under attack - Beginner and Familiar AIs no longer micro defending villagers with low health back to base - Familiar AI will like Beginner AIs never flee with its offensive army but keep attacking until all are dead - It is harder to cheese Beginner AI within the first minutes of gameplay - AI perceives Watchtower as less of a threat and is therefore less likely to flee with its offensive army from it - AI perceives villagers as less of a threat and is therefore less likely to flee with its offensive army from areas with large amounts of villagers - AI perceives villagers to be a stronger defensive force and will therefore send less villagers to help fend off enemy attacks - Skilled and Expert AIs are slightly less inclined to flee in general unless they are totally overwhelmed by enemy forces - Skirmish AI villagers never skin meat until all boars in a flock are killed (this could cause problems which lead to skirmish AI starving early game) - Fixed a case where AI would get blocked by lack of dwellings early on which would severaly impact its early game performance

Horde Mode

- Horde Mode is easier on Beginner (more so) and Familiar difficulty levels - Horde Mode spawn timer starts as soon as you place a building (community feedback) - The minimap skull icon will keep being a skull after hordes have spawned on the map - Re-introduced sword icon showing location that under attack for this mode - Fixed UI issues that would happen if a wave spawned and another wave was still not defeated - Horde mode UI shows correct information after loading horde mode game where the last boss wave has spawned - Horde mode UI elements no longer "flicker" while dragging mouse on minimap to move camera position - Fixed a problem with some units detaching from group on spawn if group had battering ram as member

General bug fixes

- Fixed typo in multiplayer end screen when someone wins Wonder Victory (community feedback) - Palace description no longer overflows icons below - Fixed notification regarding enemy Wonder being upgraded to the next stage (community feedback) - Cost of Wonder matches constructing Wonder tooltip (community feedback) - Rotation of gate is now correctly saved and loaded (community feedback) - Starvation timer is now correctly saved and loaded - Fixed a case that let military units place buildings - Fixed that Claypit disappears after loading game, if you don't move the tribe unit - Whenever nothing is selected the bottom hud will never show - Fixed a problem with villagers occasionally idling when a group of them were constructing walls (community feedback) - Fixed some weird behavior when attacking boars from another walled in area - Fixed an issue where units would walk back and forwards trying to get around longer segments of walls because the high level and low level pathfinding systems disagreed on the best path - Fixed a general pathfinding issue - Fog of war no longer displays incorrect building state after loading the game two times - Fixed a case where a villlager would not construct a building ordered to upon reaching destination - Field of view no longer stays after destroying the Village Center in multiplayer team games - Selecting a group of villagers to construct multiple walls and watchtower using waypoints will no longer cause some villagers to unexpectedly idle or garrison towers - Swapping between players' tech trees as a spectator always updates technology costs correctly - Swapping between players' tech trees as a spectator always updates which technologies the followed player can and can not afford correctly - If villager production was paused at save, once game is loaded, production % will no longer show 0% until training is resumed - Villagers attacking animal fires correct projectile sprite - Pressing NUMBER while chatting no longer triggers spectator setting or group selection hotkeys - Fixed several typos - After an online team game and while you're exploring the map, an ally leaving the game no longer opens the end game statistics panel for you - Revolting Village Center is correctly removed from map after revolting villagers destroy it - Revolting buildings' health bars are correctly rendered and updated

[ 2022-04-22 03:54:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

We sincerely invite all our players to the Crescent Cup 2v2 Tournament! This is the first TFC Community Tournament since the launch of Early Access, organized by our faithful player HeavyBeber!

When?

The tournament is limited to 16 teams, so secure your spot as soon as possible! The TFC Crescent Cup will take place from 14 to 22 May. You have plenty of time to prepare with your companion for battle and learn about all the changes we will make to the game before the tournament.

Why?

It is worth participating in the tournament because we have also prepared awards for the best warriors - the winning team members will both be granted a 50 USD gift card. The 2nd place team members will be given a 25 USD gift card.

Where?

You can find the tournament rules here. There you will also find a link to sign up. And what else can we add? Good luck, and may the best duo win!

[ 2022-04-20 12:33:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

As the game has been out for almost a week now, we are aware that you might wonder... what is next for TFC? But first! We want to thank you for all your amazing support! The feedback since launch has been wonderful, and we keep receiving great suggestions both in our Discord and Steam Discussions. This is exactly what we hoped for, and we cant wait to dive into it all and continue working on the game. [previewyoutube=Z6qLkWwHx4s;full][/previewyoutube] We have worked on this game for about five years to get it to Early Access release, and we are pleased to see that the game works well for the most part, and you seem to enjoy it! Saying that, there is still room for improvement. We have big plans to sort out smaller bugs and minor improvements and expand the game with new features and content! Before we get to that though, its important that we take a small break and have a breather. This means that we will tone down our presence for the rest of this week. After this short break, we will collect all the suggestions and feedback we have received and start working on them. We cant promise to work on every suggestion right away. However, some kind of general improvement update will be our first priority, and it should land fairly soon. When it comes to our long-term plans, we will tell you more about our exciting plans in a later post! Thanks again for your support!

[ 2022-04-05 12:31:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

If you see an update downloading, it's because we added support for 32-bit Windows. There are no other changes or new version number apart from that. We'll update you on our future patches once the dust from the release has settled.

[ 2022-04-02 07:05:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all! We did a quick video showcasing a match between the developers where Andr goes over some of the basics in the game, shows some tips on how to get better and manage your food surplus, and some basic strategies and thought processes that he goes through when he plays! [previewyoutube=Zr1N_Jguehw;full][/previewyoutube] We'll be doing more of these in the future and go more in-depth on specific topics or mechanics! Good luck during your games, and don't forget that you will always find people willing to play together on our Discord!

[ 2022-03-31 09:31:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Constructing gates no longer causes multiplayer games to desync - Fixed a problem that could cause villagers to suddenly stop making further wall segments under construction

[ 2022-03-30 01:57:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

It is with great excitement and gratitude that we release TFC today! Lincread and I have worked on TFC for many years now, and it feels almost unreal to see it finally released in Early Access! It is weird looking back on the development process that has been a red thread through both of our lives for the past five years and realising that we were completely different people back then, and as we have changed and improved as people, so has the game! [previewyoutube=Z6qLkWwHx4s;full][/previewyoutube] There are three modes in TFC now, a Skirmish mode with an AI that doesnt cheat, a Horde Mode that will really challenge the most avid base builder out there and an online Multiplayer for those who want to get competitive! Also, please join us in our Discord to report bugs and bring us suggestions for how to improve the game and play against the best TFC players there are! Once we have caught our breath a bit, there will be tournaments and other exciting community events. We hope you find a lot of enjoyment in TFC and that you will join us for the journey towards 1.0! We already have a lot of exciting ideas for what TFC will look like when it reaches 1.0, and we will be announcing the roadmap in the next couple of weeks. Thanks so much again for checking out TFC, and we look forward to seeing you on Discord! - Andr and Anders

[ 2022-03-29 15:10:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Did you miss our Thursday stream, where we showed horde mode together with PixelsForBreakfast? No worries! Join us on Saturday 26.02 at 5 PM PST for a restream of the event. Don't forget to check out our Discord server. or play a demo!

[ 2022-02-26 13:45:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Grab your morning coffee and join us on our Live Q&A hosted by PixelsForBreakfast! We will be talking about TFC development, upcoming features, and answering your questions from the chat and our Discord server. See you on Thursday, February 24 at 11 AM CET!

[ 2022-02-23 10:08:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

The crescent moon over the fertile lands has just risen. A time of fertility and growth is approaching. But be vigilant; not everything that comes out of the darkness is known, not even safe... Can you defend your people from the barbarian nomad hordes? How will you gain an advantage over your enemy? Lead your people to the glory and victory in TFC, coming to Early Access on Steam on March 29.
Yes, on March 29, TFC: The Fertile Crescent will arrive in Early Access. Expect a lot of news and changes for the start and more to come. Horde Mode and the new UI are just the beginning of our RTS development. We hope you will stay with us till the end of this journey - until version 1.0 and beyond releases! We don't want to reveal all the surprises right away, so regularly keep an eye on us. The closer we get to March 29, the more we'll have to show, but in the meantime, we encourage you to enjoy Steam Next Fest and play the demo!

[ 2022-02-21 15:01:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi and welcome back to the DevBlog! Were currently working hard on the Early Access release, and this months post will be about what to expect from it.

The main gameplay loop is tested

TFC: The Fertile Crescent has been in development since 2017, and since 2018 weve had a public alpha available. We maintained that version for around 3 years. We also released a Multiplayer Demo to our Steam page last year, providing a snippet of an in-development version of the game. This means weve already had quite a lot of time to receive feedback and data from people testing the game.

Our main goal for the release

We hope the EA release will expand our user base, and we hope to gather further feedback from this, as we wish to improve the game long into the future. However, weve always wanted to make sure that we worked through the most obvious stuff before charging for it. We cant promise there will not be any rough edges here and there, but overall our main goal is for TFC to feel like a polished and high-quality product already when we release it into Early Access.

Is the Steam Multiplayer Demo the same as the Early Access version?

No, The Steam Multiplayer Demo represents an earlier in-development version of the game, from last year, so expect a ton of bug fixes and general improvements over the demo once TFC is released onto Early Access.

New UI

If youve tried the Steam Multiplayer Demo, you can for example expect a complete overhaul of all the user interfaces. Every single asset in the game has been redone!

New Singleplayer Game Modes

So far, weve spent most resources on nailing the core gameplay loop and making sure its fun. As weve reached many of our goals for the core gameplay loop, weve started shifting more focus onto content for the Early Access release. As part of this, were going to introduce new game modes that can be played in single player, which well reveal more about during Steam Next Fest!

Multiplayer

Since 2018, weve had a large focus on multiplayer. This has paid off as the community has already been able to run several successful tournaments. Thanks to these, we even added a spectator mode as part of our alpha builds. Early Access multiplayer will not change much from the Steam Multiplayer Demo, since it already works quite well there. However, the tons of bug fixes and general improvements weve made to the game in general, since we shared the demo, will carry over to multiplayer as well. And of course, were continuing to take care of it and improve its stability for the Early Access release.

Steam Next Fest

We will be part of Steam Next Fest! "Its a multi-day celebration where fans can try out demos, chat with developers, watch livestreams, and learn about upcoming games on Steam, [...] and returns on February 21st through 28th, 2022." We have some big announcements to share during Steam Next Fest, so make sure you visit us! -Andr and Anders

[ 2022-02-15 12:30:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi, and welcome back to the DevBlog! This months post is a bit of an indulgence for me as I get to talk about the sound design in TFC! When I first joined the project way back in the day, it was mainly to help with sound and music, which has been a lot of fun! I could probably talk about sound design in TFC until the cows come home, so Ill try to limit it a bit in this post and stick to giving a sense of what tools I have used and what were going for aesthetically. Also, there will be a fair bit of jargon in this blog post, but Ill try to explain as we go along!

The Idea

When we started, TFC was a very different looking game. It had a fairly lo-fi visual aesthetic and looked a lot less intricate than what it does now. Since then, weve obviously seen big improvements to both UI and art. (With further updates to the UI right around the corner!) But this was the version of TFC I started to put sounds to, and it informed some design choices early on that worked well as a starting point for the rest of the sound design.
With its lo-fi aesthetic, it was very easy to start thinking about using 8-bit style sound design, reminiscent of the old NES games, in TFC. However, we were aiming for a fairly smooth soundscape as we wanted to make a game that people could play for long periods of time without getting annoyed or tired of the sound design. So, this was consideration number one for us, and youll see this reflected in the music as well! Ill do a post about that too, one day:) I also wanted to impose a sort of creative limitation on myself, sort of a challenge, and that was to create all the sounds in the game using one specific synthesiser. For those who arent big music nerds; a synthesiser is a tool often used in music and sound production that creates (or synthesises) sounds either digitally or electronically, as opposed to relying on recordings of audio. My thinking was that this would be a fun way to learn more about the synth, push the envelope a bit for what the synth can do, and would also likely make the sound design a bit more coherent.

The Nitty Gritty

So, what is this synthesiser that was supposed to generate all the sounds in the game, and what sounds did end up being responsible for? Well, it is the Elektron Monomachine SFX-60+ MkII, and it is worthy of a few blog posts just by itself, though Ill limit it to a short introduction here: It is a very digital sounding synth that can either operate as six independent monophonic synths or as one six voice synth. It also has an amazing sequencer per synth, which makes it great to create songs or loops on.
So, in TFC, the Monomachine is responsible for all the in-world sounds that arent ambience sounds or voices (although it can do voice synthesis, too!). That means, every time a tree is being chopped, a sword is being swung and so on, youre hearing the Monomachine. While I was saying before that I wanted to steer away from 8 bit samples in the game, the Monomachine has some great 12 bit drum samples, which form the basis of most of the in-world sounds. It also can make small changes to the sound every time you play it! So all of the sounds made with the Monomachine have up to 12 variations, where they have a slightly different pitch or a sound slightly different in some other way. This means that when you sit and listen to someone chopping wood, it doesnt repeat the exact same sound over and over again, as that would get annoying very quickly. This is achieved by modulating the different parameters of the synth, meaning we change the value of the pitch, for example. We can do this manually, or we can do this with a modulator. Almost all synths have modulators of some sort, and often you can assign them to any parameter you want, and they will wiggle that parameter for you. Another key part of our audio workflow is FMOD. FMOD is an audio implementation middleware that sits between Unity, which is our game engine, and myself. Chances are youve seen the logo during the splash screen of other games, and even if you havent, it is very likely that you have played a game that is using FMOD. By using FMOD, I get to have much greater control of how audio is played in the game itself. This means that I can experiment and explore different ideas much faster and without having to ask too much of the programmer! One thing FMOD does well is to make it easy to add variation to a sound, to modulate it. So, in the same way that we have used slight variations in the sound to create 12 different sounding versions of the same sound, FMOD now makes it easy to add even more variation to those 12 sounds. FMOD is also responsible for the spatialisation of the sounds. That means that when you move the camera across the screen, the sound of someone chopping wood will pan around and feel like it is somewhat tied to the location where the woodchopping is happening. We havent tried to go for pinpoint accuracy here, but it is very useful as there are a lot of people chopping wood at any one time in the game, and if you had to listen to all of them at once, that would be annoying, too! So we have tried to make it so that the ones that matter to you in the moment, the ones you can see, make sounds and the rest are quiet. Now that we have gotten further in the development, and the game has gotten more intricate both visually and gameplay wise, I have ended up abandoning the one synth approach and instead branching out to other synths capable of producing different sounds, as well as having a larger focus on recordings. Currently, I am in the process of creating wind sounds, for example, and I have been using Unfiltered Audios Lion, which Ill take a moment here to shout out. It has all the modulation you could ever need and then some! And some interesting noise oscillators to boot! In the context of synthesisers, modulation is the ability to move different parameters of the synth automatically.

The recorded sounds

In addition to synthesised sounds, you might have also heard a fair few drums and flutes in the game! You will find those most in the user interface sounds, so clicking buttons in the menus, placing buildings and even game over sounds and so on. Some of the heavier drum sounds are from a taiko drumming class I took many years ago. Taiko drums are Japanese drums that sound awesome, and they have a very specific playing style and are often played in large ensembles. When I was lucky enough to take that class all those years ago, I brought with me a handheld recorder and went around after the class, recording as many drums as I could. An interesting take away from that session was that the best sounding drum was actually one that was broken, where the drum skin was flapping around a bit. You can hear it when selecting buildings, for example, the Palace. There are also a fair few taiko drums in the multiplayer lobby sounds! Also in the multiplayer lobbies, you can hear a flute when you unready. This is a very cheap flute that is sold as a souvenir at The Big Banana, which is a tourist attraction in New South Wales in Australia. It is a faux bamboo flute where they have marked it to look like a bamboo flute, it is not in key and doesnt sound very good, but for some reason, it is great for flute sound effects! So, whenever you hear any flute sounds in the menus, this is what youre hearing.
There are also some wood elements in the user interface sounds, and in a very similar fashion to the flute, this is a very cheap coconut kalimba that I found at an antique shop in my neighbourhood. It, too, is out of tune, doesnt play right, but makes a lot of great sounds that are useful for sound design. The tines, the little rods you play to make sound are all over the place regarding pitch, and while Ive tried to tune it, it doesnt seem interested in maintaining a pitch! But, by whacking it, playing it with chopsticks and interacting with all the ways you can think of, it can make some pretty cool sounds!

Some musings about sound design and the road forward

To my mind, sound has the ability to expand the world of the game outside of what is shown on screen, and this can happen across a few different dimensions. One of these dimensions are the abstract vs the concrete, or the stylised vs the naturalistic. I dont always feel like it is necessary to couple lo-fi or stylised visual aesthetics with lo-fi or stylised audio aesthetics. Combining a more naturalistic sound design with visuals that are fairly abstract can in certain scenarios make the world feel more real. Im throwing in a lot of sometimes and certain here, as there are no actual rules for this, but for TFC, I am in the process of realizing that it could work well with a more naturalistic sound design for parts of the soundscape. I started experimenting with this idea when I implemented recordings of birds to try to make the world feel more comfortable and real. It wouldve been a great exercise to create bird sounds with synths, but I felt like it would be interesting to see how recordings would fit in the world. It definitely made it feel more comfortable, a world youd like to spend some time in. Once the bird sounds were in, it became clear how awkward the silence in the game could be at times. I had always wanted to have some sort of ambience sound in the game, but it became clear how necessary it was after the birds were implemented. This led to me starting the process of adding wind sounds, which we hope will change as you pan across deserts onto forested areas, representing what youre looking at, at any given time. While this is a synthesised sound, I am aiming for something that will sound more naturalistic, and it has been a great learning experience to see just how close we can get to something natural sounding with just software! Another recent experiment we have undertaken sound wise is the implementation of a reverb. This means that there is some sense of the sounds bouncing around in the environment. There are interesting things we could do here too, like changing the reverb to reflect perhaps how many trees are surrounding the sound generating object, or even buildings, but for now we are starting with trying to find a general ambience that works well and is subtle enough so that it doesnt take too much of peoples attention! The goal is really for people not to notice it unless we remove it.

The Outro

All this to say that Im very much still experimenting with the sound design in TFC. So far I think there are some cool sounds in there, and Im very happy well get to spend some time implementing new sounds and come up with new ideas for implementation of sounds in the game going forward. The Early Access release will let us gather a fair bit of feedback which is very helpful in marrying what I think is a cool idea for sound design with what the players actually want. Im looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Stay tuned for further updates on this! There will likely be more sound and music specific blog posts in the future, and well be trying to stick to monthly DevBlogs, though things are heating up a bit here development-wise as we get closer to release! For any questions or feedback, feel free to contact me on the Discord at bit.ly/TFC_Discord or via email at boss@minibossaudio.com. Thanks for reading! -Anders

[ 2022-01-19 15:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.5 years ago we released the Beginners Guide video for TFC to serve as an introduction to the game, while we were still working on the in-game tutorial. That, and our announcement video for when we put online multiplayer in the game, were the only two videos we had made about TFC. Therefore, we thought it was about time we did another. SO! Last month we released the creatively named Development Update video showing off some of the improvements and progress weve made since the Beginners Guide. [previewyoutube=Z-oA0fbyAjA;full][/previewyoutube]

Our love for classic RTS games

This month's DevBlog will be a sort of companion to that video, explaining some of our history with RTS games and some of the mechanics and aspects of TFC we think are cool. We hope you enjoy it! TFC: The Fertile Crescent exists in a long lineage of great RTS games. Both Andr and I are big fans of the classics from the 90s and early 2000s, as well as the more contemporary ones that we share a market with today. For my own part, I have very fond memories of playing the Age of Empires demo that came with some computer magazine demo disc. At 7 years old, my friend and I would rush home to my place after school to play shee ha, which was the sound the game made when you got a new villager. For two Norwegian kids, Age of Empires was much too complicated a sentence for us to wrap our heads around. Later, Id get a full copy of the game and spend hours in skirmish mode, building up the biggest army I could and taking down the CPU players, one by one. Or, I would create incredibly unfair scenarios in the scenario designer and fight the CPU that way. In any regard, I never played much of the competitive modes against other players as I wouldve gotten creamed immediately.
Andr enjoyed the multiplayer aspects more, spending a lot of time in the early 2000s with Warcraft 3, Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour, The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth 2, and of course, Age of Empires 2. It was around this time that the seeds of designing his own game were planted, and 10-15 years later it sprouted into the first concept for TFC. In that time, the classic RTS genre had been declared dead by some pockets of the industry. Pockets that perhaps were not noticing the indie space, where future classics like Northgard, Tooth and Tail and They are Billions were being developed. These more modern RTS games also quickly became favourites of Andrs, breathing life into what many saw as a dormant genre.

Its all about pomegranate trees

At the same time, Andr would pour over history books on the Near East Bronze Age, learning about the different civilizations, their customs and traditions, and about life in general in that area during that time. The details gleaned from those books have found their way into TFC in various ways. They have informed how we designed the mechanics surrounding the Palace building, and details like the fruit trees being pomegranate trees, which would have been one food source back then. Perhaps most obvious of all, it informed the push and pull between growing your village and army while maintaining a sufficient amount of food for your population, as well as how food sources functioned as a type of currency in Bronze Age civilizations, which has become integral to the game. In Andrs own words: TFC is a sort of bucket where I have collected all the different things that I like from other RTS games, and the market research I have done in learning what other people like about RTS games, and then combined it with an era that I find very exciting. And so, it is in this context that TFC is being developed. Considering all this, what are the goals of TFC? How is TFC looking to contribute to a genre, which in the last couple of years, has seen not only an awakening, but really an explosion of new upcoming titles.

Strategic options from the beginning

One of our main concerns with classic base-building RTS games has been the slow and repetitive start. Often the first few minutes of a match are played almost on autopilot, and so there are a few designs we have implemented to attempt to address this. The first important decision you make is where to place your town centre. Already here, there is a chance to optimize your strategy, finding a spot that is close to future farms, current fruit trees and with quick access to clay pits. From there, we have an almost flat Technology Tree, where you get a lot of options to specialise in different directions from the beginning of the game, and you can also quickly level up military units that can potentially ruin the early game for your competitor.

Survival and food stores

The soil fertility and food surplus mechanic go hand in hand, and are probably one of the most obvious different aspects of TFC compared to other fast-paced RTS games. By implementing soil fertility, the player needs to take the environment into consideration and plan ahead when building their base. Farms built on less fertile ground will yield less crops. The most fertile land is also the only place where you can build clay pits, and so youll have to consider this as well. This can make the process of base-building more interesting and a bit more demanding, and ties nicely into the food surplus mechanic. As your village grows, so will your food needs, and staying on top of this is very important for how quickly you can advance your village. If you are able to keep your food stores well stocked, you will see benefits to both villager training and knowledge generation, both of which will lead to you getting an advantage against your opponent. On the other hand, if your food stock is too low for too long, your villagers will revolt and you lose the game.

Removing busy work and friction

In the same vein, it was an early decision to have automatic villager training in TFC. As with most RTS games with an economy aspect, the more villagers you have, the more resources you can collect. This means that as soon as you are behind on the number of villagers compared to your opponent, you are at a disadvantage. So by removing the busywork of manually generating villagers, the player can focus on more fun aspects of the game, like balancing the different resources and making strategic decisions. Another result of this gameplay goal is that you can queue production of additional military units even while you cant afford them. This takes away the need to keep a close eye on your resources while youre waiting to train more axemen, for example. Instead, you just queue them up, and theyll automatically get trained as you are able to stock up more resources.

Several viable strategies and a focus on base design

With the automatic villager production, we think it is important to make sure they are useful outside of just gathering resources, and so we have made them fairly capable in fights, too! Especially during the early-game, the villagers can hold their own in certain scenarios. As the game progresses, you can decide to start producing military units and upgrade them, or you can use the Militia upgrade in the tech tree to make the villagers even more effective in combat, as long as they are within a certain distance of your Town Centre or Palace. This means that you can access effective defences, while also saving up resources and research points for a more demanding strategy later in the game. If you have decided to not go for an early rush, youll likely be planning on building the Palace, which will give you access to more advanced technologies and military units. Just like with the Village Centre, where you chose to place the Palace is a strategic concern, since as mentioned, the Palace will also buff your villagers combat abilities the same way the Town Centre does, as long as you have unlocked the Militia upgrade.
We have also designed the knowledge accumulation so that you earn points that you can save up. When you decide to research a technology, and as you spend your knowledge points, the technologies you unlock come into effect immediately. This means that you can adapt and respond to your enemy quickly. During an unexpected attack you can for example upgrade your villagers to become militia immediately, in order to defend your base more efficiently. Or perhaps you have a strategy ready but are unsure of the state of your enemy. By sending a scout to their base, you can quickly assess what kinds of defenses they have, and then proceed to upgrade the appropriate units and launch an attack. These are just some examples of our gameplay goals and how we have attempted to answer them in the design of TFC. We hope this helps give you a sense of what we are trying to achieve with TFC, and perhaps even deepen your understanding of how to play it! By the way, big "thank you" for this fantasic YouTube creators who believed in our project:

• GamerZakh
• Perafilozof
• Nookrium

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us either through the Discord bit.ly/TFC_Discord or via email boss@minibossaudio.com Thanks for reading and well see you in the next DevBlog! -Anders

[ 2021-12-15 15:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Official Trailer Reveal

We're getting closer to the launch of TFC: The Fertile Crescent on Steam in Early Access. We cannot give the exact date yet, but we can reveal that it is closer than further. To sweeten this waiting time, we have prepared something special for you... ...the first official trailer of TFC: The Fertile Crescent! We hope it will encourage you to play! [previewyoutube=nSGXMCTvivE;full][/previewyoutube] Lead your civilization, hunt for food, gather resources and farm fertile lands! Rule the near east Bronze Age and outgrow your opponents, before they outgrow you! Brace yourself, TFC: The Fertile Crescent is coming!

[ 2021-12-07 15:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

#CrescentCup Year 1 Arena Wars 3 is over! What a competition it was!

Many players tested their strength in our TFC: The Fertile Crescent and fought for a copy of the game. The community proved that it has a fighting spirit and a will to win - we thank everyone for participating. However, there can only be one winner! Nown0 proudly stood on the podium! Andrej was in second place, [UBGE] Lo Freitas was third and read was fourth. All of these people will be rewarded for their efforts and will receive a copy of TFC: The Fertile Crescent from us. We would also like to thank the tournament organizers and all those involved. InfinityPanda, you are great! Same as HeavyBeber who has broadcasts of all matches on his channel - check them out! Thanks again to everyone for participating and see you at the next tournament!

[ 2021-12-06 15:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Crescent Cup Year 1 Arena Wars 3 starts today! For all interested, we have prepared a tournament match schedule, which is available for you below: Qualifiers: From November 27th to December 3rd

• We will assign each competitor 5 opponents.
• They will then have to organize themselves to play the 5 matches before the qualifier phase ends on December 3rd.
• The top 4 players will advance to the next stage of the tournament.

Semi-finals: December 4th

• The semi-finals will take place at 20h UTC on December 4th.
• Top1 from the qualifiers will face the top4 in semi-finals 1.
• Top2 from the qualifiers will face the top3 in semi-finals 2.
• Both semi-finals will be best of 3 matches.
• Winners of both semi-finals will advance to the next stage.

Finals: December 5th

• The finals will take place at 20h UTC on December 5th.
• The finals will be a best of 5 matches.

All broadcasting will be on Steam by designated streamers. Every game of the qualifiers is susceptible to being streamed, according to the availability of broadcasters. Semi-finals will be broadcast on Steam at 20h UTC on December 4th. Finals will be broadcast on Steam at 20h UTC on December 5th. Keep your fingers crossed for your favourites and cheer them on with us during streams on Steam!

[ 2021-11-27 12:57:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi and welcome back to the DevBlog! This month were doing a text version of the recent video development update we shared a couple weeks ago, expanding on some of the topics discussed there! [previewyoutube=Z-oA0fbyAjA;full][/previewyoutube] This was actually the first time we had done a video update for TFC in a year and a half. That is much too long, and well try to be a bit more frequent than that with our upcoming videos.

So yes, what has happened with TFC in the past year and a half?

Well, weve already talked about the new art! We are super excited about it. The game now looks like what we always hoped it would look like, and that is much thanks to our publisher and their very talented artists! They were able to take what we had in the game and extrapolate it into something really beautiful. We cant wait to show you what they have done with the UI! We have also added animals and hunting. This one was added a while back and provides a great food source, both early and late game. We have been experimenting with different flock behaviours. For those who have been playing the game on itch.io regularly, you might have noticed that when you start hunting a gazelle for example, the entire flock will flee. After experimenting with making the individual animals flee instead of the entire flock, we ended up reverting back to the flock behaviour for a couple of reasons. Firstly, feedback from the community was that the animals feel more alive and dynamic when they behave as a flock. It also makes it much easier to herd animals to your own base, which is key. Another interesting effect of this behaviour is that it provides opportunities for running to your opponents base and chasing away their food source. Very cheeky!

The Palace for all of you!

Then there is the Palace! This had a huge impact on the gameplay and strategies of the game. The Palace now unlocks the second half of the technology tree (which really isnt a tree, considering how flat it is). Initially, all the technologies were available to research from the very beginning of the match, what we would call a completely flat technology tree. This gave the players the opportunity to jump in and research more advanced techs like bronze smelting in the first few minutes. At some point we realised this wasnt especially useful, and there was no reason to have a flat technology tree just for the sake of it, and so we decided to try to split a match into two stages: the early game and later. Each player will obviously arrive at the stages at different times, and it provides an interesting strategic consideration as well; are you going to try to finish the match in the early game or will you place your bets on the late game, and try to defend against any attacks until then? For this to make sense, well have to explain the Palace first. The Palace is a fairly expensive building that, once built, will give you access to more advanced technologies as well as more advanced units. Initially, you can only generate slingers and light axemen. Both have one upgrade each, and can be very effective in early rushes, especially against an enemy who perhaps is saving resources to build a Palace. However, once you have built the Palace, youll have units like archers, heavy axemen and spearmen, among others, available to you. And! Youre one step closer to the elite swordsmen as well, all with their own upgrades. By tying this to a specific building, it also makes it fairly easy to spot how far along your opponent is by scouting their base looking for their Palace.
Hand in hand with the Palace were also the changes to the way you use and generate Knowledge Points. It used to be that you would select a technology to research, and then a timer would start ticking before you had acquired that technology. After feedback from players, we decided to change this by implementing Knowledge Points, which will accumulate, and you can spend these to instantly unlock new technologies. This means that you can save up your Knowledge Points, scout your enemy, and then spec in a direction that gives you the best chance. This change has also had a huge impact on what a multiplayer match in TFC looks like, and we think games are much more exciting to play and watch now.

Spectator mode is wonderful just like... the Wonder!

Speaking of watching matches! We didnt mention this in the video, but we have implemented a Spectator Mode that we hope youll have an opportunity to check out during the Multiplayer Beta that is available right now until December 5. This mode lets you swap between players and see what they see with regards to Fog of War, which technologies they have researched, and gives a breakdown of how many units they have as well as their resources. You can also turn off Fog of War and see the entire map, which is useful later in the match. Another exciting thing we have added is the Wonder, and with it the Wonder Victory. This is exciting as it provides a victory condition for players (like myself) who prefer to turtle and build a big base with strong defences. There is an interesting aspect to the way we have implemented the Wonder Victory in TFC though, and that is that it is built in stages, with each stage providing you with extra Knowledge Points upon completion. This means that you can get the benefits from building the first few stages of the Wonder without having to commit to the Wonder Victory. For each stage you build, it will notify all the other players in the match, so that is something to consider.

Break down the walls!

Last, but not least, we have added walls and siege units. This has been a long time coming and is perhaps the oldest of the changes I have mentioned here. It is also among the new mechanics that has seen the most iterations. We are pretty happy with how they work now. They are fast and easy to place, you can connect them to each other easily, and they connect well with watch towers as well. Having walls in a base-builder like TFC is absolutely critical, and now that it is in and working well, it has had a huge impact on the efficacy of late game and turteling strategies. Like the Wonder. But! It is important to have units that can efficiently counter walls, and so we have implemented two new siege units as well: The Battering Ram and the Sapper. The Battering Ram is what it sounds like. It is a unit on wheels that slowly rolls across the landscape. It takes little damage from ranged units, and so you will need to get up close and personal to defend against them. Seeing as theyre on wheels, they wont be available to you until you research the wheel. Another great use of the Battering Ram is to roll over your enemys farms. As the Battering Ram rolls over their farms, they take damage and are eventually destroyed. A really solid strategy to ruin your enemys economy. The Sapper is a unit that will run up to the enemys walls and/or buildings and start digging out the foundation from underneath them. This was a fairly common Bronze Age strategy to counter walls, and provides a less armoured but faster alternative to the Battering Ram.
There are of course a whole heap of other changes and updates we have added as well, like waypoints which let you queue commands for your villagers, and we have spent a lot of time on improving pathfinding. However, in the interest of brevity, we will have to return to those in a future DevBlog. For now, thank you very much for reading, and we hope you enjoy the Multiplayer Beta! As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us either through the Discord or via email boss@minibossaudio.com. We should mention here as well, that if you are looking for people to play against in the Multiplayer Beta, the Discord is great for that!

[ 2021-11-22 10:05:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Were thrilled to invite you to the Crescent Cup, a community-driven tournament for TFC: The Fertile Crescent, which is coming together with a Multiplayer Beta release on Steam!

Crescent Cup Info

The tournament will start on 27th of November and will last for 8 days. We are going to reward the 4 best players with 4 keys for the full release of TFC! Sign up now with the form below, and take part in the ancient battle of civilizations! Registration for the tournament is ending by 26th of November, so be sure to not miss it. Form link here: https://bit.ly/ArenaWars3SignUp All necessary information about the tournament can be found in this document.

Multiplayer Beta Release

For the purposes of the tournament, we provide you with the latest version of the games multiplayer, available on Steam. And together with it, you can see the new, polished artwork, a fresh Spectator Mode, and a whole bunch of improvements and bug fixes. It is worth noting that the tournament takes place only on the Steam platform! Feel free to try out the latest version of TFC and be sure to share your feelings and feedback with us! Remember that when the tournament is over, the Multiplayer Beta will disappear from Steam. Good luck from the TFC team!

[ 2021-11-15 14:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Welcome to what will be a series of blog posts about the development of TFC: The Fertile Crescent! Andr and I will be regularly writing these little blogs to discuss what our goals for TFC are, how we have arrived at setting those goals and about the process of making the game. We will also talk about some of the nitty-gritty details of development, like how our online multiplayer works, our approach to balancing the game as well as discussions about the art, music and sound in the game! We hope you will find at least one of these blog posts interesting and useful in some way :) But before we get to all that, it might be prudent to make proper introductions first. My name is Anders and I am one of two developers on TFC. The other developer is Andr. It was just the two of us working on the game for a long time, with Andr being the main brain behind it all. TFC was originally his idea and he had been working on it for a little while before I got involved. As I was living in Australia, I was looking to connect with the Norwegian game development community as well, and after I posted on a Norwegian game development group on Facebook, Andr reached out explaining that he also was living here and we got to talking. Soon after we started discussing TFC and his ambitions for it. With my expertise being in sound and music, we fairly quickly started collaborating on it and have been working on it together since then. Andr has been fascinated with RTS games since childhood, and was dreaming of designing his own at some point. Around 4-5 years ago, Andr finally decided to start spending some evenings and weekends on realizing this dream. Being talented in several of the disciplines of game development, Andr has been the main designer, the sole programmer and the art lead since the beginning. It is only since we were able to work on the game full time that we started getting other people involved, mainly getting help from our publisher on refining the art. I also got an opportunity to start thinking about game design since then, which has been interesting.
Here is a screenshot of the early version of TFC.
And this is what it looks like now! (UI is a work in progress) Another area of interest for Andr is the Near East Bronze Age, happening from ~3300 B.C. to ~1200 B.C. This area of the world has been nicknamed The Fertile Crescent (hence the name of the game). It forms a Crescent moon shape around the rivers of Euphrates, Tigris and the Nile, covering an area where modern-day countries Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt are located.
Not all maps include Egypt in the depiction of The Fertile Crescent Rarely used as a setting for video games (though we are seeing a bit more of that nowadays, especially in the strategy market!), it is a very interesting part of human history, where domestication of crops allowed for division of labour and small communities to start emerging. As these communities grew, we started seeing several different city-states and empires develop with their own customs and cultures. Civilizations like Babylon, Assyria, the Hittite empire and, as well as the Egyptians and their pyramids, all evolved during this period, trading and warring with each other. As the different civilizations and their cities grow, we also see big cultural and architectural endeavours happen, most notably the Ziggurat of Ur. The Wonder building in our game is heavily inspired by Ziggurat as you can see here:
Left - The Wonder in TFC, right - The original Ziggurat From almost the very beginning, TFC has been available for free on itch.io and we have been very lucky to see a little community form around the game. Not too long after I joined the project, Andr and I started discussing the future of the game. We had established a Discord server with only a few dozen members at the time, and we decided to let the community vote on the direction of the game: Should we focus on online multiplayer or on the single-player first? From that vote it was clear that multiplayer should be the focus to begin with. This helped further grow the community, and we have some very nice and engaged community members who are helping us not only with moderation, but also with organising multiplayer tournaments. Seeing the community play and discuss the game, provide suggestions and ideas for improving the game and uploading videos about the game, has worked as a major motivator for us as we kept working towards some sort of release. As this side of TFC developed, we began talking to The Knights of Unity about a potential publishing deal, which then allowed us to now focus on the game full time. We went on to make a more detailed plan for what the Early Access release of the game is going to look like, including a more robust and interesting single-player experience. We are very excited for everyone to play it when it is ready and we thank you for sticking with us this far, be it since the early days on itch.io or just for reading through this little article. Stay tuned for more blogs in the future where we dig deeper into the different aspects of developing TFC. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us either through Discord or via email boss@minibossaudio.com.

[ 2021-10-15 09:05:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

TFC: The Fertile Crescent will be showcasing during the EGX conference in London! Were starting this Thursday, 7 October. On the stand, you will be able to play the demo version of the game, as well as meet us and chat! See you there!

[ 2021-10-05 09:01:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello and welcome!

We are super happy to finally be here, on Steam! If you haven't met us before, please, let us introduce ourselves!

Who are we and what is TFC?

Wield Interactive was formed around the production of TFC: The Fertile Crescent. The project was started in 2017, when Wield Interactive's co-founders took their first steps in making their own base building RTS game, a dream carried since childhood. They already have long careers in games development, and now they're pooling all their knowledge and experience into TFC. TFC: The Fertile Crescent is a classic base-building RTS inspired by the struggles of growth, advancement, and conquest in the cradle of civilization. Establish your village near fertile lands, and balance your food supplies against the size of your civilian and military might, as you build your village solo, or online with up to 4 players. This year was really significant for the game's future because we found huge support in the form of a new publisher: The Knights of Unity. They are helping us in all kinds of ways, including testing, design and art support, publishing and promo activities. Knights have been working on games for 6 years - in their portfolio, you will find such titles as Disco Elysium, Gwent: The Witcher Card Game and Card Hunter.

What do we aim for?

Steam is an important milestone for the project and a turning point for the game. This platform will allow us to reach a wider audience as well as serve as a stable home to TFC: The Fertile Crescent. We want the game to move forward all the time and develop like the ancient civilizations, continuously advancing at a steady pace. We can assure you that it can only get better from here! Our goal is to reach Early Access in the first half of 2022.

Where to find us? And how to communicate with us?

As we are open and willing to communicate with all TFC players, you can reach us directly via our Discord server - this is a place where we share all important game updates and improvements. There you can find out more about the development process, ask us questions, and freely talk about almost everything you want :) Second place to reach us is our social media. On Facebook and Twitter, we share all game insights and relevant information related to game development and publishing activities. Join us on Discord here: https://bit.ly/Discord_TFC Find us on Facebook here: https://bit.ly/FB_TFC And tweet with us here: https://bit.ly/Twitter_TFC Thanks and cheers! TFC team

[ 2021-09-21 09:07:48 CET ] [ Original post ]