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 ]

TFC 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 surplus against the size of your civilian and military might, as you build your village.

Food is responsible for more than just feeding your troops. It determines the rate your population grows, and how quickly you can gain Knowledge Points. Keeping your village fed will ensure your prosperous expansion, but allowing your farms to be compromised can bring even the strongest economies to their knees.

Inspired by the real history of the Near East Bronze Age era, TFC utilizes classic RTS elements while offering a unique perspective for the genre. Taking technological limitations and advancements into account, players will need to carefully consider how to spend their precious Knowledge Points, as they explore the Village Improvements that are designed to enable players to quickly counter an opponent’s strategy.

Strategic Options From The Beginning

Heavily inspired by the giants of the genre, TFC looks to expand on the mechanics of its contemporaries in interesting ways, giving players multiple strategic actions to explore from the very beginning of a match. There are multiple paths to victory, and players can quickly adapt their strategy to respond to enemy actions. How well players leverage this freedom will determine whether they experience glorious victory, or crushing defeat.

Consequential Fertility Mechanic

Food is the foundation of every successful village. Locate fertile ground and build your village around it to ensure that there is enough to sustain your growing population. Balancing your food surplus against your villagers and growing military is important, and protecting your farms is critical if you want to keep your village alive. Likewise there’s no better way to demoralize your opponents’ populations than by destroying their farms, and decimating their economy.

Advance Your Village

Increase the strength of your village as you explore Village Improvements. TFC features a collection of powerful improvements that allow commanders to spend points to quickly react to their enemy’s advancements, or perhaps create a window of opportunity to strike. With various ways to boost your economy and military, your strategic options are always clear to understand, and easy to implement.

Play Online With Up To 4 Players

An AI can be quite the challenge, but nothing can replace a real player. Available at launch, battle it out with up to three other commanders in order to prove who is the best at managing their village, army and food supplies. Challenge your friends or complete strangers, and visit our Discord to find new rivals. May the most prosperous village win, or perhaps the smarter commander? Everything is in your hands!