Season 2 starts tomorrow, September 14th, at 16:00 CET. The most significant new mechanics have already been introduced, and in addition to that there will be some adjustments to existing mechanics and production methods.
Buildings
The new management point system is meant to encourage the construction of more numerous but smaller buildings, which other than diversity in the game helps stabilize the economy and reduce the need for micro-management of production. In the interest of moving further in this direction, the cost and impact of building upgrades will be reduced in a few places.
Production methods using bellows will now consume a small amount of the corresponding product
The bellows (bloomery, coppersmith, foundry and smithy), spinning wheel (spinnery) and treadle loom (weavery) upgrades are getting a lot cheaper, and the production methods using them will start requiring the new products bellows, spinning wheels, and looms. This is similar to how the grindestone upgrade already works, and helps spread out the cost of these high level production methods in time rather than during the construction of an expensive upgrade.
The new machine workshop produces advanced machinery
A new building, the machine workshop, is added for producing spinning wheels and looms, while bellows are made at the existing leatherwork
Capacities and ranges
- All town centre buildings get size caps (25 for most, 40 for cottages and warehouse, 10 for townhouse, 5 for chapel, 3 for church)
- Ranges of mines are increased
- Logging camp, charcoal hut and hunting lodge max size is increased to 101.
- The bakery, spinnery, and weavery get large throughput increases, roughly doubling their capacities, to help reduce shortages of the staple products produced by them.
Transports
Manual and automated travel distance is harmonized and extended. The automatic trade range is technically unchanged, but trade routes will now allow partial trips if the movement points aren’t divisible with the journey length (a common case) instead of rounding down. This can give significant added capacity in many cases, and more incentive to optimize trade route length.
New manual ranges:
- handcart — 2314 moves
- tumbrel — 4629 moves
- snekkja — 3333 moves
- cog — 4444 moves
- hulk — 5925 moves
The cog and hulk are getting marginally cheaper to operate, and shifting some cost away from labour to other inputs.
Commoners
With commoners now being price-sensitive and dynamic in their sustenance spending, it opens up for them consuming more diverse products.
They will now pick from a range of product to satisfy their various needs, adapting to local price and availability. Pasties, flour, charcoal, (fresh) fish and meat, and honey, have been added as sustenance options since season 1.
Prestige
The 0.75% prestige decay has been replaced with a 0.5% conversion to legacy, essentially making it 1/3 cheaper to sustain prestige. Prestige received from building production methods is reduced a bit and the cost of the prestige buildings increased, to partially (but not fully) compensate for this.
Additionally, the cathedral gets doubled (twice the cost, production throughput and prestige).
Other balancing and changes
- Worker skill cost is increased for the higher levels (to 600 for journeyman, 3000 for master, and 6000 for specialist).
- Master level forging production methods that consume both wrought iron and steel have been rebalanced to be competitive with the lower level production methods on raw iron use.
- Manure and flour have their sizes reduced for cheaper storage and transportation.
- The lumber product is renamed to logs to avoid confusion with timber.
- Numerous production methods are getting minor adjustments (new values are now available Mercatorio in-game
