Hey everyone, this month brought a lot of changes in the Politics and War development space, for starters I’ve come back to work on the game again, having gotten school under control. More importantly though, we now have a development team, with Putmir and Limi joining the team as Community Developers! Thanks to their amazing help, I’m excited to announce that we’re finally able to deliver monthly updates, with this post being the culmination of all the work we’ve been able to do in March after completing onboarding!
Updates
Espionage Rewrite
Two things were missing when I completed the wars rewrite last summer, an espionage rewrite and a battle simulator rewrite. This month, espionage has been completely rewritten and next month we’re tackling the battle simulator!
No mechanical changes to espionage were done as part of this rewrite, however the project changes below will have some effect.
New Projects
Two new projects have been added to the game, Guiding Satellite and Nuclear Launch Facility! More information about them can be found in the Game Development Discussion post here https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/36867-game-development-discussion-update-feedback/.
Note: We are aware of the lack of project pictures, Alex has been very busy and we’re waiting for him to get images, personally I’d rather have new projects without pictures than delay content for an image.
Revenue Rewrite
To improve performance and development productivity, we’ve also redone the revenue backend and frontend this month!
However, we need your help! Revenue is a very large segment of code, and it’s edge cases are not easily tested on the test server like when working with wars. To that end, the new revenue page is being deployed live now, however the code running and turn change has not changed. We kindly ask that you take a look at your new revenue page (https://politicsandwar.com/nation/revenue) and the old revenue page (made available temporarily here https://politicsandwar.com/index.php?id=230) and open a ticket on the PnW Discord server with pictures of both if you notice any differences that amount to a difference of more than $10. There will be small changes in money and food due to some rounding optimizations.
Once we’ve verified that the new system is correctly calculating revenue, we will release the new backend (which should significantly improve turn and day change times!).
Project Updates
A number of projects got new pricing or were rebalanced, the entire list can be found in the forum post here https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/36611-game-development-discussion-project-commerce-update-proposal/. Of note however is that for the moment only the mechanical changes to Activity Center, Spy Satellite, and Surveillance Network are available on the live server. Since the remaining projects effect revenue, we are delaying there release until we have verified the new revenue backend functions correctly. Expect these to be released in a week or two once we’ve worked out any kinks in the new system!
Map Calibrator Disabled
I have disabled the automatic MAP calibrator on war pages, this seems to be the culprit of the insane quantities of deadlock errors encountered during the opening round of globals. If you notice any discrepancies with your MAPs or any other aspect of wars please open a ticket on the PnW Discord server so I can look into why.
Color Bloc Bonus Increase
The color bloc bonus cap has been increased from $75,000 to $125,000, correspondingly the beige turn bonus has been increased from $50,000 to $85,000.
Miscellaneous Changes
- You are no longer able to spy on alliances with which you are allied.
- The city page now has a button to directly copy the city’s build without having to go to the export page.
- The trade cap has been increased to allow trades of up to a hundred million units.
- The max bulletin length has been increased to 25,000 characters.
- An icon will now show on the trade page on trades with members of your own alliance.
Roadmap
The road ahead is exciting! Now that we have a team, and I’ve got more time over the summer, I hope to have even more content out over the next few months. Check out a summary below!
April
May (depending on the Game Design Team’s progress)
- Bulletins overhaul
- Color bloc councils
- Lots more quality of life changes!
Thank you guys so much for hanging in there, I hope you’re as excited as I am about what the summer will hold for Politics and War! Have a great day everyone!
This post is also available on the forums https://forum.politicsandwar.com/index.php?/topic/39424-new-projects-project-rebalancing-revenue-rewrite-and-espionage-rewrite-march-2024-update/.
