Hello everyone,
It's been a bit chaotic lately, but I think we're on track to deploy the following changes to the live server early next week:
- New Alliance Positions system
- This is the main update that has been in testing for a long time because it is so complex. We are currently running a tournament on the test server to help identify and fix bugs - so far, aside from some minor bugs, it's been working fine based on the lack of bug reports.
- This change replaces the existing alliance positions system (5 static positions: applicant, member, officer, heir, and leader) and replaces it with a custom system which contains these default positions, but also lets you build and name your own positions and define what they can do based on 15 different permission options.
- In theory it's all setup to be backwards compatible such that your existing positions will migrate to the new default positions in the system, with more or less the same permissions selections. But I will be available as it's deployed for any necessary hotfixes.
- The Score you get from each City after City 1 is reduced from 100 -> 75
- Treasure Trading system
- If you have a Treasure, you can create a personal trade offer to sell it to another player using a new page interface.
- You cannot send buy offers for Treasures - this is to prevent attempted abuse of noobs by sending spam offers or unfair offers
- There is a mandatory minimum Treasure sale price of $50,000,000 to prevent shenanigans
- You cannot trade Treasures if you are involved in any active wars
- You cannot trade Treasures in Vacation Mode
- You cannot buy a Treasure if you already have a Treasure
- Three new National Projects are being added
- Government Support Agency
- Improves Domestic Policy Effect by 50% (5% -> 7.5%) (1% -> 1.5% for open markets)
- Costs $20,000,000 - 200,000 Food - 10,000 Aluminum
- Research and Development Center
- This project provides two project slots (net: one additional project slot)
- Costs $50,000,000 - 100,000 Food - 5,000 Aluminum - 1,000 Uranium
- Resource Production Center
- Every Turn the nation gets 1 raw resource for each raw resource they can mine besides food (based on a chart found https://politicsandwar.com/nation/edit/map/ ) This bonus increases for every 2 cities they have up to 10. This Project no longer functions above 15 cities
- 1-2 Cities : 1 Raw Resource(s) Per Type
- 3-4 Cities : 2 Raw Resource(s) Per Type
- 5-6 Cities : 3 Raw Resource(s) Per Type
- 7-8 Cities : 4 Raw Resource(s) Per Type
- 9-10 Cities : 5 Raw Resource(s) Per Type
- Costs $500,000 - 1,000 Food
- The monthly Credit redemption limit is going to increase from 10 -> 20
- This is a way to increase the revenue generated by the game, which is important as expenses have been increasing as I have hired an additional part-time developer as well as two full-time moderators in the past months
- The reason for increasing the Credit redemption limit, rather than just increasing prices or increasing the value of each Credit, is to allow those players who are less price-sensitive to spend more money on the game each month, while making Credits (and the benefits they confer) still accessible to the average player
- Credit prices will also increase slightly - they haven't been adjusted in years and I'm more or less just trying to keep up with inflation
- Option to hide left-hand sidebar and replace with a top navigation bar on desktop
- We set this up a long time ago and it's been an option on the test server for like a year, I don't think anyone really uses it but we'll deploy it live in case anyone wants to use it
- New Dark Theme
- I hired a designer to build out a new, updated dark theme for the game, which you can test currently on the test server. It's probably not perfect, but shouldn't be too bad
Once these changes are deployed and any outstanding issues are resolved, some top next priorities include (but are not limited to):
- Finally implementing a new and better new player tutorial
- Setting up and testing with a test server tournament some changes to war mechanics
- Finally implement proper push notifications for the App versions of the game
- Fixing improvement destruction bugs, and probably a new Espionage op to destroy an improvement in one of the target's cities
Among other general game improvements.
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I know that I have not done the best job over these past few months of keeping up with things - a lot of the work that has been done on the game has been stuff behind the scenes, such as setting up a pretty comprehensive moderator UI to allow me to hire moderators to help out with daily moderation work, which is a lot more to do than you might think. Getting that established and getting the new moderators trained in has been really, really helpful in freeing up more of my time to actually work on development. Another roadblock was that the part-time developer I hired a year and a half ago had no prior experience playing Politics and War. While she is a great programmer and has made a ton of quality-of-life improvements in that time, anything related to game mechanics has required a ton of oversight. The new part-time developer I am bringing on has experience playing the game and it should be far easier for him to do bug fixes and make changes to mechanics fairly independently, which ought to speed up the process of game development significantly.
If you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask here and I'll do my best to answer. Thanks everyone for playing the game and making this community what it is; none of this would mean much if it wasn't for all of you players building and maintaining the community around the game 
