Hello, long time no see!

We’ve finally been able to work on The Fertile Crescent again, so today we’re uploading the first build in almost 100 days!

This is a massive build for us to upload, since it improves several important aspects of the game. Our goal has mainly been to streamline the game mechanics further.

Group behaviour 
We’ve completely rewritten how groups of units move towards the same target. It feels more dynamic, it is more optimised, and best of all, it no longer causes games to freeze!

Automatic Villager training
Villagers now automatically train at your Tribe Center. This is something you would typically want to do non-stop anyway, so why not automate the process? Less click-feast opens up more room to focus on your strategy.

Catching up
Having more Villagers reduces Villager training speed. This means that if you lose Villagers you are given a fair chance to catch up on the count, and it also makes it harder to grow preposterously big. Furthermore, it evens the play field a bit, since forgetting to continuously train new Villagers is one of the most common rookie errors

Construct your Tribe Center
The only feature that is less streamlined is the fact that the Tribe Center is no longer magically constructed as soon as your Tribe unit reaches it. Your Villagers actually have to do some construction work now. Gasp! Because of this, you get extra time to suss out your surroundings and pick the first technology to research, since no knowledge gets generated until the Tribe Center is up and running.

Removed Wealth
We have removed Wealth as a resource altogether. This means that there’s one less resource to worry about. However, farming enough food has become more important than ever, since military units now cost food to train (in addition to consuming food while serving in your army). This opens up for all kinds of new and crazy strategies.

New Farm production indicator
The visual indicator for how much food your farm will produce (based on fertility levels) has been improved to look better and make more sense.

Redesigned unit roles and balance
All units have had their roles redefined and most of their stats tweaked.

Tiers of units
There are now 2 tiers of units. The most basic, tier 1 units, can be trained right off the bat. But, to train tier 2 units, you now have to research Organised Warfare.

New unit: Militia
We added a new basic melee warrior titled Militia. It’s a tier 1 unit, so it doesn’t required Organised Warfare to be researched.

Other
For a more thorough and detailed list of all the changes and improvements, please read the change log below.

Change log 0.4.5

New behaviour for groups of units
- Group behaviour no longer causes MP games to stall
- Groups are better at avoiding other groups
- Group dynamic has been improved
- All members of a group move as fast as the slowest unit in the group

Tribe Center
- Tribe Center no longer gets fully constructed the moment the Tribe unit reaches it, but instead it gets +25% constructed
- Tribe Center no longer generates knowledge until fully constructed

Food Indicator
- New indicator to represent soil fertility/food production efficiency for Farm

Automatic training of villagers
- Villagers are now automatically trained at Tribe Center
- You can no longer cancel training of Villager
- Scout can no longer be trained at Tribe Center
- When you have 10 villagers or more, training speed of new villagers are reduced by 5% per Villager above 10 (reduction maxed at 90%)

Removed Wealth
- Removed Wealth as resource from UI
- Removed gold deposits from map generation

Technologies
- Organised Warfare no longer increases production speed of military units
- Organised Warfare now gives access to train advanced military units (Archer, Javelinman, Axeman, Spearman, Swordsman)
- Organised Warfare no longer increases speed of training military units
- Composite Bow now increases range by 4 (reduced from 6)
- Updated description of Composite Bow technology

General unit changes
- Units cost food instead of wealth
- All units have had their stats and costs changed
- Updated all unit descriptions
- Ranged armour and melee armour is now merged into armour

Militia (new unit)
- Basic melee warrior that can be trained from a Barracks

Slinger
- Updated die animation
- No longer has a helmet (updated art and animations)
- Copper Helmet no longer upgrades armour

Javelinman
- Changed title to Javelinman (from Javelin Thrower)
- Trained in Archery instead of Barracks
- Has a small shield now, so equipping with Bronze Shield gives +1 armour
- New art and animations

Bowman
- Starts with the same vision range as ranged attack range
- Composite bow now increases vision range as well as attack range

Spearman
- Repels 1 damage against any ranged attacks 
- Updated idle animation

Axeman
- Ignores 1 armour on every attack
- Updated attack animation

Misc
- Updated art and animations for all tier 2 units (Spearman, Axeman, Javelinman, Bowman) to have shoe wear
- AI units will follow your unit until your unit is outside its visible range (as well as too far away from its guarded position)
- Melee unit will no longer try to find a new path when the enemy unit it attacks moves, unless enemy unit moves completely out of attack radius
- Can no longer click construction icon to cancel construction of building (have to click stop production button)
- Normal map size increased to 90x90 (from 80x80)
- Can select 22 units at once again (up from 18)
- AI will send tier 1 units for the first waves, and then send tier 2 units from there on
- Improved building offset from mouse position while placing building

Bug fixes
- Melee unit now always faces the enemy unit it attacks
- Melee unit no longer fumbles around for a bit before finally attacking the target unit
- Tribe Center no longer shows 'Waiting for tribe...' as title after placed directly on top of friendly Tribe unit
- Can create control group with same amount of units as max number of selected units (now 22)
- Fixed a few typos