It has been around a year since we first mentioned that we wanted to add some kind of Watchtower to The Fertile Crescent. Having at least one defensive structure at your disposal is pivotal for an RTS game. But here we are, finally releasing a build that includes a defensive structure!

This build is exciting for us, since this addition completely changes the dynamics. Constructing a Watchtower and being less exposed means you can focus more on building up your economy.  In addition to the other changes that are part of the biggest change log we have ever written for this game, we hope it is pushing the game in a massive step in the right direction.

(if not, you are always welcome to let us know in the comment section or in our Discord channel)

Watchtower
The reason it took so long to introduce Watchtower was our indecisiveness in how to implement it. We want the game to feel interesting, refreshing and different. At the same time, we attempt to keep it simple stupid.

The Watchtower we implemented ended up becoming a tad more complex than the typical-for-RTS-games Watchtower. It doesn’t function like a static unit that automatically fires projectiles towards enemy units. In The Fertile Crescent, for it to be useful, you must order units to enter it. The Watchtower then functions like a shield for the garrisoned units, in addition to increasing their vision and attack range.

We hope this will add more strategic depth to the game. By adding a Scout the Watchtower functions like an Outpost with great vision range. You can use it to protect your Villagers (while dealing some damage to raiders). You can add hard-hitting Javelinmen with short range, or you can add Bowman with long range. And remember, if you have many units just hanging around in Watchtowers, food will be consumed by units that do nothing (of course this is not true, because it might make enemies think twice about attacking you!).

Larger armies
One important feedback that we have gathered from the community lately is that it has been too hard to train and maintain a large army. Players became too preoccupied in just making sure they didn’t starve. Therefore, after testing, we decided to slightly increase the speed of foraging and farming. With the addition of Watchtower, which can increasingly deter and cope with enemy raids, players now have a better opportunity to build up their economy to sustain a larger population. Focusing on research is also a more viable option now.

Longer battles
Another change we did was to decrease attack speed of all units. This makes battles less of a click-fest that can end almost instantaneously, like in Starcraft II, which has never been our aim. We want players to have time to react and think strategically.

Improved experience for Linux users
One of the newest Unity versions released with improvements to Vulkan and Linux, so users who previously experienced several different unrelated problems with the Linux version of The Fertile Crescent don't experience these anymore.

Bug fixes
We have fixed tons of bugs and really put in an effort to improve the play-ability of the game. If you are interested in all the small and large changes and improvements we have made, please read the full change log below.

Change log 0.4.8

New building 'Watchtower'
- Can be garrisoned by up to 4 units
- Garrisoned units are safe from attacks and receives +1 attack range +1 vision range

General improvements
- All buildings except Resource Camp and Clay Pit now requires Triber Center to be fully constructed
- New icons for all units when showing in group selection
- Less land around Tribe unit gets cleared when map generates (radius reduced by 25%)
- New animations showing what resource a Villager is carrying when idle
- Added female voices for Tribe unit
- Sound plays when Tribe unit reaches Tribe Center
- If you order a group of Villagers to to move to a Farm, all the Villagers will automatically attempt to find an available Farm and take over it
- You can now double click units that are standing on top of a Farm
- If you rallypoint Tribe Center to a Farm the next trained Villager will automatically start farming if the Farm is still available
- Selected Farm now shows food output indicator
- When having multiple units selected and units die or garrison so you only have one left, the unit view changes to single unit view
- Added sound effect for stop production button
- Updated description of all equipment
- If a Villager is walking towards a Farm that gets destroyed, the Villager will no longer stop to idle, but will instead continue walking to the destroyed Farm's location
- You can now hear enemy Villager chop and mine sounds if visible and close enough to Camera pivot
- Optimised settings for foley sounds
- Updated to a new Unity version that came with improvements for Vulkan and Linux: users who previously experienced several different unrelated problems with the Linux version don't experience these anymore

Enemy Tribe
- Tribe AI will send all of its defenders to repel your attacks
- Enemy Tribe now has four Watch Towers (number of units garrisoning them depends on difficulty level)
- Changed layout of base

Resources
- Harvest berries difficulty is 140 (down from 150)
- Farming food difficulty without Plough technology researched is 175-231 (down from 200-256)

Technologies and equipment
- Mining metal is 25% faster
- Metal deposits have 150 metal (down from 250)
- Weaving increases hitpoints by 10 (down from 30)
- Bronze Arrowhead now adds 1 extra damage for Bowman (reduced from 2)
- All equipment costs double metal and half wood
- Domesticated Animals technology title renamed to Plough
- Farming speed is now correctly 20% faster after researching Plough (in previous versions in reality it was closer to 16.6%)
- Plough technology description now correctly states that farming speed has been increased by 20% (said 25%)
- Switched position of Bronze Shield and Bronze Armor in Furnace
- Baked Clay Bricks no longer upgrades hit points of Farm

Buildings
- Hitpoints reduced for all buildings ~33%

Units
- All units have had their ROT (Rate of Fire) increased by 50%

Ranged units
- Projectiles travel slightly faster
- Proectiles target ~neck of enemy unit instead of their feet
- Ranged units no longer take an extra step after target unit has been killed before proceeding to attack another unit within attack range
- Attack trigger radius is now always set to same as vision range

Siege damage
- Copper Axe, Copper Spear, Bronze Axe and Bronze Spear now also adds +1 siege damage
- Axeman, Spearman and Javelinman starts with 3 siege damage (down from 5)
- Militia starts with 2 siege damage (down from 3)
- Slinger deals 2 siege damage (up from 1)
- Swordsman deals 3 siege damage (down from 5)
- Villager deals 3 siege damage (up from 2)

Axeman
- Has 60 hp (down from 65)
- Deals 8 damage (down from 9)
- Takes 15 seconds to train (down from 18)
- Starts with 0 armor (down from 1)
- Has 20 vision range (up from 16)

Spearman
- Has 85 hp (up from 75)
- Starts with 1 armor (down from 2)
- Deals 5 attack damage (down from 6)

Bowman
- Takes 18 seconds to train (up from 15)
- Has 45 hp (up from 40)
- Bowman starts with correct attack range: 16 (not 24)
- Bowman starts with correct vision range: 16 (not 24)

Javelinman
- Starts with 0 armor (down from 1)

Slinger
- Has 20 attack range (up from 16)
- Has 24 vision range (up from 20)

Tribe
- Has 12 vision range (down from 16)

Bug fixes
- Fixed the so called "pink villager" problem that occurred when resetting a building's rally point
- Fixed several pathfinding problems related to placing a building on top of friendly units
- Fixed group pathfinding problem that could occur when walking around buildings and that could potentially stop the entire group
- If Tribe Center has been placed then getting your Tribe unit killed no longer leads to instant game over
- Tribe unit no longer seeks an enemy unit  within vision range to attack it
- Tribe unit no longer aims to move to any ranged units that is attacking it
- Fixed a bug that let you cheat the production queue to equip the same equipment twice and have the bonus applied both times
- Fixed a bug that would mess up the ordering of units being trained when cancelling training by using production queue buttons
- Fixed wrong offset of Villager icon
- Randomised how a an idle unit gives way to a moving unit so that there are fewer cases when a unit will not be able to move away properly
- If a group of units are moving towards a Farm, then the one occupying the Farm will no longer idle if a unit of the same group reaches the Farm first and is blocking the path
- Fixed case where Tribe unit would just idle and never get to the Tribe Center
- Fixed that when placing a building over a Villager that this would cause the Villager to continue harvesting or building from an odd position
- Farm ownership for a farmer who is ordered to construct a building is now correctly removed
- Fixed pathfinding problem that would happen if a building was placed on top of units moving to a location that the building was placed upon
- All bronze equipment now correctly requires Bronze Smelting to be researched
- No longer showing tooltip 'Stop production (S)' every time a building that can train units or forge equipment is selected
- Music is properly looping again
- No longer playing select unit sound effect when enemy unit is selected
- Villager back and construct building command buttons now play sound effects
- Fixed a pathfinding bug that could happen when Villager was blocked by another unit close to destination
- Fixed an animation bug
- Fixed a bug that caused Villager to reach target even if current node was not adjacent to target
- Clicking any construct building button outside the game world now works without any issues