Hello everyone. Great to see so many people enjoying the game over the last few weeks! We’ve been busy fixing bugs, listening to everyone’s great feedback and looking at our internal data to put out our first Early Access update before we take a break for Christmas. This update focuses on addressing a few balance issues around Culture and certain leaders, by updating Culture to make its play more tactical, rather than just trying to be the player to spam out the most Culture. We’ve also got some more asynchronicity between the factions with Faction specific pacts as well as some more variety in Techs, Titles and Resolutions. As always, please let us know what you think! [h1]Gameplay Changes[/h1] [h2]Tactical Culture[/h2] Culture is something we’ve wanted to rework a bit for a while and given the dominance of culture focused leaders and strategies since the beta release, we wanted to start this process before disappearing for our end of year break. The idea is to not nerf these strategies, but to give culture more gameplay utility, rather than just scoring large amounts of Succession. [list] [*] The Culture title now works differently. You can score a maximum of 5 Succession at each council, based on how much culture you have spread throughout the galaxy compared to other Empires. [*] Cultures, base +1 Vote benefit has been replaced with a benefit based on the planet type. [*] Advanced planets grant +2 Research, +2 Trade Value. [*] Rich planets grant +2 Materials income. [*] Industrial planets grant +5 Munitions. [*] Populous planets grant +4 Council Votes. [/list] [h2]Fleet Advantage[/h2] [list] [*] Fleets now deal +50% damage against disadvantaged fleets as well as taking -50% damage. [*] This is to ensure that the advantage still has a significant effect when fighting against a much larger fleet. [/list] [h1]New Content[/h1] [h2]Faction Pacts[/h2] [list] [*] To give some more options when forming pacts with your rivals, each Faction now comes with its own unique pact that can be offered or requested when dealing with that faction. [*] Try to make the right friends! [/list] [h2]Additional Content[/h2] [list] [*] New Titles, Resolutions and Technologies to look out for! [/list] [h1]Balance Changes[/h1] To start off, we are introducing some slight balance tweaks to leaders who are levelling up way quicker than the rest. [h2]Leaders[/h2] [list] [*] UNE Diplomat: Reduced XP gain from pacts to 20 (from 25). [*] Voor Teacher: Reduced XP gain from trading techs to 6 per tech level (from 8). [*] Voor Explorer: Reduced XP gain from exploration to 10 / 4 (from 15 / 5). [*] Kel-Azaan Hunter: Reduced XP gain to 25 (from 30). [/list] [h2]Ultimate Edicts[/h2] [list] [*] Versatile (UNE): This Edict’s effect is now: ‘This turn, whenever you play an Edict, draw an Edict. (This Edict is not returned to your queue until the end of the turn.)’ [/list] [h2]Military Tech[/h2] [list] [*] Reduced the base Strength bonus of all military tech by 1 across the board. [*] This is to even out the tech picks with and across the tech branches. [*] To make it a bit harder (but still possible) to build up your unstoppable death balls! [/list] [h1]Matchmaking[/h1] [list] [*] Removed AI players from matchmade games. [/list] [h1]Important Bug Fixes[/h1] [list] [*] Fixed all clients being disconnected at the end of a 150 turn game. [*] Fixed clients being kicked off the summary screen if the host quits the game. [*] Fixed being able to get duplicate techs through exploration. [*] Numerous stability and typo fixes. [/list]