Hello,

We have prepared a preview of our next big update that includes bonus starting citizens, more trade, better balance, and tweaks to make evil more, well evil.  

Summary

• Evil is better (and good is dumb): Many of the colonization events are getting a slight rework whereby the "evil" choice is somewhat more profitable than before.  Also, the Malevolent ideology tree in Crusade is being tweaked to give a general bonus in negotiations rather than focusing on minors.
• More Trade: We're slightly decreasing the amount of money from trade routes but substantially increasing the number of trade routes you can have.  This makes trading empires a lot more interesting.
• A citizen for you: Crusade owners will get a free citizen. This way, at the start of the game, they can make some tweaks to their economy.
• New mission for you to accept: Crusade owners get a new a new mission to harvest Aurorus Trees.  
• Custom Factions for MP: Players can use their custom factions and fleets in MP games.  
• Mercenary Update: Updated the Mercenary ships to better align them with recent economy updates
• Ongoing Polish: Each time we play we find something to improve. We've also been working closely with the community to identify bugs and "quality of life" improvements for this update.  
  

Please read below for details.  

Base Game

Gameplay / Balance

• Players can use custom factions in MP
• High-level factories require Durantium to build.
• Fusion Power Plant requires 1 anti-matter to build
• Research Cloister Promethium cost reduced from 10 to 5
• Cities can be built any number of times on a planet but now have 1 Promethium cost. The idea is that if you have lots of Durantium, you should probably build up with Factories. If you have lots of Promethion, you can build up with cities.
• Prototype Hyperdrive base mass use reduced from 8 to 6 but now uses 10% of the ship's mass.
• Prototype Hyperdrive moves reduced from 5 to 2 to conform to other component performances.
• Thrusters made smaller but cost more.
• Thrusters now faster.
• Fixed typos in Tutorial_Refuge_FlavorText.xml and added in the tutorial text to explain changes from 2.5.
• AI more careful about getting overextended with too many wars.
• Ripe for conquest Diplomatic mod now takes more personality traits into account.
• AI is a little more wary of going to war with lots of other players.
• Updated description for personality traits to be more explicit in what they mean.
• Changed planet word on the street text better grammar.
• Building a shipyard with a constructor in crusade will now refund an administrator
• Pirates are slightly more frisky.
• Turn time improvement.
• Made it so that the rename object dialog always appears on top (otherwise it has issues when bringing it up in places like the planet govern screen)
• Fix for missing strings in base campaigns

• Reduced power of some of the ideological events.
• Slave trade route benefits balanced to not provide quite as much approval bonus as well as reduce production bonus.
• Balance pass on base game improvements.
• Political Mastery military manufacturing reduced from 20% to 10%
• Planetology +1 raw production bonus removed
• Starport level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5 military production
• Space Elevator manufacturing level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5
• Fusion Power Plant and other high-level mega improvements reduced in effect
• Updated Mercenary abilities 
• Certain high-level improvements no longer provide an empire-wide bonus (particularly ones that can be built over and over...)
• Drengin slave improvements don't increase population cap anymore.
• More balancing to ideological events.
• Pirate event more common
• Evil motivation traits reduced from doubling to something more reasonable
• Updated and rebalanced Mercenary components just for the Mercenaries DLC.
• DLC Mega events:Pirates start with some techs that make them move faster, get some money up front.
• DLC Mega events: The Artifact diplomacy points reduced from 5 to 1 so that you don't just instantly win.
• Updated base game Manufacturing improvements to work better with the "All Construction" adjacency bonuses. 
• Map generation balance fixes to make Crusade/base game let idiotic in their resource generation.
• Battle Initiation Window doesn't pop up when you are attacking an asteroid
• Added a Crusade specific FOW coloring.
• Added a Crusade specific starbox.
• Increased number of trade licenses that techs provide
• Tiny hull cost increased from 20 to 25
• Tiny hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Tiny hull acceleration increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Tiny hull max speed increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Small hull cost increased from 30 to 40
• Small hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Medium hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Large hull cost increased from 150 to 250
• Large hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull logistics cost increased from 12 to 15
• Starbase maint increased from 1 to 3
• Trade Route income reduced from 5% of planet income to 3%.
• Snathi get 4 instead of 3 trade route licenses with Xeno Commerce in order for Stardock to survive their inevitable culling of Earth.
• More typo fixes.
• Rework to various colonization events to give the evil choice more goodies because evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
• Starports now cost 1 maint.

UI

• Added personality traits to Diplomacy Report Window
• Fixed quirkiness with the "Allow Clear Queue" governor option 
• Fixed issue where having an empty modifier list in the improvement tooltip would mess up the display
•  Added confirmation for when obsoleting a ship design in the designer landing window
• Added new hotkey for building asteroid mining base (defaults to "B")
• Added tooltips to the fleet stats entry in the main game window saying what each stat represents
• Fleets now use the closest star system plus roman numerals for their name when 'creating' a new fleet ('creating' meaning when a single ship becomes a fleet)
• Fixed small space at the bottom of the command buttons list in base game mode
• Added Design Author field to the ship style set editor that shows the ship design's author (hides if it's a core ship design)

Bugs

• Fixed issue where the city improvements were showing as lit up and available to build when there were no more tiles left to place the city on
• fixes issues with some hotkeys not working, like CTRL+S, as well as being unable to assign those keys with flags correctly
• Fixed issue where fleets were getting hidden underneath things like asteroids and rally points when you select the fleet
• Fixed issue where clicking on a different improvement in the planet's build queue would not update the Rush button's tooltip with the correct rush cost
• Fixed issue where a few of the ship components with abilities were not showing up in the fleet/ship abilities list
• Fleet/ship context windows are no longer rounding down numbers to the stat breakdown tooltip giving inaccurate info for the weapons and defenses
• Erragis now correctly gives the kinetic damage reduction to all ships in the fleet, instead of just itself
• Fixed error that was setting the wrong spinner for the custom faction's second material def
• Precursor anomalies now correctly actually give Antimatter and Elerium when you survey them

• Added checks to prevent asteroids related crashes.
• Updated research video for base game tutorial.
• You can longer upload cheesed factions to the workshop
• Fixed issue where when the AI would fall-back to governors, the governor would queue up durational projects as regular improvements, causing the icon to show up on the colony map
• Made it so that whenever a new governor is assigned to the colony, the governor takes action immediately, instead of waiting for the next turn
• Added new checkbox to the Govern Planet and Govern Planet With Production Wheel windows that enables/disables allowing the governor to clear the production queue whenever a new one is assigned
• Factions that start with techs no longer start researching a high level tech without your permission.  
• The economy dot on the production wheel no longer pops out on Govern screen
• Fixed issue where base game "classic" saves weren't showing the message to load the classic branch in steam
• Fixed issue where you could click a tab in the civ builder a second time to de-select it, which would then prevent the line next to it from un-highlighting whenever switching to another tab
• Fixed an MP crash related to the godlike AI
• Fixed issue where pressing the "save" button in civ builder wouldn't leave the civ builder when it finished saving
• Optimized UI code to get a perf boost
• Added base production points to manufacturing/research/income production tooltips
• Fixed issue where functional components in the ship designer weren't taking the player's techs into account
• Fix for issue where player made ship components would be loaded twice, showing up as duplicates
• Fix for issue where DLC custom ship components would show up twice in the ship designer if launched from the main menu
• Moved improvement gfx from Mercenaries to base gfx folder because Crusade uses them too
• Improvements that use Arnor spice now charge you only once instead of every turn.  
• Increase drawing performance on higher resolution displays
• Fixed the "Death Furnaces" ideology description to match its effect 
• Made the planet window not display manufacturing for military if the planet isn't sponsoring a shipyard
• Eject all button on planet UI of planets that are not yours
• Fix for odd behavior in MP that can result in a crash for the host in the United Planets system.
• Disabled the required win ratio for UP resolutions because no one really understood it.  
• Fixed issue where the resource log wasn't being updated for administrators whenever you bought a mercenary
• Fixed issue where you could get infinite legions if you had a stationed general on a planet

Crusade

Gameplay / Balance

• Custom factions are available in MP
• Research improvements now have a maint of 0.5 
• Research buildings no longer have a Promethion cost
• Research-based Wonders require Arnor Spice to construct
• There's no limit on the number of cities you can have on a planet but they now cost 1 promethion in addition to food. Again, the idea is that if you have lots of Durantium, use factories to increase the productivity of your population but if you have lots of promothion then people are probably a better bet.
• Prototype Hyperdrive moves reduced from 5 to 2 to conform to other component performances.
• Drengin labor camps and such only provide 0.1 population cap increases instead of a full point.
• New mission: Aurorus tree expedition
• AI is more careful about getting overextended with too many wars.
• Ripe for conquest Diplomatic mod now takes more personality traits into account.
• AI is a little more wary of going to war with lots of other players.
• Updated description for personality traits to be more explicit in what they mean.
• Changed planet word on the street text better grammar.
• Building a shipyard with a constructor in crusade will now refund an administrator
• Pirates are slightly more frisky.
• Turn time improvement.
• Made it so that the rename object dialog always appears on top (otherwise it has issues when bringing it up in places like the planet govern screen)
• Fix for missing strings in base campaigns

• Reduced power of some of the ideological events.
• Slave trade route benefits balanced to not provide quite as much approval bonus as well as reduce production bonus.
• Balance pass on base game improvements.
• Political Mastery military manufacturing reduced from 20% to 10%
• Planetology +1 raw production bonus removed
• Starport level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5 military production
• Space Elevator manufacturing level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5
• Fusion Power Plant and other high-level mega improvements reduced in effect
• Updated Mercenary abilities 
• Certain high-level improvements no longer provide an empire-wide bonus (particularly ones that can be built over and over...)
• Drengin slave improvements don't increase population cap anymore.
• More balancing to ideological events.
• Pirate event more common
• Evil motivation traits reduced from doubling to something more reasonable
• Updated and rebalanced Mercenary components just for the Mercenaries DLC.
• DLC Mega events:Pirates start with some techs that make them move faster, get some money up front.
• DLC Mega events: The Artifact diplomacy points reduced from 5 to 1 so that you don't just instantly win.
• Updated base game Manufacturing improvements to work better with the "All Construction" adjacency bonuses. 
• Map generation balance fixes to make Crusade/base game let idiotic in their resource generation.
• Battle Initiation Window doesn't pop up when you are attacking an asteroid
• Added a Crusade specific FOW coloring.
• Added a Crusade specific starbox.
• Increased number of trade licenses that techs provide
• Tiny hull cost increased from 20 to 25
• Tiny hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Tiny hull acceleration increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Tiny hull max speed increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Small hull cost increased from 30 to 40
• Small hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Medium hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Large hull cost increased from 150 to 250
• Large hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull logistics cost increased from 12 to 15
• Starbase maint increased from 1 to 3
• Trade Route income reduced from 5% of planet income to 3%.
• Snathi get 4 instead of 3 trade route licenses with Xeno Commerce in order for Stardock to survive their inevitable culling of Earth.
• More typo fixes.
• Rework to various colonization events to give the evil choice more goodies because evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
• Epiphany now costs 2 instead of 1 Spice
• Central Bank provides 1 wealth instead of 100% wealth (was a bug)
• Central bank provides 1 wealth per level
• Starports now cost 1 maint
• Bureaucrats get 10 instead of 25 bonus administrative points. 
• New Improvement: Diplomatic Corps.  Let's the player train Diplomats.
• Players now start out with a leader.
• Awe trait now provides benefit to all civs rather than just minors since you don't trade with Minors in Crusade
• Interstellar governance now provides a leader upon researching 
• Republic government now provides a leader upon researching
• Democracy tech now provides a leader upon researching 
• Star Federation tech now provides a leader upon research
• Various high end diplomacy techs now provide a diplomat 
• Cultural Influence tech now provides a celebrity 
• Xeno Economics now provides an Entrepreneur upon researching 
• Xeno Farms now provide 0.5 food per level instead of only 0.3 (along with all the upgrades) 
• Various recruit projects on planets cost less but now require a special resource. 
• You can now recruit celebrities but you cannot yet eject them into space (patience). 
• Treasure Hunt mission is now available at the start of the game. 
• Prototype hyperdrive base cost increased from 8 to 50 (duh) 
• Beam weapons use slightly more mass 
• Plasma weapon cost increased from 60 to 70 
• Phased cannon cost increased from 70 to 90 
• Rapid recharger mass dramatically reduced but cost increased from 12 to 32
• Energy Accelerator mass greatly reduced but cost increased from 23 to 50
• Harpoon cost reduced from 80 to 60
• Photonic warhead cost reduced from 150 to 90
• Triton missile cost reduced from 250 to 120
• Photon Torps reduced from 300 to 120 
• Kinetic weapon mass substantially reduced across the board
• Kinetic weapons damage slightly increased 
• Quantum Driver cost reduced from 120 to 90 
• Singularity driver reduced from 140 to 90 cost
• Rapid reload and other special modules have their cost increased but their mass decreased. Idea is that special modules should be used by wealthy civs.  
• If a commander is already in the fleet the "Add Commander" button (if available) is disabled.

UI

• Added personality traits to Diplomacy Report Window
• Fixed quirkiness with the "Allow Clear Queue" governor option 
• Fixed issue where having an empty modifier list in the improvement tooltip would mess up the display
• Added confirmation for when obsoleting a ship design in the designer landing window
• Added new hotkey for building asteroid mining base (defaults to "B")
• Added tooltips to the fleet stats entry in the main game window saying what each stat represents
• Fleets now use the closest star system plus roman numerals for their name when 'creating' a new fleet ('creating' meaning when a single ship becomes a fleet)
• Fixed small space at the bottom of the command buttons list in base game mode
• Added Design Author field to the ship style set editor that shows the ship design's author (hides if it's a core ship design)

Bugs

• Added checks to prevent asteroids related crashes.
• Updated research video for base game tutorial.
• You can longer upload cheesed factions to the workshop
• Fixed issue where when the AI would fall-back to governors, the governor would queue up durational projects as regular improvements, causing the icon to show up on the colony map
• Made it so that whenever a new governor is assigned to the colony, the governor takes action immediately, instead of waiting for the next turn
• Added new checkbox to the Govern Planet and Govern Planet With Production Wheel windows that enables/disables allowing the governor to clear the production queue whenever a new one is assigned
• Factions that start with techs no longer start researching a high level tech without your permission.  
• Fixed issue where you could click a tab in the civ builder a second time to de-select it, which would then prevent the line next to it from un-highlighting whenever switching to another tab
• Fixed a MP crash related to the godlike AI
• Fixed issue where pressing the "save" button in civ builder wouldn't leave the civ builder when it finished saving
• Optimized UI code to get a perf boost
• Added base production points to manufacturing/research/income production tooltips
• Fixed issue where functional components in the ship designer weren't taking the player's techs into account
• Fix for issue where player made ship components would be loaded twice, showing up as duplicates
• Fix for issue where DLC custom ship components would show up twice in the ship designer if launched from the main menu
• Moved improvement gfx from Mercenaries to base gfx folder because Crusade uses them too
• Improvements that use Arnor spice now charge you only once instead of every turn.  
• Increase drawing performance on higher resolution displays
• Fixed the "Death Furnaces" ideology description to match its effect 
• Made the planet window not display manufacturing for military if the planet isn't sponsoring a shipyard
• Fixed issue where if an opponent's planet had stationed ships, but you didn't have enough espionage to see them, the "Eject All" button would still show up and be clickable
• Eject all button on planet UI of planets that are not yours
• Fix for odd behavior in MP that can result in a crash for the host in the United Planets system.
• Disabled the required win ratio for UP resolutions because no one really understood it.  
• Fixed issue where the resource log wasn't being updated for administrators whenever you bought a mercenary
• Fixed issue where you could get infinite legions if you had a stationed general on a planet.