Open Beta 0.16

Hello everyone. I have been working on miscellaneous things for a while and now have enough changes to begin pushing them to the beta branch. For the most part, these are preparations for Interstellar space and as a result there isn't as much gameplay altering effects, but there is one new major mechanic.

Cultural Evolution

Over time, cultures now change and evolve. This happens in 2 ways: cultural splintering and evolution. Cultural Splintering is triggered by new space colonies, and allows for new colonial nations to appear later in the game if they manage to gain their independence. As a result, space colonies on other planets are less lucrative as they will eventually leave your culture group.

Cultural Evolution happens either when you buy culture traits/ideas for your primary culture or passively for cultures with no country controlling them. This will accumulate bonuses over the course of the game, and adds a significant amount of variety to each country.

You can also replace culture traits to change out the bonuses

New culture traits are unlocked by the procession of Ages, which go from the Industrial age (ending in 2000), to the Interstellar Age (which begins in 2700). There will probably be changes to these, as most likely they will trigger after someone researches a technology in the future, but for now they are simply time based.

You can see there are some cool ages near the bottom, each one will have some special stuff for it in the future.

Planet Nine: Haephestus

I have taken the liberty of adding Planet 9 to the game even though people still debate its existence. This is because I think it is cool. Planet 9 also currently has 2 moons, Tartarus and Lethe.

Tartarus

A frozen world with a hypersalinized ocean, Tartarus is a very cool moon for only the most ice cold of explorers. It is covered mostly a salty compound water/nitrogen ocean, but has a small continent that can be colonized, and offers some unique opportunities for the first person to make it to the very fringe of the Solar System.

Lethe

A tiny snowball that floats around Planet 9, Lethe can be easily overlooked, but has secret riches if you look hard enough!

Other Changes

• Integration cost modifiers generally flattened

• Morale increase from technology is weaker, but also multiplies with other effects

• Characters level up more slowly

• Culture and Research resources give less bonuses, but the Monument and University give more regional bonuses to encourage their construction.

How to Play

This update is on the Open Beta branch, which is called experimental_features. It can be accessed via the properties menu in the Steam Library.