Changelog v3 110s - Heliomance/Uncharted-Horizons GitHub Wiki

_{Changelog · Design document — Changelog}

Breakthrough IDs link to the breakthrough that holds the ID today. A few early entries predate a renumbering or a merge, so an ID there may since have passed to another breakthrough.

• Gearing (MC03) moves from the Ancient to the Classical era. Toothed gears are Hellenistic and Han: Philo's geared water wheel (3rd century BC), the Antikythera mechanism (2nd century BC), Vitruvius's water mill and hodometer, and Han China's bronze gears. The row's own text already called its machines Hellenistic and Han-era; only the lever and pulley merged into it are older. It remains available from the Ancient era (the Wheel and Geometry), one era early at the era premium.
• Nothing breaks: no Ancient row requires Gearing, and the battery's results are unchanged. Eight rows that could be had from the Ancient era now wait for the Classical: the Water Mill, Hero's Aeolipile and the Antikythera-Style Mechanism (now available in their own era), the Windmill, the Printing Press and the Crossbow (one era early instead of two), and the Cotton Gin and the Ornithopter (two instead of three). Rows available two or more eras early fall from 20 to 17.
• Measured (familiar world, three benchmark players, 900 games, against v3.118 with the same seeds): victory medians unchanged; 8 unfinished games against 7, all STANDARD build-list ideas that never occurred.
• Not simulated: Gearing's bonuses (faster Mines and Farms, +10% Production on wonders) arrive later in a typical game; Gearing now counts toward entering the Classical era; and Energy Systems' early route, Canal Building with Gearing, opens later.
• ~544 breakthroughs.

• Glassmaking no longer needs a desert or coast tile. It requires Kiln Construction and either Charcoal Production or a desert or coast tile: the two traditions of glass. Soda glass took its flux from natron and the ash of salt-loving plants of desert and shore (Egypt, Rome, Venice). Potash glass took it from wood ash: the forest glass of inland Europe (Theophilus, c. 1120: two parts beechwood ash to one of sand washed from a river), later Bohemian crystal. The silica was never the difficulty: river sand, crushed quartz pebbles and sandstone are found almost everywhere, and inland China made glass with lead and barium.
• Why: a terrain condition cannot be met by trade, and Glassmaking opens the Optics focus and stands on every route to 152 rows (27 CORE): the Telescope, the Vacuum Tube, the Programmable Computer, nuclear fission, the quantum chain, Quantum Gravity Theory and Orbital Assembly. A civilisation with neither a desert nor a coast could not win in an atomic world, and in an elemental one only by Warp or Wormhole.
• In practice the gate is gone, since Charcoal Production is a Primitive CORE row with no terrain condition; the shore keeps its story, not an advantage. Inland, the Lighthouse bonus does nothing, but opening the Optics focus is the row's benefit (v3.84). The tools read the row as Kiln Construction plus Charcoal Production, as they read every environmental alternative.
• Guarantee Rule 1 now says what v3.117 and this change make true: no terrain condition stands on the CORE path to Interstellar. Its only environmental conditions are iron in territory, which trade or conquest can supply, and a city of five.
• ~544 breakthroughs.

• The industrial chain no longer needs a river. Irrigation requires a "River or Water source", and through Canal Building and the Water Mill it stood on every route to the Workshop, the Blast Furnace, the Steam Engine and everything after them: 170 rows, among them Orbital Mechanics, whose Apollo Program enables spaceship parts. A civilisation without water could never win; in a light simulator run with Irrigation removed it won none of 300 games.
• The Windmill is the alternative. It now requires Gearing and Weaving (the sails' cloth) instead of Sail Invention, which needed the Raft's coast or river, and it is CORE, like the Water Mill it stands in for, so the industrial chain keeps an all-CORE route without water. Crank and Connecting Rod (the Workshop), the Blast Furnace, Plate Armour and the Steam Engine each take the Water Mill or the Windmill. History is strongest for the crank (the Dutch wind-powered sawmill of the 1590s) and the Steam Engine (the Zaan's industrial windmills); bellows and hammers ran on water, or in dry country on animals, which have no row.
• Irrigation now gates 21 rows, nearly all bound to water by nature: the Water Management focus, the water UNIQUEs, Hydroponics and Vertical Farming, and Miasma Engineering, plus the optional Early Steam chain, whose Hero's Aeolipile needs Canal Building. Guarantee Rule 8 now names both mills.
• The Windmill can be had from the Ancient era, two eras early, because Gearing is labelled Ancient; as a CORE row it reveals itself then, at the era premium.
• Measured (familiar world): against v3.116, victory medians within one turn, with 5 unfinished games against 3 of 900, all STANDARD build-list ideas that never occurred. A civilisation without water (Irrigation removed) wins 299 of 300 expert games, at the same median as with water.
• Not yet fixed: Glassmaking's "Desert or Coast tile in territory" still bars a civilisation with neither from the Optics focus, electronics and most FTL methods (152 rows).
• ~544 breakthroughs (CORE ~142).

• The University no longer requires the Printing Press. Bologna (1088), Paris and Oxford came three centuries before Gutenberg, so the requirement ran history backwards. The University now needs Writing and Formal Logic, the grammar and logic its arts course was built on. It can therefore be had from the Classical era, one era early at the era premium, alongside the first schools of higher learning (Nalanda; Constantinople, 425; al-Qarawiyyin, 859; al-Azhar, 970). Its era stays Medieval.
• Scientific Method requires the University and the Printing Press, the two institutions it waited on: the universities, where natural philosophy was taught from about 1200 and most of the seventeenth century's founders trained, and the press, which made observations fixed, shared and checkable. On Formal Logic alone it was available from the Classical era, two eras early; it is now available from the Medieval era, and the Experimental Laboratory's University is certain to come first.
• What depends on them. The University is now on every route to 310 rows (3 before) and the Printing Press to 309 (5 before): Scientific Method and everything after it, and for the University also the Renaissance. All are Early Modern or later, while both rows are Medieval and CORE, so they arrive first and no timing moves. §1.4's example of a CORE row revealing itself now has the University waiting on Writing and Formal Logic.
• Comparative Anatomy (O07) is merged into Anatomy Study (MD03). Since its Anatomy Theatre was cut (v3.88), its only benefit was opening the Medicine focus, which Herbal Medicine and Writing also open, normally first. Its only dependent was Anatomy Study, which covers the same Classical tradition. Anatomy Study now requires Animal Behavior Study, Herbal Medicine and Natural Philosophy (which brings Writing), so it is still available from the Classical era and nothing downstream moves. The Medicine focus opens with Herbal Medicine and Writing.
• Measured (familiar world, three benchmark players, 900 games, against v3.115 with the same seeds): victory medians within one turn; 3 unfinished games against 10, all STANDARD build-list ideas that never occurred.
• ~544 breakthroughs (CORE ~141).

• Sixteen rows gain the prerequisite history waited for. A review of the 38 rows whose prerequisites can all be held two or more eras before their own era found nineteen whose missing enabler is already a row; these sixteen are adopted. Each row now arrives in its own era, or one era early with the rest of the gap left to demand:
  • Advanced Pyrotechnics (F07) after Saltpeter Mining (MI08), its oxidiser; and Saltpeter Mining after Alchemy (CH01), whose practitioners identified saltpetre (c. 492).
  • The Blast Furnace (ME08) after the Water Mill (WM05): water-driven bellows, in Han China (31 AD) and in 12th-century Europe.
  • Letter of Credit (TR05) and Probability Theory (MA06) after Banking (SO11), the bill of exchange and the insurer's risk.
  • Mongol Combined Arms (WA14) after the Stirrup (WA27).
  • Petroleum Discovery (MI07) after the Steam Engine (MC08): the steam-driven drilling rig (Drake, 1859), and an industry that wanted lamp oil.
  • The Industrial Canal Network (WM11) after the Joint Stock Company (TR06), the canal companies' capital.
  • Vaccination (MD04) and Calculus (MA05) after Scientific Method (PH04).
  • Existentialism (PH09) after The Enlightenment (PH14).
  • Information Theory (PH10) after the Vacuum Tube (EN01), the telephone and radio circuits it measured.
  • Fractal Mathematics (MA11) and Optimisation Theory (MA15) after the Programmable Computer (CP01).
  • Anaesthesia (MD07) after Oxygen Theory (CH05): nitrous oxide came out of the same pneumatic chemistry.
  • Vertical Farming (FA11) after Semiconductor Mastery (EN06), for LED lighting.
• The rules hold: no addition is from a later era than its row, a CORE row gains only CORE prerequisites, each exists in every world its row does, and none makes a cycle. The battery's results are unchanged.
• Hyperspace: Optimisation Theory's prerequisite puts the Programmable Computer on the build list, through Higher-Dimensional Geometry (MA19); the prove list already needed it.
• Irrigation's terrain condition reaches further. Through the Blast Furnace and Petroleum Discovery, 18 more rows, four of them CORE (the Blast Furnace, Iron-Frame Construction, the Bessemer Process and Petroleum Discovery), now cannot be had without Irrigation's "River or Water source": 170 in all. The gate predates this change (the Workshop and the Steam Engine already needed the Water Mill) and is an open question.
• Measured on two seed sets of 2,700 games each (three worlds, five methods, three benchmark players): victory medians move by three turns at most: the expert's one to three turns sooner, the other players' by a turn or less; 31 games are unfinished against 29 before, all of them STANDARD build-list ideas that never occurred, none a changed row.
• Not adopted yet: Scientific Method after the University, Comparative Anatomy after Natural Philosophy, and the Windmill after the Water Mill. ~545 breakthroughs.

• PH08 Dialectical Thinking is removed, by the rule that a row must justify its existence (v3.80). With Synthesis gone (v3.113) its only effect was ⟨Resting point for Influence with City-States is increased by [10]⟩, which Radio and Talking Drum Networks also grant, and no row needed it. Philosophy and the Arts keeps two UNCOMMON rows, Existentialism and Systems Thinking. ~545 breakthroughs.

• Experiment and Synthesis are removed from Scientific Method (PH04) and Dialectical Thinking (PH08), and from §7.0's list of the fork's custom uniques. They were never part of the agreed design: two abilities written for the per-turn roll model ("spend Gold to boost one Revealed breakthrough's roll"; "once per era, re-roll one failed breakthrough") with no price, no size and no definition of a failed breakthrough, and no meaning in the discovery model's occurrence windows. §7.0 no longer counts its list: "one of these seven" had gone stale as the list grew.
• The Experimental Laboratory's spec is restored on Scientific Method: [190/2; requires a University in this city; +2 Science; Scientist ×1]. The v3.100 merge copied the building's name without its brackets (the merge script's spec reader stopped before the opening bracket), leaving the Early Modern era's Science landmark with no cost or statistics. The values are those the power pass recorded: +2 Science and a Scientist slot (v3.80 kept the +2 as the era's landmark), the price and upkeep set by value in v3.90, and the University requirement added in v3.88.

• §4 rewritten from the direction document's W1–W19. A hypothesis for each candidate method, proposed by a CORE theory row and listed on the FTL screen from RC01 Special Relativity; the unified theory (QP08 / QM-E27) closes the list. Three conditions per method, each a Space-era result with a named host, a positive raising a method's standing and any failure ruling it out; every report is true; the screen shows facts, never odds or advice, and every hint points to where progress is possible now. Generation rules: the viable method uniformly, the other conditions at even odds, and a guarantee checked as a battery.
• Instruments answer the measurement questions. CP21 Macroscopic Quantum Control unlocks the Orbital Quantum Laboratory, the new RC11 Gravitational Leakage Survey the Space Interferometer, and RC05 Dark Matter Identification or RC06 Dark Energy Understanding the shared Survey Telescope — national wonders whose completion settles the question. RC05 and RC06 now sit alongside each other (RC02 + RK05 + the unified theory). Theoretical tests answer with their breakthrough. A test's evidence travels with it by diffusion, trade or theft; a measurement still needs the receiver's own instrument.
• The theory phase opens promptly: each unified theory needs its ontology's great instrument (QP08 needs QP04 Particle Accelerator; QM-E27 needs QM-E08 Boundary Furnace, and MA13 Topology so every proposal arrives first), and both instruments become CORE; QM-E08 needs EL07 Power Grid, as QP04 does. Neither instrument settles a condition any more.
• The prototype (a Grand Endeavour, one per method, on the FTL screen) costs 5× the Space era's price, runs its full length and reports; the SS FTL Drive needs only the viable method's successful prototype. Committing before certainty is the Hail Mary. Completing the prototype and the Drive is announced to every civilisation; committing stays private.
• The Space era widened (W18): signature pools for Computing (CP16–CP22), Energy Systems (ES17–ES22), Materials Science (MS10–MS17), Mathematics (MA15–MA23), Nuclear Physics (NP12–NP17), Thermodynamics (TH15–TH22) and Aeronautics (AE14–AE20), each carrying its method's engineering; entry and pool rows at 2.5×, capstones at 4×, condition hosts and deciders at 1×. QM-E07 Aether Tension Engine moves to Energy Systems, QM-E23 Current Sail to Aeronautics (now STANDARD). Space Engineering settled: the Dyson Swarm becomes SE09 Advanced Solar Power and its Orbital Solar Array, and MS09 Dyson Sphere Materials is retired. Rocketry settled, with one new row, RK17 Reconnaissance Satellites (the Spy Satellite).
• Balance, measured on three benchmark players (expert, novice, average) at 60 games a cell: round two's changes — MS17 for Wormhole at 4×, ES18 without ES22, AE14 1×, atomic Tachyonic without NP11 (NP15 needs EL11 and a power plant), TH20 4×, MA19 1×, CP16 1× — and CP10 Quantum Computing at 2×. MS17 is Transformation Media: Shockproof Walls (siege resistance in their city) and Bomb Shelters made 50% more effective. Victory medians: expert about turn 294, novice 305, average player 380; methods within a few turns of each other.
• Reliability: MS02 Nanotechnology / Fine Structuring is CORE, and QM-E06 accepts MS02. EL07 Power Grid becomes CORE, since both CORE great instruments need it: with it STANDARD, a lost Power Grid idea left the unified theory unreachable (8 of 60 simulated Substance Plenum games).
• Removed: the three clauses speeding Tunnelling's "final research", a step from the older design; QP13 Hidden Variable Discovery's Determinist Institute instead reveals every breakthrough as soon as the civilisation becomes eligible for it.
• The tachyonic-sector test moves to the Space era, found by a traced game: it sat on QP06 Standard Model Completion and QM-E17 Complete Catalogue, Atomic-era rows, against W1. New rows QP15 Beyond the Standard Model and QM-E28 Beyond the Catalogue (Space, STANDARD, priced as deciders) host it as measurement tests; each unlocks a national wonder, the Very Large Particle Collider / Very Large Boundary Furnace (+6 Science, 2 Scientist slots), whose completion settles it. QP06 and QM-E17 return to plain prerequisites.
• The Space era's price per discovery ×0.8 (§2).
• Deferred: the discovery model's write-up in §1.2 and §1.5 (Grand Endeavours at 2×, proximity revelation at 10%); the non-FTL Space-era fields; the fork engine work (the orbital unique, buildings that settle a condition, Nuke.kt's context, the Determinist reveal, the announcements). New buildings' and units' costs and statistics are marked "set at spec".

• The Evidence Map (§4). Every method's deciding rows in both ontologies, each with the report it gives where its method is the world's and the plainer one it gives everywhere else. Elemental worlds had no negative signals at all — nothing could be ruled out in 45% of games; now every method can be. The elemental negatives name only inversion: exotic matter is the medium driven below its zero, which is neither the thinning that is gravity (Model I, axiom 5) nor the opening of a cycle to the Great Cycle that every Generative Cycle Engine performs (Model II, axiom 6) — so the negative that rules out Warp and Wormhole cannot be read as forbidding either. Models I and II now say so in their own text.
  • Wormhole is decided by RC04 Black Hole Thermodynamics and RC07 Closed Timelike Curves — the rows it alone needs. The negatives are real physics: every throat pinches shut faster than light could cross it (Fuller and Wheeler), every closed curve proves unstable (chronology protection); in elemental worlds, every dark star closes smoothly, every closed circuit of the medium unwinds. RC04 is Atomic-era, so Wormhole can be confirmed or ruled out an era before exotic matter can be tested. FQ1 (FTL Method) gains the derived truth that makes this so — Method B makes traversable geometry real — which it had lacked.
  • QP12 Casimir Effect Amplification and QM-E13 Aetheric Vacuum are no longer deciders. FQ4 (Vacuum Energy) already says they always work as science; a report tied to the method would have contradicted it whenever the two disagreed. Wormhole still needs them, since a throat is held open by the Casimir effect's negative energy, real in every world.
• QM-E07 Transcendent Engine becomes the Aether Tension Engine (Substance) / Still-Point Engine (Process): power drawn from the medium's tension, or at the still point where the cycle turns — the vacuum tap at power scale. It needs QM-E13 Aetheric Vacuum and QM-E27 Plenum Gravitation, as ES12 Zero-Point Energy needs QP12 Casimir Effect Amplification and QP08 Quantum Gravity Theory, and like ES12 it validates or dead-ends with FQ4 (Vacuum Energy). It had been governed by nothing, so elemental worlds had their RARE endgame-energy shortcut five times as often as atomic ones. It keeps its Aluminium and Rare Earths, now grounded: with power this abundant, re-tempering's loss stops mattering (Substance), or Earth-patterns are driven forward into Metal faster than any mine (Process).
• Plenum's sail is MS02 Nanotechnology / Fine Structuring, not QM-E06 Exotic Matter (Elemental): the models keep the Plenum Drive apart from exotic Aether, the material of warps and throats. Elemental exotic matter now rules out exactly two methods, as its atomic mirror does, and Plenum completes in step with Tunnelling (about turn 287 in both).
• Gravitic engineering no longer depends on exotic matter, in either kind of world. RC09 Inertial Dampening needed MS08 Exotic Matter Engineering, which needs exotic matter — real only in Warp and Wormhole worlds — so gravitic engineering would have paid off in about 6% of games instead of 15%. It now takes MS02 Nanotechnology / Fine Structuring: gravity control is control of spacetime's coupling, of the Aether's rarefaction, or of the world-eddy's draw, and needs no negative density. MS08 itself now requires validated exotic matter — where none can be sustained there is nothing to fabricate — and declares that it exists only where the FTL method is Warp or Wormhole; battery check 20 accepts that form of declaration, which is not a World Truth.
• Elemental names in a scientific register. Elemental physics is science, so its late-era names are a scientist's, each grounded in the models: QM-E04 Unified Field Theory's Process name Flow Field Theory; QM-E05 Re-Tempering Reactor / Self-Feeding Cycle Reactor; QM-E08 Boundary Furnace / Cycle-Limit Observatory; QM-E10 Temperament Medicine, with its wonder the Institute of Temperament; QM-E11 Full-Cycle Coupling (the Great Wheel keeps its name); QM-E12 Higher Strata Theory — Aether Strata Theory / Higher-Order Cycle Theory; QM-E21 Compact Re-Tempering Reactor / Compact Cycle Reactor. §4's "higher realms", "ten thousand transformations" and the like are rewritten in the same register. CH21 Philosopher's Stone keeps its name: if science made something that worked like the fabled Stone, that is what it would be called.
• Battery check 22: every breakthrough row is a well-formed table row, closing pipe included. A row that had lost its closing pipe was still read by the battery but dropped by reach.py — and so by the generator, the harness and the viewer — while every check passed.
• Measured (30 harness runs a world): every elemental method completes within a few turns of its atomic mirror — Warp 294 against 296, Wormhole 294–295 against 301, Hyperspace 284–288 against 288, Tachyonic 278–285 against 282, Plenum 287 against Tunnelling's 287.
• Still to come in this pass: the spread between methods — Tachyonic is identified an era before the others and completes about 20 turns before Wormhole — and the Space era's length.

The FTL methods were audited in both ontologies — the rows each needs, whether each exists and is reachable in each world, when a civilisation completes each method's set in the harness, and the evidence each gives. Part 1 fixes structure and era parity; every change is grounded in Elemental Physics, Models I and II.

• Four rows stood only in atomic worlds, though Warp and Wormhole need them and v3.17 meant the Relativity chain to stand in both: Black Hole Thermodynamics, Dark Energy Understanding, Closed Timelike Curves and Exotic Matter Engineering. Their prerequisites named only atomic rows, so elemental worlds could not reach them, and nothing said what the SS FTL Drive should require in their place. Each now takes its elemental mirror and carries its elemental account:
  • Black Hole Thermodynamics — the dark star: rarefaction so deep that light cannot climb out, its rim glowing at the Aether's limiting fineness; or an eddy whose draw no Fire-movement escapes, its rim at the flow's fastest rhythm. Michell's 1783 dark star, read through Lorentzian aether-mechanics.
  • Closed Timelike Curves — closed circuits of the medium: the Aether's natural motion is the circle, and a fold lets a circuit close upon itself; where the medium gives a preferred frame these are closed paths in space, not in time.
  • Dark Energy Understanding — the same expansion, read as the Aether's tension at the scale of the heavens, or as yang's outward flow against the world-eddy's draw.
  • Exotic Matter Engineering — exotic Aether, or broken-cycle matter, made in quantity. Its text always said the elemental Exotic Matter satisfied it; its prerequisite now says so too.
• Elemental worlds reached Warp, Wormhole and Hyperspace about 30 turns early. Unified Field Theory did two jobs — the mirror of Quantum Field Theory (Atomic era) and of Quantum Gravity (Space era) — so the elemental FTL rows hung two steps closer to the start than their atomic mirrors. Plenum Gravitation (QM-E27), a new CORE Space-era row, now takes Quantum Gravity's part: Rarefaction Mechanics in Substance worlds — bulk substance rarefies the Aether, and substance drifts toward rarer Aether (Model I, axiom 5) — and the Mechanics of the Inward Draw in Process worlds — the world-eddy's Earth-movement drawing every pattern inward (Model II, §2). It needs Unified Field Theory and General Relativity, as Quantum Gravity needs Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity, and like it maps strategic deposits — a dense body betrays itself by what it does to the medium. Exotic Matter, Supernal Spheres, the Celestial Current Survey and the Gravitational Coupling Experiment now follow it; the Aetheric Vacuum stays on Unified Field Theory, as its mirror, Casimir, follows Quantum Field Theory.
• Elemental Gravitic worlds could never reach Inertial Dampening or Gravitic Lift (about 7% of games), since both needed the atomic-only Exotic Matter Engineering. Now they can.
• §4 states every method's prerequisites for both ontologies, as the FTL Drive's derivation reads them. Elemental Tachyonic takes Unified Field Theory — which grants HIGH_ENERGY_PHYSICS — as Quantum Field Theory's mirror; the capability table had named a token from QM-E01, which does not grant it.
• Measured in the harness (30 runs a world), each elemental method now completes within a few turns of its atomic mirror — Warp about 295 against 296, Wormhole 296 against 301, Hyperspace 284 against 288, Tachyonic 278–284 against 282, Plenum 288–290 against Tunnelling's 287 — where they had run 15–35 turns early.
• The Quintessic Physics note no longer names the Medium Reservoir, removed in an earlier version.
• Tallies: 494 breakthroughs; CORE 138.
• Still to come in this pass: an evidence map — every method's deciding rows and both their reports, in both ontologies, since elemental worlds have no negative signals at all; the spread between methods (Wormhole completes about 20 turns after Tachyonic); and the Space era's length.