Changelog v3 20s - 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.

Summary: Strategic resource audit: kept Saltpeter, Rare Earths, Obsidian, the two stockpiles and the Heavy Ore alias; cut Sulfur, Bitumen, Rubber, Phlogiston, Caloric and Ritual Bronze as resources (their breakthroughs survive as knowledge or building requirements); FOSSIL_FUELS_ABSENT removes Coal and Oil only. ~531.

Every resource this design added was tested against one standard: at least three consumers spanning an era, and a game honestly poorer without it. Outcome (recorded in §7.0):

• Kept: Saltpeter (Musketman, Cannon, Fireworks Ground — a Renaissance scarcity Civ V lacked, with Riflemen as the free fallback exactly as Pikemen are for iron); Rare Earths (six consumers, v3.28); Obsidian (the volcanic cluster's payoff); the Prima Materia and Qi stockpiles; the Heavy Ore alias.
• Cut as resources: Sulfur and Bitumen — two more gates on eras already gated, and double jeopardy for the gunpowder age. Sulfur Mining survives as knowledge (bleaching, antiseptic, the Gunpowder prerequisite); Bitumen becomes Pitch and Tar (wood tar from the charcoal kiln — road maintenance and caulked hulls), which needs no deposit and no world flag. FOSSIL_FUELS_ABSENT now removes only Coal and Oil; Greek Fire (pine pitch, sulfur, a siphon) exists in every world.
• Cut: Rubber (nothing consumed it) — Rubber Discovery (MI09) removed, Vulcanization now requires Botanical Classification; Phlogiston and Caloric as resources (one consumer each) — the Levity Airship and Caloric Lance now require their producing building in the city; Ritual Bronze (the Foundry Temple provides Copper). ~532 → ~531.

Summary: Rare Earths given a consumption profile (Foundry, Fab, Photonic Network, Quantum Computer, Drone; Solar Farm to follow) so it functions as a true strategic resource.

• Rare Earths (added v3.22) was a strategic resource nothing consumed — a prerequisite for Miniaturisation and a tile science yield, no more. It is now the late-game high-tech strategic, requiredResource for the Microchip Foundry, Fab, Photonic Network, Quantum Computer and Drone (and the Solar Farm when Energy Systems is grounded), in the role Aluminum plays for aircraft. This also gives Transmuted Rare Earths (CH20) something worth buying, and makes the resource a genuine diplomatic and military object.

Summary: Transmuted Horses removed (Rare Earths instead); Cycle Forge re-based as Qi stockpile → the Five Turnings in generative order, the terrain-neutral mirror of Transmutation.

• Transmuted Horses removed (a vat should not produce a living thing); Transmuted Rare Earths takes the slot — minerals only. Transmuted Coal and Oil are removed with their resources in FOSSIL_FUELS_ABSENT worlds.
• The Cycle Forge re-designed as the exact mirror of the Transmutation Hall. Its Forest/Jungle yields were both dull and a start-position lottery. Now the Forge converts its own production into Qi, a second stockpiled resource — at 150%, the opened loop's gain — and Qi buys the Five Turnings (Wood +Food, Fire +Production, Earth +Gold, Metal +Science, Water +Culture), each requiring the one before, so the wheel turns only forward. Substance: a stockpile lost, spent on any form. Process: a stockpile gained, spent along a fixed sequence. Neither depends on terrain. A city that completes all five Turnings has "turned the wheel", which Great Harmony (QM-E11) will key off when its focus is grounded.
• Tuning note: 30 Qi is five turns of one Forge for a +3-yield building — deliberately generous, since the gain is the Process world's identity; raise toward 40 if it outpaces normal construction in play.

Summary: Transmutation re-based on native stockpiled resources (Prima Materia → Transmuted buildings); the five decisive experiments become national-wonder laboratories that perform the experiment on completion; §7.0 enumerates the fork's six custom uniques.

• Transmutation re-based on Unciv's native stockpiled resources. "Provides Iron and Horses in every city" was creation, not re-tempering, and a glut. Now: the Transmutation Hall disperses its own production into Prima Materia (a Stockpiled resource — formless temperament), and seven small "Transmuted" buildings re-lock it into the form you lack (Costs [40] [Prima Materia] → Provides [2] [Iron], likewise Horses, Coal, Oil, Aluminum; Costs [60] → Jewelry or Porcelain, the luxuries that are made rather than mined). Any form into any other, at a loss, with no new interface — the stockpile is in the resource bar, the costs in the build menu. The Philosopher's Stone grants a lump of Prima Materia and turns Market gold into matter; Formless Reserve catches a quarter of every Forge's output as Prima Materia. The Cycle Forge no longer conjures ore: its gain is production from Forest and Jungle plus a city-wide bonus — forward-only and renewable, as the Process physics says.
• The five decisive experiments are now national-wonder laboratories. Each is one-per-civilisation, costs production, and on completion Triggers a [event] event (native) carrying the world's report, then Reveals (fork unique) the breakthrough this world's answer opens — Periodic Table / Transmutation / Five-Phase for the Matter axis, Germ / Miasma / Humoral for Disease, and so on. The breakthrough is the gate; building the laboratory is the choice to find out. Native event trigger, custom reveal — both recorded in §7.0.
• §7.0 now enumerates the fork's custom uniques (six: focus unlock, Insight %, Reveals, obsolescence, Experiment/Synthesis, diffusion phases) so that everything else in the Unlocks column is guaranteed to be a real template; stockpiled resources added to the "what exists" list.

Summary: Batch 5: Chemistry, Optics, Electricity, Electronics, Computing (74 breakthroughs) grounded; transmutation and the generative cycle expressed through resource-providing buildings.

• 74 breakthroughs rewritten concretely. Chemistry's canonical mine bonus lands on Acid/Base Discovery; the canonical Fertilizer farm bonus moves to Catalysis (the Haber process) and Atmospheric Science gets a Weather Bureau instead; Portland Cement carries Machinery's Improves movement speed on roads; the Power Grid uses [in all cities connected to capital] for both production and happiness — the grid follows the roads.
• Transmutation and the Generative Cycle made concrete. Unciv has no resource stockpiles, so "convert resources" becomes the Recycling Center pattern: the Transmutation Hall and Cycle Forge each Provide strategic resources — the Hall on demand at a loss (any-to-any, Substance), the Forge from renewable Forest input at a gain (forward-only, Process). The Philosopher's Stone is a wonder that provides Iron and Aluminum outright.
• The decisive experiments are laboratories (Combustion, Analytical, Synthesis, Calorimetry), each granting science and revealing the path their result opens — the epistemic ladder as buildings.
• Sentient AI becomes an Events.json chain (Unciv cannot spawn a civilisation); Piezoelectricity grants a Sonar promotion; Glassmaking's "Sand" prerequisite becomes a Desert or Coast tile.
• Science percentages from techs are now explicit and should be watched in tuning: Scientific Method +25%, Printing Press +10%, Internet +10%, AGI +15% — Insight is science, so these compound the whole tree's pace.

Summary: Nation-unique layering principle (no breakthrough grants a nation's own UU/UB); eleven rows corrected. Batch 4: Trade, Textiles, Water Management, Mechanics, Thermodynamics (70 breakthroughs) grounded; conditionals now validated too.

• Layering principle added to §7.0: players still choose an Unciv nation with its own UA/UU/UB, so UNIQUE breakthroughs are a second layer of identity. A breakthrough never grants a nation's own unique object; nation uniques keep their base object's gate; stacking a nation ability with a matching UNIQUE is allowed and bounded by the cumulative UNIQUE penalty. Eleven rows corrected accordingly: Mangudai (not Keshik), Huscarl (not Berserker), Repeating Crossbowman (not Chu-Ko-Nu), Siphon Galley (not Dromon), no Samurai or Tercio or Battering Ram granted, Chinampa Garden (not Floating Gardens), Terrace Granary (not Terrace farm), Elephant Cavalry / Armoured Elephant (India's War Elephant keeps its name).
• 70 breakthroughs rewritten concretely. Highlights: Enables Research agreements on Free Trade Agreements; Refrigeration's [15]% Food is carried over after population increases [in all cities] (the spoilage conversion, empire-wide); Silk Production provides the Silk luxury from a building; Mainspring Energy Storage's <in cities without a [Water Mill]> (spring power exactly where water gives none); the Automaton as a Civilian unit with [-100]% maintenance costs; Caloric worlds gain Caloric as a tradeable strategic resource. The Wheel now carries the civilian-movement bonus (removed from Horse Domestication, which gets Horses-tile production instead).
• Validator extended to check conditionals as well as uniques (173 conditional templates); all 51 in use are legal.

Summary: Mechanical grounding, batch 3. Seafaring, Warfare, Mathematics, Philosophy and Medicine (85 breakthroughs) rewritten concretely; Arsenical Bronze removed (~527); unit lines spread by era.

• Arsenical Bronze (ME03) removed: with tin gone from the resource model its purpose ("bronze without tin trade") no longer exists. Statistics corrected: the five "-W" fossil-fuel alternatives had never been counted by the tally script, so every total since v3.2 was five short — the true count is ~532 breakthroughs (72 UNCOMMON).
• 85 breakthroughs rewritten concretely. Canonical uniques placed where history puts them: Enables embarkation for land units on Dugout Canoe, Enables [Embarked] units to enter ocean tiles on Celestial Navigation, the Great Wall's Enemy [Land] units must spend [1] extra movement points… as the Fortified Border culture, Great General provides double combat bonus as the Mongol culture, the Honor-style Earn [50]% of killed [Military] unit's [Strength] as [Culture] as Bushido.
• Scientific Method's bonus is now a legal unique: Insight is science, so [+25]% [Science] [in all cities] says exactly what the design meant.
• New units where none existed: Phalanx, Longship, Dhow, Reed Boat, Ekranoplan, Air Rifleman, Railgun Battery, Drone; Musketman now requires Saltpeter, Cannon Sulfur. (This pass originally granted nation-unique units — Keshik, Samurai, Berserker, Chu-Ko-Nu, Tercio, Dromon — to matching breakthroughs; reversed in v3.24, see below.)
• Unit lines spread by era in §7 so no Ancient breakthrough unlocks a Medieval unit: Knight and Pikeman to Steel, Lancer to Pike and Shot, Cavalry stays at Rifling, Great War Infantry to Precision Machining, Infantry to Polymer Science, Machine Gun to Assembly Line, Marine to the Helicopter, Anti-Tank Gun to Internal Combustion. Hospital (+5 Food) moves from Ancient Surgery to Germ Theory; Research Lab from Early-Modern Empiricism to the Periodic Table.
• Temperament Engineering becomes four mutually exclusive Regimen Halls (the Solar/Nuclear Plant exclusivity pattern) — the design's "choose your city's humour", made concrete.

Summary: Mechanical grounding, batch 2. Farming, Animal Husbandry, Mining, Metallurgy and Construction (80 breakthroughs) rewritten concretely; resource reveals moved to our breakthroughs; five new strategic resources; tin and seismic zones re-based on what Civ V has.

80 breakthroughs rewritten concretely, same method and validator as v3.21.

• Resources now carry the reveal moments the tree always promised: Horses → AH03, Coal → MI06, Oil → MI07, Uranium → MI10, Aluminum → ME13 (each the canonical revealedBy, moved to our breakthrough); Silver and Salt → Deep Shaft Mining (the "second reveal"); and five new strategic resources the world-truth design needs — Sulfur (MI04), Bitumen (MI05B), Saltpeter (MI08), Rubber (MI09), Rare Earths (MI11) — plus the Ritual Bronze luxury. FOSSIL_FUELS_ABSENT now means Coal, Oil and Bitumen are simply never placed.
• Canonical uniques land where they belong: Roads connect tiles across rivers on Arch Construction; the Fertilizer-class farm and pasture bonuses split across Irrigation (fresh-water farms), Crop Rotation (Wheat), Selective Breeding (Plantations) and Nitrogen Fixation (dry farms); Provides [2] [Iron]/[Aluminum] on the Asteroid Mining Station (the Recycling Center pattern).
• Civ V has no tin: Bronze Alloy now requires Copper in territory under the Section 1.2 resource rule, and Arsenical Bronze becomes the copper-only defensive alternative. Civ V has no seismic zones: Earthquake-Resistant Design and Earthquake Mastery are re-based on Hill and Mountain country.
• UNIQUE breakthroughs follow the UB + UA pattern throughout (e.g. Flood Harvest → Nilometer + Flood-plains yields; Steppe Rider → Horse Archer + Nomad Camp + [+1] Movement <for [Mounted] units>; Ceremonial Road → Pilgrimage Route + [+1 Culture, +1 Faith] [in all cities connected to capital]).
• New objects this batch: 27 buildings (incl. 9 unique replacements, 5 national wonders), 6 improvements, 7 units, 3 promotions, 6 resources.

Summary: Mechanical grounding, batch 1. §7.0 rulebook from the Unciv repository; Fire, Foraging, Stonework, Observation and Social Organisation (67 breakthroughs) rewritten as concrete Unciv objects and uniques. Remaining foci pending.

The Unlocks column is being rewritten against Unciv's actual capabilities, read from the repository (docs/Modders/uniques.md, Unique-parameters.md, the Mod-file-structure docs, and the Gods & Kings ruleset JSONs).

• New §7.0 Mechanical Grounding: the legal vocabulary (seven stats, object fields, Global/Triggerable tech uniques), a conversion table for every concept earlier drafts used that Unciv lacks (tourism, loyalty, morale, health, disasters, weather, city size caps, spoilage, pollution, MAD, probe movement, blockade, code-breaking…), the terrain the tree assumes but Civ V lacks (a new Volcanic feature; Flood plains reused; earthquakes dropped), a calibration rule (a breakthrough ≈ one-sixth of a canonical tech, CORE gateways excepted; UNIQUEs mirror a Civ V civilisation's UB + UA), and a notation legend.
• 67 breakthroughs rewritten concretely across the five starting foci — every effect now a base-game object, a new object with a JSON-ready spec, a legal unique in Unciv syntax, a resource revealedBy, or a focus unlock. Examples: Controlled Fire → [+1 Production] [in all cities] + Tundra food; Ore Identification → sets revealedBy for Copper, Gold Ore, Silver, Gems and Iron (hidden until then) + Mine + Mining; Geological Observation → the Triggerable Reveal up to [all] [Strategic resource] within a [10] tile radius; Guilds → the canonical Enables conversion of city production to [Gold]; Writing → the canonical Enables establishment of embassies; Dreamtime Pathways → a granted Songline promotion (Double movement in [Desert]).
• New objects introduced so far: 32 buildings (incl. 9 unique replacements and 3 national wonders), 4 improvements, 3 units, 1 promotion, 3 resources (Obsidian, Bitumen, Phlogiston), 1 terrain feature (Volcanic). Camp moved to O03 (Animal Behaviour Study); Stock Exchange moved to TR09 (Modern-era trade) in §7.
• Remaining foci still carry draft prose; §7.0 records the pass's status. Reward values are preliminary pending playtesting.

Summary: Elemental worlds derived from the two physics models. Sixty-three blocked breakthroughs rewired (Computer, Integrated Circuit, Substrate Mastery, Solar, and nine more read an elemental face); alternate elemental names on shared late craft; sixteen new breakthroughs — ten shared elemental (Limiting Fineness, Aetheric Electrodynamics, Boundary Survey, Complete Catalogue, Aether Telegraphy, Celestial Current Survey, Quintessic Warhead, Compact Athanor, Medium Reservoir, Current Sail), two Substance (Formless Reserve, Dissonance Weaponry), four Process (Closed-Loop Calorimetry, Self-Renewing Structures, Counter-Cycle Reversal, Phase Exchange). Density parity ~27–29 vs ~34. Phase Ascendancy dropped. ~528 breakthroughs.

The elemental fork is now built from the two physics models (Elemental Physics, Models I & II) rather than patched onto the atomic tree.

• Sixty-three blocked breakthroughs rewired. The Programmable Computer and Integrated Circuit accept Resonant-State Computing beside the Transistor; Substrate Mastery (formerly Semiconductor Mastery) accepts a resonant-crystal route; Solar, Dark Matter, the Gravitational Coupling Experiment, Ion Drive, Metamaterials, Radiation Shielding, the Submarine, Interstellar Communication, Planetary Defence, Orion Pulse and Post-Scarcity all read their elemental face. Computing, Genetics, Robotics, Space Engineering and the sub-light victories are now reachable in elemental worlds; the atomic-dependency sweep is clean except for the ontologically atomic set.
• Alternate elemental names on shared late craft where the practical upshot is identical (Resonance / Cycle-Logic Computer, Integrated Resonator / Cycle Array, Resonant / Fire-Capture Collector, Fire / Flow Valve, Emanation Shielding, Quintessic / Overcycle Submarine).
• Sixteen new breakthroughs, each a consequence of the models. Shared elemental (10): Limiting Fineness (QM-E14, mirror of Wave-Particle Duality; now the gateway to Resonant-State Computing), Aetheric Electrodynamics (E15, mirror of QED), Boundary Survey (E16 — the warm ores investigated; reveals Heavy Ore, mirror of Radioactivity + Uranium), Complete Catalogue (E17, mirror of the Standard Model; second tachyonic signal), Aether Telegraphy (E18), Celestial Current Survey (E19 — now a Method F prerequisite), Quintessic Warhead (E20, mirror of Nuclear Weapons with MAD parity), Compact Athanor (E21, RARE), Medium Reservoir (E22), Current Sail (E23, UNCOMMON). Substance only (2): Formless Reserve (CH27), Dissonance Weaponry (QM-E26). Process only (4): Closed-Loop Calorimetry (CH26 — the surplus experiment, reveals the Cycle Engine), Self-Renewing Structures (QM-E24 — the Process mirror of Incorruptible Matter), Counter-Cycle Reversal (QM-E25, RARE), Phase Exchange (TR16).
• Density parity: a Substance world now holds ~27 elemental-exclusive Modern-and-later breakthroughs and a Process world ~29, against ~34 atomic-exclusive (excluding the deep-fission alternative path). ~512 → ~528 total.
• Phase Ascendancy dropped. Its cosmic-seasons form would be either a tell or dormant-until-discovered, and the universal weather mechanic that could hide it is out of scope for an Unciv fork; the Process world's Great Cycle has no terrestrial rhythm. Method F strengthened to three specific prerequisites (matching Method D's weight) with the Celestial Current Survey as its decisive signal.