We are actively working to make Citizen of Rome better, equally in terms of improving existing performance, user interface and in adding new content.

I will be sharing some of the progress we have been making and new key features we have been working on via Dev Diaries such as this one.

Today I want share 3 significant changes, apart from major changes to the UI, prestige and other systems:

1. Performance - Chunked NPC management

First, we have upgraded the way the game handles events for non-player-characters - NPCs that are not a part of your household, they still live their lives, have kids, get educated and married on their own, the reason we have this is so that the family of say your character's brother who has a household of their own separately from yours, continues to exist and progress, so that they are available for you to play as in case your character dies heirless. We also use it to generate NPCs for marriage, etc and to marry &/ kill them off later.

The newest update makes it so that these NPCs continue to experience targeted events but changes the way the game handles them, so that only a small set of NPCs are processed every month instead of all of them.

This significantly improves performance, and will be especially noticeable if you are on a low end device or in the late game with a large family and many NPCs around.

2. Replacing auto-scroll with character notifications

Previously the game used to automatically scroll and highlight characters with interesting things happening to them, be it them getting pregnant, being ready for school or winning an election. While this works well for smaller families, it can get irritating when you have a large family with grandchildren and great grandchildren. This also had the effect of slowing the game down with all that scrolling and sometimes even preventing you from doing what you intended to do.

To solve this we have implemented character notifications that show up on the right end of the screen. When hovered upon, they tell you about the update/thing of interest that has happened to a character, and when clicked, they scroll to and highlight the character. These notifications also disappear automatically in a few seconds making interacting with them entirely optional.

3. Scaling apprenticeship costs based on potential earnings

Apprentice costs are now scaled based on what you can expect to earn with a given occupation. Previously it was a fixed cost, under the thought process that you were working while apprenticing and thus only paid for tutoring costs, balancing it out with your work. 

But upon looking at it again, I realised having it be a fraction of your future earnings would work better especially in providing a meaningful choice where you only pick the apprenticeship you can actually afford, after weighing your revenues and apprenticeship costs against future earnings.

That's it for now, Citizen of Rome - Dynasty Ascendant is coming soon to Steam with a hefty launch discount, please be sure to wishlist it so that you don't miss out and to show your support. And feel free to share any thoughts/ideas/suggestions

Long live the Republic!