Version 0.76 released

This version is one big fix and finetuning of the noble houses related mechanics and events based on the feedback you provided. Tons of small fixes, tooltips improvements, rebalance of events, rebalance of houses finances, etc. There are two new features. A political marriage option where you can marry a member of your house to another house to strengthen the ties and get rid of the annoying grudges. The second feature is shares of the Feudal Economic Directorate. Each house has number of shares in the F.E.D. which are partially tied to the house rank and determine what share of income from imperial fiefs the house gets (in future most likely there will be options to trade shares with other houses). This feature complements nicely with the new rule that house related options are usually (with exceptions) tied to the income of such house, therefore if a house is poor you can get stuff done cheaper since they basically expect a smaller financial compensation.

All this was possible thanks to the great feedback you provided! I know I mentioned this before, but again, I love making an Early Access game under such conditions. Not only you forgive me the myriad of not working things, which let me focus on experimentation and forging out the best mechanics, but also you provide valuable feedback which allows me to direct my attention to the critical areas and basically make me aware what exactly needs to be looked into and adjusted or redesigned. Thanks a lot!

– [feature] Political marriage. Over time you get audience events that young ones from your family are ready for arranged marriage. This can strengthen the ties with other noble houses and let them forget old grudges.
– [feature] Feudal Economic Directorate shares for noble houses (determine percentage of fiefs income the house gets). Shares are based on rank.

– [misc] Relations of houses naming altered to make them sound more logical.
– [misc] Your spouse actions changed to “Progressively expensive action” and the base cost of those actions significantly reduced.
– [misc] Proxy (non functional) option on the Emperor’s dialog box to embark the imperial flagship (to test how the feature would feel).

– [balance] Rebalanced costs of noble house actions (those called by clicking on a noble portrait), now those costs are based on income of the house.
– [balance] Each house gets additional flat +X income depending on rank (+160/+140/+120/+100). Useful for Young Empire start.
– [balance] Grudges removal cost (average one, affected also by other factors) equals 20 turns worth of income of the house that has the grudge (therefore removing grudges from poor houses is cheaper).

– [content] Event “Ambition of house X” rebalanced so the option to avoid getting grudge is more reasonable to select (much lower Administrative points cost and lower opinion with other houses penalty) but on the other hand now it grants higher Authority to the house.
– [content] Event “Dishonorable deed of the nobles” now has an additional option which let you resolve this issue by paying money.
– [content] New noble house event with mild effects (for a bigger variation of events and to not get you bombed with the high consequence ones all the time).

– [interface] Added notes to summoned nobles audience events about options availability depending on favors/secrets.
– [interface] Added breakdown of houses income in tooltips (rank income and fiefs income).
– [interface] Finetuned head & spouse of the house action tooltips.
– [interface] House member dialog box auto closes if the house window changes to another house (for any reason).

– [fix] Audience option selection bug which made in some circumstances wrong effects to trigger.
– [fix] Upon new game some core planets had no noble lord (auto corrected on first turn).
– [fix] Stability glorious achievement incorrect.
– [fix] Stability from imperial count incorrect upon game start (was correct only after the first turn).
– [fix] Incorrect planet attack report (switched description who was the attacked and who was attacked).
– [fix] One audience allowed using an option which required favors without having any left.
– [fix] Small spelling fixes.
– [fix] Other smaller fixes.

Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.74+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).