Kill your darlings, darling

I’ll admit. The base game has been too long, particularly for 4 players. Here is the fastest way to shorten it I had been avoiding - shorten the path to unlock the end game powers.

Now the game can end after about 10 turns. 4 players at 10 turns each, 40 turns, ~2 mins per turn, ~80mins total. Why had I not done that simple calculation before beats me.

Every single layer

So, the rulebook was taking 40s to load. Why might you ask? I was using efficient svgs right!? Well turns out the 2.5D renders from illustrator were actually just svg wrappers with pngs of each 2.5D rendered element in them. The more hexagons, the more layers, the more pngs. It was messy.

I’ve now created a webp shortcode and am in the process of re-exporting these out to make it a quick efficient load.

The comment section are deferred, HTMX version is no longer loaded (wasn’t being used).

Evacuation - 2 resource change back.

The incoming lava tile forces any critters on that tile, friend or foe, to evacuate to a tile with a connecting biome paying 2 x resources to do so.

Burrowing critters update

Removed these ‘stipulations’:

• A critter remains burrowed until the start of your next turn, at which point it re-emerges, the same critter can not be burrowed this turn." Keeping them buried is interesting. They don’t generate resources and are somewhat protected, but they do count towards your points.

• A land tile can be placed on top of the burrowed critter but it will not be wiped out, the land tile must contain a biome that the burrowed critter was previously in. After placing the tile, the burrowed critter will emerge on to the same biome.

• A volcano tile can be place on top of the burrowed critter but it will not be wiped out, after the volcano erupts and the lava begins to flow, the burrowed critter will emerge on to the (potentially rotated) new tile.

• If lava flows onto a burrowed critter, it will not be wiped out, after the lava progress to a new tile, the critter will emerge onto its original biome.

• If lava is on top of a burrowed critter during the player’s turn who owns the critter, they cannot emerge the critter or interact with it in any way.

All were too complex and unneccessary. Volcanoes and lava wipes out burrowed critters now. Nerfs the power, but you can have unlimited burrowed critters.