Hello! Welcome to another installment of Empires Expanded’s devlogs. Today, we’ll be looking at one of the mod’s origins that will be getting a complete overhaul: the origin formerly known as Plague-Ridden.
Remember, everything shown is not final, with details subject to change and improvement.
Origin: Contagion Outbreak
Once a thriving society, your people were ravaged by a pernicious plague, infecting and killing millions. Civilisation collapsed, and those lucky enough to survive hid away in tiny groups wherever they could.
Recent attempts at re-establishing contact with other survivor groups has led to the formation of your new civilisation, and after many years of joint cooperation, space travel has been rediscovered. Now, your people take to the stars, with wounds of the past.
The origin is mostly similar to the original at a glance, but in addition to those penalties listed, there have been many changes made to the unique deposits and planetary features.
And of course, the addition of 2 entirely new situations is the main change!
The Homeworld
While the new species trait is not too crippling, it will certainly affect your empire’s initial expansion. Nonetheless, various other penalties will be present on your homeworld.
The important thing I had in mind with this origin is having a reason to choose it more than just once. As such, while you might notice a handful of negative modifiers, especially in regards to districts, some small boons can also be gained from the origin, especially nearer to the end of its event chains.
The deposits seen above are quick to remove, but the cost is somewhat high, meaning that it will be a few in-game years before removal is possible or plausible. You might also see that the Obstructed Refuges cannot be removed initially. This will be unlocked as you progress through the tech tree.
The above planetary features cannot be removed through conventional means. While one provides bonuses to offer some sort of silver lining at the start of the game, the other reduces habitability and pop growth, which can be quite problematic when added to the other penalties of the origin.
But of course, it is up to you to progress your research capabilities until a solution is found to restore your homeworld and people.
New Technologies
The previous iteration of this origin had many technologies that were required in order to complete the event chain of the origin. A large portion of these were even vanilla technologies, which was problematic due to overwrites, and also not really conveying to the player that it was required to progress.
As such, only 9 new technologies are added to this origin, with a much more linear and clear order. These are split into 2 categories: Homeworld Restoration and Plague Eradication. You begin with Viral Structual Mapping available as a research option
Each individual technology does more than just progress their respective situation; they provide a small bonus, often one which counteracts an existing negative modifier you have from the origin. This way, researching technologies will gradually improve your empire, even before completion.
The Situations
Below you can see the Plague Eradication situation, which is available alongside the Homeworld Restoration situation upon the start of the game.
All options to progress the situation are greyed out, meaning that no progress can be made; that is, until the necessary technologies are researched. Each technology related to the situation will add varying amounts of progress until the final technology of each chain has been researched.
After researching said technology, a small reward of resources and/or temporary bonuses will be provided, as well as the option to change the situation approach.
At this point, you will simply have to wait until the situation is completed (which can be sped up with the Heavy Funding approach, though it will cost more!).
As a reward for completing this part of the origin specifically, your empire will gain a lump sum of unity and other resources, a permanent modifier boosting happiness and jobs, and even a new trait to replace the Plague-Ridden trait. These useful boons mean that the origin has an overall positive effect on your empire once the trials and tribulations of the start have been overcome.
…and that’s all for today! Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the new Contagion Outbreak origin, especially its presentation. My biggest gripe with the older one related to the badly-written events (which were mostly unnecessary and random additions). To be fair, they were done years ago when I was still new to modding and younger!
The new implementation will feature no overwrites, a less boring and confusing chain of technologies, and will not have like 4 special projects in a row! Hopefully you all will enjoy playing it in the 2.0 update. Let me know what you think.
Next time, we’ll be going over the other major overhaul for an origin, and this time, it’s going to be a bit more different and story-focused. Stay tuned for that!
Thanks for reading as always.
-MadeinCanada
MadeinCanada's Site 