Just in time for the holiday season, we prepared a gift to all Foundation fans: a winter-themed wallpaper that we hope brings you joy during this special time of the year. Choose from one of the many screen resolutions available below and you’re good to go! Thank you for being part of this community.
1366 x 768 | 1600 x 900 | 1920 × 1080 | 3840 × 2160 | 2560 × 1440
1400 × 1050 | 1440 × 1080 | 1920 × 1440
Greetings Lords & Ladies!
Update 1.9.1 has just been released on Steam & GOG. Here’s what you need to know:
First and foremost, the experimental map generator is now part of Foundation’s public build. Everyone can now discover the joys of building a village on a procedurally generated map. Choose from one of the three available topographies (Hills, Coastal, Fluvial), roll the dice and jump into an infinite number of maps, each with their own unique landscapes.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the players who helped us with the map generator’s initial release in the beta branch about three weeks ago. Also, quite a few things you asked for are already planned down the line! One such case relates to overly hilly maps, something we plan to mitigate with flattened “plains” clusters.
As part of our continued efforts to improve your medieval city-building experience, we added a detailed breakdown of each resource’s physical location in the resources tooltip. For instance, hovering over the wood icon will show you how much of that resource is currently available in storage, in production, in stalls or in transit. In a similar vein, if you have wood which is already in use, the tooltip will clue you in: it may be in production, in construction or in transit.
The delivery quest window now clearly shows how much of the required resources are accumulated in your warehouses. Furthermore, reserved resources from your warehouses are now included in the calculation of the delivery quests. We also made it so reserved resources from your warehouses will now be cancelled in order to complete delivery quests.
You may have noticed new loading screen art, which has been added as part of the 1.9 update. From now on, this loading screen will be enhanced with easy to understand tips about some of Foundation’s best kept secrets. Our first batch includes 5 of them, with more to come.
That’s it for today. Stay tuned for further update news coming up in 2023.
Greetings everyone!
The game has just been updated to version 1.9.0.33. Here’s the highlights:
/ month string (from the taxation toggle) wasn’t localized (is now / #MONTH)As always, we are more than happy to read your feedback about this new patch. Head over to our Discord channel if you want to chime in!
Greetings Lords & Ladies!
Foundation’s Update 1.9 is finally available on GOG and Steam.
The team has been hard at work to bring you quality content as part of a new and improved gameplay experience.
Here’s a quick overview of what’s included.
A fundamental aspect of Foundation is the customisation of your experience, which is reflected in the game by the organic growth that makes each village unique. With 1.9, we wanted to go one step further and give you the ability to achieve Village Aspirations: optional objectives that offer different ways to play in order to nab sweet GOG or Steam achievements. Examples include building an Abbatial Church or having 100 citizens in your village
Village Aspirations are another way for us to not only increase the replayability of Foundation, but also to make it a somewhat more challenging experience.
Update 1.9 changes several elements of Foundation, including the way you progress into the game. Now, each EstateUpdate 1.9 changes several elements of Foundation, including the way you progress into the game. Now, each Estate—whether it be Labour, Clergy or Kingdom—has several unlockables of its own. Investing influence in and thus favouring one Estate makes it more difficult to progress with the others. This dynamic requires more planning on your part and adds weight to your decisions without restricting your ambitions.
In addition to Estate-specific progression paths, there is also a common progression path, which includes quite a few essential production buildings in Foundation, such as the Warehouse, the Stonecutter Camp and the Fishing Hut. In e
In addition to Estate-specific progression paths, there is also a common progression path, which includes quite a few essential production buildings in Foundation, such as the Warehouse, the Stonecutter Camp and the Fishing Hut. In either case, you will need to reach different tiers of Prosperity before being able to unlock some of the most desirable options. This new measure of your success takes into account six factors: wealth, territory size, trade, population, splendor and beautification.
Our next updates will focus on upgrading both the Kingdom and Labor progression paths.
You may have noticed that the progression page has a tab dedicated to edicts and privileges. This is another new feature introduced with Update 1.9. The first case represents what may be described as laws that you enact in your village. The second case represents rewards given by the different Estates to their most loyal Lords or Ladies.
Edicts and privileges grant important boons such as reducing a Splendor penalty between two Estates, increasing the market value of certain resources or reducing the maintenance cost of production buildings by half. They are unlocked with coins or influence points. Afterwards, you just have to choose the edicts or privileges you want to activate.
The city-building aspect is at the heart of the Foundation experience, so we wanted to let you expand the capabilities of your buildings. You can now assign functions to a group of building parts (what we call sub-buildings) instead of individual parts. Each sub-building will therefore be linked to a single function (e.g. Treasury) which you can change should you desire so.
In a few words, this means that a Monastery can now be home to a Chapel, a Scriptorium, a Hospitium, a Monastic Garden and so on. The same goes for a Market, which you can expand by adding a sub-building associated with a separate function from the parent building if you wish, such as a Luxury Goods Stall. At any time, it is possible to browse each of the functions of a parent building thanks to the “Parts List” tab.
Progressing on the Clergy path, you’ll soon notice important changes. For starters, there are several new functions available, including a Hospitium that will host visitors, a Scriptorium that will help you produce Manuscripts used to promote your faithfuls or a Cloister where they can medidate while fulfilling a new need. Moreover, you will have the pProgressing on the Clergy path, you’ll soon notice important changes. For starters, there are several new functions available, including a Hospitium that will host visitors, a Scriptorium that will help you produce Manuscripts used to promote your faithfuls or a Cloister where they can meditate while fulfilling a new need. Moreover, you will have the pleasure of building a prettified Abbatial Church: our artists have done a great job upgrading its visuals for your enjoyment!
Previously, Foundation’s economy was largely tied to market stalls. With Update 1.9, taxation replaces the main way to fill your coffers. The Manor House now has a Tax Office function, which is combined with the Tax Collector job. Each house accumulates coins over time, and it’s up to you to decide how heavily your village will be taxed. But beware: people are not too keen on having to pay much, so there is a balance to be struck so as not to collapse your global Happiness factor!
In keeping with our commitment to the modding community, we’ve outlined several new features that are sure to have a snowball effect in the coming weeks. Without getting too technical, the major changes to unlockables, the progression system and narrative choices will certainly result in the creation of mods that we’ll be happy to share with you!
Foundation’s 1.9 update is multi-faceted and marks an important milestone in our Early Access (EA) journey. We hope you will enjoy how we reimagined some of the existing systems while adding more depth to the core medieval city-building experience.
As for what the future holds, in the short term work has already started on a first patch to fix newly discovered bugs. At a later date, and after focusing a lot on the Clergy progression path—particularly the Monastery—we want to give the other two Estates the attention they deserve. We plan to overhaul the Kingdom and Labor progression paths, in that order.. We will let you fill in the gaps as to what that might entail.
Until then, have fun!
It’s been a while since we’ve posted on the blog, but today marks an important milestone in the development of Foundation and we couldn’t pass up such an opportunity. From now on and for a limited time, all players can participate in the public playtest of our upcoming 1.9 update!
Over the past few months, we’ve worked tirelessly to redesign some of the game’s core features and improve the overall experience.
We encourage you to playtest the Clergy progression path, which has been reworked the most. In a few words, what this means is that we’ve focused on this Estate in terms of unlockables and narrative for the time being. The Monastery—crown jewel of this Estate—has undergone several changes. You can now build new parts such as the Hospitium (to host visitors) and the Scriptorium (to produce manuscripts with copyists). You can also build Nun Dorms and yes, even concede female villagers to your monasteries!
A crucial element of the 1.9 update is all about progression. Some buildings are now part of what we call a common progression path, i.e. without any investment towards a particular Estate. Others are linked to one of the three available Estates—Labor, Clergy or Kingdom—and require you to reach specific Splendor thresholds to be unlocked by spending Influence.
The dynamics between Estates are very important in update 1.9. The more you invest in a particular Estate, the harder it becomes to progress with others’. This is our way of adding weight to your decisions, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be handcuffed to the Clergy should you choose this progression path, for example.
Update 1.9 introduces sweeping changes to Foundation, including to its economy, which is now largely tax-based—something that was attributed to markets in the past. You can now tax your villagers and send a tax collector to collect the precious coins that will soon fill your coffers. Trade remains another viable avenue for accumulating wealth; the introduction of upgradable trade routes makes all the difference! Oh, and military missions are still a surefire way to get valuable resources, as always.
Edicts and privileges change the rules of the game in your favor. Once unlocked, these options can, among other things, mitigate a penalty or improve your trade with a neighboring village. Be careful though: if you change your mind about a specific edict or privilege, you will need the help of a Bailiff.
Players looking for an extra challenge will be pleased to know that we’ve added Village Aspirations. These are long-term goals that you can try to achieve, with some of them being pretty hard! Eventually, we’d like to tie these goals to GOG/Steam achievements and give them a bit more fanfare. At this point though, their integration is not final, but gives a good idea of our intentions with this system.
You will notice that narration plays a bigger role in Foundation than ever. Indeed, our Narrative Designer has been pretty busy and added a large number of interesting events and opportunities, ranging from hosting fairs to improving trades with neighbors and much, much more. In that same regard, players will feel they have more of a say as Lord/Lady thanks to the addition of more extensive narrative choices.
In order to better guide you through Foundation’s many interconnected systems, we’ve thought of a series of one-off (and entirely optional!) advice to guide you through your first steps as Lord or Lady—what we call Onboarding. This helps smoothes the learning curve and makes you feel more in control of your village’s development.
The 1.9 update includes lots of other new features and changes, but we want to leave you the pleasure of discovering them on your own terms. This post just skims over the scope of the changes to give you an updated look at Foundation.
You’ll soon notice that the game remains true to itself, but that its form has matured to a degree we’re very proud of. Expect a more detailed breakdown of the many new and improved features once the update is officially released to all Steam and GOG players around the world!
General discussions take place on our official Discord server, in the dedicated #public-playtest-1-9 channel. You can report bugs or technical problems in the #bug-report-public-playtest-1-9 channel. If you would rather write us, please do so using the following email: support@polymorph.games. It’s always a pleasure to read about what you have to say!
Welcome back to yet another episode in our Modding Mondays series!
It’s already been a month since we last featured a popular fan-made mod here.
Today, we have the pleasure of talking about the Vegetable and Poultry Farms mod from creator Batyushki, whom you may remember from the Security mod we shared not so long ago.
Immersion is an important part of gaming: feeling like you’re part of the world and, to an extent, being able to engage in role-playing.
One way to achieve a greater level of immersion is by adding gameplay features that feel relevant without bloating what’s already in place. With Vegetable and Poultry Farms, Batyushki had two goals in mind: to add variety and a more realistic food supply for villages.
This was one of the first mods that I designed. I am a hobby farmer in real life and wanted to add some basic foods to the game. The mod has been through many versions and I’ve slowly improved and simplified it over time
-Batyushki
Agriculture and farming in the Medieval age were critically important: most peasants worked the land and played a key role in the production chain.
This mod introduces two major gameplay additions to Foundation. The first one, a poultry farm, is unlocked once you get 10 villagers. Once it has been built, you will be spawn chickens and geese (they respawn every two weeks).
Chickens produce eggs and poultry. The former is faster, but trades for less gold. On the other hand, geese, duck ponds and dovecotes produce only poultry. You want to keep that in mind once you start building your new poultry farms!
Additionally—and this is a nice touch—you collect dung from your animals using the dung heap. You can then turn dung into compost to grow your vegetables. The circle of life!
The other major inclusion from Batyushki’s mod are the vegetable farms. Unlocked once you get 20 villagers, you can build them according to your own taste just like wheat farms (by snapping together building parts in free-form) or use the simple, fixed farms.
The free-form farm requires both field workers and a processing worker, but produces more per acre of land than the simple field farms. Once you build a free-form farm you need to select which vegetable to grow, and paint the crop field.
Here’s a list of available vegetables:
Vegetables require compost (see above) and water to grow. Once you have vegetables ready for trade and stocked in a granary, you can add them to the vegetable cart, which acts as a market tender.
Creating the Vegetable and Poultry farm mod proved to be quite challenging. With a lot of hard work and the help of a fellow modder, Batyushki was able to see its completion:
One challenge with the mod was how to make the chickens and geese move. I knew this was technically possible but I didn’t know how to go about it. A fellow modder, Minotorious, created code that other modders can use to do simple movement animations. So in the end I didn’t have to solve the problem myself but was able to leverage the code Minotorious developed. I’m looking forward to many more collaborations with other modders going forward.
-Batyushki
We are always humbled to see such amazing content created for Foundation. The modding community is truly astonishing and we know it’s only going to get better as the game further evolves.
Hello everyone!
This week, we’re back with a fifth episode in our Modding Mondays series.
Foundation is a medieval city building game. Therefore, its buildings are at the heart of the gameplay. We can think of them as characters for the game who are all working together to give it a unique identity.
Something that truly inspired Vjraymon, a former IT professional who discovered his passion for modding through a co-worker. With House Addition V4, his goal was to offer more variety with Foundation’s architecture.
Modding new buildings for a city builder seemed like a no-brainer. I first added them to the so-called organic house system of the game, then I took inspiration from the Vanioville mod created by Arthas to populate them manually.
-Vjraymon
Here’s what the mod has to offer in terms of new possibilities for residential zoning:
Another mod from Vjraymon allows you to manually place the new houses in your village, which is very interesting. As a reminder, Foundation villagers build houses by themselves in residential painted areas on your territory. The end result is entirely organic.
Like others before him, Vjraymon learned how to code mostly on his own, but also with the help of the community and developers here at Polymorph Games.
I learned to code in Lua with Foundation. At the beginning, I used examples provided with the game in addition to the help of Maxime and the modder Helron.
-Vjraymon
Today, this creator has more than 20 mods to his name. His biggest wish for the future of modding with Foundation? Being able to mod character animations beyond what we currently offer, i.e. move, rotate and scale.
Hello everyone and welcome to this fourth episode of our Modding Mondays series.
This week, we’ll share the discovery of Batyuski’s Security mod. This prolific creator has been credited for over 60 mods and shows no signs of slowing down.
The main idea behind the Security mod is to add a new layer of realism to our city builder while beefing up its challenge.
At the time of writing, Foundation’s vanilla experience (i.e. without mods) does not offer crime in any form or fashion.
Batyuski took this opportunity to add a whole new dynamic to the game: players are now able to protect their village from outlaws and punish them accordingly.
I have a huge list of mod ideas and spend a lot of time thinking about ways to make Foundation more true to medieval life while also keeping it fun. Castles and security played a central role in medieval towns and I always wanted to make a mod to replicate both the visuals and the functionality of a castle, and to introduce some mild challenges to the game in the form of outlaws.
-Batyushki
When playing with the Security mod, you will have access to new buildings once you reach a population of 20 villagers. The most important one is undoubtedly the Constable’s Keep, which includes a prison part where outlaws will eventually be housed before being released a week later, jobless and with the Newcomer rank.
The mod also adds guard towers. Guards assigned to them will patrol the surrounding streets: a powerful deterrent to crime! You are free to change their route with special arrows placed on your territory.
Each keep, tower, wall, barrier or guard adds to the overall sense of security in your village. It is therefore important to place them in strategic locations to prevent the crime rate from increasing.
At any time, you can check the security level of a given building by clicking on it:
If a workplace is located too far from the above-mentioned security buildings or patrol routes, after two weeks workers will be tempted to steal food, goods and gold.
When a villager commits a crime, he becomes an outlaw. But this is not the only factor that can make them fall to the dark side: being unemployed for more than two weeks can also be the spark that leads to crime.
In this mod, villagers turn Outlaw if they are unemployed for too long or work in an area with low security. Outlaws live in forest camps and come back to the town to steal from other villagers. The player can build keeps, towers, walls and gates to increase security. Guards capture outlaws and go out on missions to destroy outlaw camps.
Mods require a ton of preparation, testing and patience. This was certainly the case with Security.
In 2021, working with another modder, Minotorious, I learned more complex modding techniques, including behaviours (making villagers act in a certain way) and how to overlay information above buildings. These made possible my second Security mod which is now available at foundation.mod.io.
While we strive to create the best possible modding environment with Foundation, there are times when creators find themselves in a bind and have to really think outside the box.
One significant obstacle I faced was how to spawn Outlaw camps away from the village but in places that the outlaws could reach. By using a behavior script I was able to send an invisible pathfinder to potential locations, to verify that outlaws could get there without being blocked by water or mountains.
Other ideas will have to wait, despite all our best intentions:
There are still more things to be done for the Security mod, once Foundation releases a few new features to modders. One would be to improve the way the player can view the security of each building, similar to how they can now see residential desirability. Another would be to zoom in on an area where outlaws have stolen something, when the player clicks a theft notification.
To conclude, Batyushki looks forward to the future of Foundation’s modding:
Even with its current limitations I am delighted at how the mod has turned out and really enjoy building my own castles, seeing the guards go on patrol, and watching the outlaws travel through the forest to their camps. Someday I hope to have entire villages of outlaws, Robin Hood style, living their own lives in the forest.
Foundation is truly a unique game and an amazing platform for modders!
Hi everyone!
Now that the holidays are decidedly behind us, it’s time to think about what the future holds.
There’s little doubt that 2022 will be a pivotal year for Foundation. We know you’re eager to learn more about the game, hence why we’re sharing an exclusive look at what’s going on behind the scenes…and hopefully answer some of your burning questions!
After three years in Early Access (time flies!), we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Looking back, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, but acknowledge that there’s still a lot of work left to do. Still, we’re confident that we’ll cross the finish line before long.
Our current focus is on Core Game II (1.9), which we’ve actually already talked about last year. We can’t stress enough just how much of a game changer this new release will be. We’ll have more details to share about it very soon. In the meantime, here’s some up-to-date info about the new features being worked on right now by the team for this massive update:
As part of our overhauled progression system, your village will now score points according to various metrics (territories, population, etc.). We’re calling this system Prosperity (which is not to be confused with Splendor). The idea behind it is to allow you, the player, to progress in the game without imposing a specific playstyle. For example, you will be able to progress by focusing on a large populated city, but you’ll also be able to progress by focusing on a prolific monastery. Aiming for higher scores isn’t just for bragging rights: you’ll unlock new buildings and put in place new politics (edicts) along the way.
The Estates are evolving and will be closely tied to different gameplay types. Each Estate will have their specific advantages over some core features of the game. For instance, the Labor Estate will fare well in villager taxation, the Clergy Estate on luxury resources and the Kingdom—you probably guessed it—on military campaigns. Also, get ready as having a high Splendor with an estate will negatively impact influence with other estates. This is just a quick overview of our intentions. More on that later!
We know several players would love to see endgame content added to Foundation and 1.9 will deliver on that front. Victory conditions are late game objectives you can complete to score rare player celebrations in Foundation—and their own achievements. Pick one or more victory conditions to track and try to complete all the prerequisites…if you dare!
If you’ve been following us on social media, you know we hired a talented narrative designer a couple of weeks ago. Core Game II will be the first occasion to see his work applied to the world of Foundation. What does that mean?
Well…we’re not ready to spill the beans quite yet, but here’s a nugget of information for you: our new narrative events aim to make your experience more open-ended. Since 1.9 redefines our global game progression, we wanted to establish the first step of what we could describe as a “dialogue” between players and Foundation. In that sense, the game will feel a lot more responsive by serving events tailored to your play style.
Core Game II is an opportunity for us to review Foundation’s early game and more precisely its onboarding. Since we’re introducing a lot of new features to the game, it’s important that our tutorials and in-game messaging are on point. We’ve put a lot of effort into explaining our systems and helping players understand the steps they need to take in order to build—and maintain—successful villages.
And more! Look forward to our new blog series that will delve deeper into upcoming features included in 1.9
The Core Game II (1.9) update is scheduled for release in the first half of 2022.
Apart from the work being done on Core Game II, our team is working in parallel on other important additions that will see the light of day before/at release. Here’s a few of them:
We are rehauling the residential experience to make it more fluid and informative while improving the game’s overall organic layout. Villagers will still build and upgrade (up to a 3rd level) houses by themselves but through blood, sweat, and tears, they’ll be better at it than ever!
Gone are the days where unused space could really hinder your village’s development. Improvements to our painting tool will help determine more precisely where districts are formed and ensure residential space (as defined by the player) is sufficient. The tool will be able to predict how many villagers can be housed within a specific zone.
We already gave you a glimpse of our Map Generator. Work on this feature has progressed steadily since then and is already showing promising results. We know this is one of the most anticipated features and we want to make it right, hence why we’re keeping things a bit under wraps for now.
One way to add more uniqueness to maps is by making sure biomes are different enough from each other. How are we going to do it? Well, for starters, we want to improve vegetation a lot—even going as far as having different vegetation depending on elevation. Think leafy on lower altitudes and coniferous on higher altitudes. What we’re not aiming for is to add tropical or desert biomes, as we feel they don’t quite fit with our design.
We strive to make Foundation more functional, accessible and enjoyable by all types of players. Expect even more accessibility options in the future, including improved colored text contrast and colorblind-friendly signs/feedback.
We will continue to support the modding community. One way to do so will be by exposing more real-time interactions, but we also plan to let modders edit the user interface (UI), among other things.
Delivering a smooth gameplay experience has always been a top priority for us. On that point, we can say this year will introduce a number of interesting QOL changes, included but not limited to: more tooltips, improved handling of panels and ESC key behavior, new Book shortcuts and UI customization (resize).
We are doing everything in our power to get Foundation our of Early Access before the end of 2022. We will keep you updated as we go.
Lords & Ladies, it’s time for a new patch!
Patch 1.8.1.4 fixes a number of issues that have surfaced lately. Here’s the complete rundown:
As always, we are interested in reading your comments about this new patch. Feel free to come and discuss on Discord with us!
