Regions and regional markets
The aspect of the game that changes the most going into season 1 is the introduction of regional markets for ships and carts. The map is divided into regions spanning multiple towns and potentially several landmasses and islands. Each region has a capital, which is where all trading of the ships and carts takes place.
Every town within a region can directly trade on that regional market, while visitors from other regions need to go to the capital to access the regional market.
This means that all towns have access to ships and cart markets from the start of the game (though there may not always be anyone willing to trade on them), and these markets can now be found in predictable places.
A guide going into more details on regional markets as well as trading in general will be published in a few days time.
Prestige updates
Prestige will be earned the same ways as before, through extravagant living, fulfilling contracts, building impressive buildings, and hosting events in those buildings. There are some slight adjustments towards making prestige a little more expensive to obtain, while the decay (reduction in prestige over time) is reduced (now capped at 0.75% / turn instead of 1%). As before, decay only comes into play when the player reaches 10 prestige.
Production method and building updates
Related to the prestige update, there are some new products and production methods being introduced, centered on the beehives upgrade to flax farms. This allows bees to be kept on the farms, producing wax and honey in addition to flax.
The wax and honey can in turn be used at the new chandlery to make candles or at the bakery to bake pies, respectively. Both pies and candles are prestige products, with the latter being used particularly intensively at the religious buildings.
Profit from throughput
In addition to the new production methods, almost all town center production is getting a boost in throughput, reducing the need for large expansions within the town center. In return, many town center buildings and upgrades are getting more expensive and profit margins are reduced.
Season 1 kick-off
Season 1 kicks off tomorrow (April 19th) at 18:00 CET at mercatorio.io
