The farm has a season ladder now, running every quarter from 1 October. The broadcast also takes a postcard every 10 minutes, and players vote the best into a Collection. Monorail and maglev have Mk wagons, so there is a download. One balance change will show in a few bank balances: brand value finally has a ceiling that holds.
The brand setting called the maximum was never one. It was applied before prestige, so a brand with full awareness, most of the share and strong prestige went straight past it. The highest we saw was a livestock brand at 1,384 per cent. Brands like that were behind some very large incomes.
There is a real top now, applied after prestige: 300 per cent. A brand at full awareness and full share is worth 300 per cent before prestige, so prestige can no longer carry it higher. What prestige buys instead is a way to the top with less of the share: half the share with +100 per cent prestige gets there. Middling brands are smaller than they were too, because that base came down from 800.
The freight weight multiplier is 2 on every world. The cargo in a freight train now weighs twice what it did. Our train slopes were already steeper than stock: 5, where the game ships 3. Passenger and mail trains are unaffected. Engine power and a flatter route matter more than they did.
The Mk1 to Mk8 wagons that rail got in v1.00 now exist on monorail and maglev as well. Every wagon type is on both tracks with the same eight tiers, the same roles and the same unlocks. Until now a monorail or maglev line could only pull vanilla wagons.
Electric lines keep the rail wagons, which the game already runs behind electric engines. Road vehicles, ships and aircraft have not changed.
From 1 October every calendar quarter is a season. Every world feeds one table and you are on it as soon as you finish a session. Until then it runs as a preseason: the table is live and the points are real, but they do not carry into Season 1.
| What you did | Season points |
|---|---|
| Finishing a session | 10 |
| Each company you finish above (up to 14) | 2 |
| First, second or third | 40 / 25 / 15 |
| Each contract you complete | 3 |
| Each monthly record you set | 1 |
| Each all-time record you set | 3 |
| Each full hour in the game | 2 |
| Your first finish on a world this season | 5 |
Your charter does not change any of these. XP already pays more for a harder charter. Season points pay for turning up and doing well, so a newcomer can climb the table too.
Twelve seasonal challenges add points on top, from Regular (finish 10 sessions, 30 points) to Cartographer (finish a session on all 16 worlds, 120). They reset with the season.
When a season closes, everyone with at least 100 points is ranked: Champion for first, Gold for 2nd and 3rd, Silver for 4th to 10th and Bronze for 11th to 25th.
Seasons pay in status, never in power. Every challenge you complete gives you a title with its name. A finishing tier gives a title stamped with its season, such as Gold, Season 1, so they build up over the seasons. There are 16 titles and 8 crests to earn, and a crest is drawn round your company mark. On the broadcast the best title you hold sits under your CEO name.
The season page has the table and your challenges. Section 11 of the guide explains the rest.
Every 10 minutes the broadcast takes a postcard. It waits up to 5 minutes for a shot that is following a vehicle, then the farm prints it in one of many card designs, branded with the company in shot: its mark, its name, the CEO and the class. The picture without the branding is one click away on the site.
Log in with Discord or Steam to vote each postcard up or down, once. A card with more up votes than down goes into the Collection straight away. The Collection is ranked by score and holds the best 1,000. A newer card that outscores the lowest one takes its place. A card has 14 days to earn a place; one that has not by then is thrown away.
Each card that enters the Collection is posted to #postcards on our Discord with its picture and a link to its page. The postcards page filters by player so you can find your own. Every recap shows the postcards taken during its session.
A recap now carries maps drawn at the whistle. For the server there is the transport map and the territory map. For each company there is its cargo network, its network health and the towns it holds. They are kept for 14 days. Only sessions from 12 September have them, because older sessions left no snapshot to draw from.
Every row on the contracts page is a location button now. Click it and your view goes to the mine, works or town the contract names. A contract with a second place gets a small line under it that goes there.
The rows are coloured by state: completed contracts are green, failed ones red and open ones light blue. The colours reach each world at its next reset, the last one at 11:30 UTC today.
Cargo names are picked out in blue on Your Brands, Your Network and the balance sheet's network rows. A cargo is easy to find in a long line now.
AI companies now spend on research through the same buttons and prices a player uses. Once one has plenty of cash (the bar rises with the era), it puts 90 per cent of that cash into research, at most once every 5 minutes.
Each class has its own order of priorities, led by its own specialty. The more levels a track already has, the less an AI wants it. It works down its list and keeps the levels close instead of maxing one. Expect AI companies to be stronger late in a session.
#cs14-africa), and change with the rotation.