We've been developing tonight, and here's what's new.
New System: The game now keeps dynamic track of ingame civilization levels by means of what we call the Census System. This means that the old creature levels, determined by simple distance from the Ring of Brodgar, are now retired. Three things increase the civilization level of an area: Hearth Fires, Houses (1/20 as much as a Hearth Fire) and The Ring of Brodgar itself (Worth 50 Hearth Fires). This means that, as an area gets more civilized, through the building of houses and hearth fires, creatures in it will become progressively less dangerous.
Creatures now also display the nearest approximation of their level, in their avatar, in roman numerals.
Here is a newly generated worldmap, which includes all recent road projects and the like (please note that it lacks ridges, and that the textures look like crap): http://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/re ... exture.png (I am insanely impressed by the impact you guys have had on the map)
...and here is that same map with a danger overlay based on official civilization census number 0: http://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/res/map-danger.png
You will note that, for example, the tristate area Laketown/Clayshire/Leperbunny Commune now spawns level one foxes, and that creatures down in Bottleneck are now at around level two/three.
The census is updated once every IRL hour.
Update: A high industrial alignment should now yield more wrought iron when processing blooms. (2/3 with max industry, zero at max nature)
Fun Trivia: Before this update, the server had been running without interruption for 36 hours, a new record since we started getting users.
With this new system in place, I think I can promise that the next update will be a lot more fun in terms of stuff to do. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that it is still possible to vote for us.
Happy civilizing!