Voxel Turf just had a huge update, the AI can now build cities and hired goons can be given orders

Voxel Turf [Steam], the urban sandbox that's a little like Minecraft with elements of a city-builder and GTA has just had a huge update.

Just released today with update 1.1.0, the AI has become a whole lot smarter! Now, if you decided to hire some goons to help you out, you can actually order them around. They can be set to follow you, guard a location, go to a waypoint and return to their home base. This opens the game up quite a bit more for human players, since they can hire a small army to attack their enemies if they wish.

Additionally, AI factions are now able to properly build. They can establish new bases and construct new entire regions in a city. The developer said that they won't do it without reason though, if you have as many bases as them or you approach their Networth.

There's also another game mode "Strat Zero", which is where up to 16 people can start on an empty map and build a city from scratch, but in this mode the AI will start wars. They say it's a mix between the other Turf Zero and Strategy modes.

Voxel Turf has also seen a major tweak to construction costs, with them all being reduced quite a lot. This is so players can get right into the meat of the game, without being forced through high-paying missions first. 

There's quite a bit more to the updatte, so for an overview, the developer sent along this poster they made in GIMP (the developer is a Linux user), or you can read about it on Steam.

I've been really impressed with how the developer of Voxel Turf has improved the base game and expanded upon it since the initial release. At a glance, they've added:

• 1.0.28 – Waypoints appear in the world, new bandit bases, improved mouse code, strategic pause
• 1.0.26 – Boats, Hovercrafts, Marinas and Hovercraft shops. Hovercrafts can boost by holding sprint or hover by holding jump
• 1.0.23 – Improved AI pathfinding, added headshots
• 1.0.19 – Blocks crumble when destroyed and go flying when explosions happen
• 1.0.18 – You can place fortifications as bases from the construction screen
• 1.0.14 – Massive FPS boost due to cpu/gpu binding opimisations. Can result in up to 3x improvement in frame rate
• 1.0.11 – Removing blocks returns the item to your inventory
• Plus assorted performance upgrades and bugfixes

Honestly, it's great. I enjoy it, my son adores it and I'm sure more of you will when you check it out too.