Version 0.34.0: Edit base, the research queue and famous ants

Version 0.34.0: arrange your colony with Edit base and decorations, queue up to 3 days of research, meet history's famous ants, find alliances with alliance search, play longer, illustrated Story Quests, and age gates paced fairly for players who check in less often.

New

• Edit base: arrange your colony your way. Tap the little house button on the colony (or Edit base in the main menu), then drag buildings to new spots or pick one and tap where it should go. The Founding Chamber stays put, and the ant trails follow wherever you move things. It's purely for looks: where things stand never changes production.
• Base decorations: flower patches, toadstools, moon rocks, golden coins and dozens more to place around your colony, several of the small ones at once. Flip them, move them or put them back in the tray any time. Room decorations can go on the map too.
• Your ground grows with the ages: each new age reveals more of the map to build on, and from the Atomic Age the view pulls back to show your whole colony, so every building has room plus space for decorations.
• Edit base works without a mouse or touch too: pick something from the list, move it with the arrow keys, Enter to put it down, Escape to cancel. Every spot is read out for screen readers, and Undo and Reset layout are always there.
• Alliance search: find an alliance by name, or leave the box blank to see open alliances with space, ones near you first. Join with one tap, no code needed, or switch across from your current alliance. Your alliance's longest-standing member chooses whether it shows in search; alliances made before this update stay code-only until they turn it on.
• Famous ants: history's great minds, as ants. Find the Character card of Socrantes, Isaac Newtant, Joan of Ant or any of 19 famous ants and they move into your colony. Each keeps their card's bonus, can run a building like any named ant (upgrading their card makes them a rarer overseer), and walks around your base in their own costume, from a toga to a space suit. Tap one to say hello. Meet them all, and see how to find them, in Ants → Named ants.
• Research queue: while one research runs, line up more behind it, up to 3 days of research time. Each starts by itself the moment the one before finishes, even while you're away. Research points are paid when each one starts, so nothing is locked away and taking one out costs nothing; if you're short of points when it's due, the queue waits and says so, then carries on once you have them. See what's next, move things up or down or take them out from the bar at the top of Research. Age gates are still opened by hand.
• Longer, illustrated Story Quests: every quest is now a proper story of a dozen or more scenes, with over a hundred new pixel-art pictures showing where you are, from under the bed to the dark side of the Moon. More of your choices change what happens next and where the story goes. Rewards are the same, and a quest you were part-way through may start again from its first scene.

Changes

• Each age gate now also needs building levels from the age you're in (any mix of that age's buildings counts) and some time spent in that age, which keeps counting while you're away. Saving Materials alone no longer rushes you through the ages, and checking in once a day keeps a fair pace. Gates also open while another research is running. The gate shows a progress bar and what's still missing.
• Research, Gathering, Exploration and Outposts keep what's in progress pinned at the top of the screen as you scroll, with its time left and its buttons (Finish now, or the next research to start).
• Cosmetic bundles are a much bigger haul: each A$4.49 set now holds 25 themed items (building skins for eight buildings, an ant colour, a card frame, a map theme and over a dozen base decorations), and the Golden colony set (A$7.99) holds 30. The A$4.49 sets are the best value in the shop. Every item is still sold on its own for Royal Jelly, and nothing is random.
• Building skins now come for age buildings too, like the Fungus Garden, Lamp Forge and Orbital Hive.
• The What's new card now shows each time you open the game for a week after an update, counted from the first time you open the new version, so you won't miss it if you were away at launch. It still waits for other popups, never shows to brand-new players, and has a "Don't show again for this update" button.
• Reminders are now on to start with, but nothing is sent until you say yes. After an age-up or a welcome back the game asks you once, in plain words, what you'll get: a short note when your stores are full, research is done or a gift is waiting, at most 3 a day and never at night. It always asks first, even on devices that wouldn't ask for permission themselves. Say "Not now" and it asks at most once more, a month later. If you turned reminders off before, they stay off.

Balance

• Story Quests are longer, so each leaning choice now moves the Great Ant and Satant bar a little less (2.5 instead of 3). A whole quest moves it about as much as before.
• The weekly quest for story quests now asks for 2 steps instead of 1, in step with the longer quests.

Fixes

• Reminders in the browser: if your browser quietly replaced its notification address, reminders stopped until you turned them off and on again. The game now sets them up again by itself.
• Turning reminders on no longer waits for ever in browsers where the game's offline helper isn't running; it says it couldn't instead.

Fairness & privacy

• When you start an alliance, we keep the two-letter country your connection comes from with that alliance, only to show nearby alliances first in alliance search. It's never shown to other players and is deleted when the alliance closes. The privacy page says so too.
• While reminders are on in a browser, we keep that browser's push address and the game's language, so we can count reminder browsers and send one short note when a new version is out. They're deleted when you turn reminders off, delete your online data, or 90 days after the browser was last seen. The privacy page now says so, and that app reminders are scheduled on your phone with nothing sent to us.