I would like to use a 4 position version number 1.2.3.4, but I am having trouble figuring out how I can iterate the numbers to suit my purpose.

I would define the positions as:
1 - Major (iterated manually in yml file)
2 - Minor (iterated manually in yml file)
3 - Release (should iterate only when a successful build is deployed to production
4 - Build (this would use the {build} variable already supplied by Appveyor

#3 above is the one I am struggling with. Is there a way to set a persistent variable that I can access in later builds via PowerShell so I can ++ to iterate the release number? I see that I can run PowerShell scripts to set the version number in init, but I am unsure of how to proceed when I am acting on a specific branch (technically a PR)

My ultimate hope is to also use the first 3 positions (1.2.3) when pushing releases to GitHub and when patching my .NET Core assembly files for public display.

Any help would be appreciated!