Hello there,
some time has gone by since the last update in August. I've been extremely busy since then and haven't had as much time to work on Andalia as I'd liked to.
With that said let me just share a few pics of the ongoing work on the 6th civilisation: The Necropolis.
The Necropolis, as the name suggests, is a civilisation of the dead, composing its ranks mostly from skeletal units of various types aswell as ghosts.
Since the dead do not need to eat and do not pay taxes, there is no such thing as farms or dwellings for them. Instead, the power of the Necropolis is fuelled by restless souls, which are periodically gained from small monuments, called Soul Stones.
Soul Stones will always gather souls, regardless of whether there is any other resource is available, and the cheapest units of the Necropolis, the Skeleton Worker and the Skeleton Warrior do not require anything else but souls and a little bit of wood/ore, to be recruited, making it easy to build up your economics and a sizable army quickly.
However, here comes the major drawback: Since there are no taxes, the Necropolis entirely relies on external gold sources to cover any gold expenses, which will occur for any buildings or their more powerful units. Without access to gold, one needs to resort to using the cheap, but relatively weak base skeletons.
Being a civilisation of the dead, the Necropolis will spread death wherever its buildings will be placed, killing the local trees and herbs, so they will no longer regrow and reproduce. As the Necropolis has no use for herbs and most buildings will be based on stone, it will take no disadvantage from it.
Lastly, there is no strategy game with undead civilisations, which do not revive their fallen enemies. This is not yet implemented, but the Lich, a powerful wizard skeleton unit, will be able to call the souls of fallen enemies into their ranks, who will return from Hades as (probably highly individualised) skeletons.
This is all for now. Expect the Necropolis to show up in Andalia sometime in the course of the next year.
See you then.