Hi all! It’s been quite a while since the last dev diary - and in that time the game has changed significantly. So from here on out until release, I’ll be writing a new dev diary each week explaining how the various systems in Fall of an Empire interact, and how the game actually works.
First off: an explanation of what the game is and what it aims to accomplish.
Fall of an Empire is a character-focused grand strategy game, not unlike Crusader Kings or some entries in the Total War series. The player rules as Flavius Theodosius Histrius, emperor of Rephsis, a large and ancient realm that has been weakened by strife and mismanagement (it’s totally legally distinct and has no relation to any historical civilisations whatsoever). The ability to play as other characters will be something that I’ll look at introducing in the future, but for now the gameplay systems are tuned for an emperor.
The gameplay is focused around managing internal and external threats: characters control provinces, barbarian tribes, armies or navies. In a bureaucratic imperial system like in the game, the main thing that matters is holding military and political offices - but at any point the balance could shift entirely as one faction falls out of favour and another rises. The game involves a lot of scheming, politicking and treachery, and models a kind of network of patronage where most political characters are either the patron or client of another character.
You’ll need to build up your armies from a diverse roster of units (including foederati from barbarian factions), and send them to fight against your enemies. Battles in the game take place in a kind of simulated 2D space, where units join up into formations and then move around the battlefield to outmaneuver each other - the player also has some input here, and can choose where formations are going to attack.
The resource system is also very important. Settlements within the game produce and consume resources: the common people eat food, the upper class use up luxury goods such as silks and spices, and the army uses swords and clothes. Rather than having these resources move abstractly to your coffers, they’re carried by convoys that move across the map and that can be captured by rebels and barbarians: therefore you need to ensure that your supply lines are protected if you want to keep your troops fed.
The game doesn’t have a defined win condition. Instead, it’s about surviving as long as possible against the threats to your reign. As the game continues these threats will increase: more wars, plagues, invasions and so on will continue to grow and become more pronounced. To lose, the player will either lose control of the Empire or die heirless.
Finally, a big feature that I’ve been working on is a system of creating dynamic event chains with a language model. This will make it so that all events that occur will be tailored to the character's age, relations, stats and traits: they can be accurate and mention things that aren't closely related to the event and still avoid vagueness at the same time,
Thank you for reading! Next week we’ll be looking at the world map and factions.