Hello all! Welcome back to the third dev diary for Fall of an Empire. As promised last week, today we'll be looking at the resource and economy system - one of the core pillars of the game.
In many strategy games, resources are abstracted away into a simple income number that ticks up each turn. Gold flows into your treasury from nowhere in particular, and you spend it on things without much thought about where it's actually coming from. Fall of an Empire takes a different approach: resources are physical things that exist in the world, are produced in specific places, and must be transported to where they're needed.
Resources in the game fall into five categories. Food is the most fundamental - your people need to eat, and your armies need to eat even more. Raw Materials include things like timber, iron ore and stone: the building blocks of industry. Manufactured Goods are what your craftsmen produce from those raw materials: weapons, armour, cloth, tools. Luxury Goods are the silks, spices, wine and other fineries that keep your nobles happy (and your tax revenues high). Finally, Strategic Resources are rare materials needed for military purposes - things like weapons and horses.
Every settlement in the game has an economy. Farms in the countryside produce grain, mines extract ore, and so on. But a settlement also consumes resources: the common people eat food, the upper classes need luxuries, and any garrison stationed there needs to be equipped and fed. The balance between production and consumption determines whether a settlement has a surplus to export or a deficit that needs to be filled.
Above: the resources map mode, showing all the resource production for various settlements.
This is where convoys come in. When a settlement has excess resources, it can send them to other settlements that need them. These aren't abstract transfers - convoys are actual entities on the map, moving along roads and sea routes, carrying various goods. That means it can be intercepted.
Rebels, barbarians, and enemy armies can all attack your convoys. A successful raid might see your precious supplies carried off to feed a barbarian warband instead of your troops. This means that protecting your supply lines becomes a strategic concern. You might have the richest provinces in the world, but if you can't get those resources to where they're needed, they're worthless.
The priority system determines where resources go when there isn't enough for everyone. Armies in the field generally take priority - you don't want your soldiers starving while on campaign. But this can create its own problems: strip too many resources away from your settlements and unrest will rise as people go hungry and workshops sit idle.
An army carries a stockpile of food and equipment, which it consumes as it marches and fights. When that stockpile runs low, the army needs to be resupplied - either by receiving convoys from nearby friendly settlements, by capturing enemy convoys, or by foraging from the land (which tends to make the locals rather unhappy). An army that runs out of supplies entirely will suffer attrition: men deserting, dying of hunger.
The economy overview. This will get a bit of a refresh before release.
Sieges add more complexity. A besieged settlement is cut off from outside supply - no convoys can reach it. The defender must survive on whatever stockpiles they've accumulated, while the attacker must maintain their own supply lines to keep their besieging army fed. A well-stocked fortress can hold out for months; a poorly prepared one might fall in weeks simply because the garrison ran out of food.
This all means that the map itself becomes more strategically important. Controlling key road junctions means you protect your own convoys while threatening enemy supply lines. Coastal settlements with good harbours can receive supplies by sea, making them harder to starve out. Mountain passes are important chokepoints and roads can be upgraded at certain locations so your troops and convoys can get somewhere faster.
The economy is about more than keeping your armies supplied, of course. Settlements need resources to construct buildings, which in turn can increase production or provide other benefits. A prosperous economy generates more tax revenue, which you'll need to pay your soldiers and administrators. Lack of food causes unrest and kills your citizens. And keeping the luxury goods flowing to your nobles helps maintain their loyalty - or at least makes their disloyalty slightly less likely.
Thank you for reading! Next week we'll be diving into the character system and how the people of your empire scheme, plot and occasionally remain loyal.