Hey guys, Dmitry is here.
Below, I will talk about the challenges facing the game's design and how we plan to address them.
But first, I would like to thank everyone for their support. It's not easy to develop experimental complex games these days, given the increased quality expectations from the audience. Conducting experiments while maintaining the required level of quality is a non-trivial task that would be impossible without the constant support and feedback from our wonderful community. Thank you - we will continue creating interesting new features (even if they don't always work as intended right away, but that's part of the invention process).
So.
At the moment, we are planning to exit Early Access around summer 2027, giving us roughly one and a half years of development to create the envisioned gameplay experience. After that, we will expand it both through adding a modding system and through our own updates.
Of course, all of this is very tentative - the Early Access exit date may be postponed, some items on this list will be implemented differently, and so on. So please don't take this as a promise - these are approximate plans. I'm sharing them to hear your ideas and feedback.
Over the past year, we have formed a fairly clear vision of the game's final form, and now we will focus on three strategic directions that, in our opinion, the game needs the most.
Progression
Variety
Story Generation
Progression
Currently, the game has two progression systems - the city and the global map, with the global map playing more of a supporting role. Once city progression stalls (currently around 30 hours of play), progress on the map starts relying on grinding, which significantly kills interest. We will work on both directions, but the city is the priority.
City Progression
This autumn, we changed the overall progression system, tying it to population size. However, since our characters are very complex in behavior (and thus in computational resources), we cannot expand the city outward like in classic city-builders, so we will develop it upward in a spiral.
Currently, progression stops at 100 population from peasants and captives, and next we will introduce a new type of thresholds: based on the number of craftsmen. Craftsmen are efficient specialized workers with higher demands. At the same time, we will add management of village development, where basic productions like agriculture can be outsourced.
Thus, craftsmen will begin to "replace" peasants, keeping the total population (and thus game performance) stable. The replacement process will occur through more complex productions and services, such as entertainment (e.g., theater), hygiene, more refined food and clothing, etc.
In turn, craftsmen will be necessary for producing top-tier weapons, city siege tools, potions, and luxuries.
As a result, the initial militarized village will transform into a true medieval city - a center of craftsmanship, trade, spiritual, and entertainment services. In some ways, this is a historically accurate process.
Global Map Progression
Currently, conquering the global map is limited to about a dozen provinces. One reason is that the more provinces under your control, the more micromanagement with vassals and allies.
History also suggests a solution to the scaling problem - feudalization. The map can be divided into regions - groups of provinces sharing common culture and climate - and dukes can be appointed over them as intermediary vassals who collect tribute from the territory, take a portion as taxes, and pass the rest to you. The rulers of such provinces themselves would prefer to submit to one of their own kings rather than a foreign ruler from a distant land with an alien culture. Thus, creating duchies will be necessary for stability.
Such dukes will be stronger opponents to your ruler (since they receive part of the income) than a single vassal. They will also serve as power centers of the kingdom - when sending an army is too far and complicated (and garrison management is very complex overall), it's easier to send an emissary with gold who can hire local mercenaries or barbarians on the spot and arm a loyal (for the time being) duke.
By adding the possibility of internal power transitions within the state, we will also develop foreign policy (currently, joining another state is a step backward toward victory, but enabling internal power seizure could make it a good opportunity). And for Alliances, we will add elections.
Late Game
We are also thinking about reworking the late game, shifting it to a survival mode in the later stages. After you've built everything, you can test your city's resilience. Historically, it all started with droughts that set the wheel of history in motion. Famine, nomadic invasions, epidemics and destruction, religious tensions - all the trials and crises of the end times in a chain reaction. Perhaps we will add some meta-progression - for example, after completion, new unique books written by your lords will remain in the world, available early in the next playthrough.
Overall, the measures described above should increase the average playthrough length by 2-3 times.
However, playthroughs should also be varied. Here's what we want to do for replayability.
Variety
Local Map
We've already started working on this - since summer, we've been developing local map generation. By the end of winter, we will start implementing seasonal changes and climates for 4 different biomes (to make generation even more meaningful). For this, we need to prepare mechanics for alternative food gathering and storage, heating, and so on.
Hunting, foraging, clay mining - all already in progress. A bit later, we also want to add variety to resource extraction methods. For example, in a swamp biome, you can mine bog iron - it's practically infinite but requires a lot of firewood to purify from impurities.
Global Map Variety
After much deliberation, we decided to hand-draw global maps. We will create about a dozen of our own, and later add the ability to import player-drawn maps.
However, for the map to be interesting, it needs to be diverse and complex. In addition to climate, we want to add a trade route system.
Trade routes are historically based on light and expensive luxury goods unavailable for production in one part of the continent due to geography. For example, a scarce resource that can only be bought from a specific barbarian tribe in the mountains on the edge of the map. A caravan buys this resource cheaply from the barbarians and travels to the opposite end of the continent, gradually selling it off at stops in different cities at ever-increasing prices. All cities on this trade route gain advantages, as they can now resell the luxury to their neighbors and collect tolls from the caravan. However, caravans prefer routes through safe provinces, so many wars will gain a clear economic dimension.
Barbarians, luxury sources, trade routes, historical conflict points, abandoned lands, cultural regions - all this will be part of the settings (and generation) of the global map's political layer at game start.
War
To add more tactics to battles, weapons and armor need to have more significant advantages against each other.
How we'll achieve this is a separate big discussion - for now, I just want to say that we plan to tackle combat in spring-summer this year. It should turn out interesting.
Character Traits
This winter, we will begin a radical overhaul of the character role-playing system. In addition to skill modifications, preferences or dislikes for actions, special abilities, relationship bonuses, and behavior modifications, we want to add weaknesses to characters that will be used in politics.
We also want to expand talent skills into small skill trees.
King traits on the map will also be revised - they will be more complex and varied, and in some cases more predictable.
Story Generation
This year, we realized that by making a game about society, we're making a game about hierarchy. The struggle for a place in society is called politics. Accordingly, we want to focus on generating stories about power in all its forms - violence, sex, and money.
Right now, we're testing the politics of the next version, where pawns, gaining support and power, start dictating their desires to you and soon demand that you hand over the crown.
We will add a topological dimension to politics through temple influence zones (essentially the area where their bells can be heard). Thus, each temple will have its own flock and parish, and influence over it will determine politics.
Politics will also include intermediate forms of violence (currently, characters jump straight from hatred to murder, whereas in life it's usually more nuanced), as well as intimidation and control through dependent characters (imprison a close relative to turn someone into your puppet out of fear).
We also want to experiment with multi-stage conflicts, where after initiating a conflict, various kinds of response actions may follow - including involving third characters, harbored grudges, immediate anger, attempts at reconciliation, or delayed revenge. Such an action in turn can also trigger a response reaction - and so on.
Overall, this is the most interesting part for us, and we have a lot of ideas here. For example, we haven't really started developing church politics yet, or a system of hidden knowledge (e.g., when not everyone knows about a crime, but only a limited circle, enabling mechanics like blackmail).
That's the plan in broad strokes.
I'm not at all sure we'll manage to do all this in one and a half years, but we'll try (since it seems very exciting to us), and thanks to your support and feedback, we can always adjust and fine-tune the most complex processes.
Thank you again for everything, and please write what you think - we'll read it all.
And don't forget to leave a review on the Steam page if you like our ambitious plans. :)