Fellow Geopolarians :) Long time no see! After a longer break I've resumed active work on making further updates to the released demo.
My goal is to gradually add additional mechanics presented in the roadmap in the coming demo updates. I intend to roll out a horizontal slice of the game to show it's potential depth and re-playability. It is possible that some mechanics will be released after the game will reach early access - I haven't yet decided on that and will reveal more when it comes to it.
Roadmap
So a quick recap what is there in the roadmap, what has been done and what is being worked upon for the coming update:
- Set up core and puppet province types and a basic resource called geopolitical power that these provinces generate and that is spent on influencing external provinces and managing your own. - released in the first demo
- Have a basic form of geopolitical interaction called influences. Players are influencing provinces on a map to make target province(s) to start leaning towards most invested player and eventually flip to his side. - released in the first demo
- Introduce province management possibilities, such as annexing a puppet province (turning it into core province) and developing a province (to increase its geopolitical power generation or its level of defense). - released in the first demo
- Breakdown generic geopolitical influence into more refined influence actions across military, economy and foreign policy domains. This will be achieved by having a 2-tier system: same existing influences functionality to make target province leaning towards you and new additional geopolitical actions that increase the flipping (formerly impact) chance %. - will be released in the coming demo update
- For the above mechanic, introduce 3 new power projection resources - military, economy and foreign power. These resources are earned by boosting their gain on a province level and are spent paying for the additional geopolitical actions. - will be released in the coming demo update
- Add civilizations to the map (nine of them, having buffs/debuffs) and how they impact strategy/gameplay.
- Add ideologies (8 for now, adding buffs/debuffs) and their own impacts on gameplay.
- Add a technology tree (unlock certain influence actions or increase their strength, power(s) generation, etc).
- Add (random) events/decisions/challenges that help to shape your nation (buffs/debuffs, permanent/temporary, speeding up/unlocking technologies, etc) as you play enabling diverging gameplay strategies.
- Introduce a concept of a global power / resource and each nation’s share of it (similar to the market share). Higher share, or share reaching certain tier - certain buffs/functionalities get enabled, losing share/tier disables them.
- Add a Space race quest. It introduces another way to win – extract rare resources in random locations, research and build a space ship and expand outside of this world. Or prevent your competitors from doing so.
- Make use of population (currently regions have fixed numbers from historical 1949 and each nation holds a sum of pops from all regions they hold).
Note that this is not a cut in stone list, some definitions could change, new items may come in (I'm toying with an idea of introducing a basic diplomacy into the game) and current items down prioritized. This is to give an idea of the volume of game mechanics to expect.
Coming demo
Apart from the new mechanics #4 and #5, the updated demo will also feature a reworked AI, different bug fixes and UI/UX improvements.
The coding is mostly done (80%), however there is still work remaining for polish, including tutorial and tool tip updates, as well as play testing. Depending on the circumstances the updated demo might drop during August or early September.
I will share a more detailed description of the coming changes (which might act like a game manual) in the coming weeks.
I am also looking into commissioning a new art style for the game, which might either make it to this demo, or to the next one or a separate UI-only release in between.
What is coming after the new demo is released
After releasing this update I will focus on the next items in the roadmap - civilizations and ideologies.
Let me know what you think in the comments or discord and stay tuned for more updates!