⛏️ Devlog #6 — New Large-Scale Resource Gathering System
Greetings, Eternal Emperors!
Today, we want to present one of the most important foundations of Imperium Eternal:
the new large-scale resource gathering system, designed to manage everything from small groups of workers to thousands of units gathering resources simultaneously across the map.
Resource management is one of the most important aspects of any real-time strategy game, and our goal is to create a system that remains organized, responsive, and efficient regardless of the scale of your economy.
🌍 A New Resource Gathering System
The new system was developed to support large-scale economies while keeping every worker independent.
The player can select a small group or thousands of units and send them to gather resources.
Each worker independently:
Searches for an available gathering position
Moves toward the selected resource
Reserves an available gathering slot
Begins gathering automatically
When all available positions around a resource are occupied, the remaining workers do not simply remain inactive.
Instead, they can:
Wait at a nearby position
Search for another available resource
Move to another gathering location in the surrounding area
This allows large groups of workers to distribute themselves naturally between multiple resource locations instead of gathering around a single point.
🦌 Hunting and Animal Gathering
Hunting is now fully integrated into the resource system.
The player can order workers to attack an animal. Once the animal is killed, the units begin gathering food from it.
Each animal has a limited number of gathering positions. When all available positions are occupied, the remaining hunters automatically search for other nearby animals.
These workers can then:
Search for another animal
Move toward the new target
Attack and kill it
Reserve an available gathering position
Begin gathering food
This creates a more dynamic hunting system where large groups naturally divide themselves between multiple animals instead of every unit attempting to gather from the same target.
The result is a continuous hunting chain, allowing large groups of hunters to advance through an area while searching for new sources of food.
🎣 Fishing
Fishing is another important source of food, especially for civilizations located near rivers, lakes, and coastal regions.
Workers can use fishing locations to gather food while the rest of the civilization continues developing on land.
Our goal is to make access to water strategically important, creating new opportunities for:
Food production
Population growth
Territorial expansion
Long-term survival
Civilizations with access to water will have additional economic options, but these valuable locations will also need to be protected from enemy expansion.
⛏️ Wood, Stone, and Strategic Metals
The gathering system supports the main resources required for the development of a civilization throughout history.
Workers can gather:
Food
Wood
Stone
Gold
Copper
Iron
Oil
Uranium
Technology resources
Each resource type can have its own:
Gathering rules
Available gathering positions
Search behavior
Collection speed
Strategic importance
As civilizations advance through history, access to new materials becomes increasingly important.
Early civilizations will depend mainly on food, wood, and stone. Later eras will require metals, oil, and other advanced resources to support larger cities, stronger armies, and more complex technologies.
👷 Independent Worker Behavior
Although the player controls workers as a group, every unit maintains its own task, position, and destination.
Each worker can independently:
Search for an available resource
Reserve a gathering position
Move toward the resource
Wait when no gathering position is available
Search for another nearby resource
Gather materials
Transport resources to a deposit building
Automatically return to work
This independence allows large groups to behave more naturally and prevents hundreds of workers from trying to occupy exactly the same position.
The player gives the main order, but each worker is capable of finding the best available position and continuing the gathering process independently.
🏛️ Building the Economy of Your Imperium
The economy will be the foundation of every civilization in Imperium Eternal.
The player will need to balance:
Food production
Construction materials
Strategic metals
Technological resources
Territorial expansion
Protection of gathering regions
Important resource locations may become the center of conflicts between civilizations.
Controlling a forest, a mining region, a river, or an oil field may determine whether your civilization continues advancing or begins to fall behind its enemies.
Our goal is to give the player control over both small economic decisions and enormous production networks capable of supporting cities and armies throughout different historical eras.
⚙️ Designed for Large-Scale Economies
Imperium Eternal is being developed to support cities, armies, and economies involving thousands of units.
Because of this, the resource system cannot depend on every worker constantly searching the entire map.
The new system uses:
Optimized local searches
Limited gathering positions
Independent worker behavior
Specialized spatial organization
Automatic distribution between resources
Workers search only the relevant area around them instead of continuously checking every resource on the map.
This helps maintain better performance even when thousands of units are simultaneously moving, searching, gathering, and transporting resources.
Our objective is clear: the same system must work efficiently with ten workers, one hundred workers, or several thousand workers.
🔨 Development Continues
The resource gathering system continues to be expanded and improved.
Future updates will continue improving:
Worker behavior
Hunting
Fishing
Resource distribution
Deposit buildings
Animations
Visual effects
Large-scale performance
This system is an important foundation for the economy of Imperium Eternal, but there is still a lot of work ahead.
We would like to thank everyone who follows the development of Imperium Eternal and supports the project through Steam, Discord, Patreon, and our social media channels.
Your feedback and support are extremely important to the development of the game.
If you enjoyed this update, share the video and add Imperium Eternal to your Steam Wishlist.
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Thank you for your support!
— EPO
Imperium Eternal Development