Hello everyone!
I wanted to take some time to showcase some of the recent progress and talk about some of the upcoming work for Clockwork Dawn. The recent focus has been on a new feature - Projects, and on refining diplomacy and the AI.
Projects
During a Clockwork Dawn campaign, a nation - especially one played by the player, begins to snowball in terms of resource production. The two major outlets that have existed for excess resources to be poured into are:
- Overseas empire expansion
- Army and navy expansion
I wanted to create a domestic alternative for countries to pour their excess resources as a counterpart to overseas empire expansion for countries that are not well situated to create a colonial empire (landlocked or on the interior of Europe). The solution for this has been Projects. Projects essentially act as large buildings with their own upgrades and a constant need for resources that output nation-wide bonuses. Two projects have been implemented so far - "The Municiperium" and "The Cognition Engine". The Municiperium takes food as the input resource and gives a population growth bonus while the Cognition Engine takes coal as the input resource and gives a bonus to research. To expand the projects, upgrades are available to be bought that increase the efficiency, max input resources, max output bonus, upgrade capacity, and more. The mechanics and UI for Projects have been built out so that more projects can be added through technology research and events.
Diplomacy and AI
To support more interactive and responsive AI, diplomacy has been expanded to more clearly show the relations between each country and the likelihood for countries to accept them. The AI has been given the capability to weigh diplomatic options and strategically pursue countries as friends or enemies. The way AI wages war has also been improved to more strategically choose provinces to siege, battles to start, and what provinces to attempt to wage war for.
Clockwork Dawn Roadmap
There are a number of critical items that are being worked on to make the Early Access version of the game complete. Below is a short, but not anywhere near exhaustive list:
- Undersea colony construction
- Choosable social reforms
- Better handling of overseas empire by AI
- Better handling of building construction by AI
- Basic tutorial
- More events with larger outcomes
- More strategic AI pathing during war
In addition to this, the UI is always being worked on and improved to make Clockwork Dawn feel more alive and provide better information to players. More animations and a cohesive "look" of the game are a large part of this.
Wrap-up
So that's all for now, many more fixes and minor improvements have been added that are too much to list here. Many thanks to everyone that is following the creation of Clockwork Dawn - it has come a long way in just a few months and getting closer to the goal imagined from the outset. Clockwork Dawn is now in the phase where the really interesting work can happen with worldbuilding and polishing. Excited for future!