Hello everyone!
Clockwork Dawn continues to move forward with development - the initial Early Access build has been submitted to Steam for review! To go along with this, I wanted to show some of the recent features that have been implemented since the previous update.
Undersea Outposts
The map's playable area currently contains 119 sea provinces - a lot of area that previously did not have much effect on gameplay. This changes with the addition of undersea outposts. Countries, once they have researched the prerequisite technologies, can now send undersea expeditions to explore the depths of the ocean for suitability for creating an outpost away from the prying eyes of the public. Outposts, once constructed, give a country-wide bonus to a specific resource or to research points gain, along with claiming that sea province for the home country. The magnitude of the bonus (and cost of the outpost) depends on the depth of the ocean in that area. Currently, claiming sea provinces by building an outpost is a first-come first-serve mechanic where other countries are locked from building there once it has been claimed. Later on, this will be changed so that naval warfare has a larger presence in the game.
Visual Map Changes
Improvements have been made to the map to make the playable area feel more alive, including adding animations for moving clouds and country names that are displayed over a countries' area when zoomed out. Some countries and their starting diplomatic relations have also been added/removed to fit the historical context of the start date of 1822 better.
UI Improvements
Many mechanics that were previously hidden have now been hooked up to also display on the UI to give players more information on the factors in play behind the scenes, such as population growth, building capacity, literacy gain, and more unit information. To coincide with this, many of the UI elements have been made prettier. Almost every screen has been tweaked in some way, but would be too much to show in one post.
AI Improvements and Save File Compression
The way the AI handles army and navy movement has been optimized to allow for the AI to be better at war, economic production, and executing complicated tasks such as sending armies to reinforce or seize overseas colonies. Unique biases (with a bit of random factor for each game) have been added so that each AI country has a unique personality with focuses on war, domestic production, overseas colonies, etc. Additionally, save file compression was implemented that reduces save file size by at least a factor of 10.
Wrap-up
Before releasing into Early Access, a few more goals come to mind - the implementation of a "fog of war" effect so that the player can only gain access to information near their country or units, and the addition of more pop-up events to make the world feel more alive, along with further balancing and tweaking of the AI. These may or may not make it into the initial version, but will at least be added shortly after. The current goal for the release into Early Access is August 2 (less than two weeks!) as long as no major hurdles suddenly appear. Thanks for following along, hopefully will be back soon with an official release announcement!