In Masters Of Gaia, your followers will face a diverse array of threats: from wandering monsters and watchful treasure guardians to mystic creatures, and even clashes with other believers.
As a God, you'll have the power to guide and protect them through these trials – or perhaps choose a different path entirely. We're working diligently to deliver a unique and engaging experience as you navigate these divine choices.
AI : tailored for our needs
For the AI, we built our own system in C++ from scratch, allowing us to tailor it exactly to the needs of our game. It handles creature behavior both in the open world and during combat.
The system is highly configurable through Lua (we'll be speaking about Lua in Masters of Gaia very soon), making it easy for us to tweak and create a wide variety of behaviors for each creature.
Between human and ants
Imagine a crowd somewhere between individual humans and a bustling ant colony. When danger looms, these believers are most likely to scatter and run!
Given the hundreds populating our cities, we had to build AI systems that could replicate large-scale crowd reactions. We envisioned their behavior as a blend of human reaction and the collective instinct of an ant hive.
And you, the player, can shape this behavior. Through your efforts and magical powers, you can instill courage in them. However, a touch of randomness within each believer will always ensure unexpected encounters. Your ligntnings and fire bolts can help, too, but you will soon discover that damages can spread all across the battlefield...
Battle avatar
For the combat system, we needed to balance fights between one (or a few) monster(s) and a large group of believers, while ensuring players could meaningfully influence the outcome.
We deliberately avoided managing massive armies. Not only because it’s a complex challenge and other games already excel at it, but more importantly, because hundreds of combatants could overwhelm players, making it hard to follow the action or react quickly.
Instead, we focused on creating a fresh, accessible approach to combat that keeps players engaged and in control.
We opted for a turn-based-logic combat system (renderered in real-time) where a large crowd of believers can channel their energies (life, capabilities, resistances) into a single fighter known as the Battle Avatar. With the support of their allies, the Battle Avatar can grow significantly stronger and stand a chance against the massive monsters that will eventually threaten your settlements. Think about the battle between Achilles fighting Hector, with his people around him, supporting and cheering.
This powerful assistance comes at a price: allies experience the battle as if they were fighting themselves, suffering damage whenever the Avatar does. They may even perish in combat.
It's your turn!
While the combat system is turn-based, the world around you keeps moving. This means you’ll sometimes need to shift your focus to other tasks, even as battles continue to unfold.
You can support your believers with protective powers, disrupt the enemy using a different set of divine abilities, or simply do… nothing, letting your followers face their fate on their own.
You can even choose to help the enemies, if that’s what you feel like doing. The choice is entirely yours. You'll discover that sometimes, a god's objectives can be beyond the immediate survival of a handful of creatures...
The outcome of battles, along with the support you provide (or don’t), can significantly impact your believers. Those who become avatars, in particular, may gain substantial experience and honor. Additionally, your actions during combat can influence the trust that your believers have in you.
We hope you'll like this combat system. Feel free to let us know what you think ! And follow us to get updates on the game development.