Greetings! Welcome to the second dev diary for Divided Empire: Sengoku! Today we’ll take a deep dive into the game’s districts!
The world map is divided into over 200 districts. These territories form the core of each clan; it is in the districts you recruit armies, construct buildings, upgrade castles, gather resources, and much more.
Each district has its own "development", a value which determines the tax base, manpower pool, and how many buildings that can be built at their normal cost (if buildings exceed development level the cost is greatly increased). Development is dynamic and will change over the course of the game. In times of stability it will slowly grow, but it can also quickly decrease if a hostile army marches through, or unrest gets too high...
Central Japan in development map-mode at game start (more green = higher development)
Unrest can be caused by several factors, such as food shortages, raiding armies, and religious differences. It has many negative consequences, both directly for the districts affected, and for the clan controlling them. Additionally, unrest partially spreads to neighbouring districts, so if the clan next door is starving you will be affected as well – whether you like it or not.
A famine is ravaging the north, causing massive unrest (more red = higher unrest)
Districts also have modifiers which add further variation – the modifier "fertile land" causes farms to output more food, "Gold mine" gives extra income, "Rough terrain" increases construction costs and siege duration of the castle, etc. (check out dev diary #1 if you want more info about castles).
Just because a district belongs to you does not mean you fully control it. Control is gradual; when a district is conquered it will have low control, greatly reducing the tax and manpower gained from it. To enjoy its full value both authority and time must be spent to increase the control, but doing so will also increase the admin ability needed to govern it. However, if a clan is mismanaged there is a risk of something much worse than low control to appear: splinters...
Hosokawa is one of the largest clans at game start, but it is woefully divided with 3 (!) splinters
Splinters represent factions within a clan which has managed to achieve a degree of autonomy. They can appear when a clan is going through turbulent times, like when unrest is high or admin ability is low. A splinter effectively seizes partial control of a few districts, causing the true owner to lose many of its benefits.
There are several ways to interact with splinters, to hopefully bring them back into the fold. But if that fails they will eventually break free and form their own independent clans. This becomes especially concerning for larger clans.
Miyoshi and Naitō broke free, can Hosokawa recover from this?
That's it for this dev diary, thanks for taking the time to read it! Please note that the game is still in development and thus subject to change. Please consider wishlisting the game if you haven't already.