Good day Ellarians!
In our last dev diary, we discussed how the economy of your kingdom will work in Legends of Ellaria – but we focused mostly on its macro economy, that is, the management of your kingdom at large. However, we did mention how cities contribute to your economy, and some of the actions you can take to improve them because there is a microeconomy side of things too. This week we're focusing on cities and how you manage them to make them the strong and powerful heart of your land.
You already know that towns share resources with your kingdom: that means that everything that each city produces goes to the kingdom coffers, so to speak, and in turn, every city can count on that "treasure" for its needs. You don't have to worry about how to move your gold or wood from one point to another. However, cities do have their own internal management. Every city has its manpower capabilities, which depends on how many houses you have built. You need that manpower in turn for building utility buildings such as barracks, markets, workshops, etc.
On the other hand, your kingdom has an upper management limit, and both houses and buildings draw from these management capabilities. Thus, you cannot spam housings to build as many buildings as you want, because then your kingdom would suffer undermanagement. There is a delicate balance to be found there: you just cannot build everything in every city, so you will have to "specialize" them and make them as efficient as possible if you want to get the most out of them and of your kingdom economic potential.
And there is quite a bit of variety when it comes to building. The most basic thing you can build is houses and props (such as fences, fountains, etc.). There are places that increase happiness and give you revenue depending on the number of citizens you have, like taverns and markets. Then there are military buildings, such as blacksmiths and barracks, which allow you to recruit or upgrade your soldiers. You can also build places for gathering resources or upgrade some capabilities, like farms, granaries, or metallurgist. You have research buildings too, like libraries, to research new technologies that help you get more happiness, more tax efficiency... The more libraries you have, the faster your research goes!
There is a peculiar place of building you can create to help you manage another kingdom-wide statistic: happiness. If you recall previous dev blogs, unhappiness leads to a decrease in general efficiency and can cause problems like bandits roaming your lands. You can put buildings and props in your cities to increase happiness: gardens, fountains, and some other buildings. Since happiness is a kingdom stat, you can devote one or several towns to increasing the overall happiness of a kingdom while other towns focus on construction.
As it happens with every other gameplay feature of Legends of Ellaria, you can manage your city and build new places both in the first- and third-person view. In the world view, you can choose a house or building, just click +, and have it put in place automatically. But if you want to design and customize your town by yourself, creating your own districts and putting props in place, you can enter the Build menu from inside the town during the first person to RTS menu. In this menu, you can position your houses wherever you want, just as long as nothing obscures it.
And since you're at it going around your city, you can stop a minute to chat with your citizens! You can have a basic conversation with your subjects, and even help them with their daily choirs to increase their overall trust in you as a king. You can buy and sell items at vendors like the market, tavern, blacksmith, and other locations, "borrow" (ahem) household items from houses, and smelt stuff at the blacksmith to get ore. You can also talk to the librarian and take quests to help him find ancient devices, which will increase your research capabilities.
As you can see, cities in Legends of Ellaria are a thriving, living place that you can customize to make it really your own places.
Remember that Legends of Ellaria is nearing its full release, so don't forget to Wishlist the game and Follow it here on Steam so as not to miss anything – and see you next week in the next entry of our dev blog!