An excursion into history

I want to tell you about my project, which I have been working on for more than six years.
I started in 2016 with a concept and a map generator in 2D mode, but it turned into 3D.

Looking at these old screenshots and the latest ones, it makes me cry, but it’s not a tear of sadness, but joy, what a huge amount of work has been done during this time!

For the most part, I was doing the project alone, but during the development, people are constantly joining the project and falling off. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed at least a little to the project and even just supported me with a kind word!

In the last year, several people joined the project, who began to make a significant contribution. These are several concept artists, 3d modelers programmers, historians and screenwriters. The work went faster!

Technical aspects

The game is being developed on a self-written Java engine using the LWJGL library. The game runs on Windows and *nix platforms.

I want to test on Mac OS, but I don’t have a MacBook yet.

An important issue of compatibility of our game with integrated Intel graphics has been resolved. A test sample laptop with Intel HD Graphics 630. Everything works! FPS 15-30 frames.

The minimum system requirements will be higher: a video card with OpenGL 4.3 support, 4GB of RAM and an AMD Athlon 2X dual-core processor.
Recommended requirements are a GTX 1060 6GB graphics card, 8GB of RAM and a six-core processor.

Why do I need a six-core processor? I fully implement multithreading support, because artificial intelligence works very fast

Key Features

The indirect operation, the player can transfer some control functions to A.I.

Gameplay​

• Nowadays there are 6 races in the game, the starting one depends on the player’s spawn location.
• There are nomadic and sedentary ingame tribes, on the first stage players can choose both. If a player has chosen a sedentary
  tribe, he can set up a colony and manage and control it from the first minutes of the game.
• Territories of countries are divided into regions, each of them being managed separately. Each region can include several cities and settlements.
• In the game, you can find neutral locations that are managed by simplified A.I.
• The game has a generation of ruins that players can explore.
• On every tile of the game field, there can be useful resources to obtain, but first, the player has to explore it.
• Two types of resources: renewable and exhaustible.
• Every settlement is split into districts and each of them can be built up independently. The amount and variety of districts are unlimited.
• There is a simulation of dividing the population into different social strata, with individual interests and demands.
• In addition to castes, there is a division into factions that unite people with common goals, like scientists or warriors.
• Religion is formed by the player’s choice of gods to worship, as well as defining sins and virtues to create dogmas.
• Player forms the culture of his civilization using a special ingame constructor interface, depending on national priorities.
• The game economy is based on barter. There is a constant trade turnover, both within one country and in the international market.
• Each product has its own production chain, depending on the available resources and known technologies.
• The science tree is non-linear and self-intersecting, its research depends on the player’s actions. Many technologies can be explored in several ways. For example, sea navigation can be investigated without access to the sea, but through active use of navigable rivers.
• In the game, there are 15 directions of progress, for which the player receives research points.
• Rivers and canals have their own throughput, some of them may be unavailable for navigation.
• Battles have principles of real-time strategy, like Total War. But now that idea hasn’t been implemented, so combat actions remain as hidden calculations of the results.
• Each army isn’t a single unit, but a system of separately controlled brigades, consisting of different types of fighters.
• Every troop group is constructed by the player, choosing various types of used weapons, armour, methods of movement, and special machinery.
• A.I. has no advantage over the player, like information about the territories and player’s progress.
• A large number of random events take place on the game map, including those related to the player’s actions.
• The game implements the functionality of man-made and natural disasters.
• Diplomacy has an extended structure, with the ability to form alliances of several players in a special constructor.
• In the game, it’s possible to change the internal policy of the state to adjust the needs of the population and its attitude to the ruling authorities.
• Parliament, councillors, and elected leaders can act as applicants for the wishes of the people.
• Rulers and significants have separate mortal personalities.
• Ingame personalities have their own characteristics that affect country management. For AI they are also starting points for decision-making.
• The player’s actions influence the environment.
• The game has terraforming functionality.

Technical side​

• A game map is created using procedure generation, depending on set parameters.
• In singleplayer there can be up to 50 A.I. In the future, this amount will be increased, but that needs testing for the latest game stages that weren’t implemented yet.
• The game engine supports multi-threading, which allows it to support much larger maps with a really big amount of A.I.’s.