Hi,

Welcome to this weeks dev diary. As most of the new mechanics are implemented I want to present to you the current changelog. The changelog describes all changes made from the “old” Fate of an Empire that is available on the Play store.

This changelog is valid for beta build 114.

New features

• Added a map editor allowing you to create your own maps and play on them. Maps can also be exported to the external storage for sharing between players.
• Added settlement focus mechanic allowing (forcing?) empires to specialise their settlements.
• Added new feature called provinces. Each province may only contain one province capital and this also impact the garrison focus for settlements (recruits is only taken from settlements in the same province).
• New terrain types added: Island, Lakes, Desert, Oasis, Mesas, Black soil and Mud hills.
• Terrain properties – The terrain in a hex also gives bonus to trade income and production values. Before it only gave bonuses to maximum population and defence values.
• Trade income – A settlement will now collect trade income from all hexes within sight. Trade income is affected by improvements and features on each hex.
• When a soldier makes a ground attack it can now score a critical hit (10% of hitchance). If it does the attack makes 2-6 damage points instead of 1.

World

• Changed map from square to hexagonal.

Art

• New UI theme and style.
• New map terrain art.
• New map object art.
• New religion symbols.

Balance changes

• Adjusted tax ability values for all buildings.
• Adjusted offensive and defensive combat values for militia and forced militia making them better at defence than offence. Also improved combat stats for forced militia.
• Build times for all buildings increased with 50%.
• Build times for all start company types increased. The increase depends on type of company.
• Build time for all squadrons doubled.
• Changed how weather affects movement cost for fleets.
• Changed maximum combat rounds to 10, previously 100. After 10 turns the battle ends automatically with the attacker retreating.
• Dwarves now start on the Surface, not the Netherworld.
• General increase of fleet movement speed to make fleet movement faster than army movement.
• Increased build times for unique company types created by an empire.
• Increased revenue from pillaging terrain 4-5 times.
• Increased the cost in research points for technology tree Farming with 50%. Farming is used to improve more terrain types compared to Animal husbandry and Hunting.
• Krant start scout changed from flying to cavalry.
• Standard hitpoints increased from 2 to 4 (Krant 2).
• Tax income from a single population decreased from 0.5 to 0.25.

Modding

• Added new data file, data_settlement_types, making it possible to adjust settlements and settlement focus properties.
• In data_companies changed data type for offensive and defensive vales, making it possible to use decimals for these values.
• In data_terrain added columns for bcv, ccv and scv bonuses.

Other changes

• Advanced start is removed. Empires will only start with the capital settlement.
• After world and empire creation the world is updated in order to generate values for all empire and settlement stats (income, max pop, research).
• Number of movement phases increased from 3 to 5. Meaning that maximum amount of hexes an army or fleet can move is 5 per turn.
• Number of start militia companies increased from one to two.
• Number of start scouts increased from one to two.
• The first time the game is loaded on the phone all maps that is supplied with the game is copied over to the internal app storage making it possible to load and create games on them.

What remains to do?

Yes, this is a big question. The Rulebook must be updated with all the changes and new mechanics. I also need to create a random map generator for the Surface that can be used both in the map editor (like the Netherworld map generator) and also add the option to play with a random map. This will increase the re-playability for those players that aren’t interested in making or downloading custom maps.

After this I need to do a lot of playtesting to make sure that the AI survived the change from squares to hexagons. It also need to change its behavior and start use settlement focuses. While working in this I also need to continue improving the landscape mode, especially for players that try this on their phones.

When all this is done it’s time to create trailer videos and marketing material in publish the game.

How long will this take?

Who knows. This is a solo project and I hope you respect that I can’t give you a date for when Fate of an Empire – Age of War will be published. As soon as possible, I would say…

Thank you for your support!