Critias Empire News

[h2]Celebrations[/h2]

Festivals allow players to make medium-term tradeoffs, spending resources to throw celebrations and festivities, but with ongoing costs to match. Meanwhile, the game itself has been in a number of digital festivals on Steam.

[h2]Throwing a Party[/h2]

There are various pre-defined Festivals in Critias Empire can be instituted by the player. Each festival runs for a fixed length of time and cannot be cancelled. Most festivals involve paying some resource every turn for the whole time the festival is running, in exchange for bonuses or other types of resources.

Players often end up with an excess of one resource that they can't easily or immediately do anything with. The idea behind festivals is to let players trade those resources in for something they want. But rather than a straight swap, the festival, and thus the costs and benefits, last for many years. In this time, the player's priorities might change or there might be a disaster for example. This means that there is a risk involved in starting a festival that may not be sustainable or become a drain on the player's resources.



I have finally implemented this feature after many years of having it planned, though I need to test and balance it before updating the demo to include it. Nevertheless, I'm really pleased with it, and I think it'll lead to many interesting medium-term decisions for players to make.

[h2]Of Gods and Mortals[/h2]

I've also added in a few more decisions. Even after having made myself some extra development tools for adding and editing decisions, the process of creating and balancing them is very long and involved. I'm hoping to add a further few more to the Glittering Isles scenario in time for the next update to the demo, but unfortunately the Bronze Seas scenario will remain disabled for the meanwhile as I try to churn out the decisions data for that also.

[h2]Building Steam[/h2]

Since Critias Empire was in the TurnBasedThursday fest on Steam, as well as June 2025 NextFest, it has received a lot of new followers and wishlists, and even some people making youtube videos playing the demo, which is super encouraging!


The game will also be in Steam's 4X fest this week, alongside a number of other 4X games by indie developers. We even have our own group for promoting each other's games, and I highly recommend you check out the others if you're at all interested in different and innovative 4X and strategy games: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45670309

[h2]Road to Release[/h2]

The festivals feature took me a bit longer than I anticipated, but largely due to me getting back into the flow of working after being on vacation in July. (Aide: I was in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a fascinating part of the world that even had some ancient Greek ruins from the time of Alexander the Great and the successor states to his empire).

My aim is still to release Critias Empire by the end of September, but I will need to step up the speed to get there on time. My next aim is to implement all the remaining disasters and Gods that will be in the release version. I will share more details of those in the next update.

After that, I can focus on balancing the "main" game as opposed to the individual small scale scenarios that are currently in the demo. That will be the home straight and where I'll be looking out for assistance with feedback and testing. Follow the game here on Steam or stalk me on social media if you'd be interested in helping with that. Meantime any feedback and thoughts on the current demo is more than welcome, as it'll feed into my thinking about the balancing to come.

[h2]Predicting the Future[/h2]

The decision system is finally implemented in the demo, heralding a new way to interact with the Gods. Plus the predictions feature is back! In this devlog I'll give more details on both as well as future plans for the game.

[h2]Decisions Decisions[/h2]

God anger and patience, which affect when and where disasters are spawned, are now largely driven by the "decision" system - The little story snippets and choices you make as a player around them mean your actions and the mechanics actually correlate to the story of the game. It's much easier now to know a) when the Gods are angry and b) why!

It does though somewhat rely on my skill as a writer to weave this all together. I'm happy with the stories so far, though I'll be refining them over time to emphasise that Greek-myth feeling of big personalities and ironic twists.



The writing time needed is why the Bronze Seas scenario is currently disabled in the demo - I just didn't have time to add in the decisions for it yet. Hopefully I can get those in game and tested before Steam NextFest in June.

[h2]Foreshadowing[/h2]

I finally re-added the predictions feature to the game. You can now spend favour with the Gods to predict where on the map disasters may strike and their possible results.

It still needs a bit of balancing as right now it tends to give too-accurate predictions. I'm definitely looking for feedback both on how people use it and any suggestions on how it can be improved.



[h2]Early Steps[/h2]

After taking the game to various events and conventions and observing how players actually interacted with the game and approached the map and core loop, I've completely rearranged how the UI in Critias Empire works. It feels just that bit more natural to play than before, which is really encouraging for me, but I'll still be looking to see how I can improve the UI further in the future.



The tutorial needed to be completely remade as a result of the UI changes, and I'm reasonably happy with how it shaped up. It has a similar narrative arc as before, but takes more time to explain the underlying game concepts, so players know a bit more why they are being told to do various things. Next step will be to put a skip option in, and add tips/advice pop-ups for some of the features not in the tutorial, like the Survey and Oracle screens.

[h2]Bugs Ahoy[/h2]

Whereas last year I was making lots of regular smallish builds, the latest demo has lots of big changes, some to foundational parts of the game like disasters and saving. I therefore anticipate that, even with testing, there'll be plenty of bugs lurking in this build.

If you do find any problems, please report them using either the in-game button or via the Bugs Thread. I'll also make a new Feedback thread, so if you have any suggestions or comments on the game (from difficulty and balance to general frustrations or feature suggestions), definitely drop them in there.

[h2]Nearly There[/h2]

In the last devlog update I spoke about the final push to get Critias Empire ready for release. Amazingly, I'm only a little way behind where I wanted to be by this point. Beyond what I already mentioned in this devlog, all that's left are to add the remaining disasters, and then balance the "main" game. That will come in August (I'm out of the country in July) and add another dimension to the game which is missing in the smaller limited scenarios right now.

Before then though, Critias Empire will be in TurnBasedThursday Fest on Steam. The organisers have done a great job putting the fest together and I'm honoured and excited they let me join in again this year. If you're a fan of turn-based games, be sure to check it out.

It's been a long time since my last update, way back in August. The second half of 2024 really pulled me in too many different directions; I spent most of my time trying to balance working on 3 different game projects and in the end, none of them made anything like the progress I wanted.

[h2]Shorter Focus[/h2]

Partly for financial reasons, and partly for my own sanity, I've started 2025 by focusing on smaller games. I've managed to finish Ambient Dark, which will come out until March. And I've a second small game that will be announced in the next few days, that similarly is close to completion and should release in the next couple of months.

Both those games will be in Steam NextFest, alongside Critias Empire. My plan is to spend February before the festival on Critias Empire, finishing up as many features as I can before NextFest, with a view to release the full game a couple of months later. For those not aware, Steam NextFest is a big deal and a game can only ever be in the festival once, so I want to make sure the game is as good as it can be. But also I'm hoping this will be the push needed to get the game within sight of the finish line, instead of something I'm forever tinkering with.

[h2]Road To The Finish[/h2]

To get Critias Empire where it needs to be for that, I am going to have to be a bit ruthless with features and concentrate on the things that are really vital for the game. That means Festivals feature will get moved to post-launch update. As well, making new disasters, while fun, is something I can shift to after the "main" game is finished, and just keep adding in post-release.

That "main" game will have much larger maps than what are currently in the demo scenarios, with longer play times, more Gods, and more wonders. I've also concluded, after much thought, that the game is best served by having fixed balance settings / difficulty levels. I will therefore balance the game to give specific experiences. Currently I am thinking along the lines of:

• A genuinely chill game where disasters are more helpful than hurtful.
  
• A more narrative focused game where the impact of decisions and God-Player interactions really ramps up.
  
• A game that is far more of a mechanical challenge with much harsher limits on things like worker bonuses.
  

I should be giving updates on each of these as I implement them. In the meantime though, I'll be finishing off the Decisions system and re-implementing the Tutorial, so expect to see those in the next update.

[h2]The Legend of Atlantis[/h2]

Finally, I'm excited that Critias Empire is part of the Myths and Legends festival, which starts today! (Jan 29, 2025). The legend of Atlantis might be one of the more well known stories to have been handed down from ancient times, but the fact only the first half of the story has made its way down through history to us is telling about all the possibilities it sparks in the imagination.



My hope with Critias Empire is that it can be a way for people to explore a bit further some of those "what if..?" type scenarios and imagine what the ancient world was like in the spaces between what records and archaeology can tell us!

The decision system has been implemented and I'm now in the process of creating the content for it. In this update I'll preview that, and the changes I want to make to the tutorial afterwards.

[h2]Think About[/h2]

I've talked previously about plans for the "Decisions" system in the game: Various player actions have a chance of spawning a story snippet, that asks the player to choose between a number of options, each with various possible outcomes.

Which is a very dry way of saying that the Gods are now much more reactive to how you play, throwing you tricky conundrums which you need to respond to. I'm hoping this will make the game feel much more connected to the ancient Greek mythological theme and be a much more intuitive way of interacting with the Gods.



I've finally implemented this! I'm pretty happy with how it works, but it does mean I need to now go and write a whole bunch of story for the game, which is part of the reason I'm not releasing this feature just quite yet.

[h2]What Now?[/h2]

However, I've noticed another problem with Critias Empire:

Some people don't know what to do...

This comes from me watching people play the game at live events, on youtube/let's plays, and is also hinted at in the analytics data recorded about how people play the game. I've known for a while that the game has a couple of problems for new players:

Firstly: There is often nothing to do from turn 2 to turn 4 or 5, as players use up all their stone in their first turn and then have to wait to collect enough stone to build another building.

In most strategy games, players can at least move some units around to explore the map during these very early parts of the game. Typically they'll get random rewards (a.k.a "goodie huts" for those familiar with the Civilization series) from things players find scattered about. which both feels like progress and then enables further decisions. Things such as where to send a newly spawned scout unit, or what to build with the hoard of materials pilfered from ancient ruins.

(As an aside: I think Humankind does this the best of all the 4X games I've played. It's Neolithic era is dynamic and interesting and has lots of fun decisions to make. It's a lot more than just picking a direction and sending the scout that way).

Since Critias Empire doesn't have units, and exploration doesn't work in the same way, I think players get confused and put off at not having anything to do - neither being asked by the game, nor being able to find something themselves.



I plan to use the decision system to get players over this hump and not only give them something to think about, but also give rewards/resources that then enable them to do more things in the following turns also.

[h2]And Why?[/h2]

Secondly: The tutorial does not explain why players' choices are important (or why the tutorial is asking them to do something). It just teaches them how to do various things. For some, that's fine because they enjoy figuring out stuff for themselves. But for others it fails to give them a sense of what to do immediately after they come off the tutorial rails. It also leaves players without an idea of what their short and medium term goals should be.

I always wanted to have a more sophisticated tutorial with gifs and multiple ways of explaining things, but I've realised the content of the current tutorial is also missing this "why" element.

[h2]And So[/h2]

My plan, after creating the initial batch of content/stories for the Decisions system, is to re-make the tutorial. There's a business priority here as well, which is that right now, the median demo play time is 14 minutes, and that's way shorter than it should be - A few people are playing much longer, which is great, but ultimately I want more people to really get stuck into the game and reach the later stages, then go on to wishlist the game. Not just get wiped out after the second disaster because they didn't really know what they were doing (as I've seen happen a few times).

[h2]Fortune[/h2]

The last couple of months have been a bit strange. After going on holiday and unsuccessfully pitching my games to publishers at develop conference in Brighton, I first injured myself while running, then got covid, from which I've only recovered properly this week. I'm quite pleased with myself at merely having got back to doing some normal programming, with the Decisions system, after barely writing a line of code since some time in June!

I'll be at gamescom in Cologne next week, (so come say Hi if you're there also!) though I won't be showing Critias Empire except at a side event (Courage Cologne on Tuesday). Once I get back from that, expect another update some time in September, where hopefully I can talk about the tutorial changes and push the Decision system live / to the demo build.

In the meantime, any thoughts or feedback on the game or this update are most welcome, and you can always contact me on social media or leave a comment below!

The latest version of the demo is out now. It comes with a new scenario, and a new disaster! In this devlog I'll be detailing the changes to the game, plus the facepalm-inducing bugs that I fixed and lots of other small improvements.

[h2]Sea Change[/h2]

As covered in the previous update, Critias Empire now has "scenarios". Each scenario has its own rules and balance, including different resources and buildings, all wrapped up in a bit of story. The maps are still procedurally (randomly) generated for now. I want to see how people find them before thinking about whether to support scenarios with pre-made maps.

Originally I was thinking scenarios would be a relatively easy way to keep adding fresh content into the game, as well as compartmentalise new features or ideas around game balance. However, it's taken a lot more effort than I anticipated to create just the two scenarios in this update, one of which is just a re-packaging of what was already in the game. I have a few ideas for more scenarios but if those also prove to take a lot of time to create, I'll switch focus back to adding features and systems.

[h2]Poseidon's Revenge[/h2]

The new Bronze Seas scenario also comes with a new disaster. You can probably guess what it is from the blog title, but I'll leave the details of how it works as a surprise. I am though encouraged that it was relatively easy to implement.

I'm keen to get more feedback on how the disaster feels, as well as the Bronze Seas scenario balance, so please let me know in comments or find me on social media / discord if you have opinions. This will help me fine tune the disaster balance and also help with determining what disasters to add in the future.

[h2]Epic Facepalm[/h2]

Right from when the demo first launched, players have been reporting strange behaviour and playing on weird map configurations. In the results from the bug reporting button I kept seeing screenshots of maps with tiny slithers of land, and sea, all forest and mountain and bonus resources on every single tile. Completely wrong compared to what should be being generated.

I decided to add in some extra fields/data to the bug reporting to help me find this and other issues. One of those extras was a date stamp. Since I knew people (and by extension, the local time settings on their operating systems) in the USA use a strange month-day-year format for their dates, I'd have to format every date to be in a neutral, non-regional-specific format, before sending the bug report data.

Doing this, it dawned on me that there are some other regional quirks, like some countries use a dot for a decimal place marker, and others a comma. That's when I realised what was going wrong with the map generation. Most of the balance data in Critias Empire is just whole numbers, but there are a lot of decimal points in the balance data for map generation. Turns out, when reading in the balance data from file, the decimal points in that data were being interpreted differently based on what language/location settings the player had. For example, 1.5 was sometimes being turned into 1 and a half, and sometimes into 1 thousand 5 hundred.



I'm kinda proud that my code is so robust it can handle ridiculously large numbers without straight up crashing (too often). But I even had this same type of problem occur on a previous game I worked on earlier in my career. So I feel especially stupid for not thinking about it earlier.

In any case, the bug is now fixed, and everyone can enjoy the maps as they're supposed to be. (Note: I actually patched this fix in in Build 45 around the start of June. But you will need to start a new game for the fix to work. It does not fix existing maps/playthroughs sadly).

[h2]Abandon Ship[/h2]

One piece of feedback I keep getting is that there's no way to destroy a building (land use) except by hoping it gets destroyed in a disaster. Way back years ago, I gave players the ability to destroy buildings and recover a portion of the build cost. I found during early playtesting, often players would simply tear down their empire the turn before a disaster, hold everything in resource stockpiles that are unaffected by disasters, and then rebuild as they saw fit afterwards.

It was quite a smart strategy but removed the jeopardy of disasters in exchange for the player doing a lot of repetitious clicking. That wasn't a fun dynamic, so I removed the ability for players to destroy buildings.



However with the new Bronze Seas scenario, my QA tester at one point got stuck through no fault of his own due to being unable to destroy certain buildings. So I thought it would be a good time to re-open the issue.

Critias Empire now has an ability where you can "Abandon" a building. It stops producing and consuming, and also frees up workers, which can be handy especially in some tight squeezes immediately after a disaster. Abandoned buildings will decay over a number of turns until they are so dilapidated they are considered destroyed and removed from the map. This can anger the Gods in the process. Decaying buildings can however be repaired and reoccupied by paying a percent of their original build cost.

It's not an especially elegant solution, but it introduces some risk vs reward to the decision and hopefully won't be as obviously exploitable as what came before.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

Last month, I burned out and became incredibly stressed trying to hit a succession of Steam festivals in a row. Around the end of May, I decided to withdraw Critias Empire from the June Steam NextFest, along with my other game, Palm Paradise Garden. Since then I've been much more relaxed and frankly healthier, mostly by actively avoiding optimising my work time. The demo will still remain online and available however, and my plan to keep updating it long term hasn't changed.

The next month will be a bit disjointed as I'll be visiting my family in the UK as well as pitching for a publisher and funding at develop conference in Brighton. However, I plan to get back to regular monthly updates on Critias Empire, so expect to hear from me again around the start of August.



Before all that, Critias Empire is in the "Made in Germany" steam festival! I moved to Berlin in spring 2017, so about 95% of Critias Empire's development has been here in good ol' Deutschland. I will eventually translate the game into German, but unfortunately not in time for this festival.

Development wise, having teased the Decisions system a few months back, I'm hoping to finally get down to implementing it. Doubtless there'll be lots of bugs to fix and balance tweaks to do from the new update, so I anticipate that'll take up most of my time on Critias Empire in the next few weeks.

Beyond that, Festivals and Predictions features are hovering near the top of the to-do list. However, the latter ties into the reworking of disasters I need to do, so may need to wait till I have a few weeks clear of other tasks.

As usual, if you have any of your own feedback or thoughts on the game's progress, (especially on Bronze Seas balance and the new disaster) you can always contact me or leave a comment!