Critias Empire News

A number of people have mentioned disappointment when looking at the Critias Empire store page that the game only seems to have island type maps.

Well be disappointed no more! The game now supports multiple map types. So far I have re-implemented the "Islands" map type, and also added a "Coast" map type.



[h2]New Range[/h2]

For both the new map types, I took a different approach to topology, with the map gen algorithm creating either areas of uplift or long chains of mountains. These are then surrounded by foothills that gently slope down to plains below.

This gives the terrain a much more natural feel than the somewhat random distribution used before.

[h2]A Wide World[/h2]

I also implemented configurable map size, but in the end, I concluded that a much bigger map gave the feel I was looking for: Something on a grander scale than a city builder, but not the globe spanning scale of games like Civilization.



In the course of making the Coast map type, I didn't quite get the effect I was looking for first time. But I liked the results so much I kept them as a new map type, before continuing with fixing the Coast type algorithm.

This happy accident happened not once, but twice, meaning the game now has an additional two map types:

The "Bays" map type has a shattered coast type feel of inlets, bays and lagoons along a narrow stretch of coast.



Meanwhile, the "Straights" map type is a variation on the Coast map type, with land on two sides of a narrow sea channel. Think something like the Bosphorus, or the famous Pillars of Herecles as mentioned in the legend of Atlantis (today known as the Straights of Gibraltar).



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

There is still some tidy up to do on the maps. Currently, the whole map is surrounded by sea, but some map types should have some impenetrable hinterland beyond their playable borders. The Straights screenshot above is one such example of where I still need to implement this.

As well, there are two more map types I plan to make before launch - "Peninsula" which should be self-explanatory, and "Inland sea", which will feature a small sea surrounded by land on all sides, akin to the Black Sea or Caspian Sea.

In the short term though, I will work on balancing production and construction costs of various land uses (buildings like farms, mines etc). After that, I plan to do a lot of bug fixing and polishing in preparation for making a playable demo. If all goes to plan, this will be available in December, or at the latest by Steam NextFest in February.

It's August! In fact, nearly the end of August, and this month, my provisional penciled-in date for when the game would be released has been and gone. While disappointing for all, it's not a bad thing in the long term. In this update, I'll explain why, and how development and the road to release has changed.

First off, what has been done on the game since the last update in June?

• Balancing data spreadsheets have been massively improved.
  
• Buildings (Land Uses) have a whole suite of new variables that affect them.
  
• The city / population growth algorithm has been changed
  
• UIs have been tweaked and improved.
  

[h2]Lost in the Details[/h2]

Most of the code changes to the game of late have been about giving myself as many possible tools and techniques to balance the game. For example, I added construction timers to buildings. I added restrictions to where buildings can be placed. I added build costs, depending on the underlying terrain. And lots of other similar small things.

All of which I eventually realised was just glorified procrastination. The game might not even need these features, and with each, I was adding complexity to the task of balancing.

However, that's not the only procrastinating-like thing I've been doing. Recently, I've done a lot more research on other similar games, mostly in the 4x genre, but also a bit with colony sims and city builders. Only instead of playing these games myself, I've been watching let's play videos, to see how others play them.

[h2]Theory Craft[/h2]

Turns out, there are two types of player who enjoy 4x and similar games. Those like me, who jump in, play by ear, and from the chaos formulate a strategy for victory. And those who like to craft a strategy beforehand, and then try to execute it in-game.

For both, the starting of a new game and looking at the map for the first time is very important, as it sets the tone for how the game will play out. In the last update, I talked about changes I made to the map generation / disaster algorithm, and unfortunately the way I wrote it starts the player off on one small puny island. The island then expands and changes over a number of disaster cycles in order to give the player a feeling of progress.

This may have ticked all the game design boxes, but it doesn't have the same magic of say a city builder, where players are given a wide open map - a tabula rasa, onto which they can start etching their dreams or grand designs. Likewise with 4x games, starting on one small island means no exploration and no real choice where to build that all important first city. It takes away an important, exciting early decision for the player.

This became especially apparent after playing the neolithic era in Humankind, in which the opening part of that game is all about exploration and getting a feel for your surroundings, with the game rewarding, rather than punishing players taking the time to find a good first spot for an outpost/city.



If the current map generation algorithm in Critias Empire lacks that buzz of similar games, then what other feelings should the game give?

1. "One More Turn"
   Every turn should give the player a feeling of progress, and a decision to make.
   This is really the signature feel of most strategy games, and definitely something I want for Critias Empire.
   
2. "Sandcastles"
   Building sandcastles on a beach comes with the inevitability that the tide will eventually come in. This is the feeling I want when disasters hit your empire: Preparing as best you can for the waves. Seeing which parts of your sandcastle unexpectedly crumble. Reacting to protect as much of your sandcastle as you can. And finally rebuild back your sandcastle even better!
   

[h2]New Balance[/h2]

With that in mind, I've made a framework for how to balance the game. The map generation algorithm will have to be re-written yet again, and this will most likely take some weeks. However, I now have a much clearer vision of how to proceed after that.

This has also made me rethink the roadmap. Instead of trying to tick off features from a list, I am now going to wait until the game is giving the right vibes, then polish and expand from there. This means skipping Early Access, with the full launch now happening in early 2023.

[h2]Page Turner[/h2]

With a clearer vision of the game, at least in my mind, I've been experimenting with the Steam Store Page to better get that across. Over the next few weeks, you may see some parts of the store change, from the artwork to the descriptions and roadmap. Don't worry, the game is not fundamentally changing, and no features are getting cut, even if the order in which I do things is changing.

[h2]What's Next[/h2]

As already mentioned, the map generation algorithm, tied in with the disasters, needs rewriting. As well I will finally be rebalancing the stats for buildings and resources. And I still need to think of some ways to make Wonders more interesting and varied. Expect to hear about all that, hopefully with some screenshots of it all in action, in the next update.

Back in April, Critias Empire was looking in pretty good shape. It felt polished and robust. I knew the game needed rebalancing, but I also had a nagging feeling this meant more than just adjusting the numbers. A round of intensive internal testing confirmed a number of my suspicions:

• Disasters were a bit too random / arbitrary
  
• Spamming quarries/pastures made the game too easy
  
• The shrines next to wonders winning strategy removed the late-game challenge of keeping wonders alive
  
• Population growth/decline was unintuitive and opaque
  
• Wonders were not very wonderous. They didn't do anything
  

Moreover, these things contributed to the game being overall less replayable than I had hoped. To tackle this, I decided to take each problem on one at a time. The biggest was the disaster randomness and that's the subject for today's update. As you may have guessed by the title and the fact it's now the start of June, this took a looooong time and spawned multiple side quests along the way.



I was quite pleased with the old Critias Empire terrain generation algorithm. Every time there was a disaster, it would pick a new origin point somewhere near the centre of the map, then randomly calculate the likelihood of any tile/hex being land based on how far it was from that origin tile. The probability was non-linear - closer in, there would be a high chance of land, then medium distance out would be very low, followed by a decent chance furthest out towards the edge of the map. On top of this I laid a perlin noise pattern to add some randomness.



This generated an aesthetically pleasing effect - both the distribution of the land and the land rising and falling during disasters. However, whenever disaster struck, potentially every tile/hex could change, making it hard for players to plan. Equally no consideration was given to the balance of grassland vs mountains, and the distribution of bonus resources. In short, the randomness was the arbitrary, bad kind of randomness.

[h3]A New Land[/h3]

I won't say how this was solved exactly (as that would give the game away!). But the new terrain regeneration algorithm balances risk and reward for the player much better than before. Areas of the map that are more or less stable offer different bonus resources and so different decisions about what to build, where and when.

The new algorithm also reduces the difficulty early in the game, while ramping it up later on. This should give the game a less "survivalist" feel - as though the player is just hanging on until the one unlucky disaster pushes them over the edge into extinction - and instead give the player a feeling the Gods are toying with them, and that their patience has a limit!

[h3]Hot and Cold[/h3]

Previously, mountain = mines = stone, and grassland = farms = food, and sea was death. And that was about it. Whilst there was an elegant simplicity to the rock-paper-scissors of the three basic resources, (stone/food/prayers), and three basic terrain types (sea/mountain/grassland), it didn't lead to much variety, nor interesting decisions on where and what to build.



Rewriting the terrain algorithm threw up a chance to add in more terrain types. In particular, I wanted forests on tiles to be more than just aesthetic, and to actually have some meaning. Especially since they look different, and so players might expect them to act differently. As well, the map is awfully green and verdant for a game set in the ancient Mediterranean.

The result was something more subtle than I anticipated - Tiles now have an underlying terrain, plus a climate zone (alpine/temperate/arid) and vegetation zone (scrub/forest).



This not only makes the game look a bit more visually varied, but gives an extra axis to consider when deciding where to build - both between individual tiles, and more generally, to build north (cooler alpine) or south (arid, warmer).

[h3]Rivers of Tears[/h3]

The terrain plugin used for rendering the hexes/tiles in the game, while excellent in many ways, was not designed with the idea of parts or the whole map changing throughout the game. This is especially so when it comes to rivers. Since the plugin already had a river module that produced nice looking rivers, I wanted to keep rivers in the game just for aesthetic reasons. But like with the forests, players would not be unreasonable if they assumed the rivers affected gameplay as well. therefore I wanted to also rivers give bonuses or penalties, and so add further variety to the map.



Digging into the terrain plugin code and making rivers persist between disasters was not easy to say the least. Not helped by the many edge cases encountered along the way (what if the old river mouth becomes land after the disaster? Or the start point becomes sea?)

Fortunately I was able to work through these issues, but dealing with rivers alone took me many, many (....) many days.

[h3]Bronze Chains[/h3]

I also wanted to make building and production a bit more interesting, especially when it came to wonders. It had already been theoretically possible to make more complex production chains, but with the planned rebalancing I wanted to actually try this out and make sure it worked as expected.



Thus three new products were added to the game - Copper, Tin and Bronze - with the latter only being produced from the former two in a new "forge" type building. While I don't know if these will make it into the final game, I at least proved the idea (and code) worked for the future.

[h3]Spreadsheet Surprise[/h3]

In the course of rewriting the terrain algorithm and making the new resources, it also became clear I needed a better way to load balancing data into the game. Especially if I wanted to rapidly iterate ideas, requiring custom tools or making a new build of the game each time something needed changing and testing proved incredibly cumbersome.

So I took the chance to clean up the balancing spreadsheets and make them refreshable from inside the game. This could also represent the foundation needed to make the game moddable, though for now I don't want to invest too much more time going down that path.

[h3]What's Next?[/h3]

The shrines and spamming quarries problems should be relatively easy to fix. I will also re-write population growth/decline - population decline is how players lose the game, so it should at least be easy to understand! I will also need to get creative/inventive with wonders. Looking forward to trying out a bunch of ideas with them. Expect to hear all about the results of that, and more, in the next update!