Kaiserpunk News

Greetings Commanders!

As we are approaching the release, it's time for another dev diary! Today, it’s time to dive into one of our favorite topics—production, logistics, and all the exciting things that make your industries tick! Production and logistics are the heart of your empire, where the production of weapons, machinery, and supplies becomes central to an empire's ability to sustain war efforts. In Kaiserpunk, production runs both deep and wide, with a wide variety of resources, along with multiple refinement and production stages.


Heavy industry, mass production, and the 20th century... I don't think we could have thought of a better fit. Add weapons and combat machinery to the mix, and sadly, that sums up the first half of the last century. On top of that, it may seem cold, but it's also fitting that your residents, despite the fact that you take care of them (or should at least), end up as faceless numbers, a statistic, churned out by the ever-growing industry of your new capital and the ceaseless fighting. The 20th century was both beautiful for the resilience and innovation humanity showed, and at the same time, very ugly and dark. An interesting and stark contradiction.

But let's not get caught up in philosophy, shall we. Let’s focus on the industry part: the production chains and getting goods from one place to another. We've covered this in quite some detail in an earlier dev diary that you can read, so I thought I'd run through some of the key questions. The 21st is just around the corner, and we'd best be prepared ;).

A production chain is a series of buildings that starts with one resource, refines it, adds more resources into the mix, and in the end, spits out a completely different resource. A chain can be as simple as one or two buildings to create construction plywood, or it can consist of a long series of branches, gradually zeroing in to create that light bomber you've been eyeing for your air force.

None of these goods can teleport or fly. They need to be delivered from building to building, which is where depots come in. Depots dispatch transporter trucks to carry the resources around your city. Be careful, though, since the number of trucks available in a single depot is limited and before you know it, you could be shovelling more work onto a depot than it can carry out. A nice little detail that you can do, as the high-and-mighty governor, is to place buildings that depend on each other close to one another. That way, they can skip the "depot step" entirely.

Upgrade before building anew! Almost all buildings in Kaiserpunk can be upgraded in some way. Always look to that first, as it comes with much lower construction and operational costs. Money doesn't grow on trees, not even in Kaiserpunk. And you'll need the money... training and supplying armies is not cheap. A strong, resilient industry is the cornerstone of any powerful global empire.

Oh, and I almost forgot: experiment! Try different approaches and have fun. Be creative! Use the actions at the bottom of the HUD to your advantage. Copy blocks of your city that work perfectly and use the Move tool to shuffle things around. You’d be surprised how much you can gain by giving your city a nice “facelift” and a bit more organization.


We hope you enjoyed this dev diary! To make sure we cover any questions you might have, we’re hosting an AMA over on Reddit this Thursday, March 13th, at 6 PM CET / 9 AM PST. You can start asking us questions now, though! We look forward to answering them!

Until next time - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games

Greetings Commanders!

Before we jump into today's topic, we know you’ve been awaiting an update on the release date—and the time has finally come! Kaiserpunk will launch on March 21, 2025!

On top of that, we’ve teamed up with a great partner, Elda Entertainment, to ensure we can focus on what truly matters - the game itself! Elda will help us spread the word about Kaiserpunk!

Before we continue, we just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your support so far. We’ve now surpassed 160K wishlists, and we are incredibly grateful for your excitement about the game—just as excited as we are! Without further ado, let’s get into the topic of the day, Warfare.


So, what do you actually need in your capital to build a successful war machine? The short answer: everything.

Your infantry needs food rations – you'll produce them in your factories. Your tanks need shells – you'll manufacture them in your Munitions factories. Your bombers need kerosene – you'll refine it in Refineries. Of course, you'll need plenty of raw and refined resources beforehand to even get to final products. And workforce... don't forget about the workforce to actually do all that work.

Then, once you deploy your new troops to the battlefield, you'll need to produce even more because armies consume vast amounts of supplies to operate efficiently. Remember: logistics wins wars. Simply spamming army units won't cut it. They'll be out of ammo, luck, and life before you know it.

Something we haven't explored in detail in any of our previous blogs is combat – the calculus of it. Don’t worry, I'm not going to bore you with the actual maths (that would be wrong on sooooo many levels). Instead, here’s a quick rundown of what you should keep in mind when assessing a potential battle. A checklist of sorts of what should be taken into account:

• Quantity – Of course. Sending eight units instead of one will make a difference. Let's not kid ourselves.
  
• Veterancy – The experience level of the units involved. More experienced troops perform better: higher attack power, better defense, at the same supply expenses.
  
• Unit tier – It's difficult to beat technological progress. More advanced units are more deadly. Simple as that.
  
• Terrain characteristics – Where will you be fighting? An urban jungle or an open field? The difference is massive.
  
• Supply state – Is your army well-supplied, or are they scrounging for bullets and sharing a rifle between ten infantrymen? Supply chains matter!
  
• Leader – Not you, in this case, but the army general. How experienced is your general? What traits have they acquired during their service? Passive bonuses gained via traits can make a huge difference.
  
• Enemy – Who are you fighting? Are you sure you want to send an army packed with infantry units against a squadron of bombers?
  

And that’s just for a single army! Battles can involve multiple land, air, and naval forces, as well as defensive garrisons, turning combat into complete mayhem.

Especially since when you're on the attack, you can't know for certain (without a special military base upgrade) what orders will the enemy governor issue. The AI might concentrate its defenses against a single attacking army or maybe disperse its defensive forces to simply block the attacker, gain some time and upgrade its garrison or bring in more armies. It all depends on the situation and on the AI leader. Some leaders are aggressive, others prefer peaceful resolutions. Even when it comes to armies, some leaders will focus more on their navy or aviation. This approach burrows down to the setup of individual armies. You can easily encounter an AI leader who focuses mostly on infantry with the support of artillery.

Then again, you might encounter a Gandhi-like passive resistance leader (not to be confused with the atom bomb-loving Gandhi from a certain beloved 4X game series) who’ll do his best to affirm peaceful relationships with everyone. That’s where diplomatic trade comes into play. You may think this is just all about trade and in a way, you’re correct, but trade in Kaiserpunk can also be used for more aggressive purposes. If you, for example, trade a lot of military gear with an empire, that empire is likely stockpiling the arms for a purpose and not just for show. Doesn’t have to be used against you though. There are plenty of other, perhaps more suitable targets in the world… 😉

That brings us to the last major point for today: location, location, location. In this case in the world. Where you start your campaign of world-domination matters.

• Starting in Europe, Asia, or Africa gives you the most opportunities to spread your influence, but you will face the most opposition as well.
  
• On the flip side, starting in Australia means you’ll have fewer early threats, but you’ll also have a harder time leaving the home-shores. To transfer your armies across the seas, you’ll need to make some significant development, both in technology and industry. But yeah… you’ll be quite a bit safer in the beginning at least.
  

There’s a whole lot of mechanics that you can play with and use for your strategic advantage in Kaiserpunk. Don’t forget to experiment and have fun 😊.


We’ll also be streaming today at 7:00 PM, feel free to tune in on Twitch or here on Steam if you like what you see and want to hear more!

More dev diaries are coming up until launch! Join Reddit and Discord to chat more about Kaiserpunk.

Until next time - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games

Greetings Commanders!

Tomorrow Wednesday March 5th at 7:00pm CET we'll be hosting a live stream to show off the latest version of the game, share some news and talk about how development is going and what's coming up!

Join our Game Director and Art Director as we showcase the game and share our thoughts on the design, intentions and the development process of these past couple of years.

You can join the stream over on Twitch @ https://www.twitch.tv/overseer_games_publishing or follow along here on Steam.

We hope you'll join us and look forward to showing off the game to you.

Until then - over and out!

Greetings Commanders!

Today, we’ll talk about the genre of Grand City Building and share our thoughts on it. Finding the right subgenre for this game has been challenging. Previously we’ve talked about Kaiserpunk as a mix between a City Builder and a Grand Strategy Game, which still holds true, but today we’d like to dig a little bit deeper into it and share our current thinking on the matter.


First of all, we need to talk about game loops, and especially the so-called core loops. As many of you probably know, core loops are a concept used to break down the key activities a player will do while playing a game, often seen over different time scales like moment-to-moment, minute-to-minute, quarter-to-quarter, hour-to-hour, etc. The exact length of the time scales tends to differ depending on the intensity of a game, e.g., shooters often have shorter loops than city builders.

Also, and the reason for this dev. diary, is that the core loops (especially minute-to-minute) tend to be how we define genres for games (and sometimes even name them after, such as 4X), apart from specific features ofc. This means that a shooter will most often have the same core loop; same goes for survival crafting and city builders etc. And this leads us to why we have started with this intro to game design 101. When we say Grand City Building, we are talking about the game’s core loops - and how they are unique.

Kaiserpunk is a city builder with the hour-to-hour loop of grand strategy. If we look at the minute-to-minute and quarter-to-quarter gameplay, our game is clearly a city builder. You place buildings, unlock new resources, research, satisfy the needs of your citizens etc. - all the things required to build a city. But as the game progresses into the hour-to-hour gameplay, things change. Your city is part of a living world, where other budding empires are vying for power in a running time simulation. Your task is to force the will of your city upon the world and become the pre-eminent power, leveraging your city’s economy to engage in trade, diplomacy, and most importantly, warfare. This hour-to-hour loop is what makes a strategy game grand (quite literally, grand strategy is the scholarly term for strategy that includes… well, trade, diplomacy, economy, and warfare). It is also the loop that makes our city builder grand. You are not only building a city - you will build a city to rule the world!


So how does this all tie together? Simply put, the grand part of our grand city builder is the why. In an alternate history where all the old powers went extinct in the Great War, you will forge the world anew. Several other powers are both potential allies and enemies, sometimes both. Through conquest and trade, you will get access to more and new resources, your fleets and armies projecting your power across the world. In the end, you will rise to become a dominant new power - bringing civilization back from the ashes.

The city builder part is the how and what. Every soldier marching will be trained in your military bases, every gun produced, every ration grown, milled, baked into bread, and packaged. Through the choices you make, your city can become the shining city upon a hill - leading the world through diplomacy and culture. Or you can become a warmaking behemoth - your populace toiling away in the massive industries feeding your war machine. Wherever your path will take you, your city is your engine, your tool, and the choices you make will shape your city accordingly. As such, your why influences the how and the what, and the how and the what will shape the why.

Build a city to rule the world - this is what a grand city builder is for us.

We’ve also released a new Feature Spotlight video on this same topic. Coincidence? We think not!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
In the coming dev diaries we will talk a lot more about the hows, next one specifically focused on Warfare.

As always, let us know what you thought, and we’ll be back next week!
Overseer Games over and out