Kaiserpunk News

Hello everyone!

Only two more days until release! We can’t believe we’re almost here, and we’re very grateful for your patience as we extended the timeline. Everyone is really busy wrapping up the last bits before we lock down the game for release, but we still want to continue sharing more in-depth info about the game we’ve been working so hard on.

Today, we’re going to talk about some topics related to war that we didn’t manage to cover in much detail in Dev Diary #10, where we discussed warfare in greater depth.

Let's first emphasize a very important point here: To have an army, you need an army base. One army base = one army. Just so there's no confusion! ;)

And to expand on that a little:

• A land army, or a battalion, needs a military base.
  
• A navy fleet needs a naval base.
  
• An air force, or a squadron, needs an airbase.
  

OK? It's really as simple as that. Anything you need regarding an army, you can either select the army, or select that army's military base. The options and information are mostly the same. Naturally, to train new army units, it's always a good idea to do it through the military base interface, its info panel. As noted in the previous blogs, don't forget to deploy your army onto the world map ;) An army won't do much sitting on their hands or twiddling their thumbs 'back home'.

Once you deploy your “51st Freedom brigade”, your job isn't done. The army will do your bidding, but it needs supplies in return, likely plenty of them. All of those supplies you need to make sure you either produce or trade for. They will be automatically transported to your army, provided your army can be reached. If your adversaries manage to cut off your army so you don't have a territorial link to it... no supplies for them, so protect your supply lines. Over time, the supplies they have will dwindle and you can forget about that army being anywhere near efficient. They'll be used for target practice...

There is a way to counter that, even if only temporarily. Outposts, which you can build as region upgrades, serve as supply points. They actually hold the needed supplies (or what you've ordered them to store) and even if they’re cut off or encircled, your army can still use outposts to resupply. It won't last forever, but it can buy you some time at least, maybe just enough to break through the blockade.


The same rules are applied to fleets of ships and squadrons of airplanes. All of them need supplies and rely on you to provide both the resources and a clear supply path. Fleets move across the water, over naval points, and they get resupplied through those supply lines too. Meaning they can also get blocked, though logically, by other fleets. Naval blockades can be an extremely effective tool to harass your opponents.

Unlike fleets however, squadrons can only move between air bases on the world map which you build as region upgrades, so they can be easier to mess with. Keep in mind though that squadrons can attack across the distance of 2, making their attacks very problematic to deal with.

One thing we didn't talk about much however is what happens after a battle. Let's say one of your armies got decimated. It's not completely done yet, but it lost half of its units. What can you do about it? You can send reinforcements. To make it simple, even units that were killed in battle are still displayed in the units list of an army. This is just so you don't have to memorize the composition of your armies. You 'know' what units were in the army and you can then reinforce it, meaning training new units that will replace the lost ones. Simply click on a damaged or dead unit and a nifty little window will pop out with all the info and options that you need.


Even if all units in an army are killed, that's still not the end of it. The army general makes an escape (as one would...) to the safety of the military base. There you can rebuild the army and try again. The commanding general will retain all of their gained experience and traits. Traits are passive bonuses that you pick and choose for your general each time they level up. And trust me, you want to keep those traits...

That’s it for now! Very soon, the game will be in your hands, and we can’t wait! We do hope you enjoyed this more in-depth dev diary and if you have more questions on this topic or any other and would like to interact with us, feel free to join us on Discord or Reddit.

Until tomorrow - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games

Greetings future Governors!

With Friday's release fast approaching, today we’ll highlight two aspects of the game: citizens and the research and development panel. For some of you who have followed us for a long time, the first part may feel familiar, as we covered the topic of morale last year. However, it’s an important aspect that’s definitely worth revisiting.

[h2]Your Citizens[/h2]
As with all city-builders, balancing the needs of your citizens is crucial. In Kaiserpunk, these needs are represented by morale, which can be influenced by both world events and conditions within the city. Each citizen type has different needs, with higher-class citizens demanding more. However, you'll need more educated citizen classes to enable advanced industries, so be prepared to meet these demands.


There are four tiers of citizens classes for you to manage:

• Laborers - Operating basic industries, farms and other menial labor
  
• Manufacturers - Primarily working in factories
  
• Technicians - Working in more advanced production and public service buildings
  
• Specialists - The highest and most educated class in your city, employed in only the most advanced roles
  

These four classes have their own unique needs and functions within your city.


Citizens pay taxes as long as their morale is high. The higher their morale, the greater the tax income:

• Basic needs - Simple food sources like vegetables, bread, meat etc.
  
• Luxury products - For example, newspapers, clothing, radio sets, or alcohol.
  
• Public services - Such as fire safety, education and health care.
  
• Employment rate - If you can't provide enough jobs, it will negatively impact morale.
  

Keeping all classes happy is key to success, give the people what they need, and they will pay taxes and support your wars. Fail to do so, and they will eventually riot, burning down your city center.


[h2]Research and Development Panel[/h2]
While building in Kaiserpunk, you’ll accumulate development points based on buildings from specific categories, such as agriculture, manufacturing, living, or military. Regions you’ve conquered will also add certain development points. The more points you accumulate in a given category, the more new buildings and upgrades you’ll unlock within that category. Additionally, all production and utility buildings in Kaiserpunk come with 6 upgrade slots, allowing you some options to steer them in certain directions depending on your goals.


A few examples:

• Your economy is struggling so you upgrade a few of your more upkeep heavy buildings with oversight offices that reduce their upkeep cost by 12% per upgrade to help lower costs.
  
• You’ve ended up in a situation where you can’t produce enough food to sustain your current population and you need to increase migration, so you upgrade your farms with both Irrigation that increases their output yield AND mechanized farming upgrades that also lowers the workforce need.
  
• You start struggling with the long distances your transportation trucks must cover to fetch yields from your farms. To solve this, you apply storage upgrades, allowing the farms to wait longer for the trucks to arrive. Additionally, you upgrade nearby depots with loading ramp upgrades to provide more trucks for that area.

That’s it for today's dev diary! Tomorrow, we’ll be back to talk more about your armies and military units so stay tuned for that.

Until tomorrow - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games

Greetings Commanders!

Before we enter the topic of the day, we wanted to bring to your attention that we’re hosting an AMA over on Reddit today, at 6 PM CET / 9 AM PST. We would love to chat with you and cover any questions you might have, big or small so join in and ask us anything!

Now, let’s talk about the essentials of city building in Kaiserpunk. Everything starts with your initially humble Town Center, which serves as the heart of your new capital that eventually will become the capital of your entire Empire. This Town Center is where you both progress your city-state’s development and choose your social pillars, but more on that in another dev diary.

Once you’ve laid down your first road and built a few houses, immigrants will begin to arrive. This early in the game, they come with hope for a better future and are eager to settle in. Let’s hope you can keep that optimism alive! To ensure their well-being, make sure your people have access to food and the necessary luxuries. To achieve this, you'll need to establish your basic industries, which will require access to both water and electricity. Your choice of placed buildings and what you upgrade will determine what you unlock in the development tree. If you focus on industry, more industrial buildings will unlock; if you focus on agriculture or military, the corresponding categories will unlock faster.
As your city grows and you begin producing more advanced goods, you’ll need higher-educated citizens, who won't be satisfied with simple bread and fish. Your industries will therefore continue to grow to meet these new demands, and on top of that, you’ll likely want to remember to defend your people and the region you’ve worked so hard to establish. The world around you is changing; even if the world map appears still, things can shift quickly as new leaders rise, and you will eventually run out of resources…

This brings you to the next step: training soldiers, building tanks, airplanes and ships – each requiring its own set of production facilities and equipment. At this point, perhaps you might feel the urge to test your strength against some neutral neighbors, and so the world begins to react around you. There’s lots to do in Kaiserpunk, and city building is the heart of it all.


Going a little deeper into the actual city-building, roads, bridges and tunnels are the glue that holds your city together. They have an upkeep cost, and the distance between buildings plays a significant role. Roads also allow your transportation trucks to get around town, transporting resources and goods between depots and your production buildings. As your city develops and access to resources is enabled, you’ll be able to build better roads. While they come with a higher financial upkeep cost, they allow your trucks to move around faster, improving your production capacity. More advanced roads also give the city a more sophisticated and modern feel.

We’ve already dedicated our last dev diary to industries, so we wont repeat ourselves. It’s worth pointing out that, while you can, of course, build your city however you please, it might be a good idea to dedicate certain parts of the city to production and cluster production buildings together–such as grain, wheat, bakeries– while reserving other areas for housing your citizens. Why? Well, while your industrial sectors benefit from good access and structure to enable smooth production, your housing doesn’t really require efficiency or transportation. However, they do need access to public services like fire stations, education and healthcare. Ensuring your citizens' needs for these services are met is key to keeping morale high—and high morale is crucial for getting your citizens to pay taxes, which keeps your city's economy running smoothly. You’ll do an even better job if you plan your layout with this in mind!

It might be challenging to predict the requirements of your city’s infrastructure from the very beginning as the city expands. Therefore, there are several tools in the game to help you build faster and with more precision. Apart from demolishing, you can move an existing building if you find it’s been misplaced, copy buildings to quickly generate more of the same, or plan and create a temporary blueprint to set up exact copies of several buildings, parks and plazas with just a few clicks. In Kaiserpunk, the city can become massive, and with quays, you could even fill the whole ocean with buildings if you'd like.


Apart from the tools, there are also plenty of decorations! While these particular elements of your city have no real game mechanical function, we think they’re essential to give your capital that extra something. If you’re spending hours on your city, why not make it a bit aesthetically appealing? It’s supposed to be a world capital, after all. In addition to buildings and roads, you can create and decorate parks, plazas, flower fields, neatly arrayed hedge rows, fences, statues, and more. There are many options to make your city a nice place to live.


We can't wait for you to dive into the game and see the grand metropolises you'll create. The wait is almost over—just one more week! Stay tuned as we keep rolling out these diaries to keep you hooked in the meantime.

Until next time - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games

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