The first real game with committed players has ended.
It was more successful than I had hoped.
Thank you to everyone who participated, your feedback has been a huge influence on development and direction. This thing would be far worse without you.
The final rank included 5 remaining players:
RANK
PLAYER
GOLD
1.
ansik
1,337
2.
big_boomer13
420
3.
Fish
302
4.
Guerrila man
277
5.
Vigil
69
We will pause starting any new games until the next version is pushed to the live site, which will have many changes.
Those changes will bring many bugs and there will be a period of testing before inviting people to play a real game.
Once we’re at a reasonable point of playability, I will publish a video summarising the evolution and results of PROTO, and will ask players to join the next game.
We reached 26 players max at one point, which the site handled easily. Let’s see if we can make it bigger next time.
A significant update is in progress, which will have huge affects on gameplay, and will probably bring a lot of bugs along with it.
Units will be of broader types – for example, carpenters who will be able to build workshops, horse carts, or ships, depending on what they’re assigned to. When they gain experience, it increases their skills in all the above.
Workshops are persistent, destructible structures that occupy one land-grid cell. This is part of a move toward an infrastructure model, where there must be an investment in your land/city to achieve anything more than subsistence.
Most units without a Workshop will only work at 25% productivity.
One Workshop will house multiple units when they have the same owner and unit type. So if you have 2 woodcutter units, they will live in the same workshop no matter their population size (this design may change to population limited).
When another player wants their units to work productively in the same land, they will have to build their own workshops.
Carpenter – Build workshop, carts, shipwright (available only on coastal land)
Boats are a new unit type, but must be crewed by either a navy or fishing unit to be used. They can also hold passengers. Passenger and cargo space is limited by the size of the ship, which is determined by the amount of wood used when building.
When a boat is left abandoned by a crew, another player can come along and take it.
Land grid – The general direction will be toward using the land grid toward displaying all elements of a land as a visual summary here. It’s a kind of physical representation to understand what is happening in the land at a glance.
Lots of other changes coming, and things will of course evolve as the design is fleshed out.
Horse breeding units can support 2 horses per unit population, however the horses will also need cleared land to reproduce.
The unit always starts with 1 horse, no matter how large the unit pop is.
Horses reproduce at the same rate as trees! Meaning growth will depend on rainfall, but they will grow at a minimum of 1 horse per turn. It doesn’t quite make sense but it kinda makes sense?! Will possibly double the growth per turn depending on feedback.
New resource: Horses.
Horses are basically another resource, and can be transferred to store in your land or to another unit.
Once a unit has the same number of horses as population (1:1 minimum), you will see the horse icon turn green on the unit card – this means your unit is able to move 2 hexes per turn, just like boats but on water!
Each horse will add an extra 5 inventory space (equivalent of half a human’s capacity) to the unit. So a 10-pop unit with 1 horse gets +5 inventory capacity.
HOWEVER, even if the horse:human ratio is 1:1, once the unit is holding more than the human population’s full inventory, the unit loses the ability to move 2 hexes per turn, and only moves one hex per turn.
For example, 10-pop unit has 100 inventory, then 10 horses are added which allow 50 more inventory space. Once the units loads more than 100 resources, the double-move ability is gone.
Horses do not take up inventory space themselves.
Once the new boat mechanics are implemented, if horses are boarded onto boats, they WILL take up inventory space, and the 50% inventory buff will disappear.
Intercept policies
Horse double-movement will be interrupted the same way as boats – if another player has a military unit in a land and their intercept policy says so, they will cause your mounted unit to move once per turn through that land. This also creates a chance to attack the mounted unit.
Starvation
If a land has too many horses and not enough cleared area, the horses will start feeding from the unit’s food supply at 1 food per horse.
Horses without food starve and disappear. They will die first before their human owners.
Combat
Fully mounted armies (1:1 minimum) gain the following buffs/debuffs:
Attacking units on land: +25% strength.
Defending against units on land: -25% strength.
Attack against units behind walls: ZERO horse contribution to strength
Included in this update will be a new follow action – you can target any unit and follow them (your own or others), your unit will appear in whatever land the other unit moved to. If the target moved twice in that turn, your unit will need to have the ability to move 2 tiles as well, otherwise they’ll be left in the first tile. You can still also be intercepted by other units.
Here are the changes coming with today’s update. Mostly bug or other issue fixes, message improvements and a few other things.
If it’s particularly broken, I will revert to the last version. Otherwise, please continue to let me know in Discord when you find bugs.
Deceased unit resources and loot transfer controls are again visible to eligible looters. Looting access applies to players with living units on the land, the land owner, and the land’s king.
Move options remain visible and are disabled when over capacity, with no refresh needed after inventory updates.
Message threads default to newest-first with user-selectable sorting (newest, oldest, unread-first). Turn number headings removed.
Unclaimed land stats are accessible and restricted to trees/farmland series.
Joining a kingdom now requires explicit vassalage confirmation before queueing.
Transfers targeting unclaimed land now show the non-retrievable resource warning.
“Go to capital of this kingdom” is hidden when already viewing that capital.
Transfer notifications persist on the notifications page and include land, turn, resource, amount, source, and target details.
Battle notification email details preserve structured line breaks instead of collapsing into a single paragraph.
Envoys no longer grow in population size.
Land-view queued attack tooltips now show the target unit instead of the land ID.
Tin requests are constrained to bronze units only.
Navy units now share the fisher-style unlimited inventory behaviour while on water.
Equal metrics now share rank positions in leaderboard display and persistent game scoring.
Gold victory ranking now counts only gold stored or carried on homeland (capital) lands.
Farmland/Forest now shows explicit “Tree growth next turn: XX” information.
When a unit is carrying too much, grey out the move button instead of making it disappear, and once material is transferred away, ensure the button updates and begins working again so the user doesn’t have to refresh page.
Join Kingdom confirmation
Add a confirmation step for vassalage:
“Join kingdom as vassal — are you sure?”
Unit Behavior and Rules
Navy inventory capacity
Make navy inventory behavior match fishers’ unlimited capacity model.
Bronze production requests
Ensure only bronze units request tin.
Queued movement after split (capacity check bug)
Fix false over-capacity errors when queuing movement after a future split – validation appears to use current inventory against future post-split capacity.
defer carry-capacity validation until the relevant turn?
Ensure that default units spawn after population completely wiped out
Envoy population should not grow.
Envoy XP escape mechanic
Envoy XP increases dodge/escape chance from attacks.
Rule: 1 XP = 7% escape chance.
Resource Management and Visibility
Farmland/Forest card: next-turn tree growth preview
Add next-turn tree growth info on the Farmland/Forest card:
e.g. “Tree growth next turn: XX“
Transfer warning for unclaimed land
Before confirming resource transfer to unclaimed land, show:
“The resources cannot be retrieved until a new player claims the land — are you sure?”
Kingdom shared resource visibility
Players should be able to view resource stores in lands owned by members of the same kingdom.
Resource targets: per-population mode
Add a checkbox/toggle for target mode:
Absolute amount (existing behavior)
Per population (e.g., 2 per pop)
Ranking and Leaderboard
Gold source constraint for ranking
When ranking players by gold, count only gold held in their capital/homeland.
Tie handling
Players with equal score must share the same rank, not sorting alphabetically
Naval Logistics Movement
Allow boats to move along land tiles adjacent to water while retaining high/unlimited transport capacity to simulate coastline logistics for large shipments.
2) New Features (will come later)
Combat, Army, and Progression
Battle simulator shortcut from unit UI
Add a Simulate Battle button on army units.
Route to /battle-simulator/ with relevant fields pre-filled.
Military XP beyond single-skill cap
After reaching normal XP limit, allow battle wins to continue granting +1 XP per victory up to max skill level (20).
Follow unit action
Add a follow behavior for all unit types:
unit follows another unit to each new land,
for armies, this is follow (not attack), with potential ambush risk,
can reduce repetitive manual move queueing for support/productive units.
Map Generation and Resource Distribution
Concentrated metal spawn option for new maps
During map generation, add option to select concentration centers for tin and copper.
Proposed distribution by rings from focal land:
center: 100%
first ring: 75%
second ring: 25%
all remaining lands: 10%
Keep current fully random distribution as alternative mode.
Inactivity and Delegated Control
Control over inactive players
If a player is inactive/skipping turns (or opts in), transfer limited control of their lands/units to their lord.
Exclude:
military attack actions,
movement control,
diplomatic actions.
Notifications and Social Features
Browser/PWA notifications
Add browser notifications as an option (instead of or alongside email), including PWA-friendly behavior.
Game invites
Add invite flow for other members with in-game notification + email.
Battle notification email formatting
Reformat battle notification emails to use structured sections/line breaks instead of a single collapsed paragraph.
Notification pagination contrast in dark theme
Fix unreadable active page button styling on notification pagination in dark mode.
Current issue: .td-notifications-page-link.td-notifications-page-current switches to a white background while text remains white.
Resource transfer notification persistence + email detail parity
Resource transfers from other players should appear on the notifications page and remain visible like other notification events.
Transfer emails should include key fields: land, turn, resource type, amount, source, and target.
Hide redundant capital navigation link
Do not show the “Go to capital of kingdom” link when the user is already on that capital page.
Private games
Add private game mode where only invited players can join.
Sandbox and Testing Mode
Per-player sandbox mode
Each player can create and save sandbox scenarios.
Initial concept: two factions on 4 hexes, manual turn advancement button, reset button.
Roles and Access Control
Restricted game creation role
Introduce a dedicated role required to access the game creation page.
Turn Processing Safety
Turn lock + refresh
Before turn processing starts, lock the active user screen for 5 seconds.
Keep locked until processing completes.
Then refresh without unintended submits/actions.
3) Early-Stage Concepts (Need Design Before Implementation)
Improve notification page UI
Page is busy and hard to read, figure out how to improve.
Fast-Game Experience
Define a feature suite that supports very short turns (e.g., 5-minute turns).
Roads and Automated Trade Corridors
Explore road systems between cities.
Potential behavior:
establish road once,
enable reduced-action travel,
allow optional automated trade routes once loaded,
maintain interruption/raiding possibility when military units of foreign lands are in between trading destinations,
include maintenance cost model.
Horse Logistics and Mobility
Horse breeders
Consume land space.
Enable 2-tile movement for supported units.
Revert to single-tile if enemy army blocks intermediary land.
Horses require food in winter.
Carts increase inventory capacity.
2-cell movement units (horse-enabled)
Kingdom Command Hierarchies (Vassal Tiers)
Expand kingdom management to multi-tier vassal chains to allow large kingdoms to scale governance through delegation.
player references to chain-of-command / top sovereign,
permissions and visibility by level?
Water Unit Capacity Model Evolution
Compare/choose between two models:
High-capacity water carry model (e.g., 30 per population) with land-movement restriction when overloaded for land rules.
Boat size build model where wood investment determines boat size/capacity (and potentially crew/food).
Land Grid Updates
Map resource heatmap filters
Add optional map filters for each resource that visualize relative density using a red/green heatmap (green = higher, red = lower).
Include tree heatmap as a separate filter.
Keep rainfall heatmap with current rainfall display logic.
Add icons beside each filter option.
Per-player mining icons on 10×10 land grid
Show one icon per player per mined metal type on cleared land.
Example: two different players mining tin => two tin icons.
Land info grid layout rework
Center city with walls, surrounded by farms, then mines, then horses, cleared land, then forest with wild animals for hunting displayed.
Hunter Unit Concept
Add hunter unit that harvests wild animal stock, with ecology tied to land fertility/forest.
Initial rules concept:
wild animals regenerate at similar rate to trees,
max animal population bounded by tree availability,
food output per worker similar to farming,
render animal icon in lower-left of tree cells.
Values and formulas may be tuned during balancing.
Four Seasons concept
4 turns per season, total 16 turns per game year
Farmers produce food in lower amounts throughout year, and a their main large harvest will be in summer.
For a farm to produce the large harvest in summer, it must be established from at least the previous winter,
The food will average out to be the same amount that is produced over the same number of turns currently (16),
Each game will begin in spring, with the next turn being the first part of summer,
Armies will suffer population losses when outside their kingdom in winter,
Horses will need food throughout winter when being used (1 food per 1 horse population).
1-cell water will touching land on two sides will freeze and can be crossed by land units.
In any enterprise, luck plays a part. Whether starting a business, buying stocks, growing vegetables, building a house, or starting a war, a large part of their fortune lies in unforeseeable events outside their control.
Weather, accidents, betrayal, technology which under-performed or failed, a shifting economy… there are countless unknowns. It’s difficult to predict the future when it’s impossibly to know every variable. If you’ve watched the show Grand Designs (home builders under-estimate cost and time about 90% of the time in the show) or leaders like Putin and Trump when they invade other countries, this should be obvious.
To reflect this, I’ve included an element of random chance in the calculations of not only combat, but all actions performed by all units.
Strength is based on population, tool upgrades and experience. Experience adds 1% per exp point. That means when maxed out, it can add up to 10% to the total strength of the unit.
Once base strength is calculated, by random chance your effective strength will be anything from 80% of that of that figure to 120%. It could go in either direction, for you and the opponent in a battle. Or when farming for example.
The intention is that you will need to look at the situation broadly and make a judgement – the odds might be in your favour, but will you take that chance? Have you planned for the worst and hope for the best, will you win even in the worst case scenario?
This is about pushing the player toward generalisation and leaning into strategy, rather than being able to crunch the numbers and win every battle to come out on top. I want the player to focus on the war (or whatever objective they have in mind) not the individual victories. For a more consistent outcome you will need to overwhelm the odds, and to do that you will almost always need the help of other players.
However, I accept that the current system isn’t fair. Completely random chance doesn’t make sense. Effective strength should be weighted toward the base strength.
At the moment, it works like the graph below – here are 300 random results in between 80%-120%:
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have most results closer to the base strength calculation? So it would be largely more predictable, but leaves room for random events.
Here’s how it will probably work in the future – generate two random numbers, and choose the closest to the base strength:
This creates a sort of flat-sided pyramid of results, which I think is more sensible. We could even make it the best of 3, squeezing everything to the centre even more:
“Wait” action created so you can queue any number of turns where the unit remains in place and continues doing their job before taking another action
Fisher population can now grow while they’re on water
Fisher and navy can switch to each other while on water
Fog issue not allowing members of the same kingdom to see the same area fixed
Added separate military unit population icons to map so it’s easier to identify where armies are building at a glance
Text on map chips/icons automatically chooses high contrast text depending on the colour of the background – this stops, for example, white text on light background becoming impossible to read
Fixed issue where players could control resources of a deceased unit even though the player had no local units in the same land
Adjusted map elements so they’re not obscuring each other when kingdom filter is on
Probably several other small things I forgot about
Some updates after issues were identified which resulted in players accidentally starving their populations to death, and quality of life suggestions to manage all resources.
If you choose, it should hopefully be possible to just stick with defaults and the units will mostly manage themselves.
Food now works more safely:
Units eat before excess redistribution.
Same-owner units on the same land share carried food for survival.
If food is short, it is split proportionally so population losses are consistent.
Any surplus above carry targets (see below) can still redistribute normally.
Added two unit resource controls:
Request materials for work This controls what materials a unit is allowed to automatically request and spend for work/tools. If wood, copper, tin, or bronze is unchecked, that unit will not ask distribution for it and will not auto-spend it for production or tools.
Carry targets This sets how much food/material a unit should try to keep after eating. Distribution can fill these targets when resources are available, and it will not take resources below the target unless the unit spends/eats them.
Fog of war has been implemented, let me know what you think.
Fisher’s population can now grow while they are on water. It didn’t make any sense that a fishing community would suddenly become sterile when they are working…
Turn summary emails should be working again.
Kingdom names and land names are now separate fields. If no Kingdom name is set, it will default to the land name.
Battle casualties fixed – results were swapped by accident and you would get wiped out when attacking with a superior force! Should be working correctly now.
“Select all lands in my kingdom” when sending messages was broken, should be working now.
Unit type change no longer gives magical extra XP.
Inactive users get notified when they are being skipped.
Resource transfer dropdown includes unit id/type/name/owner when transferring between units, still need to add this to the land-unit transfer.
Game-scoped general/message/resource notifications should now display in the normal turn notification view.
Skip My Turns / Resume Turns added. It looks like crap though, will improve it later.
