Development Diary #11 - 16th of January 2008

Welcome back after two weeks of great holidays and busy like bees working on the game.

So, what have we done since the last update then? Well, a lot of time have been spent on adding in the last remaining parts of the game, as tutorials, various cityviews, a proper frontend, and finalising historical databases. From now on, we’re feature complete and just work with playing and testing and balancing the game.



This screenshot shows our current units and their status, as well as our support limits and current maintenance settings.

Today, we’ll talk about civilization and colonisation.
Every province has a civilisation value which describes how civilised it is. This value increase over time if it is neighbour or a province it is trading with is more civilised. Over time civilisation will spread from the Mediterranean out into the Barbarian hinterlands. A wealthy ruler may decide to raise epic monuments to their rule, boosting the civilisation value of the capital. Civilisation value acts as a multiplier on research generation. So you’ll find that research goes a little slower if you are a barbarian. The civilisation value of the Capital also acts a restriction on what inventions you can get. You require a minimum civilisation value to gain access to the inventions that boost heavy infantry effectiveness, a barbarian country that raises Roman style heavy infantry will not be as good as the real thing, they just don’t get it.

Civilisation value also influences colonisation, as the civilisation value over the frontier increases and the barbarians are weak enough then the other side of the frontier looks attractive to settle. A strong military governor and defensive structures will boost this attractiveness. New colonies will start to appear. Eventually the province will become civilised enough that the Barbarians will be absorbed and become your people and the process will continue. Although another way of looking at is that regular expeditions to keep the barbarians on the frontier in check will lead eventually to the advancement of your frontier.


We have a new system of calling events, that is triggered directly from the code as an action happens with the correct scope. Here is an example on two groups of event-series that can be triggered for characters.