The world got bigger: continents, railways, living politics and wars far from the camera

Three days and more than 230 changes since the last devlog. The living world grew from a big island into continents with hundreds of towns, and everything living on it had to grow too: railways to move goods and armies, politics that can tear a nation apart from the inside, and a way to fight several wars at once without the whole world slowing down.

Version française plus bas.

Worlds the size of continents

• Two new map sizes in the menu: Continent (about 49 km a side) and Supercontinent (about 131 km). A living world there grows to hundreds of towns.
• The ground near the camera is built in tiles as you get close, and what is only a few pixels on screen is drawn and moved more simply (Distant simulation, in Graphics): a world this size stays playable.
• You choose how far apart towns stand (Rules, under Towns). Further apart: more room for new nations, and railways that matter.
• Seen from far away, the map shows the nations' names rather than every town.
• Loading a big map no longer freezes the page: the world is built a step at a time.

A Continent map at year 111, seen on the world map: 12 nations, hundreds of towns and their railways.
Une carte Continent à l'an 111, sur la carte du monde : 12 nations, des centaines de villes et leurs chemins de fer.

Railways

A freight train on the double track, through a town at dusk.
Un train de marchandises sur la double voie, à travers une ville au crépuscule.

• From the industrial age, nations lay lines between their towns and mining basins: stations, freight trains (ore, timber, oil, goods), goods carried to the ports by rail.
• Armies take the train to the far side of their country.
• Supply: an army far from its stations, depots and headquarters slows down, fires less and cannot refit. The stations behind the enemy's front become targets.
• Lines are double tracked, run straight where the land allows, and cross rivers on viaducts.

A railway viaduct over a river, the border between two nations in green.
Un viaduc ferroviaire au-dessus d'une rivière, la frontière entre deux nations en vert.

Politics that can break a nation

The Opinion map and a nation's Towns tab: what each town thinks of its rulers, and why.
La carte de l'opinion et l'onglet Villes d'une nation : ce que chaque ville pense de ses dirigeants, et pourquoi.

• Every town has an opinion of its rulers, with its reasons: taxes, an empire too vast, a distant capital, a war being lost, a bomb it remembers.
• Leaders rise in unhappy towns and build networks; some meet an informer. Rulers answer with concessions, arrests or purges, depending on how hard their grip is.
• When a network is strong enough, towns rise together and break away as a new nation, a capital can fall in a coup, and the hunted leave to found free towns. A rising with no chance is crushed at once.
• Regimes: monarchies, republics with elections, juntas, revolutions. Rulers whose traits are forged by their reign, and taxes they set.
• History: dynasties and lineage, renown, mottoes and banners, feats kept from one game to the next (main menu), ages of the world with their own events (the Great Fear, industrial disasters), and disarmament conferences.
• New map modes: culture, diplomacy, politics and opinion.

The Culture map: each people's tongue across the nations.
La carte des cultures : la langue de chaque peuple, par-delà les frontières.

Wars far from the camera

The world map (N): territories, railways, three wars and their fronts in red.
La carte du monde (N) : territoires, chemins de fer, trois guerres et leurs fronts en rouge.

• Only the war you are watching is fought unit by unit, in real time. The others are fought on the map: reserves wear down, towns on the front change hands, and the calendar keeps its pace. Come back to a front and the armies take the field again.
• The world map (N key): territories, railways, every war and its front. Zoom, drag, click to go there.
• A new war bill: an overview of each camp first, then losses and fire nation by nation, readable even with many nations.

The new war bill, its overview tab.
Le nouveau bilan de guerre, son onglet Vue d'ensemble.

At sea

• Submarines (attack and missile), sonar and depth charges: hidden until found.
• Weapons have ranges now (rockets 4 km, silo missiles 12 km), drawn round their launchers, and fleets can blockade enemy ports.
• Shipping lines: real ships shuttling between ports, a ship for each kind of load, pleasure boats round the coastal towns, and wakes behind every hull.

Comfort

• Every option in the menus has a line saying what it does.
• Overlays you can turn off, screen effects (flashes, shaking) in Graphics, a help screen in the pause for each mode, a cleaner menu on phones.

Next

Balancing all of this at continent scale, then the supply chains themselves: each army fed by its depots, and what it costs to keep a front alive.

Every game still draws a new world. Feedback is very welcome in the comments.