Devblog #29 - Divine Relationship Trees and Miracles
Hello Constructors!
Today, we’re unveiling a powerful new system in Celestial Empire – the Divine Relationship Trees! As you progress, your connection with the gods will shape your city’s destiny, offering unique and permanent bonuses that enhance your empire.
Divine Relationship Trees
In Celestial Empire, there are three godly patrons, each with their own relationship tree. As a governor, you can invest Faith Points to unlock various permanent bonuses, such as the ability to purchase some vials of Miracles or economic perks like, for example, road decorations providing a tax boost.
Earlier in the game, you had to choose your divine patron. Remember, this decision matters and stays with your city forever! Bonuses within your chosen god’s tree come at a reduced cost, making it easier to strengthen your bond with them. If you want to explore these divine paths, visit the Divine Island, where the relationship trees await.
The Divine Shop
Your faith doesn’t just grant blessings. It also opens the doors to the Divine Shop, where you can spend Faith Points on powerful bonuses, such as:
Miracles – Single-use abilities that provide instant effects. Blessings – Permanent bonuses that last forever, shaping your city’s long-term prosperity.
Every player starts with access to four base vials in the shop. However, your chosen patron grants access to a unique additional miracle vial, making your decision even more impactful. The Divine Shop can also be found on the Divine Island, so be sure to visit and see what the gods have to offer!
How will you shape your divine path? Will you stay loyal to your patron and focus on his relationship tree, or seek power beyond your chosen god? Let us know your thoughts, and stay tuned for more updates!
See ya The Devs
Happy Lunar New Year, Constructors!
To all the Constructors!
The Year of the Dragon has passed, and now we welcome the Year of the Snake! In Chinese culture, the snake symbolizes wisdom, transformation, prosperity and determination – qualities that every great ruler needs to build a thriving empire. Governor, bring glory to your city, for that is your duty!
May this new year bring you success, harmony, and endless creativity in shaping your cities. Thank you for being part of our journey, and we can’t wait to share more exciting updates with you. Let Celestial Empire awaken your curiosity and bring you closer to the wonderful Chinese culture.
Wishing you happiness, good fortune, and a prosperous Year of the Snake!
Best wishes from the whole President Studio
Devblog #28 - Improvement Office
Hello Constructors!
Today, we’re diving into one of the tier choices you’ll face when advancing to the Age of Scholars. You'll find an option to unlock the Improvement Office. This is a building which introduces a brand-new mechanic that will help you make use of spare Science Points.
CONVERT YOUR SCIENCE POINTS
Once you’ve constructed an Improvement Office, its engineers get to work converting your hard-earned Science Points into valuable upgrades for your city. These upgrades can include reduced upkeep costs for buildings or increased efficiency for oxen, among others. What's the catch? The Improvement Office applies its benefits to buildings within its range, making strategic placement crucial. So keep that in mind!
PICK YOUR REWARD
You, as the Governor, have the power to choose which upgrade to prioritize. Want to focus on economic efficiency? Opt for reduced building maintenance costs. Need to boost resource transportation? Enhance your oxen’s productivity. And if your priorities shift, no problem – you can adjust the chosen upgrade anytime via the Improvement Office panel. That's also the place where you can check the exact value of your bonuses.
The Improvement Office empowers you to fine-tune your city’s performance, ensuring it thrives under your guidance. Will you use this mechanic to shape your city? Let us know your strategies, and as always, stay tuned for more updates!
See ya! The Devs
Devblog #27 - Fertility
Hello Constructors!
In the last devblog we talked about a choice a player has to make while proceeding to The Age Of Craftsmen. You have to choose between Festival or Fertility mechanics. We’ve already told you about the festivals, so now it's time to dive into fertility mechanics.
PRODUCING A FERTILIZER
After choosing Feritility, you will be able to increase the productivity of your farms by providing them with compost as a fertilizer. To produce compost, you need to place a Compost Facility subbuilding to an animal farm.
FERTILIZING FIELDS
Then you can use that compost to fertilize your fields. Place a Composter in your city, so it will fertilize cultivated fields in its range. Fields are slowly getting fertilized to their maximum level over time and their productivity increases. You can also check fertility levels in your city by clicking on a fertility filter. You can see how it works on a right side of an image below.
With the Fertility mechanic, your agricultural strategy will play a crucial role in shaping the prosperity of your empire. Balancing farm placement, composter efficiency, and crop productivity can help your city grow. Whether you prioritize festivals or sustainable, fertile land, the choice is yours. Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, feel free to share your thoughts and feedback with us. And what would YOU choose? Are you a festival fan or do you prefer prioritising fertile soil? Let us know!
Till later! The Devs
Devblog #26 - It’s Festival Time!
Hello Constructors!
Building ancient Chinese cities sure is cool, but wouldn’t you mind having a little more fun while doing it? We come to the rescue! To diversify your experience, we want to introduce you to recent changes in the choice which a player has to make when he reaches The Age Of Craftsmen. Now, players can choose between two new mechanics, the Festival mechanic and Fertility. Of course… like before, you also have the option to make no selection, but we guarantee that you'll be missing out! In this devblog, we'll delve into the mechanics of Festivals and how they can bring your city to life.
FESTIVALS
To access Festivals, after picking it while advancing to The Age Of Craftsmen, you first need to unlock the Market in the Technology Tree. Once you've built a Market in your city, you can initiate festivals through it. Clicking on the Market opens a window displaying the available festivals. Each festival offers different effects and lasts for a specific period. During a festival, you not only reap its bonuses but also experience visual enhancements throughout your city. NPCs celebrating in key locations, fireworks, kites, and banners are just some of the festive elements you will notice.
FESTIVAL LIMITATIONS
When one festival ends, you must wait for an appropriate cooldown period before launching another. Each festival also has a food cost, which varies depending on the festival you choose. This food comes from different tiers, mostly depending on the social class involved, and in varying quantities. Furthermore, each subsequent festival will be proportionally more expensive to host. We've also added new decorations that can be placed on city roads. These decorations now increase the tax revenue from the social group within their influence range.
We hope you enjoy this new addition and the vibrancy it brings to your cities. As always, we appreciate your feedback and support. Happy building, and may your empire flourish with the spirit of celebration! Stay tuned for more updates, and don’t forget to share your thoughts with us. Let us know what kind of festival you would like to see the most.
Till later! The Devs
Devblog #25 - New Monument
Hello Constructors!
The governor's job is no easy one, as it is the person responsible for all the strategic decisions regarding the city’s growth. Maintaining a positive relationship with the gods is a must. One does not want to fall into disgrace, and it’s way better to have some divine help. To progress your city into the next stage, first you need to ask for the gods’ support. And that is… the monument. You could have already seen the Weeping Fountain or the Jade Emperor, but we finished another monument – Palace On The Water.
BUILDING'S MODEL
To create that building, first we worked on the concept, which later served as a basis for the detailed construction planning. We gather references to real ancient Chinese constructions and that’s when it gets tricky. The ancient architecture of China can surprise with the complexity of its elements, each of which serves as a building structure and is also a decoration. All things are ready, so it’s time to move on to modeling using Blender.
TEXTURES
After the model is exported, it’s time to put it together with some textures. For such a big monument we prepared 3 materials: the stone base of the building, roof tiles and facade elements. And once everything looked good, another step was to import the model to the engine, where we created a blueprint and added some decorative elements to the building, such as water, plants, lights, effects, NPCs and so on.
MONUMENT IN COMPARISON
The last step was to see how the monument was doing in the game’s environment, in comparison to all the other buildings. Palace On The Water is a very big and detailed building. But if you don’t trust us, you can always look at the image below.
Monuments play a very big part in our game. They sum up the city’s progression. More monuments = more advanced city. And what do you think about Palace On The Water? It sure is huge, but did it capture your heart? With 3 monuments ready and presented, we are currently working on the last monument. Do you have any guesses about what that could be? Let us know in the comments!
See ya! The Devs
Happy Chinese New Year 2024!
To all the Constructors!
Today is a very special day in China and without a rich Chinese culture, Celestial Empire wouldn't be the same as it is today. Let's give a warm welcome to the Lunar New Year! We would love to show our appreciation by engaging in those important celebrations together with you. May all your wishes come true in 2024. Wishing you lots of energy, good spirit and the best luck to your loved ones. As the Year of the Dragon arrives, may you spread your wings and soar high, with great fortune lying ahead. Stay safe on your life's journey. We're really thankful for having such a great community like you!
Best wishes from the whole President Studio!
Devblog #24 - Early Access and Updates!
Welcome Constructors!
As time goes by, we’re slowly approaching the day of the Celestial Empire’s release. Hard to believe how much time has passed and how many things have changed since we started, isn’t it? But we’re finally getting there, so it’s about time to talk about it more.
EARLY ACCESS
The game will come out first in early access. But what is it and why is that – you might ask. EA is a solution thanks to which you will be getting a fully playable version with the promised content of the game, while helping us on our game-making journey. We are really looking forward to including our community in the process of improving the game to its fullest potential. With all the basics covered, our focus will be on adding new exciting content, balancing mechanics and polishing already existing features with you guiding us on the right path. Expect lots of updates coming! More details about early access will be available soon on the FAQ on our Steam store page.
RECENT CHANGES
It’s been a busy time for our developers, who are working hard like bees. Lots of different things have changed since last time, so let us show you what we have been up to.
Now an altar is not a thing that is already placed in the world, once you start the game. An altar is a special place where you can make offerings to the godly powers, but you have to unlock and build it first. That also means that you are the one to decide its placement, which gives you more creative freedom in constructing your city. Once the player builds an altar, he gets to choose his godly patron. Each one of them (Ao Guang, Wukong, Nüwa) provides different changes and bonuses to the game’s mechanics and will lead a player further on his journey. After choosing a patron, there's no way to change it, so choose carefully.
The new and the first monument to construct is called Weeping Fountain, representing the moon goddess Chang’e. Once the player meets requirements, he can unlock the monument and build a base for it in a place of his choice and start delivering offerings to the altar. This process can be paused at any moment. The monument no longer emerges in one moment, but it slowly appears piece by piece, according to the offerings' progression. At the end, the monument’s construction must be finalized to advance your city.
HELPFUL FEATURES
To make your game even more enjoyable, we decided to add a helpful feature - highlights. When a player hovers over an icon of a building on the lower bar, all the buildings of its type light up, which makes it easier to keep track of them. There’s also a road’s highlight. It shows you the operation range of some of the buildings, once you click on them. And, while placing a building that requires a warehouse to function, highlights will let you know about all the warehouses in range of a chosen place. Decoratives, just like religious buildings, work only for the social class assigned to them.
AND MORE COMING…
Is that all? Ha, of course not. We are currently working on new maps, new tutorials, improvements and many many different things are being developed at the time we speak. All to meet not only our expectations, but yours. Here's a little new map's teaser!
Do you like new changes? Or more importantly... are you as excited for Celestial Empire as we are? Hop on discord and feel free to share your thoughts with us!
See ya The Devs
Devblog #23 - UI Improvements
Hello Constructors!
There are times when any game can give you a headache, especially when some of its elements are unintuitive and hard to locate. Navigating through the system should proceed smoothly, without any obstacles, so you can enjoy your game in peace to the fullest. From what we’ve heard from you, some UI elements weren’t so intuitive as we believed them to be. We listen to your feedback and suggestions – that’s why we took this matter into our own hands! Let us present you some of the examples of UI improvements we’ve been working on recently.
CODEX, QUEST LOG
As you can see, codex is a whole new section you haven’t been able to see before in the demo release. You are the one who suggested we make one! It’ll pose as your guide through Celestial Empire – explaining the controls, mechanics, resources, buildings and so on. So, anytime you feel lost, or you just want to make sure how anything works, checking the codex is definitely a way to go! To get to the codex, first you have to open quest log by clicking on a question mark visible on an upper bar of a quest (check out the screenshot at the"lower bar" section). There you are able to switch tabs and switch to the codex straight from the quest log.
STATISTICS
You’ve been mentioning that it is hard to keep track of your income, resources or traded goods. That’s why we implemented yet another tab, that will let you check it all in one place instead of going through multiple tabs. You can check a resource's quantity change or its quantity history.
LOWER BAR
Even the lower bar had its redesign, as it is the UI element you will probably be using the most. There were a few problems to address: its unintuitiveness, chaotic sorting of categories and tools. Now every icon represents one of some building categories, so everything was sorted anew to make things easier to find – now there are more categories, which narrows down the number of buildings included in one. There are also some plus icons, posing as shortcuts of your choice, for you to design. For example, you can put some of your most used production chains or buildings there! There are 5 slots like this, with 3 of them already assigned at the beginning, but you can freely change it later in the game. Tools are now located in one place on the right side of the lower bar – delete tool, move tool, copy tool, upgrade tool and a whole new blueprint tool, which will allow you to plan your buildings before actually placing them. Also, delete tool and upgrade tool got enhanced in the UI, as the new design of the lower bar is now lighter.
At the top of the screen we've made it possible for you to customize shown resources. There you can attach your choosen raw materials and curriences, up to 5 of them on each side in total.
UI SCALING
If you think that’s the end, you couldn’t be more wrong. We saw your constant rambling about the uncustomizable size of UI elements. For some of you they were too small, thus quests were hard to read and, but for the other half of you, it took up too much space on your screen. We chose to follow your suggestions and meet you halfway by including UI scaling as an option in the settings. Although this feature is not ready yet, we are working on it, and it will be available in the full game’s release, so… just have some faith in us that it'll work without any problems.
Do you think that these changes will improve your city-building experience? No one likes crappy UI and having to go through a mess to find anything… so if you’ve got any other suggestions, share them with us! And if you want to show us some interesting examples of some hideous UIs, why not join our community discord server and let’s have a convo!
See ya! The Devs
Devblog #22 - New Map!
Welcome Constructors!
With a demo release behind us, you could take a glance at a charming Chinese setting. Watch its buildings, beautiful surroundings and connect with divine powers – all of that starting but with a little altar. Some of you may feel as if you already know every river by heart… but what if we told you that what you've seen so far is not a final map?
NEW MAP
You’ve heard us well – the current map, the one you know from playtests and a demo, was made just for purposes of testing Celestial Empire. We are happy to finally present you with our progress on one of the final maps! Let's have a dive into details, shall we? :)
This map is heavily inspired by some interesting Chinese land formations. It’s diverse, filled with hills, rocks, stone structures and cut by many winding rivers. All that, just to show you how amazing some parts of vast Chinese swaths can be.
NEW MAP'S GAMEPLAY
But how will a different terrain affect players? Well, you could’ve already realized that placing your buildings around natural resources is crucial in Celestial Empire. This map will give you a little bit more of a challenge, because of rivers, winding the land, thus hindering access to some parts of the map, its resources and limiting space for your architectural creations. So this map, in terms of difficulty, is a hard one. Available resources will also vary in the placement and quantity of the deposits, depending on the map you've chosen.
MAP SELECTION
At the beginning of a new game, there will be some starting maps to choose from freely. Each one of them will be handcrafted, thus polished with the utmost care, to reflect the beauty of China’s natural environment. Each one of the maps poses a different challenge and highlights different aspects of Chinese lands. There will be few maps' difficulty levels, so no worries, as easier maps will also be available. A normal map will provide you with much more free space for your buildings. You will be able to choose which one suits you best. Pick your favorite, pick your fighter! Or… just try them all for a varied experience :D
Let us know in the comments what you think of our new map! Do you, perhaps, have some part of China you would love to be portrayed in the game? And don’t forget to join our discord, so we can hear from you and have a lively discussion.
