Dear Community! Even though the Emperor gave you the power to govern part of this land, your powers will always be limited. At the beginning of our journey, you will be limited by the borders of your own estate. You will have to choose where to settle, you will have to look for a spot that will provide you with the most basic resources like trees and water.
Once you find the perfect place, you can start building your city within the borders. In the beginning, the land available to you is a small rectangle. You must be able to fit all the buildings needed for your citizens to survive.
If you start outgrowing the initial land, you can expand your domain to suit your growing population. Your citizens have more and more needs, so you have to find a way to get more and more space. You can do that with the help of Towers. They allow you to claim more land, so you can fulfil more of your citizens’ needs. You must remember that this building has its own separate needs, which are not connected to the initial price of placing it down. Additionally, the price of every other Tower you place will be more expensive.
We decided to create rectangular borders, as the ability to rotate them allows you for much more flexible development of your cities: moving your borders towards resources or pretty natural features.
We hope that the limitations at the beginning of your playthroughs help with your creativity and resource management. Growing your cities will become a more organic part of the experience. With the limitations, we try to make sure that all players can express themselves in designing your cities. Let us know how you feel about this change, we’re awaiting your opinions and propositions on how to make this more fun for you. See you next time The Devs
Devblog #19 - Shaping Your Playthroughs!
Dear Community! We’re bringing some story elements which will help you shape your cities in many ways, by encouraging stable development. Event and Quests will help you keep up with the ideal growth and give you plenty of choices to make. But remember that choices you make may have unforeseen consequences.
Events
Significant moments will shape your journey. After major milestones, you will be directly confronted with your citizens’ needs and have to find the best possible solutions for all of them. It’s up to you to decide what your city’s budget and workforce can afford. You will have a general idea of the consequences of your actions, but like everything in life, nothing is for sure. Sometimes your decisions may have unlikely consequences and you will have to pay the price.
But milestones are not the only moments when events will interrupt your peaceful city planning. Life isn’t always predictable and certain events will catch you by surprise. These may be related to forces of nature, the Emperor’s moods or special holidays. You will have to make the decisions and then follow through. The citizens will remember your choices and that will influence their satisfaction. So very often if you decline their pleadings, you will be punished with temporary satisfaction debuffs.
Quests
They are the tasks you must fulfil once you make your decision in the Event window. These are often related to providing your city with a certain amount of materials or newly unlocked processed goods. If your citizens came to you asking for new clothing and you decided to help them, the quest of making clothes will begin. Sometimes you will have to race the clock and provide for the city before the time runs out. And if you fail, your citizens will not be too happy and for a while, you will have to work extra hard to satisfy their needs.
So the shape of your city, decorations and where you choose to build things, it’s still completely up to you. We want to make sure you get to experience all sides of running a city and that you don’t accidentally forget certain branches of the industry or infrastructure. Let us know what events you would like to see the most! See you next time The Devs
Devblog #18 - Customising Your Playthroughs
Dear Community! We bring you some of the settings that will influence the way your cities grow and develop throughout your playthroughs. These will shape your playthroughs in more than one way.
Tutorials
While new players may need some help from us, experienced players may see this as being held by the hand. And sometimes returning players need help remembering what to do and need only a bit of guidance. You can have a choice of how much help you need.
Full Guidance We will walk you through all game’s mechanics and show you how to build your city from the ground up. It’s useful during your first playthroughs, where even the most basic mechanics may seem a bit new.
Less Guidance We will introduce some of the mechanics, especially those that are not commonly found in other city-builders. The basics seem too obvious for us to explain at this point. We recommend this setting if you are a returning player, who has played many city builders before but hasn’t touched Celestial Empire in a while.
No Guidance You probably know the game inside out and can play with your eyes closed. There will be no tutorials, no hints, and no expertise from us. You are the expert now. The training wheels are off.
These tutorial changes do not include tooltips, which explain certain functionalities and mechanics behind tools and buildings.
Difficulties
As players, you will be faced with a choice that will influence most of your playthroughs. Each difficulty will have its own set of challenges and different starting points. Certain obstacles are more likely to happen and even some handy tools may be disabled for the sake of the challenge.
Easy Difficulty will let you create and redecorate your dream city. Your fields will always yield high harvests and your citizens will be easier to please, so you can relax and enjoy the simple life as the Governor with almost unlimited power. Disasters will rarely threaten your citizens, so you can have some fun with barely any consequences to your choices. You start as a rich man and will hopefully help your city get even richer.
Medium Difficulty will bring some challenges but they will not be overwhelming. You can still reshape the city at any point, but it will cost you. Everything around you will be mediocre, harvests will be okay, and there will be enough materials to help you satisfy your citizens’ needs. Disasters will come and go, but with smart planning ahead and skilled building placing, you will be fine.
Hard Difficulty is challenging. Forces of nature and odds are stacked against you. There’s a permanence to your choices, so you better plan ahead, because there is no moving of the buildings. There is only demolition. Disasters will stick to you like flies to a glue trap and disastrous consequences will be more devastating than ever. Even the soil does not like you and will make harvests a miserable experience. So good luck feeding your people and finding materials. It’s you and your skills against the scary world of Hard Difficulty.
So these are the tutorial, difficulty settings. They will be the cornerstone of your playthroughs. We’re very excited to introduce some challenges and give you the option to just relax and not worry about too many things. How do you think, which difficulty setting will be your favourite? Let us know! See you next time! The Devs
Devblog #17 - Grazing on the Open Fields.
Dear Community! Before you develop sprawling cities on this untouched land, take a moment to look at the large open fields. Waving grass dances to the wind and a variety of trees change colours through the seasons. This may be a small detail but nature surrounding your city will be the most beautiful backdrop.
We’re aiming to create a complex palette of colours in which the cities will be the main focus. The lush plant life will bring out the best of the buildings’ colours. We’ve already talked about a wide variety of trees, so it’s time to mention the tiniest of plants. The base layer of the greenery cake is the grass. It may not seem like a lot, but it will be key to the seasons changing.
Masks in Unreal Engine allow us to place thousands of small tufts of grass all over the map. This will also allow for ease of access, so we can change and tweak colours depending on the time of year. Seasons will visually indicate the gameplay changes. Harsh winters will stop food production and increase the amount of fuel our citizens need. So observe nature to prepare for the upcoming hardships.
Let us know how you are planning to incorporate natural beauty into your cities. Will you have spaces for rabbits and ducks to relax and frolic around? Remember that including trees and green spaces is key to creating balance and making people happy. Can’t wait to hear about your dream cities. See you soon! The Devs
New Trailer, New Us!
Last month we presented a closer look at the technical side of things and today we deliver a visual delight that is the new trailer! You can see the full scale of the details created using Unreal Engine's Nanite. We're able to include the tiniest elements of the buildings and surrounding areas!
This trailer also delivers a closer look into the lives of your citizens! Watch them walk around, work, buy food and enjoy a lovely day at the temple! They may not know it yet, but your leadership will bring the prosperity you can see in the gorgeous and blissful scenes of the video.
Agriculture mixes with industrial parts of the city as we all watch it grow and evolve in front of our eyes. Let us know which citizens or buildings or any elements of the city are your favourite! We're eagerly waiting for your comments here, on youtube or in our Discord!
This trailer is also available here on Steam, so you can check it out on our Steam Store Page!
Devblog #16 - Upgrades continue!
Dear Community! In the previous devblog we presented a new direction we decided to take with our game’s look. These improvements are the result of a few significant technological changes behind the scenes. Here are two key shifts in production that allowed us to move to a new look.
Unreal Engine 5 Right before a stable version of the new engine was released to the public, conversations regarding a switch began and the entire project was moved soon after. This allowed us to implement new tools and methods of optimization. Thanks to them we are able to improve the vast majority of the visual elements of the game including the models and lighting, without compromising framerates and overall performance. The switch to UE5 also increases the longevity of the game itself, as the updates to the engine will continue for much longer and more useful tools will be created over time.
Nanite Virtulized Geometry One of the key reasons we considered this move beneficial was the introduction of Nanite. Our 3D artists were especially excited about this, as Nanite allows them to create high-quality models without the necessity to painstakingly double-check and limit the polygon counts in every building. This tool shortens the time needed to create a game-ready model, as we can allow every model to have more details than ever, without burning your PCs. You will spend the vast majority of your playthroughs looking at the roofs of your cities. It’s fitting that as the gameplay becomes well-rounded, so do the roofs.
Nanite helps with much more seamless transitions between LODs, especially with a high number of similar meshes in view. Your cities will have many repeating buildings to keep up with your citizens’ needs and this tool will allow them to be rendered and visible with a high level of detail without straining your computer too much.
This also means that optimization is much more straightforward, as there aren’t many obstacles which will take up time. This saved-up time can be used to improve the detailing of the models, which now can get much more love and attention.
These changes will speed up and improve the development process. We’re able to continue our work without worrying about certain aspects. The change in look and lighting will definitely help you immerse yourselves in the beautiful world of Ancient China. Hopefully, this short summary of the upgrades in the tech used behind the scenes will shed some light on the effort we put into ensuring our game’s longevity and beauty!
See you next time the Devs
Devblog #15 - And YOU get an upgrade!
Dear Community, For a while, we have been working on improving the game’s look and performance. This process has brought innovation in the creative process, new technical achievements and changes which will ensure the game’s longevity. We will reveal all of those over time, but let’s begin with the most noticeable difference of all: the game looks a lot better now.
There haven’t been many changes to the visual design principles, we are still going for a relatively realistic look with lush foliage and detailed buildings full of life and secrets. If anything, the decision was made to push even harder towards realism. Among details in the natural landscape, we have been working on details such as spectacular boulders and new ways of colouring the map with flowers. This world has to be rich in beauty and resources, so every player can take full advantage of everything this setting had to offer.
We have added a multitude of new buildings and enhanced the looks of the old ones. We pay special attention to the ones which will appear in large numbers in every playthrough. Upgrades in used technology allow us to add more details to the environment without sacrificing optimisation possibilities. We will discuss the technology behind some of those details before the end of the year. Everything has to be prepared for large settlements that grow dramatically every time the player reaches a milestone.
There are places on the map that look spectacular on their own, but we know you can all find new and exciting settings for your dream cities. You’re the ones shaping the landscape with sprawling settlements full of houses and specialised buildings. These beating hearts of the land will be your pride and joy for entire playthroughs.
Sometimes the serenity of certain places is surprising even for us. Large forests with many varieties of trees and plants can be populated with small centres of worship. Or lonely bridges can become decorative aspects of your vision for the city. These small details in what you can do with production buildings or decorative props have been some of the most exciting elements of testing.
We’re already excited to see your creations. Screenshots in this devblog were provided by multiple members of the team, who have built beautiful cities while testing new features and the game’s economy. Everyone was over the moon when all changes and upgrades finally fell into place like puzzle pieces and revealed the bigger picture of this game’s true potential and beauty. There still is a lot to be done, but we hope that a move in this direction will show the care and love everyone pours into this project. Can’t wait for your feedback! You can reach us on our social media or join our discord.
See you next time! The Devs
Devblog #14 - The Icons for all Your Citizens’ Needs
Dear Community!
The previous devblog included a simple representation of one of the production chains in the process. The introduction of this simple diagram of making baijiu inspired us to share more icons and our thought processes when creating them. Alongside the icons, we’d like to share concept art for the buildings they represent.
Clarity is one of the major factors in creating icons for any mechanic or element of the game. We want to implement simple connections between buildings, resources and simple visual representations of them. Some things are easier to show than others a simple look into Chinese culture and lifestyle was an immense inspiration. The baijiu jars are used to this day and are an easy insight into the lives of ancient Chinese. So we decided to take what we could have found in our research and in one way or another apply it to our icons.
The vast majority of the citizens were obviously farm workers, so in their daily lives, they saw equipment and animals used to produce food for the Empire. We took this experience and as we decided which animals to assist the farmers, the immediate thought was the water buffalo. These massive animals have the strength to work all day in the fields. This is why they are common in our game and are the representation of draft animals.
Another element of the agricultural landscape that could have been a common sight for farm workers were the windwihirls. We use them to pump water so your crops can grow faster in the summer months.
The elites’ lives were much more luxurious, so they could indulge in all forms of art. This very much included visiting the theatre and playing instruments. We included manufacturers making musical instruments. The workers create magnificent traditional drums and pipas, which became the icons to represent the entire production building.
Those instruments are also used in the theatre to enhance the performance of the actors. Traditional Chinese theatre has a very distinct look to it and costumes used by actors are easy to recognise even from far away. This is why we decided to assign the mask to represent the theatre.
Here is also an additional round of icons representing all sorts of resources, which will keep your citizens fed and safe. These icons will help you quickly navigate production chains, thanks to which our cities will grow large and stronger than ever before.
These are just a few examples of icons we created to help with a clear and cohesive look of the game. There are dozens of buildings and mechanics with distinct icons, which we want to keep in relative secrecy, so we can surprise you later on. We are looking forward to your feedback and ideas on how we could simplify the mental connections we try to create between icons and resources or buildings. Join our Discord and follow our social media to see more screenshots and learn more about our games!
See you! The Devs
Devblog #13 - Creating the regional delicacy.
Dear Community,
In creating a more familiar and inspired world, we put a lot of effort into understanding how the ancient Chinese lived their lives. This includes more than just reading historical records and looking at traditional architecture. We discovered interesting similarities between our culture and the ancient Chinese while trying to understand the technology and sciences used during the Tang dynasty. The significance of alcohol and its influence on history became clear. Baijiu's role in religious, political, and everyday people's affairs was too important to ignore. This meant we couldn't skip a distillery on the list of buildings necessary to help your cities grow prosperous.
Baijiu of the past While today's production is mechanised and monitored through sophisticated equipment to ensure the correct notes come through in the taste, the ancient Chinese had to rely more on their instincts and ingenuity. This means that hundreds of years ago, the process was theoretically simpler, but it still took years to master. Sorgo was steamed and prepared for the fermentation process in special holes in the ground. This is where the flavour profile is determined. Depending on bacteria and other microorganisms in the soil, the taste of baijiu changes. The next step of production is the distillation of the alcohol. This is where the baijiu masters would pay special attention to the bubbles forming on the top of the liquid. They are an indicator of the quality and how much flavour baijiu has. They would monitor how long the bubbles linger and remove bits if the liquid that didn’t meet their expectations. After they have the perfect alcohol, distilled batches of baijiu are left in cool cellars to age, which further enriches the flavour. We tried to emulate these steps in our game.
Our distilleries The distillery unlocks once your city welcomes in the third tier of citizens. It consists of scholars. At this time you should have access to sorgo fields. They will have to be connected to the nearest river to ensure the highest quality harvests. Additionally, you should be able to create fine pottery. The science and artistry needed to create high-quality baijiu will be possible with the help of scholars. As they introduce the beverage into your city, they will require it as a part of their lives. Baijiu will be a part of their need for recreation. Alcohol will be distributed to your citizens through a system of warehouses scattered around your city.
We are trying to find these small details that will allow you to immerse yourselves in managing an ancient Chinese city—basing the needs of your citizens on real-life necessities to enhance the experience of being a true governor attending to the demands of the people. We constantly seek new ideas to help us improve the game. What elements are you looking forward to? Do you have things you’d like us to include? Let us know in our Discord and social media!
See you next time, The Devs
Devblog #12 - Plan, Adapt, Overcome!
Dear Community! Your cities are under attack! Nature brings its mightiest soldiers to destroy your city’s economy and buildings! Not every day in your life as the governor will be smooth sailing. Disasters will plague your cities from time to time and threaten your citizens’ safety, but you can be prepared. The majority of them can be mitigated through specialised buildings and characters. So continue reading to learn how to survive some of the disasters that are lurking to end your city.
Fires Since the majority of your citizens use an open fire to warm themselves and cook fires will be an often occurrence in your city. Every building can catch fire, so remember to watch out for them. They spread fast and travel from building to building and before you know it you may not be able to stop them. So be prepared! To prevent fires from scorching your lands, remember to build plenty of wells. Citizens working at them will continuously save important infrastructure.
Locust These small insects are a threat to your food supply chains. Swarms of locusts will appear in farming attachments. They will ramage through your fields making it difficult/impossible to produce food. To stop these bugs from getting all your supplies make sure you have your duck farms and locust hunter’s hut somewhere in your city. When your crops are jeopardized this brave individual will summon local ducks to defeat the horrifying swarms of insects.
These are only two of the disasters and weather conditions influencing your city which we planned for the final version of the game. As we move along with the production there will be more information on these dangerous events. Remember to make sure you can protect your cities from these disasters and pay attention to what’s happening to the buildings. There will be warnings, but the longer you decide to ignore them, the more devastating consequences you will have to face. If there are any other disasters you see fit for your game, let us know! We are waiting for your ideas in our Discord and on our social media! See you there! The Devs
