itch.io

mid-run saves vaguely work now, from the latest version (although still need to improve it)
settings I have only a few notes about and will probably wait a while longer to add them. 

military is likely to scale even more in terms of variety and skill expression (ex: tons of specialized units in army building, more tactics, more upgrades variety, more traits, leader on the battlefield, raid boss style threats, white/black teams from affinity, more city stats affecting unit stats and military stat, more intricate triggers for invasion events, more ways to handle them, etc.) so the current form is only vaguely balanced in anticipation of that (currently working on connectivity/morale stats which can affect military, for example).  It might be that I know all the details ahead of time, but it currently feels way too easy, so with more variety it would also require more threats. 

I was also theorycrafting ways to scale building variety without having an endless front-loaded wall of buildings and have designed a vague notion of a blueprints mechanic that would allow naturally forming available building selection to some degree (ex: imagine there are 999 different buildings, and you have to de-select all the ones you don't want rather than drafting ones you do). I'm not sure how the details of blueprints work exactly, and I'm not even sure that I prefer it that way since personally I enjoy the giant megawall of options approach, but it's on the table for another game system similar to prefabs except unlocking new building types (one issue is that balance of progress becomes 10x more complicated if everyone has different building options). I like favorites/hidden or even changing the ordering of things, but not sure yet how the actual implementation would look (prefer not to have keyboard controls required, even if optional ones are added later)

idk if I'll do that yet... stats are the basis of everything else so for today I have been thinking a lot about how to theme more stats, what kinds of influence/scaling they could have, and what level of viability each one has in combination with the doors it opens. ex: connectivity allows concepts like transport/roads to be a part of the city without hijacking some other arbitrary stat. small city has high connectivity by default, and the larger it becomes the more roads/transport are needed to keep the stat high, making the 'spam small buildings' approach less overpowered in an indirect way. Morale has some similar balance impacts, scaling its value from victory/defeat or positive/negative events, which alters the value of all other event chance scaling and makes perpetual defeat-rebuild form of progress reflected in the city stats through morale/trust. This is the synopsis version of what these stats do, so they are taking a while to sort out. (currently involves stat itself, influence mesh, research, icons sync, character trait, governance, events, buildings, etc.)  

with connectivity/morale and more the game becomes even harder, so I'm starting to consider some kind of casual mode, or eventually distributing complexity across ascension tiers. The thing about these city stats is they do not always help you. They are good at high values and bad or neutral at low values, so the more of them there are the more intractable it becomes to have all of them high, which inevitably results in a complex series of pro/con influences. So, while I have no desire to pull any punches or simplify anything, it might be unreasonable to have the most complicated version be the only available option.

It is likely to become an absurd learning curve, if it isn't already. 
(some of this is 'note to self')