What's New?

Nothing much in terms of what's been released. AI tribes will occasionally build developments, and biome mapping has been reworked to bring back a wider variety of temperature zones.

What's Next?

This week I've been working on characters, largely porting over the data from Bronze Age 3, and re-importing all of the art assets. That's more or less done now. The next step will be building out the UI for managing them.

Characters, Generation, Uses

Characters are the important nobles of your empire, including the ruler, their family, and other notable houses. Each has a set of stats and skills which will determine how well they perform when given assignments. Assignments are jobs for your empire's characters, such as governor of a settlement, high priest, or envoy to another tribe. They will provide a bonus from their job, corresponding to their stats. For example, a governor with high Wit will give a production bonus to their settlement, while an envoy with high Charisma will negotiate better treaties.

(image is from Bronze Age 3)

An initial family will be generated at the beginning of the game for your empire, and it can grow from there through births, marriages, and adoptions. Marriages can be diplomatic in nature, or as a way of adopting promising candidates without upsetting your ruler's other children. Some skills will be inherited, so careful match making is important for getting strong characters in following generations.

Species and Ethnotypes

As part of the foundation work for generating characters I've also added ethnotypes. Ethnotypes are sub-groupings within a species, entirely cosmetic in nature. Later on in Milestone 2 the Shontu will be added, sharing the Atlantean species with the Humittes, but as a new ethnotype reflecting their more southern african inspiration. Initial characters using an initial ethnotype for body features, but their children will rely on inheritance instead, so a mixed Shontu / Humitte child can have features from both ethnotypes. Characters from different species (such as Atlantean and Maskling) cannot have children.