Roadmap

Happy new year! A big thanks to everyone who's played Bronze Age in 2017, and a special thanks to everyone who's participated in discussions and feedback. Your input is invaluable in helping to make Bronze Age as good as it can be.

I'm aiming for Bronze Age to be feature complete this year, and have laid out  a rough plan below. I'm aiming for an update every one or two months, starting with the Morale Update this week.

• Morale - Luxuries, settlement happiness, and peasant revolts. Increased depth in settlement management.
• Boats and Battles - Boats, seaborne trade, and a rework of combat.
• Nobles - Nobles, characters that can be assigned to run settlements and lead armies, you'll have to keep the nobles loyal, or they might rebel to form their own tribes.
• Diplomacy - Talk, trade, and deal with other tribes. Some more AI types will be added in here as well. Humans, and maybe mushroom people.
• Laws  - Enact laws to change and evolve your tribe into an empire. Multiple branching possibilities reflecting various cultures from history.
• Religion  - Gods and temples to worship them. Earn favor with the gods to invoke their favor. Miracles ranging from a simple change in the weather, to  calling down divine wrath.
• Rival Empire - An AI empire, just as capable as your own.

What Then?

Once I'm satisfied that Bronze Age is feature complete and decently polished, I plan to release it on steam. When that happens there will be a minimum price on itch.io (probably in the $5 to $10 range) matching Steam, and each purchase will come with a steam key. I'll make sure, however, that everyone who's donated any amount in the past will also get a key.

Improving Combat

One of the goals of the next update (Boats and  Battles) is to improve combat. I'm rather unhappy with it in its current state. I'm also not entirely sure how to fix it, I have some ideas, but I'd like to hear from you all as well.

The Problems, As I See Them

• There are few tactical decisions to make.
• No real need for tactical decisions or planning.
• No rewards for tactical thinking (flanks, etc)
• Enemy units trickle into attacks.
• Sight range is too low, can't see enemies coming.

Proposed Fixes

• Reworked battle AI that moves and controls units in groups.
• Double vision range, but keep ranged attack range the same.
• Add an "Attack" order.
• Prevent units from stacking on top of each other in combat.
• Terrain modifiers to combat (increased defense in a forest, for example).
• Reimplement enemy sighted alerts.