The Future of Bronze Age


Now that 1.2 is released I'm starting to plan for 1.3, and I think it would be a good opportunity to see what features you all would be interested in. Below is a list of the major features I have on my eventual roadmap, the bolded items are on my tentative list for 1.3. What would you like to see next? Feel free to suggest anything not on the list as well.

  • Mining and metals - seek out ore to smelt into metal weapons and tools 
  • Soil fertility - some areas of the world will produce more wheat
  • Nobles - some citizens can get promoted to the nobility, they'll be more picky but can do specialized work as wise men or priests
  • Religion and Gods - build temples to gods and seek their blessings
  • Research - wise men in cities (part of the nobility) can discover new knowledge, adding new options and gameplay depth over time
  • Happiness and Morale - track the happiness of citizens, and the morale of warriors
  • Advanced housing options - house multiple citizens in the same structure
  • Luxuries - brew beer to make your citizens happy, mine gold for your nobles, that sort of stuff
  • More enemy types and races
  • Worker job priority system - set priorities for what work citizens do
  • Construction queue - manage construction in a proper queue
  • Weather and seasons
  • Random / narrative events - floods, fires, and angy gods. Add more to the game besides managing settlements and fighting masklings.
  • Pig Breeding - breed pigs to have a steady supply of meat and draft animals
  • Charriots - send your warriors into battle on a pig-drawn charriot
  • Boats - build boats and sail the seas

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Hi there! I just saw a video of the Youtuber Nookrium about the game yesterday and decided to download it to try it out for myself today!

For the future in my oopinion you'd better get all the practical stuff down like Construction Queues, Priorities for works etc before considering to add new resources, new buildings and what not.

It should make your life and our experience much better with the game to be able to have better control of what is already in the game before going for neat stuff!

It's not in the list but passive AI would be nice too, like AI settlements or even camps like maskling's ones but in peaceful mode, open for trading or dealing with masklings at the same time as the player!

I really like the idea of nobility and wise men as well as religion in this game! It would fit the idea of bronze age in a really good way!


I'm off to play now, have a nice day!

PS: i'll try to post here quite often, i like this project and would be happy to help! :)

From a motivation point of view , it's important to keep a mix of new features in with the bugfixes and user experience improvements. Features are new and exciting, not only for players but for myself as well. Focusing just on bugs and tweaks is a sure-fire way to kill any motivation. To that end 1.3 will contain a healthy mix of both.

After 1.4 Masklings will be getting a lot more interesting to interact with. Trade and diplomacy are both on the list, possibly even subjugating Maskling tribes as vassals.

Hello, I'm playing a lot of the game, and I thought if you want help to improve the game design, I'm a professional design and very different from being able to help with the project!

I'm always open to suggestions and ideas.

You can give me the graphics files of the game, so I can edit and send you, or if you can give me a contact so that we can talk better!

I'm /u/CommodoreShawn on reddit and CommodoreShawn#6231 on discord

Yeah i totally understand! didn't think about that!

I played a few hours and the first thing that struck me was the time it sometimes take to get several building built when you set the constructions order at the same time, i think construction queues are fundamental for this kind of game. Just to give an example, i was trying to build a new tower outside the walls, quite ahead of the settlement to expand safely when i had the enemy sighted notification. They were just spotters so i knew a wave was coming (btw, this idea is really good, just to know that something is on the way when you see two little masklings lurking around, neat!).

The thing is i was building homes a the same time and it looked like my citizens were trying to do everything at the same time and so my tower wasn't ready when the wave of maskilngs arrived! I sent an army to deal with them and it went just fine in the end but it really felt like a struggle to get that tower done in time (now i'm just doing constructions one at a time to avoid the trouble).

so yeah, if i may suggest an healthy mix of practical stuff and cool new features, i'd definitely throw construction queues in there, otherwise i really like the idea of mining resources like metals to make weapons, armors and tools with it! Weather and seasons seems great too for agriculture and planification! :)

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Construction queue are already done for 1.3, which is targeted for next week.

Clarification edit: Not a queue the player can manage per se, but your citizens will prioritize structures in the order they were placed.

Glad to hear it! :)

Hey just saw your post after watching Nookrium's feature. Really cool game and I love and respect the strong vision you seem to have.


Wondering if you can explain a bit more your vision on the future of this game. I really like the fact that you blend a city building rts with a greater open world. Really had an awesome 'mount and blade' kinda feel to it when I saw military groups being sent out to different maskling encampments. 


After reading about a future introduction of nobles, really seemed to have alot of potential in terms of politics with nearby settlements and trying to make your newfound civ survive as part of a greater world.


Looking forward to future updates and your thoughts! Cheers!

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I was thinking you could add a butchers so that you can control the slaughter of pigs?

Also perhaps allowing towers to be upgraded to allow for more citizens to occupy them(allowing for more and faster arrows for defense.

Make paths need stone so that there is a reason to find a mountain biome?

Allow warbands to use wagons for faster transport?

I also think a simple change should be that the new migrants message should say what settlement they are joining.

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Instead of upgrading houses, I recommend having a structure upgrade system in place with stone/ore that you mine. 

With the new resources each building can be upgraded. These upgrade structure provide a set benefit

Mudbrick house - 1 pop

Stone house - 2 pop

Mudbrick Bakery - 1 food per whatev.

Stone Bakery - 2 food per whatev.

You can also incorporate the advance structures into mining. By this I mean you need stone to build a temple, it cannot be done with Mudbrick.

 To get Nobles, you must build a city centre of stone, which will attract migrants and allow you to upgrade your villagers.


Side note: what if there was a traveling merchant camp? A merchant would occasional come to a settlement with a trade yard (or depot) and trade resources with you? 

I like the idea of travelling merchants. An eventual goal is to have trading outside your tribe.

Structure upgrading is planned, though I wasn't thinking of it for houses, mostly for defenses and farms. For upgrading houses, it would seem a little silly to have more than 1 citizen per tiny little house.

could we upgrade towers/gates/walls for higher hp? Maybe revising copper weapons increases towers attack?

Following this, upgrading towers increases the Maskling attack forces? I think that would be too complicated rgoifh

could we upgrade towers/gates/walls for higher hp? Maybe revising copper weapons increases towers attack?

I was just thinking of upgrading for higher hp, but higher damage is a good idea too.

I had another idea to go along with the new combat and Maskling tactics - will there be loot or resources gained from defeating large Maskling forces or Camps? That would be a fun way to encourage player raiding and military training

Hmm, hadn't thought about that. Something to consider though. In 1.2.5 destroying maskling camps reduces the intensity of raids, so there's a little incentive to going on the offensive.

Just another comment, how possible is structure rotation for construction? for example, select towers then rotating the direction 90 degrees with Q and E before placing the foundation.

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For towers and gatehouses it would be easy, since they already have rotation information. For other structures it might be possible, but would take a lot of art work. It's a highly requested feature though.

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Here is the city i build before everything started to lag.


http://imgur.com/a/lj7Bt


I don't think the enemies attack you anymore when you are in this state (only Romans would dare).


I don't know how to use the warriors or the trading system so if you could maybe make a tutorial for that or something that would be nice.


Anyway nice unique game.

Pretty big I must say :p

How much wealth and how many people do you have?

Also, isn't it more laggy when you want to place a building? For example, the game runs smooth, but when you are placing a house, it gets laggy until you clicked?

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Here is the settlement info


http://imgur.com/a/ZExwX


At around 500 to 550 population the people skip't frames and the game became slower (basically lag).

I have a pretty good pc so i think for people that have lower specs they are going to begin lagging at around 300 People.

Don't know about the building lag but more pixels on screen = more lag so it will still lag when you have a lot of People at the cost of them being homeless because 600 people = 600 houses = 600x the lag

Btw i learned how you can control warbands and migrants now. Apparently you have to click the next button under you map which is really great so far maybe i'm going to start another run.

If you want anymore info i'll gladly show it.

Do you know what version you're on? 1.2.4 has a significant performance fix that is affected by world size and structure count.

It was the latest version.

That's a heck of a city you have there, no wonder it lagged....

One thing I would actually love, is the ability to take over villages from the masklings. This can be an improvement of the noble people. So you can use noble people to take over a maskling camp and this noble person rules that camp.

I don't know how the majority here thinks about the gods and religion, but I'm not a big fan of that to be honest. On the other hand, I think you can make everything fun. So I'm actually neutral.

The research point can be super handy when it comes to starting to know the game.
I'am now familiar with the game, so I learn the game step by step whenever a new feature comes. But when I would have seen all the options I had at once, I would've been overwelmed and less interested. So I would add the research to let the player learn the game step by step.

Happiness and morale would be awesome. I would add that the work rate of the workers are affected by the happiness, and the morale affects the damage a warrior can give to a maskling?

I don't know if you were inspired by me for the advanced housing, but I would like it.

For luxuries I would like to add a theater and an arena for gladiators. Just big expensive buildings that serve no big purpose except for happiness and morale and are cool to look at.

Diffrent enemy types with each a special ability can be fun. So you have diffrent warriors to attack diffrent races because of their strenghts and weaknesses.

For wheater and seasons, will you add that for example, you have to make sure you have enough wheat when winter comes? Because in winter there is no farm income?

If you add the random events, make sure you can do something about it and that your only option is not that you have to watch your city being destroyed,, but that you can prevent/work against these events by building stuff.

Pig breeding seems a good idea :)

For the chariots, could you add horses into the game?

For the boats, I would love to see diffrent kind of boats. Boats for battling, boats for transporting goods, and boats to transport people to start a new settlement.
For this you can add that masklinks can attack you from the water.


I like your efforts you put in the game and that you listen to everything we say :)
Big thumbs up for you as a developer!

I'm curious about your hesitation around gods and religion, would you mind expanding on that?

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First of all, I don't know how you want to implement them, it could be that you make something fantastic out of it. But for the most games I've played that had gods and/or religion made it to complex yet very important to have. 
My aversion of this could be a bias of me because I can't really support my statement. It's just a feeling.

But then again, I don't know your view on these elements :)

My current thoughts for the feature are: a pantheon of 5 or so gods and godesses, each with a different area of interest. The player can build temples to curry favor with the gods. The more favor with the god, the more benefit the god gives. The player can also invoke the god for miracles.

As an example: Akkan the Skyfather is the god of the skies, and father of the pantheon. Earning favor with him provides favorable weather (occasional light rains, fewer storms). He can be asked to create a storm, with lighting bolts striking enemies.

If these elements are well explained while starting a game, this could be good. They also do not sound to overdone. Looking forward to it :)

This sound amazing, when I started to read that I was like holy shit yes. Will the masklings stay the same, and will there be other civilizations that you have to share the map with?

I have some more types of masklings in mind, some with blow-guns, others riding rats, as well as other species of enemy. Big ogre type guys, mole-men, and giant ants. Eventually I'd like other civilizations like the player's, but that's a lot more involved.

Alright, that makes sense. Thanks for answering so fast