Procedural Generation

Starting Setup of the map begins with all of the Mortal Races starting in a single POI with their most primitive government form, in the case of humans that would be a "Tribe." Elder Races, if configured, begin in an appropriate situation for their culture and at one of their proper advanced government types. They begin much more powerful than the Mortal Races, but compensate by that with almost no cultural growth.

Each Nation takes one action in a frequency determined by their government, which is generally either claiming (or fighting over) an adjacent POI or evolving their culture. Each Government Type has a soft and hard limit to the number of POIs it can control, as tribes grow they will split into culturally related tribes that continue to expand on their own and possibly fight amongst themselves. Great Leaders may arise to double the actions of a nation and propel it into a dominant spot, or a Crisis may occur pushing a society into a drastically different direction. The process plays out real-time and will complete in under a minute if set to the fastest speed, with pausing being important to properly influence the nations.

Nations Evolve over time with three basic statistics - Strength, Culture, and Corruption. The more a Nation fights, the higher its strength which will help them take POIs from neighbouring nations. If a nation instead chooses to raise culture they will be able to evolve into higher government forms, and eventually choose customized traits. Corruption on the other hand is something that a nation has no real control over, but it will allow you to twist that nation into a form that you desire.

The Guiding Hand of the Old One is ever-present, its strength will increase over time until it is sealed allowing the player to make use of a variety of special abilities to increase the corruption of a nation, and using that to twist them in many imaginative ways. Keep humans in the dark age, bring our their bestial nature, and create from them a race that is less than human to support a reign of terror - or take a softer touch and attempt to deny the powerful traits that nations try to covet.

Pass Through Multiple Configurable Ages such as the Age of Man or the Age of Wonders, each having distinct Traits they offer to the societies that flourish within them. Nations from prior ages risk falling into Decline and seeing themselves supplanted by their children, and their Ancient Traits may disappear, leaving behind artifacts and ruins for your Agents to discover when the game begins. Will Blood Magic make it to the modern era, or become just another rumoured lost art?

This was done as a Proof of Concept and while the approach is technically feasible and definitely fun it is certainly prone to changes once it reaches the Beta Testers. Given that art changes to the map must occur prior to any other art being commissioned, King Dinosaur Games expects Beta Access to the Procedural Generation process to occur very shortly after general Beta Access, though they do not expect it to be complete until sometime after our early access release. This discrepancy in the timeline is because they want a lot of feedback to make sure that they cover everything that is expected from a Genealogical solution (and that it is as interesting and fun as possible).