Salutations Industrialists,
We're excited to share the progress we've made in April and update you on our Alpha Roadmap.
Work on the economy continues, but is nearly resolved. Meanwhile, work continues on many other features, as you'll see below. Our team also completed several tasks than we had not listed for May in the last roadmap, so please see those below too!
Also, we'd like to thank you for your patience on this roadmap. We’re steadily advancing on several key features of Gilded Destiny as we prepare for the Alpha release to our Kickstarter and Modian backers. Right now, a major focus for the dev team is fine-tuning the in-game economy and population systems. The core challenge lies in ensuring that Pop behavior—how they consume, produce, and trade—remains balanced and consistent within the broader economy. Once these systems are functioning as intended and have passed thorough testing, we’ll be ready to deliver the Alpha build to our backers.
Without further ado, let's take a look at what we accomplished in April and what is planned for May.
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Accomplished in April
Continue testing the newly implemented Trade system
- Testing is ongoing. As Trade is integral to the proper function of the in-game economy and many other systems, such as Production, testing is planned to continue for the coming months as new features are added and existing mechanics are adjusted.
Continue Editing terrain of Southeastern and Central Asia
- Terrain of the Qing Empire has been completed.
Implement Qing events
- Initial early events have been implemented. We plan to add more content soon.
Continue designing Major US events.
- The Major US events have been designed and partially implemented. Further implementation is pending group modifiers to be developed and input into the game.
- Major event chains include:
- The Trail of Tears
- The US Civil War
- The Mexican-American War
- Texan Revolution
Continue fixing bugs reported by QA testers and pre-Alpha testers
- Ongoing. QA testers continue to test the stable and pre-Alpha builds.
Adjust various economic features, such as tariffs, to align with the new Trade system
- Progress is being made. Tariffs are functioning in game and appear to have the desired effect. QA testers are currently verifying that they work correctly. Development and refining of the Trade System is ongoing.
- Added a feature to allow different sectors to have separate tariff rates (agricultural, military, industrial, etc)
Complete implementation of Rebellions---Test, and update
- Ongoing. The system is currently working as intended. Refinement will continue into May.
Update and refine policy modifiers and tech modifiers
- Pushed to May
Continue designing and implementing cultural heritages and religious convictions
- Work is being done on this currently, but more focused development will occur in May.
Begin implementation of Bureaucratic efficiency system
- Done!
Political Parties
- Design for Political Parties is complete, including details of how they will interact with existing game systems.
Continue implementing with clothing and portraits
- Progress is being made, and our team is implementing more Leaders into the game. Our art team is working with an outsourcing studio which draws most clothing and portraits. Once our in-house art team approves, our artists will touch up each portrait before being sent for implementation into the game.
Working on updating the Trade UI
- The main interface for the Trade is largely complete, and should be completed by the end of May.
Continue work on map modes
- Map Modes have been implemented and design has been largely completed. Our Artists still need to update a few remaining icons for a few map layers. Several new map views have been introduced, including War Exhaustion, Technology, Literacy Rate, Unemployment, Resource Points, and GDP views. The map modes system now supports dynamic parameters, paving the way for more complex views like Production by Good type. Transitions between map modes are now smoother, and color shading (especially in gray-scale regions) has been optimized with a dynamic grayscale system for better clarity. Finally, existing views like Culture, Religion, and Military Recruitment have been refined with better color logic and tooltip presentation, particularly at different map zoom levels.
Extra tasks accomplished in April
Begin researching additional on Leaders / adding more into the game
- Compiled a list of influential figures for our major countries. These concern all of our leader types, so determining which scientists to add, which generals, which presidents/prime ministers, etc... Most of these will not have custom portraits, but they can appear as leaders during their lifetime with appropriate stats.
Begin designing additional Leader Traits
- This has been pushed to May. Generally, this will involve a review of our current leader traits and a brief design discussion to standardize what leader traits should offer.
Begin inputting initial data for military units, currently working on the UK
- Work has started on this area, and will continue into May and June as we input military data for other countries.
Added New AI Systems
- Added systems for restarting closed buildings, managing national reserves, and enabling investment behavior by smallholders and artisans.
Diplomacy AI Logic Redesign
- Peace negotiation behavior of AI has been made less rigid and formulaic in order to make outcomes feel more organic and responsive.
Smarter Construction AI
- Provincial building AI has been adjusted to prevent over-construction in newly developed regions.
Camera Controls Tuned
- Improved responsiveness and behavior for zooming and panning across different game systems.
UI Layer Optimization
- Made several enhancements to how UI elements display at various zoom levels, including: 1) differentiation between major and minor city labels to reduce visual clutter and 2) adding small icons for buildings and resource nodes for better at-a-glance clarity.
End of May
World Map
- Edit Terrain of South America and begin editing terrain of Africa
- Cultural Heritages and Religious Convictions
- Continue design and implementation of Cultural Heritages and Religious Convictions, aiming to cover the major Religious Convictions and finalize Religious Groups by the end of May.
Authority and Government Support
- Update and refine systems involving the generation and use of Authority, and review the impact of the Government Support system.
- Review and update configuration of POP Political Power system
Political Parties
- Begin implementation of new Political Parties design.
Policies
- Update and refine the modifiers for Policies in line with new game systems.
Economy
- Continue refining economic behavior and updating initial economic world-state based on historical data.
Rebellions
- Complete implementation of Rebellion system.
AI
- Finalize AI for province-level policy management
- Implement AI systems for leader recruitment and assignment to governmental, province, or military postings
UI
- Complete design of Navy UI
- Complete redesign of Flag Editor UI
- Continue refining Map UI elements for clarity and performance
POPs
- Refine distribution of POP cultures, religions, and professions in Western Europe and Russia, based on historical data.
Diplomacy
- Begin planning for refining and expanding on Diplomacy system
We will share our plan for June at the beginning of the month. As our goals and expectations evolve, and as these milestones are reached, we will keep you updated!
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Also, as a reminder—we have assigned Discord roles to our backers who are already part of our server. If you are not a member of our server, please join via the link below and say hello in the chat to ensure that you claim your role!
Join the Gilded Destiny Discord Server
Pre-Alpha Testing Continues
As many of you are already aware, we have launched the Pre-Alpha of Gilded Destiny to a small group of about 100 testers chosen from our Kickstarter and Modian backers at random. So far, we have received lots of constructive feedback, suggestions, and bug reports. As we continue to develop certain systems for Gilded Destiny, we are also now beginning to transition to a more feedback-based approach to development. The pre-Alpha testers have helped a great deal to isolate bugs and to improve playability. We look forward to sharing the game with more of you very soon!
As we've mentioned previously, we decided to do a small closed Pre-Alpha test to gather initial feedback so that experience of the Alpha is enjoyable and meaningful, and to streamline the process of administrating keys, feedback collection, and bug reporting on our end. Of course, as many of you know, both the pre-Alpha and Alpha builds of the game will likely have limited content and systems may not be fully implemented into the game.
Thanks for your support and for reading!
May your day be a gilded one!