Taxes and You
So there will be tax income, and you may think that means Ill track population somehow. Youd be very wrong. I havent tracked population for my games in over a year and Im not starting now. Way too much a headache. Instead, your taxes are determined primarily by the size of your country. How can I relate country size to taxes? Dont worry about it. Just know that bigger means more taxes. However, it also means more instability. More on that later. Also, you can increase your tax income less invasively by increasing tax efficiency, which is related to your stability among other things.
Resources
Resources are a constant in any self-respecting nation-builder. For this one
Its a bit complicated. Numerically, there is Tax Income(discussed above), Production, Food, Research, and Dust. However, these numerical values(sans taxes-ish) are derived from actual resources you come across. Some of these hard resources might give you a bit in each soft resource, while others will give you a large amount of one soft resource. For example, an iron vein would give you a huge production boost while something like horses would give you a fairly large production boost as well as some food.
What do these Resources do? Well, most of them are rather straightforward. Tax income gives you a medium to trade with players as well as to obtain bodies to field your armies. Production allows you to build various structures as well as equipment for your military units. Food is more subtle; you spend it to combat instability from expansion. Your men also require an upkeep in food. Research is pooled together in order to complete research. That is discussed later in the Technology section.
Now, youve also seen this Dust business thrown around. What is it you might ask? Well
Go find out. Im not spoiling the game because youre too curious for your own good. However, if you wanna know more
Look in the technologies section. Probably.
The Map and the Calendar
So the map is pretty basic. There will be all the players clearly marked, as well as a handful of NPCs you can interact with. Because Im lazy, I wont be filling /all/ places that probably should realistically be filled in. Ill use the excuse that they were largely wiped out by the onslaught of the Creatures of the Spectrum, discussed later.
The Calendar is pretty straightforward. The first turn will start on Spring. The next turn will begin a year later, but the season will be Summer. The next year, Fall. You can see a pattern by now I hope. This affects a few things, such as the effectiveness of your armies, some resource yields, and the frequency of certain events. It also does other things that I wont reveal yet.
Military and Combat
Each of your countries will have to build a military, either to subdue your adversaries or combat the forces of another world. To do this, you must field armies and navies. However, one unit does not an army make. How this works is you build units and throw them together in groups - this is what I refer to as Armies or Navies. While a single army might be fine to start out with if youre that small, as you expand it will be obvious youll need to field more and its possible you wont be able to cover all your bases all the time due to economic or logistical constraints.
In addition, armies cannot be reasonably composed of many units without a leader fit for the job. You, in all likelihood, want a leader for each one of your armies. However, the number of generals and admirals you can train is limited by the starting traits you choose and the buildings you erect. the actual skill of the general or admiral is based on your Army Tradition and Navy Tradition respectively, each having a maximum of 10. Essentially, I roll a 1d20+[Tradition] which determines the skill of the leader. You increase tradition by fighting battles and from particular structures, or perhaps even special traits derived from your culture. Tradition is decreased by being inactive militarily or losing favorable battles. Barring that, all players start with 5 tradition that you can distribute to either focus.
Stability and Leadership
Your stability is a measure of your peoples approval of your leadership. People are fickle, and the current state of affairs means the situation is quite volatile. Most will be afraid and view the new inhabitants of this world, whether theyre alive or not, with contempt. Trying to interact with them positively might not be well received. However, the people react to wealth and prosperity and who knows how much these possibly new resources can do for society? You will have a choice to make, to be sure.
Your leadership is founded upon the decisions you make and the traits you chose. A popular king with a like-minded son would definitely cushion the blow when inevitably the time comes for the prince to succeed their father. However, if the King is widely unpopular in the same situation, it could be a recipe for disaster. Your betrothed traits does not affect your country, but your successors traits will somewhat depend on the traits youve chosen. Therefore, you must think carefully when selecting your traits for them as well. Each time an heir rises to meet their destiny, you will select a new significant other for them with, perhaps, totally new traits.
If your country happens to be a republic, things are different. While the stability reduction is more or less the same when a leader leaves their role, the selection for the successor is not. Three candidates will be brought in. You can select one to endorse and then a vote is held. The one who wins becomes the new leader, even if they are not the one you endorsed. It is possible, through subterfuge,to change the outcome. This runs the risk of upsetting the populace if another candidate is obviously more popular, however.
Religion
Kinda a big deal in the 12th century, and it has been turned on its head. The map will show the religions and their domains at large as they are in the 12th century more or less, but as time moves on, cults revolving around the new state of the world are bound to rise. The question becomes how will you deal with them?
Your country will have a Faith stat for each faith within its borders. High faith will likely yield positive events about that faith. Having low Catholic Faith while running a nation dominated by Catholics is something of an issue. Meanwhile, having high Faith in two or more faiths can lead to religious disputes and outright civil war if the situation sours. On the flip side, it could lead to syncretism between faiths and the creation of a new one within your borders, almost seamlessly if you play your cards right. Religion in this game is very fluid, but also quite volatile.
Technology
Along with Religion and Culture, this is one more thing that could define the future of this world with the changes that have taken place. There will be four technological paths to undertake. These paths are: Civic, Seafaring, Military, and Dust. Civic technologies advance the society, allowing better organization of the administration and construction of better economic buildings. Seafaring technologies advance your naval capabilities and opens the window to colonialism. Military technologies advance your military might for the security of your people and to defeat your enemies, and also encompasses espionage. Finally, Dust. Not much is known about this new substance, but many scholars believe that if it is applied to our way of thinking, it could advance technology well ahead of your rivals focusing on the mundane. Essentially, it is a catch all technology. Before going further, I will explain Technological Tiers.
So, on the technology tree, there will be Tiers. The first tier of any technology has to be researched in order for the second of that same technology to be researched. This is pretty obvious. Military 1 comes before Military 2. The cost for advancing the first three paths, that is all of them besides Dust, is as follows: The first Tier for each path will all cost 100 research. The next Tier will be 150. The next, 225 and so on. When the first milestone of a Tier is complete, your research will reset to 0.
Dust is, like I said, a catch all technology. Advancing in dust will give you advancements in Civic, Seafaring, and Military. However, these advancements will be decidedly different. Furthermore, researching Dust before the others locks you out of actually researching the others in that Tier. For example, Researching Dust Tier 1 disallows you from researching Military Tier 1(and the others), and you must now either continue with the Dust research path or research the Tier 2 mundane technologies separately. Dust costs are as follows: The first Tier costs 350. The next, 525. The next, 788 and so on. Like before, with each completed Tier, research will reset to 0.
If you have researched a mundane technology before the respective Dust technology, and then research the Dust technology, youre in for !!special surprises!!. However, this puts your country at the risk of falling behind of others in technology at the larger scale; while youre playing around with different toys on Tier 1, others could be farther ahead. Still, completing mundane technologies before their Dust counterparts has interesting implications. Its up to you, though.