Introducing the coming Android strategy game - Rising Empires

[ExtremeNerd]

Please be sure security is addressed early in the game. This is similar (yet more complex) to Pocket Empires, which has faded into obscurity because hacking and cheating was everywhere. Once multiplayer launched, people had armies in the billions, which was illegal. It wasn't fun anymore, and people quit.

If you want to make a pay to play game, please make sure it is fair and there can be no cheating. Otherwise, it will be worthless to pay for a subscription to me.

Also, will there be an option to buy the game outright and avoid a subscription charge?

 

[Shinji01]

I love how the graphics looks old Dragon Quest style meets lord of the rings movie!
I will have to spend some time developing my empire...

 

[Netherlords]

Please be sure security is addressed early in the game. This is similar (yet more complex) to Pocket Empires, which has faded into obscurity because hacking and cheating was everywhere. Once multiplayer launched, people had armies in the billions, which was illegal. It wasn't fun anymore, and people quit.

If you want to make a pay to play game, please make sure it is fair and there can be no cheating. Otherwise, it will be worthless to pay for a subscription to me.

As Rising Empires is a turn-based game we will not run a constant world on a server that can be accessed by the players. The "world/-s" will be processed and stored locally and can't be manipulated unless the players breaks into our office... This might mean that the delay between the daily deadline and uploading of the new turn result might be a little longer but that is a price we are willing to pay to make it impossible for outside manipulation of the game.

Also, will there be an option to buy the game outright and avoid a subscription charge?

Not from the beginning, but if enough players are interested we might consider it.

Cheers!

 

[Netherlords]

I've taken the opportunity to further evolve our answers to the questions asked by silvercue and ExtremeNerd on our own forum:

Rising Empires security
What has inspired us?

I hope this gives you a better insight on what lies behind the game as well as how seriously we take the security.

Cheers!

 

[Netherlords]

Hi!

We've now created a blog for Rising Empires updates (much better than writing updates in our forum which we did before). It's called 'Words from the Netherlords' and can be found at:
'Words from the Netherlords'
I hope this will make it easier to follow our progress with Rising Empires and also to ask questions and discuss the game with us.

Cheers!

 

[Netherlords]

Hi everybody!

Last weekend Johan and I met for discussing and coding on Rising Empires and I must say that neither of us were prepared for what the weekend held in store for us. Our intent were to complete the setup of new empires and to test it thoroughly, instead we decided to change focus on the project from a massive multi-player game with 1 turn/day to a single-player game.

We've already started development of the AI and you can follow our progress at the 'Words from the Netherlords'-blog. Both Johan and I feel this is a good decision and we look forward to deliver Rising Empires to all Android user out there!

Cheers

 

[Netherlords]

Hi everybody!

I've been a bit silent the last weeks. This has nothing to do with lack of progress on Rising Empires as we're moving forward with good speed, especially the AI for the single-player game is getting a lot of love... Johan is also working hard to improve the app and he is doing some great improvements compared to the old layouts. As soon as he completes the first layouts I'll post some screenshots.

What are the status with the Rising Empires AI?

We've completed the first version of the scout AI. This is the AI that handle all exploration and patrolling in the empire. The exploration bit is completed and functions well but we've not started with patrolling of already scouted territory. This is important though as the AI need updated information on what's going on around its borders.

We've also done a lot of work on the settlement AI. The settlement AI can now handle and take care of the food situation in a town or city. It improves terrain, construct food buildings when more food is needed quickly and it also send requests to the main AI for better food technology when needed. The settlement AI also construct new buildings according the wishes of the governor (yeah, each settlement AI has a governor that decides how it will act). We're very satisfied with the algorithm that control what buildings that are constructed.

What we're doing now is creating the objective AI (the first objective will be to move population from one settlement to another) and implementing the first version of our strategic AI. When this is done the strategic AI will be able to choose between building scouts and sending population to settlements that need/want a larger population. It's not much but with the architecture in place it will be simpler to add more objectives.

If you want to follow the development of the AI in more detail please visit our blog, the 'Worlds from the Netherlords'.

Cheers!

 

[littledot5566]

Sounds pretty cool. Wish your launch the best of luck!

 

[Netherlords]

Long time no see. It's been a while since we wrote an update on Rising Empires. Both Johan and I have been busy getting the single-player version of Rising Empires working. It takes some time as we both have jobs on the side... We've done lots of progress on the AI (if you're interested in details and code examples visit our Rising Empires blog) and we'll soon have a version of the game that can be play tested.

Our plan for the immediate future is to release the first beta version of Rising Empires in the last week of February. It will contain the second version of our AI (as we see it) and 4 races will be included (Humans, Elves, Greenskins and Ende). The AI will be able to explore, expand, research, attack and defend itself. There will still be lots of features missing but we plan to update the beta version regularly as we continue to improve Rising Empires. The purpose of this first beta version is to check the stability of the game, investigate how the AI performs and to get valuable feedback from the potential players out there. It will be available from Google Play making it easy for all interested play testers to download and update as we improve and add more features.

Best regards,

Peter

 

[Netherlords]

‘Fog of war’ is an important aspect of most strategy games and Rising Empires is no exception. An empire need to keep plenty of scouts and watchtowers to have updated information on enemy movements around its borders. The first attached screenshot exemplifies fog of war in Rising Empire.

In this screenshot we’ve selected the sector housing the town Hithlum in the upper left corner. All the brighter (whiter) sectors is what can be seen from the town. If anything comes inside this area we’ll know about it. The darkened sectors in the right part of the screenshot is has been explored but are not currently observed by the empire.

The town Hithlum can spot everything within a range of 4 sectors. In the bottom of the screenshot is the capital city Freehold. Capitals can spot everything within a range of 5 sectors. An army travelling by foot can move 1 sector each turn and this gives us a 5 turn warning before it reach the capital. 5 turns isn’t much time to prepare if the enemy comes with a large army, that’s why scouts and watchtowers are needed to increase how far away we spot enemy armies.

When you click on an already selected sector you open up the sector information screen (the second screenshot). In this screen you get detailed information on the terrain, any settlements and all armies located in the sector. By pressing on the settlement or any of the armies you’ll activate it and be able to issue orders to it, for example production orders to a settlement and movement orders for an army. There will also be ‘event’ buttons where a player can loop through armies with no movement orders, settlements that has completed production and all other things that happens each turn in the empire.

Johan and I just had a phone meeting where we discussed our progress and the time schedule leading up to our release of the first beta build of Rising Empires. We’re on schedule (well, a revised schedule...) and plan to upload the Rising Empires beta this Thursday. We’re really excited about this.

I hope you all had a good weekend!

 

[Netherlords]

Join the beta test of Rising Empires and help us make and shape an excellent strategy game. The game is now an early beta build but we believe we

 

[Netherlords]

Hi,

It seems that the Rising Empires GUI is a little tough to get into. We should, of course, has anticipated this but better late than not at all. I've written a short tutorial over the buttons and things a player need to do in the first turn of playing Rising Empires. It can be found on our blog:
Tutorial

 

[ExtremeNerd]

Pretty sure this is a known bug already, but the back button doesn't work and there is no way to exit the game.

Works on basic level on S3. Will play later today and give better feedback!

 

[Netherlords]

Thank you for testing Rising Empires. The back button has been inactivated in all screens except for the map screen. It works in the map screen and can be used to exit to the start screen where you can quit the game.

 

[Netherlords]

Pretty sure this is a known bug already, but the back button doesn't work and there is no way to exit the game.

In the update last Friday we activated the back buttons again and tomorrow evening we'll upload a new build of Rising Empires to Google Play. This build will add a 'history' section and an updated AI. There will also be some modifications to the tech tree.

 

[Netherlords]

The game has now been updated to build 62. Among the new things that we've added is an improved AI and that towns/cities can improve the terrain around their settlements. A history section where important events is shown has also been added.

I have been asked by some players about the loyalty system. There were Ende empires which had problems keeping their Greenskin slaves happy... I've written a short guide called 'Loyalty, or how to keep your population happy'.

Cheers!

 

[Netherlords]

We're continuing our series of tutorials for Rising Empires. This week we cover the food resource and how it influence the population growth in your empire: 'Food, or how you keep your population from starving'.

Cheers!

 

[Netherlords]

We've now published the 6th tutorial, this one dig deep into the combat system of Rising Empires. Conflict is an important aspect of Rising Empires and with the feature that all empires can develop and design their own unique combat troops it's good to understand how combat works.

Here comes a list of all Rising Empires tutorials that have been written:
Tutorial I - Playing the first turn in Rising Empires
Tutorial II - Research and technologies
Tutorial III - Loyalty, or how to keep your population happy
Tutorial IV - Food, or how you keep your population from starving
Tutorial V

 

[Netherlords]

This wednesday we did a major update of Rising Empires, adding the diplomatic system and an in-game tutorial:

• Diplomacy

 

[Netherlords]

Johan and I are currently working on the next update for Rising Empires and plan to release it on the 1st of July.

In this update we'll add a number of new features, for example the new Military Academy building will be activated allowing emperors to recruit generals for their armies. A general gives a number of bonuses to the troops in his command, boosting their combat efficiancy and morale. Another new feature is that empires will be able to build settlers and militia from the races that they've conquered. The computer controlled empires have been able to do this for some time but now you can do it as well. This makes conquered towns and cities more useful.

We also hope to improve the AI further and are focusing on making it able to defend itself better. Previously the AI have had problems with defending it's capital due to it being unable to change it's priorities once a project (task) has been assigned. Now we're giving the AI the ability to cancel a project worked on in a threatened settlement allowing it to focus on its own defence instead. We've come a bit forward on this work but there are still some circumstances where the AI fail to defend itself.

If you want to give Rising Empires a try it can be downloaded on Google Play. If you want to know more or just keep up to date with the development of Rising Empires please check out our blog Words from the Netherlords.

 

[Netherlords]

The new update of Rising Empires has now been available on Google Play for a couple of days and we

 

[Netherlords]

Rising Empires, the epic 4x turn-based strategy game for Android will be released on September 21st. There will be two versions of the game; a free one with ads and a premium version with additional content. The extra premium features include two additional playable races, the fast breeding Krant and the versatile Dwarves. The game is scheduled for release on Google Play and several other app stores.

The game is currently in an open beta stage and can be downloaded at Google Play. At the time of writing, it is installed on 900 devices and has been downloaded more than 2,700 times. Many reviewers compare the game to classics like Civilization and Total War. One player writes:

 

[Netherlords]

One dangeroues mistake you might do as a developer is that you find your own GUI easy and logical while in truth it's a really tough nut to crack. The last week we doubled the number of players in our beta test but since many of them are less fanatical 4x players there seems that many don't understand how the game works. In a way it's really good that we learn this now and not when we release the game next month.

Now we're working to make the GUI more informative and more intuitive. I've attached a couple of screenshots of the new GUI. It's still a WIP but it shows what we are aiming at...

Cheers!

 

[Netherlords]

It

 

[Netherlords]

Hi,

I