Universal Idle Realm (by Eat the Moon)

I am not entirely sure if I want to use the Victory Points as a currency or not. Here's the pros and cons that I can see for all my options:

1) VP is basically experience points and your realm levels up, unlocking new features and passive bonuses.

The benefit of this is that you see "Realm Level 3" and you see "VP till Level 4: X" which provides a progress meter that you can check to see how far away you are from leveling. Likewise, when you reach the next level, fanfare can play and things pop at you. Plus, I can give you loot boxes, boosts, or other things as bonus rewards for hitting the next realm progression level.

Another benefit of this is that I can unlock features as you play, providing progression and goals while at the same time keeping the early progression options minimal and adding more complexity and choices over time. I can also keep some features hidden from the player and surprise them later on when they unlock it. The anticipation of what could be next can be a strong reason why players might push for their realm progression with game restarts.

The disadvantage is pretty clear after a few levels ... you won't level up. You will see the bar fill up, and based upon the progress bar, you might figure that you need to play a few more campaigns to hit Level 8. Then you feel yourself slowing down and the grind becomes real. Honestly, not leveling up at all after a campaign could feel bad. Sure, you just got 150 VP, nice job! You were short 10-20 to level up. Of course, you can get 10-20 VP by starting a new game and beating an island or two and then end the campaign, and that will definitely be a way to grind VP no mater what system I put in place.

2) VP is a currency.

This allows you me to show you all of the passive bonuses that you can modify and all the features you can get, with a VP price attached to it for unlocking or upgrading. This allows you to spec your realm any way that you want, but by chasing after the cheap VP items, you effectively pick all the items that I want you to get, in a specific order. Sure, you can skip some of them and make it harder on yourself, but that's up to you. Plus, after each game, there is probably at least one thing you can buy or upgrade on the realm progression screen. Always having something to do on that screen is ideal.

But this also means that the points are spent. Do I let you reset your points and respec a different way? While you could do that, there is no real reason to do so. Plus, what if I put an actual feature that gets unlocked (such as the Leader feature) and you choose not to unlock it for some reason. It just seems strange.

3) Both

When you earn VP, you also earn realm XP. You have passives, features and their upgrades locked behind realm levels. As you level up, things unlock and you can spend your VP on whatever is unlocked. I could also allow you to refund the points occasionally and respec if you want (for example, once a day for free, but if you want to do it again, spend some moon coins or something).

4) VP is a currency, but the realm level is not dictated by XP or VP earned, but rather, island map progression.

The problem with realm level grinding, or VP grinding, is that you could just spam the first couple of island maps for a while and build up VP. If the realm levels up via XP, you could level up by doing the early levels for a while, but it doesn't feel as rewarding to me. So, what if the realm level is entirely attached to the furthest island map progression you have made. This makes it so you have to put in the effort to earn the reward, and any VP you spend on existing passives are only for the passives needed to make it to the next realm level via the maps. If you get stuck, you can grind for the VP and upgrade your existing passives to the point where you can progress, then you get new passive unlocks and then you get to figure out what to do then.



With that all out of the way, a feature unlock in a later realm level could be specific research options can be auto-learned during a new game. This will help speed up the game later on, for sure. Plus, if you have a ton of VP to spend, this would be a good place to drop them. But it wouldn't be a passive that makes the research "already learned" ... it would need to be something that makes it so when the research comes available, it immediately is completed and unlocks what it needs, as if you just tapped the "complete now" button.

For example, having Housing auto-learned at the start will save you from a click or two and you'll already have access to the new three research options (Farming, Hay Farming, and Lumberjack) and you can build the house. This is because Housing is the first research in the game and this would make sense. But if you choose not to auto-learn the house but you auto-learn Farming, Hay Farming, and Lumberjack, you won't have access to those buildings. You need to research Housing first. When that finishes, those three researches would appear and then auto-complete (since you have them set to auto-learn) and you get the next upgrades available and those buildings.

I definitely don't want players to be able to build and upgrade to House Level 3, without properly unlocking House Level 3 by completing its prerequisite.

So yes, picking up research with VP would be a good thing to do, but probably not something that would be unlocked until the player has enough progression into the game to start finding a good use for it, hence the larger VP cost associated with it.

 

Those are great tips, thanks!

I can totally understand where you are coming from, but I don't want to allow tapping of the buildings to speed up their production. I have some ideas in mind to help you out but they will be a part of the new meta game progression that I'm working on.

There was another idea I had a while ago which was a tapping minigame which would provide various bonuses or boosts which would could be helpful in the early game. Also another idea of a building (like a party hall or some recreation center) that you could build and then interact with, perhaps by tapping, which could raise the morale of your citizens and increase production for a short amount of time. Then, you could drop some of these down and tap on these buildings (they don't have building info screens, nor could they be upgraded) and each tap raises a multiplier that then slowly fades. For example, tapping on it several times in a couple seconds could add a 2.5x multiplier for all production, but the multiplier drops 0.1x or 0.25x a second, so you would have to constantly be tapping it in order to keep the multiplier going. Almost like you are doing the work yourself at the factory, if all you had to do was press buttons

Basically, there will be ways to boost production other than the production boost, in the future. Just need to wait a little while!

 

Yup, the exploit was found a few days ago when I made it so that you couldn't buy more resources than you could hold. I didn't test the feature thoroughly and that slipped though. The decision was made to not release an emergency update to fix the issue and just wait for the next content update, which will be happening in a couple weeks.

The next update will probably be a small update to address that bug and introduce the empire management screen, which will let you see all of your built buildings and upgrade, demolish or go to them on the map. This is a streamlining quality of life change to the game.

The new meta game progression is still being built up and probably won't appear in the game until the Fall/Halloween update around October 1st. Of course, if the meta game progression feature isn't finished by then, the Fall/Halloween update will still happen and the meta stuff will appear shortly afterwards.

 

Just wanted to provide a small update about the status of the new meta game progression stuff.

1) When version 1.3 releases, players who have a current game going will still be using the 1.2 data for their game, but an event will trigger that will be a special type of challenge. The purpose of this event, which I will talk about in the future, is to effectively end your current game and provide rewards based upon your current progress. Once you start a new game (either via the event ending, or manually choosing to end the game), you'll be slotted into the 1.3 gameplay.

2) The tech tree for 1.3 has been completely reworked. Knowledge generation buildings now unlock new upgrades in a linear, easier to follow flow. The old tech tree shoehorned some upgrades in odd areas, just to make some upgrades required and it was a horrible decision. Due to the rework, lots of buildings and upgrades for said buildings have moved around and their costs have been adjusted to meet the 1.3+ progression going forward. Costs of buildings have also changed due to this change. Again, you won't notice this change until you're running a 1.3 campaign. For those who wanted to see the old tech tree in all its awful glory, here you go!

Old Tech Tree


New Tech Tree


3) Fixed a ton of bugs that were submitted. Most notable are the docks exploit, upgrading a knowledge generating building and not getting the extra knowledge per second unless you back out of the app for a bit, another exploit or two, and the research available badge and "pick research from the list!" text appearing when you actually researched everything.

4) A small Quality of Life change when demolishing buildings. When you select a building to demolish, it will hide the building while selected so that you can see the terrain under it. This will help you determine if you can actually build something. This typically affects the Lumberjack building, as it can only be built on trees, and nothing else can be built on trees, so when you are looking for stuff to destroy and remove the Lumberjack, you won't be surprised to find that the land is useless for what you want to build.

5) When you demolish a town hall, if it's not the last domain structure you own, a confirm dialog will remind you that in doing so, you will lose all buildings in its domain as well. If it's the last domain structure, you will still be told no and prevented from doing so (as you will then not be able to do anything).

6) As some players have been able to figure out, destroying a house will also remove the citizens it provides. If your citizen count goes negative, the game will start destroying buildings that use citizens until the count is no longer negative. Since this was a surprise for some, I have added a confirm dialog whenever this will happen, to let you know of the pain you are about to bring

7) Building Management screen is in and working great. This screen is accessed via tapping on a Town Hall and selecting Building Management. This screen will show you ever building type that you own, with a breakdown per level. You have the option of mass destroying a category of buildings, mass upgrading (will attempt to upgrade all buildings in the group, lowest level to highest), and individually destroying and upgrading. This screen will make it easier for you to determine what buildings you own and what needs to be upgraded without having to travel around the world to find your buildings.

Early UI for Building Management screen


8) Meta progression UI is still being worked on, but most upgrades and features that will unlock from the meta progression are designed. This is the primary area I'm working on now

9) New victory conditions are being created for the map progression. Each map that you visit will have a specific victory condition to achieve. These victory conditions scale with the map level. These victory conditions have been designed and will be going into testing very soon.

10) There are a few new types of terrain types that will be added to the game in 1.3. One of which is the wasteland. You can't build on it, but it has the special trait of allowing you to convert it to grass, forest, or dirt by terraforming it. Terraforming the wasteland will cost different types of resources.

11) Last but not least, there are a few new map mechanics being added to help spice-up these maps. I want to keep a lot of these mechanics a secret for now, but do know that most of these will be time-based (i.e., something happens every X minutes, even if you are not playing) and some can change the shape of the land.

The ETA on version 1.3 is still set for October. I want it done by the first week of October, but we'll see how that goes

 

Another small update!

The meta progression, as talked about before, will be using Victory Points (VP) that are earned by playing the game. By earning VP, you will unlock Realm Levels. VP will be awarded when you end your current campaign, with points awarded based upon the total island maps completed and any Bonus Objectives that you completed during this time. The higher the island map, the more points it will be worth.

The existing Victory Conditions are being renamed to Bonus Objectives and you will unlock them as you collect relics, as usual. There will be some changes to how the relics drop, so you'll be getting the easier objectives first before unlocking the harder ones. Of course, existing players will keep everything they have, so if you collected a lot of relics already, you basically have a head start or might have more hard objectives unlocked vs the easier ones.

The VP will be used to purchase and upgrade various Realm Upgrades that will affect your future games. You will able be able to spend the VP before you start a new campaign, not during.

Here's the current Realm Progression screen with some of the upgrades (without icon art):



I have a total of 42 upgrades that can be purchased and leveled for the 1.3 update, with these upgrades unlocking 2-3 at a time per Realm Level reached. Some will be Realm Upgrades that you simply purchase to unlock a new feature, while others will be Bonuses that you can level up. Some will have a max level (such as extra Town Hall Domain Radius) and others will not. The cost of the upgrades and when the unlock has not been balanced yet (hence the 1 VP cost in the screenshot), but that massive undertaking will be happening soon.

26 of these upgrades are working and affect the game, most of which had UI updates to support them, others are still waiting on me to redesign a few screens.

For example, here's the new Building Info screen:



Since I will have extra information displayed on this screen, I made it wider and clumped the input and output resources into smaller areas. Currently, all buildings use the same amount of input resources in order to push out an output resource, so that area has been condensed. Also, because the Realm Progression upgrades can affect what you generate with a building, the total bonus that the building gets is shown, with an info button that can be tapped to show the breakdown of the bonus (is it from a boost? an upgrade? it will let you know)

More info to come in the next couple days!

 

Another update today!

The Town Hall will have extra features added to it over time, with the Realm Progression upgrades. The building management screen was shown off earlier, but here's the other new feature: Leader Stats



When you start a new campaign, you'll be given a leader and points to spend to level up their stats. These stats are:

Amiable (affects pacifism options)
Belligerent (affects combat options)
Industrious (affects natural resource production and storage space)
Curios (affects knowledge and manufactured resource production)

These stats will offer small boosts to your current game, with more points awarded to level up your leader every time you travel to another island map during your campaign. The Bonuses info tab will breakdown each stat bonus and what changes, so you can make informed decisions.

While on this screen spending points, you can add or remove points that you have available. However, once you close the screen, those points are locked. You can reopen the screen and spend any remaining points you didn't spend, but all previously spent points will be set. You make reset all of your points once per campaign for free, or additional times via Moon Coins. So, you need to decide early on what you want to tackle and choose the stats you need.

For Idle Realm 1.3, the Leader is being introduced, but I have plans to expand the feature in the future. Also, for right now, there will be a basic silhouette of your leader on the screen. This is because in the future, I plan to add tribes to the game and the leader will match your tribe and have special traits related to the tribe (1.4 or 1.5, in theory).

Also, the Town Hall screen shows off some of the new data being displayed, letting you know about your bonuses:



That's it for now! More to come soon!

 

The past few days have been spent modifying the map editor for Idle Realm to handle all of the new map objectives that I'm throwing at it, along with the map hazards that can be set. In Idle Realm 1.3, the player will be playing a "campaign" and traveling to various island maps, each with specific map objectives. Every 5 islands there will be a special island that has a special rule thrown in. These maps are much smaller than the previous maps that Idle Realm used, and for good reason: players are expected to complete a map and move on to the next until they plateau. Then, the player ends their campaign, cashes in their victory points, upgrades their realm and then starts again. Of course, going from map 1 to 30 could be a pain, so there will be ways to start on later islands as well.

To aide with keeping track of your objectives, there is now a Current Objectives screen. This screen will let you see objectives related to the island that you are on as well as campaign objectives.



Island Tab:

Here, you'll see your main objectives for the map. Defeating enemies, researching something, that kind of thing. You'll also have a section at the top if you are on a special map with a hazard or special rule in place. Since I don't want to spoil anything, I blurred some information, but this will still give you an idea of what's going on.

Once your main objective is finished, you will then leave the island and travel to a new island.

And yes, some hazards or special rules will cause destruction or modification of the land, which means you could lose buildings and, if you lose all of your domain generating buildings, your campaign will be forced to end.

Campaign Tab:

This tab will show you every Bonus Objective you have unlocked and their status. These are the old Winning Conditions that you got from Relic Collections. Some have been modified to take a few islands in order to complete, while others remain the same. You will be allowed to complete these bonus objectives once per campaign. So, the more relics you find, the more objectives you can deal with and load up on Victory Points.

 

Honestly, probably the last week of October. I was hoping to have everything wrapped up 4 days ago and begin final testing, but the sheer amount of things that are going into the game has definitely delayed things. I'm still pushing as hard as I can and have been testing along the way, creating test cases to check out once everything comes together.

This version is massive due to the entire meta game that's going in. There was a point where I had to step back and look at the features that I had planned for 1.3 and bite the bullet and simply move stuff into the 1.4 or 1.5 release. Of the 42 realm upgrades that I was going to add, 33 made it in. I feel like these are the bare minimum that is needed for the meta game, with future realm upgrades slotting in easily.

The same with island map hazards. I had to push 2 of them out into a future update, but I still have 3. The great thing about the island maps is that I can shuffle them around and throw new things at players whenever I want. Right now, players will be playing on at least 16 different map layouts, with randomization being used to keep the map feeling fresh. There are also 6 map objectives that I added for these maps, so with these various combinations, there will be about 50 island maps that a player will be able to play on before they start wrapping around and you start hitting the same setups. While map 1 and 51 might be the same, the dynamic difficulty aspect of it will at least keep you trying to figure out the best layout for your bases, what to pursue, that type of thing. I don't think players will hit map 51 anytime soon though.

I also added the concept of a moving enemy... and while it has a specific purpose and will only appear once, the way it works will open up a whole new can of crazy that I might add in the future.

Anyway, everything that is going into 1.3 is because it all relies on each other, and if I made 1.3 smaller than it already is, it would feel half-baked or definitely missing something. It was really hard to plan this update's features, but I'm pretty happy with where it landed. But going forward, future updates will be much smaller as they will be expanding the game in certain areas and not overhauling huge systems. For example, Combat and Pacifism will be up for a rework in the future

Idle Realm was always meant to be an kingdom building idler game with exploration aspects thrown in. To the best of my knowledge, I don't really know of any game that is like this, other than Civilization, but even then, it's a turned based game and not really an idle game. The exploration part really opens the door for me to add new game play elements that I don't think a typical idler would have. But with the map objectives that are being thrown in, some of the map hazards that are going in ... this game is becoming something crazy that I'm excited as well as terrified about because, holy crap, what even is this genre now? I'm loving where it's going and I hope others will also enjoy it.

I'll be providing more pictures and info in the next couple days as well

 

Another Dev Update for Idle Realm!

As teased over time, there will be a form of transportation that is used to travel between islands. It was originally going to be a sea transport of some kind (barge, ship, whatever), but there was an issue I needed to address: water. In order for it to work, I would need to let it be built on water, but there is no guarantee that the water would be "ocean" or a river or lake. Plus, the player might not have a base near water, which would make things more difficult. So, what other kind of ship could be built to satisfy this requirement?

An airship.



Now, when you complete the island objective, the Airship will be unlocked for that island and you'll then need to funnel in a lot of normal low-tier resources in order to build it. Once built, you will have the option of leaving the island immediately, or wait up to 100 minutes to "fill up the cargo bay" with a percentage of the cargo bay size. Basically, 1 minute for 1% storage capacity.

This loading mechanic is meant to give you a head-start on the next island, but time is required. Some islands, you can totally wait the 100 minutes (or come back the next day) and you'll be fine. Other maps where there is a map hazard in play, you might not be able to wait the full 100 minutes as the hazard could destroy your airship or your town halls. So, for some maps, there will be higher risk/reward. You can totally wait 10 minutes and get 10% of the storage space and move out.

Here's how the resource transfer works:

Lets say that your cargo bay holds 20k resources total. This means that you can transfer up to 20k of EACH resource you have to the next island. If you load it up to 100%, you get 20k. If you load it up to 50%, you get 10k. Now, each resource will carry over based upon how many you have or the max that the cargo bay will hold, whichever is smaller. This means that if you can bring 20k Wood with you, but you only have 144 Wood, you only bring 144.

Next up, the Campaign Objectives tab on the Map Objectives screen is finished.



It basically is the old Victory Conditions dialog, with some changes to bring it in line with some of the new UI pieces. This means the old Victory Conditions dialog is gone from the Settings screen, yay! As you are playing, if you complete a campaign objective, a popup will let you know. Since these are the old winning conditions, the enemy defeating conditions and the exploring conditions have been modified to require a couple island maps worth of stats to be counted. For example, "Defeating All Enemies" on the map is now more like "Defeat 300 enemies" which might take 3-4 islands worth of maps before it is complete. I still need to update the localization text for the objectives, as they are the old victory condition descriptions, so ignore that

Last, I switched up the artwork for the ground tile for the Forest.



Now, when you have a lumberjack hut, you'll be able to tell what tile is under it based upon the leaf pattern. This should make it easier for you to determine what you should and should not demolish. Also, this screen shows off the airship building on the ground as well as one of the Realm Upgrades that applies to the town hall. That is definitely not the normal domain radius of the town hall.