Rising Empires - an Android project

[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 ? Playing the first turn in Rising Empires | Words from the Netherlords

Later this evening we'll upload a new version of Rising Empires to Google Play. This is purely bug fixes to remove some of the most common bugs that has been detected.

I would also like say thank you to all of you who've tested Rising Empires.

 

[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 – Troop statistics, or how to design the ‘super soldier’
Tutorial VI – War! Rules of engagement in Rising Empires


Cheers!

 

[Netherlords]

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

• Diplomacy – It is now possible to create non-aggression pacts (NAP) with the AI controlled empires. Lots of factors influence how the AI respond to these proposals (or if they send one themselves). For example your race and religion is compared to their race and religion, have you recently burned down one of their watchtowers, do they have NAPs with other empires and much more. We are really interested to hear your comments about the diplomatic system and how the AI perform now that it will focus it’s efforts against a smaller amount of enemy empires instead of just lashing out in all directions…
• Tutorial – The in-game tutorial will help new players get used to the interface and learn the basics of the game. Rising Empires is a relatively complex game and it’s not easy to jump right into it. We hope this new feature will help new players learn the game and find it more enjoyable.

Lots of smaller changes and additions has also been made, for example automatic terrain improvement for those that don't want this level of micro-management. Give the game a try and let us know what you think. It can be downloaded at Google Play.


Enjoy!

 

[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’re awaiting the first comments about it. There are a lot of new features and improvements. For example it’s now possible to recruit commanders for your armies in cities with the Military Academy building and you can train militia and settlers from races that you’ve conquered. This will make conquered towns and cities more useful. We did also tweak the AI quite a lot and improved it’s defensive capability.

If you've been playing Rising Empires before please let us know your thoughts on the new AI. Do you notice any difference? Is it better at defending itself? Has it ever left the cover of the high walls to hunt down your intruding armies?

I’m now preparing the code needed for training the AI. Each turns the AI evaluates a number of possible actions and selects those that gets the highest priority. These actions might be relatively simple, for example building a new patrol army, to quite advanced, for example using several settlements to create a big army that will be sent to the other level to capture an enemy city. The first one might take 1-2 turns while the other action could take 20+ turns... When training the AI we’ll try to optimise how the AI sets it’s priorities. This is done by letting different versions of the AI play against itself. I’m really looking forward to this!

 

[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: “Exactly the type of game I’ve been hoping for.” The average rating is 4.2. This news release has featured on Droid Life, Droid Gamers and many others.

 

[Netherlords]

It’s only six days left until the release of Rising Empires and we’re just about finished with all the new features and improvements for the premium version. Just a few hours ago I uploaded the final version of my code (AI and what we call the process methods) and Johan completed the last improvements for the GUI yesterday. We’ll still polish the game until the very end but we’ve added all the stuff that we intended for the release. We’re very excited to hear your response to the last features we’ve added and also how you like the insectoid Krant and the Dwarf races.

Among the last things I fixed was improving how the AI value the strength of it’s armies when it prepares to attack an enemy town. Now it will build extra companies if it believes that the enemy town is very well defended, before it sometimes sent conquest armies that where to weak even when it was sent off.

While working with this improvement I also found a very irritating bug. It seemed that when the AI compared if there is a path between two locations in the same region it always failed if both locations were the same. This just happened to have a big influence when it came to making use of all its army reserves since it always tried to locate its largest army reserve and when it would pick companies from the reserve it could no longer see that it was connected to its target location. Anyway, when I fixed this error the formerly very big army reserves that some AIs built up decreased in size as they now sent them to do mischief instead.

Read more at the Words from the Netherlords.

 

[Netherlords]

The first review of our Android game Rising Empires was published yesterday by the web magazine Hardcore Droid. They give it a score of 4.8 out of the maximum 5. ‘The amount of depth and detail surpasses many PC strategy games and is startling on a mobile device.’ The review looks deep into the mechanics of Rising Empires and concludes that ‘You’ll be hard pressed to find a mobile game that tackles the subgenre with greater success.’.


Read the whole review here: Mobile 4X Strategy of Startling Depth | Hardcore Droid