Greetings, emperors!

Over my last few posts I’ve introduced a lot of new mechanics coming in the next major update. Today I want to take a step back and give you the full picture of how the resource system works, old and new together. Think of it as a guide to what everything does and why it matters.

Let’s start with what you already know.

Wood, iron and leather are your core production materials. They are collected daily from your settlements and fed into your workshops, where they are turned into the equipment your armies need. Simple, familiar, and unchanged.

Horses work slightly differently. Like wood, iron and leather, they are collected from your territory and used in workshops to help produce support equipment. But horses also go directly into your Global Equipment Stock, where they are drawn upon to recruit cavalry. They serve two roles at once, as a production input and a recruitment resource.

Equipment in Imperium Sine Fine comes in four types: support equipment, armour, melee weapons and ranged weapons. Unlike raw materials, none of these are collected from the terrain around your cities. They are all manufactured in your workshops from wood, iron and leather, then stored in your Global Equipment Stock and drawn upon when recruiting new troops.

Support equipment, however, has a second role that the other three do not. It also acts as a consumable supply for your armies in the field, covering everything from logistical supplies to specialised tools. Crucially, it is only consumed when an army actually does something, moving into a new position, building an outpost, fighting a battle. An army sitting still uses none. This means you can maintain large forces without constantly draining your reserves, as long as they are not active.

Now for the two new resources.

Grain is a new existence tax on your empire. Unlike support equipment, grain is consumed simply by having armies and cities at all. Every month, your armies need feeding regardless of whether they marched or fought, and every city needs grain to keep its population healthy and growing. Run short and you’ll see birth rates fall, loyalty suffer, and army effectiveness drop. Run out entirely and you are looking at famine. Grain comes from farming terrain, primarily plains, lakes and oases, and must be managed empire-wide through your GES.

Stone is your construction currency. Every time you want to build something significant, whether that is a workshop, city walls, a new outpost or developing your province to the next level, you pay an upfront stone cost from your GES before work can begin. Stone comes primarily from hills and broken ground terrain, making rocky territory far more valuable than it used to be. Plains empires must pace their construction carefully, while empires that control and quarry rocky terrain become powerful builders.

Put it all together and each resource has a clear, distinct role:

Wood, iron and leather feed your workshops. Horses feed both your workshops and your cavalry. Your workshops turn those raw materials into the four equipment types, armour, melee weapons, ranged weapons and support equipment, all stored in the GES and used to recruit and supply your armies. Grain keeps your empire alive. Stone builds it.

Please note that this update will break all old save games. It is a major overhaul and there is simply no way around it. The new systems add so much depth that I believe it will be well worth starting fresh.

The figures mentioned across this series of posts may be adjusted during playtesting, but they should give you a good feel for how the systems are designed to work.

There is still more to come! This series of posts will continue as more of the new mechanics are ready to share. Stay tuned!

Cheers!