Early Gothic Era – Dev Progress Update vol. 2 

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve shared some of the first insights on the upcoming new era.  

Since that time, we’ve made quite a lot of progress, and we think we’re not far from putting it on Beta. Before it happens, however, we wanted to talk a little bit about something that we’ve all known was coming, but we haven’t discussed much before: the successor of the Arabian Allied Culture! 

So, what’s coming? Something new! 

We have a TLDR version for those short on time right here: 

• We are introducing “Trading Cultures”, a fresh take on the known Allied Cultures mechanic. 
• The first Trading Culture will be the Ottoman Empire, and it will stay with us – much like previous cultures – for two main city eras. 
• Instead of building another separate city from scratch, you’ll build a harbor in the capital, while discovering foreign villages and trading with them. 

For everyone interested in details, read on! 😊 

The Wonderings 

As we’ve been trying to find the right culture to succeed Arabia (and yes, the Arabian Wonders are still coming), we’ve also toyed with various ideas regarding mechanics and the behavior of the game. 
We’ve recognized that it’s perhaps a good moment to change how we do new cultures in general, going forward. There were a couple of reasons behind said wonderings.  

First of all, we’ve been utilizing Allied Cultures since the start of the game, 4.5 years ago (we’re going to be 5 next year!). That is a long time – both in real life, and in the game’s timeline. Trying something new wouldn’t be uncalled for – quite the opposite. 

Second – it is pretty clear that our era release rate is – simply put – rather slow. What may seem like unhurried pacing from the outside stems from the fact that we are a very small development team, and adding eras is labor-intensive. Nevertheless – feedback has been clear – our RoC community would like to see more frequent end-game content releases – and we agree. We’ve had various ideas on how we could possibly achieve it, and in the end, it comes down to new cultures and mitigating the bottlenecks in how we’ve been creating them. 

Thirdly, there was another possible approach – keeping each Allied Culture in focus for longer – for three to four eras, instead of two. We have briefly considered it because it was brought up by players in Discord (we haven’t even thought of it ourselves). We’ve decided against it, because the community has made it abundantly clear that this is not a good idea. Who are we to argue? 

The New Way 

We’ve decided to go for a completely different approach, not only introducing something new, but hopefully supporting faster releases, too! 
Trading Cultures is a large new feature, where you encounter cultures with whom you trade to obtain exotic goods. The trading takes place on a new sea map. Each new trading culture will come with its own map, reflecting its unique environment. 

You’ll unlock the map piece by piece, send ships, and help upgrade the goods-producing trade outposts. 
In doing so you’ll collect resources necessary to build and improve your capital city’s harbor. That’s another new thing we are introducing, making use of the beautiful bay: 

The harbor buildings will be era-specific, and each new trading culture will come with an upgradable ship moored in the harbor, appropriately representing its character and mood. 

So, this is the way we go! We welcome the “Trading Cultures” mechanic, which will likely remain with us for the next several ages. Much like in the past, the plan is to introduce a new culture every second main city era.  With this, we think we have managed to find an approach which makes for a refreshing new feature, while allowing us to keep up speed-wise! 

The Ottomans 

We haven’t yet explained why we have chosen this specific culture. We have a long list of cultures to pick from (and it can certainly be extended!) so it could have been anything. But – long story short – it’s because we liked it and because the time of Osman I (one of our new characters and the gentleman you can see in the top picture!) fits the period we are moving to with the Early Gothic Era. We also haven’t previously touched Ottomans, so this was a very nice opportunity! 

Future 

We are approaching what the broadly understood western world calls “the age of discovery”, so focusing more on the sea and ocean trading feels like a big but very natural step in that direction.  
Will more and more Trading Cultures be introduced forever? Probably not. You will likely expand and improve your harbor for a while across several cultures following the Ottomans, but it’s reasonable to expect that we’ll move on to yet another mechanic of adding new cultures to the game at some point. 
But that’s something we don’t have to envision just yet – there will be time for it in the future. 

Beta phase is coming! 

Soon, you will have the opportunity of experiencing the Early Gothic Era and the Ottoman Empire Trading Culture in the Beta environment! Make sure to stop by our Discord server and keep an eye on the appropriate section – that’s where we will soon share information on how you can join the test phase, find issues, and point them out to us. 
We’ll be super grateful for your help.  

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you in the game!