Rise of Cultures – near-term plans

It’s been a pretty good start to the year for Rise of Cultures. But game development never stands still, and we are always looking ahead. It feels like a good moment to just share some thoughts and talk about the near-term plans at Rise of Cultures.

The year so far

Early 2026 brought us a few nice additions: we’ve started with the ATH Vacation Mode, then we celebrated our 5th birthday, and released the Late Gothic Era. The Museum has been expanded with three new collections, our merge event mechanic has gotten somewhat more pleasant, and the skins have introduced a lot of new freedom to the process of making your cities look the way you like them.

Now, we’re firmly in the second quarter of the year, so our minds naturally drift towards what’s coming up soon.

The next few months

The Ottomans

The very near future? The Ottoman sea map Enhancements. They have been available in Beta for a while, and we think we’ve smoothed out pretty much all the bugs our awesome Beta Testers reported. So, they’ll go live in a week or so. But – at least to those who follow the changes to the game closely – Enhancements are effectively old news, and while a nice addition increasing the depth of the trade map, they’re important mostly for advanced players.
We have more in store!

The past and the future of the Polynesia Event

The Polynesia Event debuted two years ago, and it was our attempt at introducing more variety to the event types we had: “chest”, “merge,” and “board” – as we internally referred to this new mechanic. We improved it last year, strengthening its decision-making element. Nevertheless, we had to face facts: its performance matched neither the “chest” nor the “merge”-type events. Perhaps it was not that appealing, or the mechanic simply was not as strong as we hoped it would be. We got a lot of feedback about it from the community, but in the end, we arrived at the conclusion that we won’t be able to improve it to a sufficient level. That’s why we decided to discontinue the Polynesia Event.

The related rewards will be incorporated into the season pass, so its legacy will continue, and everyone will be able to upgrade both the Sacred Marae and the Drum Tower, as well as collect the Polynesian customizations (and, over time, turn them into skins, too!).

But… we can’t just remove something and not replace it with anything else! What we could have done was keep the Polynesia Event and just switch its type to one of the other two more successful mechanics. But we thought to ourselves: if we’re making changes, we can as well introduce a new theme! In the end, we decided to go with the classic chest mechanic and feature a brand-new Japanese theme.

We haven’t yet included Japan, neither in our events, nor in our march through history, so we think it’s a good choice. Expect the obvious: cherry trees, and the classical architecture of the region.

Our Beta Testers will have the opportunity of visiting Japan in May, and everyone else will follow in June.

Soooo many Evolving Buildings

We have a lot of Evolving Buildings in the game. Do you know how many exactly? Make a guess and click below to see if you were close!

We know that not everyone appreciates their abundance. Nevertheless, they remain an important part of the motivation to play events, and thus of our business model, so we can’t abruptly stop adding them. At the same time, it is true that not all of them are appreciated equally – different buildings support different playing styles, and some of the Evolving Buildings are simply more powerful than others. Finally, there is such a thing as too many Evo Buildings in the city: at a certain point you will run out of space – we cannot keep making the city map larger indefinitely, especially at the pace we’ve adopted since last year.
Quite a conundrum, but we have a solution.

What we will do is ensure that we can keep events fresh by adding new Evolving Buildings, and their tokens will have value even if one is not necessarily interested in placing a particular building in the city.

There is a specific solution we have in mind, which we think will make it work in a meaningful way, while saving some real estate, and retaining the flexibility of keeping whatever you want to keep in the city.

To avoid creating expectations that won’t match reality, that’s as much as we can say at this point. We’re still a few weeks away from sharing it on Beta, but it’s coming, so keep an eye out and you’ll be able to try it out soon.

On we go!

Aside from all that, we’re continuously plotting our journey through the ages. We’ll soon start working on the next era, and the next trading culture, as the story of the Ottomans wraps up with the Late Gothic Era.
Currently, we’re leaning toward naming this one after a specific place (like the “Iberian Era”, for instance) – or maybe a collection of places – rather than a period, and let’s leave it at that for now.

Here’s a small eye candy for you:

As far as the trading culture goes – it will use largely the same mechanic as the Ottoman Empire, but will of course come with a new sea map, a new ship moored in the harbor, and so on. As to which culture that will be – this is yet to be decided.

Timeline-wise, we are always careful about committing to any particular release date – history shows things tend to shift a bit. But – provided that one accepts a massive asterisk next to it – the Beta release toward the end of July, or in early August is not unrealistic.

And then?

We do have plans for past that point, of course, but April is too early to talk about them “on paper”. New ideas always keep coming in, not just internally, but also though the fantastic suggestions players leave for us. Game development is a process with a lot of moving parts, so we’ll see where the wind takes us for the rest of the year.

Thanks for reading our ramblings, and stay tuned!