EPOCH
Take one civilization from the Bronze Age to the modern world, on a real Earth that fights back. You don't draw borders. You build cities and forts, and the land they hold is yours. Hold it, or get wiped off the map.
A single-player 4X, in development. Real name coming later.
Dev Blog
Notes on building the game. The world sim, the civ engine, and whatever's on fire that week.
A civilization sim on a real, living planet. Not a war game.
The graphics are simple on purpose, so the work goes into the simulation. The world runs on its own underneath you, and you guide one people through it however you want. War is part of that. It isn't the whole game.
A living planet
Real Earth, built from elevation data. Seasons, weather, and wind run on an actual simulation. Winter shrinks your northern cities. Storms shut down sea routes. Hold a mountain pass and you can split an empire in half. Where you are matters.
You build, borders happen
You don't paint territory. You build cities and forts, and the land they control is your border. It shifts in real time. Over a long game, rough frontiers harden into real nations, and the map fills with borders nobody scripted.
Earned eras
You go from Bronze to Modern by what you build and survive, not by a calendar. Six eras, each one hours long. Every jump between them breaks something, from the Bronze Age Collapse to rail changing how far your power reaches.
All four X's are real
Explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate are all real. So is trade, and so is just building in peace. But losing is real too. You can get wiped off the map for good.
From a wandering band to a modern power.
A 50 to 100 hour game, measured in Cycles instead of turns. You earn each era. Every one changes how the game plays: how armies work, what land is worth, and how far you can push.
Bronze
A wandering band settles its first city on a river. Your army is farmers who go home for the harvest, so one lost battle can end you.
Iron
The Bronze Age Collapse ends the first era. Iron puts weapons in more hands, and open frontier starts turning into real borders.
Classical
Standing armies fight past a single season. Roads tie cities into provinces, and the map keeps its borders longer than the people who drew them.
Age of Sail
Open ocean, finally. Separate markets merge into one. Overseas colonies, blockades, and wind that matters in every sea battle.
Industrial
Rail is the real weapon. Cut a line and an army is stuck. Mass conscription makes full front lines possible for the first time.
Modern
Ten-million-person cities, new resources, and whole theaters of war at once. Same controls, full scale.
Systems that actually simulate, not numbers that tick up.
Cities that breathe
Each city's population cap comes from the real climate around it. Get too full and you get unrest, disease, and worse output, so you settle, fort, or build your way out.
Forts & supply
Cities make your power. Forts decide how far it reaches. Push past your supply and the attack stalls on its own, like Napoleon in Russia.
Trade you can cut
Cities make what they have and need what they don't, and the game routes the trade. Blockade a strait and you watch the other guy's money stop.
Contested deposits
Resources cover areas, not single tiles. Your share is however much of it you hold, so a front moving through an oil field is money changing hands.
Front command
Draw a line to hold, an arrow to attack, a circle to patrol. Battles play out on the map. No separate battle screen, because the world never stops for one fight.
Geography as destiny
Passes, straits, and river mouths are hard limits. Hold Thermopylae, the Khyber, or the Dardanelles, and cutting one chokepoint can split an empire in two.
The world layer is real and running.
Simple 3D terrain from real geography. This is the living planet the rest of the game gets built on. Early days. More as it comes together.
The world's alive. The civilization is next.
Still building it. Follow the devlog and watch a living Earth turn into a game you play from the Bronze Age to now.