Well, the last few months have been pretty rough as hinted at in my last posting for 2011, but slowly things start to settle, and though having a new job means not much time for hobbies anymore (8 hours a day plus driving to and from work won’t leave much sparetime, though working atmosphere is pretty fine) I recently started to continue work on “Phase 2”, and I guess that’s a good sign after all.
So besides from putting finishing touches on the user interface, like the recent overhaul of the army management window (now finally including a separate window for assigning generals, much better than cramping that into the main window), I also wrote down my first ideas of implementing the politics section of the game. The image attached to this post shows the icon to open up the new politics window, and adding that feature will hopefully add some geopolitical aspects to the game. Though it’s in the early planning stages, I want to add some kind of “political avatar” for the player, attaching him even closer to the nation he’s leading. This will include some kind of popularity status (e.g. beloved, neutral, hated) that’ll have a direct influence on e.g. military and civil efficiency. In addition to that you’ll also be able to allocate budgets for certain areas, in both directions to either boost that area, or to save money, and those settings will have direct influence on your popularity amongst your people. I also plan to add different actions that you can initiate with your “political avatar”, like troop visits or image campaings, that’ll have direct influences though they’ll cost you a huge amount of money. But well, that’s only an early draft, so more on this once I finished the design of this new gameplay section.