Axioms Of Dominion: Make Rome Rome Again: Democracies, Republics, Senates, Magistrates, And Comitias(New Design Blog Post)

[MoLAoS]

Axioms Of Dominion is a project I got about 40% through and then had to let go for life stuff. Now I have roughly a year where I shouldn't have anything else to do so I'm hoping to release in late 2022 or very early 2023 if I run into serious issues.

This is a fantasy geopolitics simulator that is broadly comparable to CK2+Vicky2+Dominions4+more. As a fantasy game it has tons of magic stuff but the focus is on DIP mechanics.

Diplomacy(foreign affairs)
Intrigue(shadowy affairs)
Politics(domestic affairs)

I have a Substack with detailed posts on the mechanics that are relatively unique:
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.com/p/the-socii-and-the-auxilia?r=i2fsj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I have a goal of enabling 40000 provinces on very new PCs but the game is perfectly functional around 14000. I have a major goal of playing an almost purely combat free couple millenia taking down a major empire in the world from the inside. I'd expect an average top tier empire to have roughly 7000 provinces on larger maps if you run history for 4000-8000 years. Anywhere from 15% to 40% of a larger map. What constitutes an empire or even a kingdom is much more fluid and dynamic than in existing games. A 7000 province empire would have something like 10 ~100 province substates at the core, 40 ~50 province "major vassals", and then 200 ~20 province periphery/border vassals. Of course you can fiddle those numbers a bit but that is a good illustration of my goal.

Several of the substack posts relate the very detailed political sim I am designing to make this goal plausible. I still have a few major and a few minor things to talk about on the blog. There is a Fandom wiki that has a few dozen pages on various major and minor systems. It hasn't been changed much since mid 2015 when I had to pause working on the game until now.

Most of the backend stuff is done and I'm primarily figuring out the equations for mechanics, doing all the UI stuff, and getting the AI to function. I expect I'll do a UI theme, smooth out map generation, and maybe polish up the art assets at the end.

The game is turn based with attention points. So you have like 1000 attention points per turn, still testing the proper amount and the costs for actions. I wanted to do a time based system but it is hard to code and people will just get mad anyways. It is a province map style like Sovereignty or Paradox games.

There is a very detailed population simulation which interacts with the character mechanics. Ideology covers almost a dozen areas, Propaganda impacts ideology and religion and the military, there's a Quality Of Life system regarding food variety/quality and material goods plus shelter, Religion ties into both magic and diplomacy/politics, population is where your troops come from and there is a logistics system.

https://imgur.com/a/AlPew
Those are some early maps. The top one almost looks like Europe/Africa/Near East. Maps are generated procedurally as will the world be if you don't start on world creation but run history for a few centuries or millenia.

The magic aspect is highly integrated and very expansive. It impacts every game system in various ways. I have a substack post about just magic. My substack is free for anyone to read. Magic can build roads, discover secrets, troop movements, and other knowledge from distant provinces, change the weather and climate, be used in various enchantments, etc. There is even a cool The Runelords(think that is the right series) inspired magical transference/pacts thing where you can empower your soldiers or other people with the powers of captured, or tamed, magical creatures. Or sentient captives. Strength, mana pool, speed, physical features like scales or claws, etc. And you can do evil mad science ****.

Speaking of evil Axioms allows you to play a truly ruthless tyrant rather than just a good boy. Fear, blackmail, military threats, second class citizens, slaves, etc.

The culture system allows a something like a society that reveres dragons, character secretly captures a dragon, transfers dragon traits to himself, become leader of confederation of tribes. Someone finds out, and can blackmail him, reveal him, kill him and become dragon king themselves, etc.

You can destabilize a society by cutting off their access to a prestigious food resource that is a traditional staple of cultural diet, say cinnamon, assuming the leader has depleted his political capital and put himself in a risky position. Much more detailed example on the blog.

The trade off is graphical sugar, no voice acting or 3d models, random world gen vs handcrafted map, although players/modders can make scenarios if they want, I just don't plan to release official ones but there is mod support.

A stretch goal, well not really since there isn't a kickstarter, if I finish the main stuff early before release date is to integrate a "History" system that records important actions and can be loaded/interpreted by a wiki type program to allow you to read "history books" about the game world. The "simulated" history mentioned earlier is just starting a game with no player or observer and letting the AI play a few centuries or millenia and then picking a point jump in. Player could look at data files in theory but the idea is that you only know what your AI guy knew when you swapped in.

[MoLAoS]

I did a post today on detailed and deep character interactions. Total War actually does more than some games as far as trust mechanics, especially in WH but I went a bit farther. Just crucial to help the AI handle a lot of stuff I wanted to add.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

I also have a dozen other posts but some of them aren't discussing mechanics as unique as the opinion/trust/fear/respect/honor system.

[MoLAoS]

I don't see an edit button or I'd just put this in the first post:
These are just working visuals except maybe the icons. I plan to finish the UI skinning and other art type stuff once the code is finalized.


Debugging some stuff:
https://imgur.com/a/23cnnra


Map:



Unique colors for province detection on maps:



Icons:

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

I'm reproducing my blog post on fantasy religion here so people don't have to leave the site. Ironically TW has better religion than Paradox games even though thematically it shouldn't. Axioms goes way farther than anything I know of:

Religious Expansion And Conflict

Much like intelligence networks religions in Axioms essentially function as a system similar to military conflict or even political conflict. Unlike most games where you can, and must in some cases, deploy a rare and limited number of individual characters/abstract agents to provinces Axioms has a more holistic religion system. It is more integrated into other systems as well. Appropriate characters can spend attention, subordinates, and resources in promoting or weakening the control of a given religion in a location on charactors and/or populations.
It is somewhat ironic that it was the Civilization franchise, often considered boardgamey and simplistic that made the biggest move to shake up religion in strategy games. Of course that system was a mess flooding the map with church units which had minimal impact and which couldn’t be interacted with in any meaningful way beyond deploying your own church units. You might have expected Slitherine or Paradox to be the first and most serious at religious gameplay innovation.
Religious power, like intrigue capacity, exists as a sort of extra layer over military power. Characters can have a shadowy puppeteer, a public political superior, and a religious superior. In theory a character could have multiple public political superiors although such a position would obviously be shaky.
Evangelism

In Axioms you have a religious network which is connected to some degree with your intelligence network. Depending on the way the religion is organized secular leaders may have more or less capability in this area. Secular and religious authority can be held by the same character if the religion operates that way. Most will likely have roles for the nobility while also having a separate religious hierarchy.
A character can invest in their religious network with other characters as well as financial resources. Intelligence and religious networks can cooperate between each other and even between different characters. These networks can support utilize the Propaganda system to increase or decrease the feelings about various religions. Religious networks can promote pluralism, syncretism, polytheism, or monotheism through propaganda missions as well as directly engage in conversion to their religion.
The distinction between the function intelligence network and the religious network is that the latter typically operates in the open. After all the publicity is the point to some degree both for characters trying to get in good with a religious hierarchy and for the religion itself. Secret religions are possible but limited for obvious reasons given the need to convert. Characters and “cadres” can be employed by a religious and intelligence network at the same time. Similarly public diplomatic representatives can have secret roles as intelligence operatives.
Religious Actions

Religious actions such as duels of rhetoric and duels of magic can be employed to gain support. Religions also gain support based on the rise and fall of their adherents. Military conflicts between faiths can cause such effects. Specifically religious wars have an increased risk and reward compared to secular wars.
Gods themselves are characters, although somewhat limited ones, and can engage in various actions. Since Axioms is a fantasy game the gods actually exist. For this reason the situation is somewhat different from our actual history.
Boons can be requested of the gods and offerings can be made to them. As noted in a previous post primal gods are eternal while other gods are sustained or even created by faith. Ascendants are existing beings including characters, spirits, and superorganisms who have gained power through faith. The neogenic gods are new gods created ex-nihilo from concerted acts of faith. In-world characters and populations aren’t conscious of this such that they would intentionally spawn a god.
In a set of features cut for the sequel, rather than the base game or expansions, both primal gods and elder/outsider gods *can* intentionally create puppet gods, or even true neogenic gods if they have a reason, for various purposes. Similarly cut features, to avoid feature creep, include multiple planes of various natures rather than the material plane.
Boons, Investments, And Magic

The gods are magical as well as divine and they can be a source of magical knowledge or power. Investments are rare, unique, and powerful actions by gods to empower corporeal representatives. Boons are more commonplace and and be traded for in a more mercenary way with lower requirements.
A boon might be a magical artifact or a spell forgotten by time. Perhaps a creature or monster bound to a character. A boon might also be a small boost to magical power. An Investment or Bestowal, haven’t decided, is an action which gives a character access to a significant percentage of a god’s personal power.
I provided some minimal information on how gods work before. We’ll need more detail for this discussion. Concepts and substances all have a sort of essence in the game. A god, of any kind, has a number of domains which can be based on any essence. War, Purity, Knowledge, etc. are examples of concept essences. Stone, Shadow, Sun, etc. are examples of material essences. Gravity, Force, Time, Space, etc. are examples of force essences. Not that it matters to gameplay what kind of essence an essence is.
So a god may have a domain of Time, Shadow, and Knowledge or something. Each Domain draws from the same essence well regardless of the god or type. So neogenic gods compete for the power of a divine well based on the scale of their worship. If they become too weak they fade away. Primal gods always exist and their power functions as though they control 50% of a well while the other 50% is available to the neogenic gods. Wells are refilled by faith for neogenic gods but by time for primal gods.
Primal gods award boons based on the actions of a character. Neogenic gods based on service. Typically neogenic gods support a particular polity although a religion could be followed by multiple polities.
Political Impact

A character in the good graces of a religion gains legitimacy in the eyes of the followers of that religion, both in the case of superiors or inferiors politically, that of the populations connected to them, and even of same religion characters outside their chain of authority.
Legitimacy in a directly controlled province increases 20% faster with same religion populations in the province. It increases 20% slower with those of other religions. For characters the increase in speed is 10%. You also get an opinion boost which is distinct from legitimacy.
Additionally any action a character takes modifies the opinion of characters and populations based on religious affiliation, just as it does for other inherent characteristics. Actions against a character or population have a smaller negative or positive impact on all characters or populations of different religions. The same mechanic affects cultures/races/nations of origin, and so forth.
Ongoing conversion efforts and effective character conversions apply bonuses as well. You could play a character in the role of St. Stephen or St. Jadwiga converting the heathans.

[MoLAoS]

Play as a northern european style tribal confederation or play a bunch of them off each other as an imperial power. Wee! Simulation. Also some fun history about those groups.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web


This is a post about how early era tribal gameplay will work in Axioms. Well technically all tribal gameplay but it is way more common in the first age, the age of exploration, that typically would last 1000 years or 12000 turns. Of course the worlds in the official release will be starting 4000 or 8000 years in to get more complex and developed societies available to casual players.


I'll update this post with the companion piece in the development blog on my substack later. The main section is design stuff and the development sections talks about what I'm doing code wise and where we are on actually implementing all the stuff in the design section.

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...velopment-blog

There is a subsection of my substack for my development blog. Basically talking about what I'm doing. Try to post several times a week. Recently? Just grinding out some code changes from library updates from TGUI and SFML and doing a ton of refactoring of systems that support core systems. Almost got the basic loop functioning after all the changes. Conquering stuff, making deals with the AI, and some of the economic stuff.

My current hurdle that is giving me a compile time based break right now is that when you don't have traditional "nations/factions" as the core of gameplay but pure character relationships, and characters and their associated populations can move around, it is hard to have a good model for who "owns" a province. Been slowly cleaning up code related to that and getting a solid model and figuring out how to display that on a map mode or two.

Especially in the case of mobile, if not actually nomadic, tribes and stuff like that, how do you define control over territory? And since characters and their relationships are what define the political landscape, you can just have giant homogenuous swaths of color in the style of a traditional map painter.

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

I wrote a post, the first in a roughly 10 part series called Esoteric Arcana, about one of the unique and integrated types of magic Axioms has that most other games don't. This one is on Divination. Farsight, Hindsight, and even Foresight are avalable to the mages of Axioms. Getting vague warnings of future danger? Yes. Axioms already had the necessary systems, simulation detail, and data structures to enable this. Barely any extra work to implement at all.

[MoLAoS]

Been about a week since I posted. I saw a video today of a popular stream talking about a set of mechanics substantially similar to Axioms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jltPHYJOZo&t=18s

One Proud Bavarian posts lots of Paradox stuff, I think this specific video is about CK3.

In any case I was inspired as to my bi/tri-weekly design blog post topic since it was so similar to stuff I was thinking about:
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

Since this is a much more warfare or warfare adjacent topic I thought it would be a good fit for these forums. I'm trying to avoid posting too much here since no one really responds to my thread, my plan is to post mainly military topics.

[alhoon]

We are supposed to answer to the thread? I thought (and still think) it should be you posting here the updates. To be honest, I think it is best to keep this thread "clean" until your game development progress enough for us to actually weigh in. You said in the OP that you hope for an early 2023 release. Add in some unavoidable delays because life happens (this is no criticism to you or anyone else; people generally prefer a more polished product with a few months delay than a buggy mess on time, like ETW was at launch) and ... it's way too early for us to weigh in, in my opinion.

Still, I wish you best of luck. What you showed so far is interesting but I don't know how much of the original vision will be in the final product and you seem to have your plan so many posts here would (in my opinion and I can't stop anyone from posting here) create needless 'noise' that would make following the development harder. Furthermore, if you are not completely set on what you want for the game, a cacophony of opinions will make things harder for you, not better. From what I have seen from indie game developers, is that if you try to please everyone, you please nobody. There's a reason betas happen towards the end of the development cycle.

[MoLAoS]

We are supposed to answer to the thread? I thought (and still think) it should be you posting here the updates. To be honest, I think it is best to keep this thread "clean" until your game development progress enough for us to actually weigh in. You said in the OP that you hope for an early 2023 release. Add in some unavoidable delays because life happens (this is no criticism to you or anyone else; people generally prefer a more polished product with a few months delay than a buggy mess on time, like ETW was at launch) and ... it's way too early for us to weigh in, in my opinion.

Still, I wish you best of luck. What you showed so far is interesting but I don't know how much of the original vision will be in the final product and you seem to have your plan so many posts here would (in my opinion and I can't stop anyone from posting here) create needless 'noise' that would make following the development harder. Furthermore, if you are not completely set on what you want for the game, a cacophony of opinions will make things harder for you, not better. From what I have seen from indie game developers, is that if you try to please everyone, you please nobody. There's a reason betas happen towards the end of the development cycle.

Well there are a lot of ways to do things I suppose. Mostly I'm curious if many people actually read the posts. Substack says I have roughly 10 unique visitors from here. However some amount of unique visitors fall under their "direct" category which includes basically all private browsing modes from all sites because it turns off their traffic detector so some people may fall under that.

Depending on where I am posting I get more or less feedback. It often makes you wonder if you should post to a particular place with no response. Some places have a social media style like button which people hit and then even though you don't get posts you know people are interested. Of course as you say many people are more likely to respond when a game gets further on. Gameplay videos, maybe trailers, etc. Here you can only really look at the view count but that is a notoriously ambiguous metric.

One thing I do like some places is that people will say oh I wish I could do "historical or epic fantasy event thing" and then I can see, is the game flexible enough to accomodate that. Usually the answer is yes but I make some notes or even code changes occasionally if someone brings something up that is *almost* possible.

When you post into the void sometimes it feels bad even if it is understandable that people might not have much to say at a given point. Also a lot of places don't like too many self bumps. Your post is helpful in two ways, that I'm not violating any rules and also that at least people look at the things I post.

I thought maybe when I remembered I used to post here a bit that people would have some interest in the historical stuff, like that you can pursue Roman-esqeu policies, such as the post about the Socii system being replicable in the game or the post about trying to properly simulate the northern germanic tribes although obviously you won't get an empire vs tribes thing in all games.

I post on a city-builer/majesty friendly forum about relevant topics for instance and get some feedback there on those issues even though the game is at the core a politicals province sim game. Or I post on an rpg site and a master of magic tbs site about the magic system and people say oh I always wanted MoM magical stuff in a world with a little more interaction or maybe they ask can I do something like x that I do in an Illwinter magical wargame.

I did find that some sites just have distinct forum cultures. I post on Historum and they say you can ask for reference materials and ask about historical events and you can mention it is for a game but no threads primarily about the game. I post on another site and the game aspect is okay with them and that helps somewhat in being able to connect my question and discussion posts explictly to being an in development game. Some sites are also far more interactive even with games pre-beta or pre-alpha but on other sites people won't expend thought on a game unless they are 95% sure it releases in 6 months. So I didn't know how you guys feel until you posted regarding that stuff.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

Well there are a lot of ways to do things I suppose. Mostly I'm curious if many people actually read the posts. Substack says I have roughly 10 unique visitors from here. However some amount of unique visitors fall under their "direct" category which includes basically all private browsing modes from all sites because it turns off their traffic detector so some people may fall under that.

Depending on where I am posting I get more or less feedback. It often makes you wonder if you should post to a particular place with no response. Some places have a social media style like button which people hit and then even though you don't get posts you know people are interested. Of course as you say many people are more likely to respond when a game gets further on. Gameplay videos, maybe trailers, etc. Here you can only really look at the view count but that is a notoriously ambiguous metric.

One thing I do like some places is that people will say oh I wish I could do "historical or epic fantasy event thing" and then I can see, is the game flexible enough to accomodate that. Usually the answer is yes but I make some notes or even code changes occasionally if someone brings something up that is *almost* possible.

When you post into the void sometimes it feels bad even if it is understandable that people might not have much to say at a given point. Also a lot of places don't like too many self bumps. Your post is helpful in two ways, that I'm not violating any rules and also that at least people look at the things I post.

I thought maybe when I remembered I used to post here a bit that people would have some interest in the historical stuff, like that you can pursue Roman-esqeu policies, such as the post about the Socii system being replicable in the game or the post about trying to properly simulate the northern germanic tribes although obviously you won't get an empire vs tribes thing in all games.

I post on a city-builer/majesty friendly forum about relevant topics for instance and get some feedback there on those issues even though the game is at the core a politicals province sim game. Or I post on an rpg site and a master of magic tbs site about the magic system and people say oh I always wanted MoM magical stuff in a world with a little more interaction or maybe they ask can I do something like x that I do in an Illwinter magical wargame.

I did find that some sites just have distinct forum cultures. I post on Historum and they say you can ask for reference materials and ask about historical events and you can mention it is for a game but no threads primarily about the game. I post on another site and the game aspect is okay with them and that helps somewhat in being able to connect my question and discussion posts explictly to being an in development game. Some sites are also far more interactive even with games pre-beta or pre-alpha but on other sites people won't expend thought on a game unless they are 95% sure it releases in 6 months. So I didn't know how you guys feel until you posted regarding that stuff.

Stream-of-thought or development threads like this have been well accepted on the site and do attract a level of readership, but not necessarily engagement. For my part I would consider myself 'vaguely' interested, on the fence as far as acquiring the project on launch based on the details so far. I think what this thread needed was a catalyst, some thing that sparks conversation, engagement, and feedback. There are a number of people who frequent this realm who can be quite persistent even if you well know this is probably not the ideal avenue to high volume attention.

We are supposed to answer to the thread? I thought (and still think) it should be you posting here the updates. To be honest, I think it is best to keep this thread "clean" until your game development progress enough for us to actually weigh in. You said in the OP that you hope for an early 2023 release. Add in some unavoidable delays because life happens (this is no criticism to you or anyone else; people generally prefer a more polished product with a few months delay than a buggy mess on time, like ETW was at launch) and ... it's way too early for us to weigh in, in my opinion.

Perhaps the OP can consider an index of announcements in the first post, at least partially making the 'clean' impression moot if the static updates are organized as is, but importantly carry some level of inquiry and engagement that would inspire people to post.

---

Incidentally, you probably couldn't edit because you lacked the amount of posts to do so. It does seem you've found the button now and have met the threshold.

[MoLAoS]

Stream-of-thought or development threads like this have been well accepted on the site and do attract a level of readership, but not necessarily engagement. For my part I would consider myself 'vaguely' interested, on the fence as far as acquiring the project on launch based on the details so far. I think what this thread needed was a catalyst, some thing that sparks conversation, engagement, and feedback. There are a number of people who frequent this realm who can be quite persistent even if you well know this is probably not the ideal avenue to high volume attention.

Perhaps the OP can consider an index of announcements in the first post, at least partially making the 'clean' impression moot if the static updates are organized as is, but importantly carry some level of inquiry and engagement that would inspire people to post.
---
Incidentally, you probably couldn't edit because you lacked the amount of posts to do so. It does seem you've found the button now and have met the threshold.

Is there something in particular that keeps you at vaguely interested? A particular thing you consider essential in province based strategy games that isn't mentioned, you prefer historical over fantasy, maybe you like most of your complexity in one aspect and so the game seems to cluttered? Or is it a developmental concern like concern over the actual implementation details of features or that you prefer to wait till much closer to release to form a strong opinion?

[MoLAoS]

Social Occasions: Feasts, Festivals, Hunts, Tournaments, And Ceremonies:

Invitations, activities, and other aspects

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.com/p/social-occasions-feasts-festivals?utm_source=twitter…

Potentially part of a series of posts similar to the Esoteric Arcana series on the character and social interactions of Axioms Of Dominion.

Who needs warfare just throw and attend fancy parties.

[MoLAoS]

Boats! Rivers!
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web


Lex Axioms: Laws And Traditions And Polities

A proposal for emergent legal systems

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

Post 3 in my magic design series Estoric Arcana:
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

I did weather and divination and this one is about the Rune Lords inspire attribute leech/transfer/bestowal system, and the other magical stuff that is related.

[MoLAoS]

Entry 2 In Everything But The Stabby Stuff: Food, Fodder, And Firewood On The March
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...twitter…
In this design post discuss the logistics and supply of armies in Axioms. It gets intense. Tomorrow another entry in EBTSS will cover the raising of troops for the armies.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

Is there something in particular that keeps you at vaguely interested? A particular thing you consider essential in province based strategy games that isn't mentioned, you prefer historical over fantasy, maybe you like most of your complexity in one aspect and so the game seems to cluttered? Or is it a developmental concern like concern over the actual implementation details of features or that you prefer to wait till much closer to release to form a strong opinion?

As a rule I ultimately prefer to reserve judgement until projects are closer to completion, main exception being if I'm personally invested (ie, beta testing). For the style I see in this thread, I think an ethos leaning towards some 'quirky' mechanics would suit it - a style of things happening a bit strangely, but with their own consistency if that makes sense. An indie charm that you can't necessarily find in a far more graphic game without it being called 'bugs' or out of place. Not to the point of making the game silly - but maybe, it would be served by being a little silly deliberately, if that makes sense. Tongue in cheek brevity, which is a part of classic Total War that pulled me in. Complexity coming both from the mechanics being thought out as you appear to intend already, and from the unexpected consequences of the quirks without them leading into flagrant abuse. I apologize if the vagueness doesn't help much.

[MoLAoS]

As a rule I ultimately prefer to reserve judgement until projects are closer to completion, main exception being if I'm personally invested (ie, beta testing). For the style I see in this thread, I think an ethos leaning towards some 'quirky' mechanics would suit it - a style of things happening a bit strangely, but with their own consistency if that makes sense. An indie charm that you can't necessarily find in a far more graphic game without it being called 'bugs' or out of place. Not to the point of making the game silly - but maybe, it would be served by being a little silly deliberately, if that makes sense. Tongue in cheek brevity, which is a part of classic Total War that pulled me in. Complexity coming both from the mechanics being thought out as you appear to intend already, and from the unexpected consequences of the quirks without them leading into flagrant abuse. I apologize if the vagueness doesn't help much.

Okay so pretty general understandable vaporware caution. Kinda what I suspected.

Same way I feel about Grey Eminence. They claimed some pretty ambitious stuff so I wonder if they can pull it off.

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web


I wrote a commonly requested post about how Axioms represents the rise and fall of empires. Basically to get a system that is both realistic and fun you need quite a bit of simulation detail from a variety of domains like ideology, culture, quality of life, and warfare.

[alhoon]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web


I wrote a commonly requested post about how Axioms represents the rise and fall of empires. Basically to get a system that is both realistic and fun you need quite a bit of simulation detail from a variety of domains like ideology, culture, quality of life, and warfare.

I don't completely agree with your interpretation of why Empires fall, as it changes with time. I agree that "Decadence" plays a role but not all the time, especially as things evolve. Most Empires fall from the inside, and we know that, but the Mongols overrun big states that could be considered "Empire-Equivalent" at least in population.
Furthermore... I wholeheartedly agree with Dismounted Feudal Knight that you should consider making the first post "cleaner" and include links to other posts where you discuss things. It will make following posts easier.

About materials and processed goods, to be honest I am more of a "Stellaris" type: You have the "things that make people happy" = consumer goods as something abstract. Micromanaging a lot of different things for the same purpose is redundant. What I mean is that you need 1-2 food resources, something that represents money resource, some resources meant to represent materials (like stone, wood etc for cities, iron for weapons, etc), "rare" resources that are used for specific things (iron could be here too or a magic thing that helps with magic etc) and then the consumer goods and other make-people-happy amenities (i.e. luxuries).
I understand your reluctance to say that if you bundle together iron, copper, wood, stone in one resource and then add gold, silver and mana-gems in a $$$ resource then an area rich in iron but poor in stone is replaceable with an area rich in stone and poor in iron but...
I don't think that is necessarily bad, especially when it comes to micromanaging a ton of resources.

Similar to some other games, you can go with "Iron is a special resource ... till the end of the iron age where it moves to a "materials" resource and areas with iron get more of the "materials resource" and a slight bonus to army construction that decays with time. "
That way, once iron becomes common instead of something of wonder, iron-based economies and armies will start becoming more obsolete and harder to manage as you lose your "special". It doesn't happen with the push of a button as the benefits are decaying with time, not disappearing.