Greetings commanders!

Release day tomorrow! We’re in full swing, getting everything ready for tomorrow. Until then, here is another dev diary you can dig into while waiting! Today, we’ll cover the less confrontational aspects of a grand city builder, such as diplomacy, politics, and trade, and how they all fit together.

Conquest is of course fun, and a lot (if not most) of us will go down that route at one point or another, but there are other ways you can spread your influence around the globe and that is forming alliances. Creating an alliance takes time and effort (and a nice sizable industry too) and there are numerous factors contributing to how fast your diplomatic relationship will evolve with another empire.

• Heritage - Certain heritage(s) influence this directly, by simply awarding you more "points" for your actions. Careful though, the points go both into the positive and the negative ;)
  
• Political alignment - Choosing social pillars as your city grows (and levels up) changes the political alignment of your city-state. Other empires may look upon your alignment favorably, while others won't. It mainly depends on their alignment.
  
• Actions - Actions taken directly on the world stage will have consequences. Staging your armies on the border with another empire is generally not looked upon fondly, especially by that empire. One might say they could consider that a threat ;)

But we mentioned earlier that your industry is important in diplomacy. In fact, it plays a vital role. Almost everything in Kaiserpunk is in some way related to the production of goods. Diplomacy is no exception. Exchanging resources with another empire impacts your relationship the most.

Let's take one step back for a moment and consider the trade buildings that you can construct in your capital. These include the market, the tradeport and the airport. All three are used for trading, but not with other city-states. These local buildings are used for trading with passing merchants and smugglers. This can absolutely be utilized nicely and to your benefit, but in comparison with real trade, this is, as they say, peanuts. "Real" trading is done by signing trade deals with other empires. Trade deals are precise in what is traded, in what quantity and over what length of time. Arranging a trade deal can be initiated either by you directly or by another empire and you always have some leeway to negotiate better terms.

And now we circle back to diplomacy. Signing and executing trade deals increase your standing with the empire in question. The more you trade, the better the standing, until it reaches a point where you officially sign a trade union. This brings 2 benefits:

• You've entered a trade union, fulfilling one of three prerequisites to become allies
  
• The other side now accepts your currency in trading. You no longer need to exchange goods exclusively

I noted it's one of three prerequisites. The second one is your military relationship. Military resources, like weapons, ammunition, military vehicles etc. are NOT exchanged via a trade deal. These are specific goods and trading them carries with it a special set of potential consequences.

• First: Military convoys carrying these goods (after a military trade deal has been signed), can be intercepted and pillaged. Both your routes and the AIs.
  
• Second: Unlike trade deals in which goods are exchanged on a daily basis for the duration of the deal, military trade is concluded only once the convoy reaches its destination
  
• Third: Successfully finishing a military deal increases your military relationship.

Be careful though. Selling or giving another state military resources could easily be considered by third parties as a threat. And in addition to that, be really REALLY sure that you can trust the empire that you want to trade military goods with. You are in essence boosting their military capabilities. Are you 'that' certain that they won't turn against you?

And finally, the third prerequisite for an alliance is technological development. If, for example, you have a surplus of development points in the agriculture branch, you can exchange those for the points of another development branch by going into scientific cooperation with another empire. It's a simple exchange of 'points', but once you've "maxed" that out too, you're nicely on your way to making an ally.

Once you've signed treaties in all three segments, you've officially formed an alliance with another empire. To make things simple, the other empire, your ally, is incorporated into your territory, but not entirely. You can be sure that not every region of that empire is pleased with such an accommodation. Some regions will break off and become 'neutral players' on the global stage. But hey, at the very least, you can then conquer just conquer them if you wish.

That concludes today’s dev diary and tomorrow you’ll actually be able to play Kaiserpunk. It’s difficult to imagine after such a long time of development. We’re beyond excited for it and we hope you share our excitement. If you haven’t already, give us a follow on our social channels or join our Discord[discord.com] and Reddit where we get a chance to interact with you more.

Until tomorrow - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games

Hello everyone!

Only two more days until release! We can’t believe we’re almost here, and we’re very grateful for your patience as we extended the timeline. Everyone is really busy wrapping up the last bits before we lock down the game for release, but we still want to continue sharing more in-depth info about the game we’ve been working so hard on.

Today, we’re going to talk about some topics related to war that we didn’t manage to cover in much detail in Dev Diary #10, where we discussed warfare in greater depth.

Let's first emphasize a very important point here: To have an army, you need an army base. One army base = one army. Just so there's no confusion! ;)

And to expand on that a little:

• A land army, or a battalion, needs a military base.
  
• A navy fleet needs a naval base.
  
• An air force, or a squadron, needs an airbase.

OK? It's really as simple as that. Anything you need regarding an army, you can either select the army, or select that army's military base. The options and information are mostly the same. Naturally, to train new army units, it's always a good idea to do it through the military base interface, its info panel. As noted in the previous blogs, don't forget to deploy your army onto the world map ;) An army won't do much sitting on their hands or twiddling their thumbs 'back home'.

Once you deploy your “51st Freedom brigade”, your job isn't done. The army will do your bidding, but it needs supplies in return, likely plenty of them. All of those supplies you need to make sure you either produce or trade for. They will be automatically transported to your army, provided your army can be reached. If your adversaries manage to cut off your army so you don't have a territorial link to it... no supplies for them, so protect your supply lines. Over time, the supplies they have will dwindle and you can forget about that army being anywhere near efficient. They'll be used for target practice...

There is a way to counter that, even if only temporarily. Outposts, which you can build as region upgrades, serve as supply points. They actually hold the needed supplies (or what you've ordered them to store) and even if they’re cut off or encircled, your army can still use outposts to resupply. It won't last forever, but it can buy you some time at least, maybe just enough to break through the blockade.

The same rules are applied to fleets of ships and squadrons of airplanes. All of them need supplies and rely on you to provide both the resources and a clear supply path. Fleets move across the water, over naval points, and they get resupplied through those supply lines too. Meaning they can also get blocked, though logically, by other fleets. Naval blockades can be an extremely effective tool to harass your opponents.

Unlike fleets however, squadrons can only move between air bases on the world map which you build as region upgrades, so they can be easier to mess with. Keep in mind though that squadrons can attack across the distance of 2, making their attacks very problematic to deal with.

One thing we didn't talk about much however is what happens after a battle. Let's say one of your armies got decimated. It's not completely done yet, but it lost half of its units. What can you do about it? You can send reinforcements. To make it simple, even units that were killed in battle are still displayed in the units list of an army. This is just so you don't have to memorize the composition of your armies. You 'know' what units were in the army and you can then reinforce it, meaning training new units that will replace the lost ones. Simply click on a damaged or dead unit and a nifty little window will pop out with all the info and options that you need.

Even if all units in an army are killed, that's still not the end of it. The army general makes an escape (as one would...) to the safety of the military base. There you can rebuild the army and try again. The commanding general will retain all of their gained experience and traits. Traits are passive bonuses that you pick and choose for your general each time they level up. And trust me, you want to keep those traits...

That’s it for now! Very soon, the game will be in your hands, and we can’t wait! We do hope you enjoyed this more in-depth dev diary and if you have more questions on this topic or any other and would like to interact with us, feel free to join us on Discord[discord.com] or Reddit.

Until tomorrow - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games