Yesterday, I had some time to work on the new Eressea. This game is going to be somewhere in between reusing the old gameplay and technology vs. a rewrite. People who have played Eressea will ercognize the game easily, production chains are similar, but it will nevertheless be a game that’s quite different from the one we’re all playing at the moment.

The first major change will be that there are two different types of units. Commoners are very much like the current units in Eressea, they can be units of different sizes, and their job is to produce things, fight battles, sail ships, etc. Commoners are lead by Heroes, which have special skills. Unlike right now, there will not be fixed limits on the amount of mages, alchemists, etc. that you can control, but instead a limit on the total number of heroes. If you decide to make an all-magician faction, you can do that, and if all your heroes should be knights, that’s possible as well.

Heroes will generate income through taxation or trade. They are the only units that can do so, other options like taxation, entertainment, or simply working have been removed. Different types of heroes get different amounts of money, and thus a magician might not be able to finance as many footsoldiers as a trader can. The decisions you make about the structure of your upper class will have secondary effects on the lower classes.

Upkeep has been removed. Instead, learning skills will cost money. Most skills are such that learning them really pays off, and recruiting more units than you can provide for is going to make very little sense.

Other things in the pipeline: New ship classes, new region types, new recruitment mechanisms, cities, strategic combat and warfare, modified economic system and a brandnew skillsystem.