Preface

Though we have had a slow week this week, we've done much in the way of fleshing out our concepts to be solid pieces of content that we are now actively developing. For a long time, Civ has been focused around military. Preparing for warfare is the core activity of any developed nation, while vaults have become the predominant resource sink for any nation. However, CivReign is actively trying to focus on other things that make Civ more real. After all, Britain didn't create the largest empire in history for conquest, they did it for spices and trade. As such, we've been working on developing things to make our experience feel more "real."

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Smeltery

We've touched on Smeltery before as a core mechanic, but what exactly is smeltery? Well, in general Smeltery will allow players to combine materials into a single output, similar to Brewery. As a matter of fact, Smeltery's config is built on the same code as Brewery! So how exactly does this work? A player will have to make a cauldron and right click to put inputs into the cauldron. This cauldron will be filled with lava to simulate melting down materials. The player will then have to let the cauldron "simmer" for a certain amount of time. After some time, you would use a bucket to take the lava out of the cauldron, before throwing that bucket into a pool of water. The lava then turns into your output, and the bucket is returned to you.

There's several outcomes from this process:

• Wrong Inputs, Wrong Time - If your inputs match no recipe, and the time left to simmer matches no recipe, you'll be left with a charred, unidentifiable and useless compound.
• Correct inputs, too early - If your inputs match a recipe, but you take it out too early then you are left with a compound that hasn't fully fused together, and is useless.
• Correct inputs, too late - If your inputs match a recipe, but you take it out too early then the compound breaks down into an aforementioned charred mess.
• Wrong inputs, right time - If your inputs match no recipe, but the time does, then you will have a properly fused, but ultimately useless compound.
• Correct inputs, right time - Congratulations, you now have a compound that you can use in recipes to your hearts content!

So what do we intend to use smeltery for? Well to begin, we'd like to include components to high-tier factories that rely on smeltery products. For example, perhaps an alloy of gold and iron will be required to craft gears which would be used for perhaps a tool factory (as an example.) Furthermore, some compounds or alloys might be used to create high-tier tools or armor in their own right, with unique advantages or characteristics that might be useful in various situations.

However, the primary motivation for Smeltery is our concept of "Seasons," where we will continuously add new, but temporary, content. When a new season begins, a slew of new things will be added, from new brews, to ores, to of course smeltery recipes. Players will, of course, know when a new season begins, but it will be up to them to discover what new and exciting puzzle pieces have been introduced. To aid in this discovery, there will be a hint system that will allow players to know if perhaps they've added too much or too little of an ingredient, or if they're off entirely. This will allow for a constant stage for discovery and innovation, and, with every season having new content, will make for some interesting scenarios!

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Resource Gathering

Many servers have had issues with the grindy-ness of their servers, which is something we certainly want to avoid. However, some servers have made changes that have greatly impacted how ores are found and created new strategic points for players and nations to control, namely through the implementation of an Aquanether. CivReign is taking this a step further by implementing Descent. Descent was originally a plugin that would have been used back on CivEx. However, with the permission and help of the creators, it will allow for a new layer of depth to CivReign (pun not intended.)

Descent is a plugin that adds portal blocks that randomly generate when mining. These portal blocks will transport you to a new dimension with custom-generated cave systems of many different types. Players can go spelunking in massive ice caverns, or traverse ruins of strange, long buries structures. Perhaps the player will be transported to a strange forest buried deep underground, or a molten hellscape that makes the nether look paradisiacal. Within these cave systems will be a myriad of custom mobs as well. From spiders that hang to ceiling to strange, eldritch threats that lurk in the labyrinthian shadows of these new realms.

Furthermore, Descent will include new blocks and ores that players can take into the overworld and incorporate into their builds, smeltery recipes, and factories. This is yet to be expanded on in our development chats, but we intend for this to play a central role in progression. Seasons will also be adding ores that will spawn in these new cave systems.

However, not everything lasts forever. These cave systems are temporary, and the portal blocks that lead there will despawn after a random amount of time. Though they will usually last on the order of hours or days, players take a risk of getting trapped in the deep underground, and may only be able to return home by losing all that they have gained.

This will be our primary way of getting ore. The overworld will, of course, still have ores, and some regions will be bountiful at that. However, descent caves will have a much higher chance to spawn ores, making them as lucrative as they are risky. Some caves might be chock full of diamonds, but also packed with mobs that seek to make you their next target. Others might be full of low tier ores such as iron or copper, but be much safer and longer lasting. It's up to you, the player, to explore these hidden, yet temporary regions and decide if its worth investing into, or perhaps just leaving it alone and avoiding whatever danger might lurk within.

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A Hot Announcement

CivReign recieved a lot of pushback due to the fact that we, originally, we're unfortunately, stuck to using 1.12. However, after further discussion and newfound help from our burgeoning community, we discovered why; when using a non-pregenerated map, upon rendering specific plants the server would throw exceptions that made it impossible to login. The solution? Just don't use a non-pregenerated map. So, we have successfully updated the server to 1.16. Though the alpha is some time away, we are happy to have been able to keep up with the times and have the ability to release a modern civ server. However, we've still not fully tested everything, and it's possible there are issues we've not discovered yet, so take this with a grain of salt, as everything is subject to change as we continue development.

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Beautiful Brews

As we have said in our initial announcement post, CivReign now sports a Patreon to help offset the costs of developing a server. It's not cheap! With many costs associated with keeping the server in an active state of progress, we've begun to ask for help with keeping everything afloat. So now, not only do Patrons get an exclusive behind the scenes look at our ideas and development process, but now we are happy to announce that Patreons may send in as many brewery recipes as they like to myself or Kannon via Discord DM! If you'd like to have some recipes implemented into the server, join our Patreon today!

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Final Thoughts

CivReign is a server we are excited about, and we hope you are too! But we're taking our time, and it'll likely be some weeks before we have an alpha for you all to play. In the meantime, however, we'd like to show a sneak peak at what will be the full release map, created by the amazing zem, also known by Paralon, who is well known for creating a massive world map by the same name. Without further ado, here's a very early glimpse at what will one day be the world of CivReign:

https://preview.redd.it/vfaecxic3g081.png?width=746&format=png&auto=webp&s=490ab5765b9ab09eacab433dc0e97cde50279eb4

Thank you for reading! If you have any thoughts, ideas, or feedback please be sure to let us know!