It's been a minute.

When we started CivReign back in August of last year, and officially began development in November, we were a group of rookies thinking we could throw out a civ server quickly by using a couple existing plugins and just redoing some configs. Well, it turns out making a civ server is hard. And though we've had amazing support from our developers and friends in CivMC, CivRevolution, and the old CivEx team, it's no secret we've struggled at times. Through a change of ownership and several shifts in the dev team, what we sought to do, what we had the ability to do, and what we can do have all changed rather dramatically since we first began this project. So, it's time to look inward and re-evaluate, and discuss what we plan to do now that we have more knowledge and skill under our belt and using what we've learned from our Pre-alpha.

The Core Goals of CivReign

1. We want to trend away from the general grindiness of civ and toward production and trade.
2. We want to build an experience the player can enjoy at all levels.
3. We want to encourage the ideas of nation- and world-building
4. We want to make it rewarding to succeed, while having paths to invest in progress, even in the endgame.
5. We want a dynamic economy focused on trade and exploration of niches.
6. We want to create a simulation, to see how civilizations engage with one another.
7. We want to increase newfriend retention, as it is presently too low to support the community.

So, what are we doing to achieve these goals?

First and foremost.

Descent

Descent is a core feature of CivReign, and we're proud to have been able to use it thanks to the work of Samnrad and Earthcomputer. Instead of simply mining endlessly and mindlessly, players now have a chance to randomly spawn a Descent portal through integration with the HiddenOre plugin. Descent portals transport the player into a new, dangerous location rife with loot, but filled with danger. Facing custom mobs, players can expect to acquire loot to progress in the tech tree and enrich themselves. By going into caves with friends, teams can vanquish Descent caves in a manner similar to co-op dungeons, taking the monotony out of mining and making the game richer for it. We feel that by integrating Descent into CivReign, we will be able to offer a more engaging mining experience than ever before

Resource Tiering

Going into development, we knew we wanted to break from the tradition of linear tech trees and a race for Prot. As a result, we have implemented Resource tiering. There are three types of ore in CivReign; Metals, Fuels, and Gems. Mobs also have a chance to drop "Mob Essence." Each type of ore and Mob Essence has 3 tiers, for a total of 9 ores and 3 mob essences. Each tier of ore will be used for different things, with higher tier ores used for making better items. However, high tier ores and essences are much rarer. The player can use a Transmuter Factory to upgrade ores to a higher tier at the cost of XP, or use a Salvager Factory to downgrade ores and generate a small amount of XP, creating a new sink for XP to be used in. Each ore type would be used for different things, such as Gems being used in Obsidian and Bastion crafting, and Mob Essence Mob Mana (melted Mob items) being used in potions. Some recipes require a bit of all ore types.

The player can additionally make their production chains more efficient by upgrading factories. Each factory has three tiers that the player can upgrade to, with each tier progressively giving better and better outputs for each input. In this way, players can specialize what they wish to produce while still allowing players to create what they need. We hope this will create a new and exciting depth for our economy.

Citadel and Bastions

Vaultcraft is something we wish to avoid at all costs. For this reason, we have changed how reinforcements and bastions work. Including multiple, expensive steps to create, bastions now take considerable wealth and manpower to create, and cover a large area. This makes it prohibitively expensive to create huge megavaults anymore, hopefully preventing such massive structures the likes of which were seen on CivClassics in Scantaphrax and on CivRealms in Heaven. Further, reinforcements will have more tiers allowing for more variety in usage, with stone now taking only 5 minutes to mature with 32 HP, and our new "Warded" reinforcements taking 48 hours with 1024 HP. It is our hope that with these changes, players will focus less on rushing toward building vaults, which we feel are antithetical to the point of civ as an experiment.

Energy

Other servers have used Energy but under different names, such as Essence, Stamina, and Mana. However, CivReign intends to take Energy further by requiring Energy in many facets of Nationbuilding such as factory maintenance, recipes, and creation. Our intent is that by tying the progression of nationbuilding to a resource that inherently is only available with more people, players will be incentivized to group together and create true nations, rather than roaming nomads. In order to progress, people must work together and cooperate. Even fellow nations might turn to each other to progress if each nation individually doesn't possess the population needed to maintain a full suite of the highest tier factories.

Experience

XP will be of paramount importance to CivReign, not just in creating high-tier armor, but also in its usage in various factories and aspects of gameplay. As such, farming crops to create XP will be an important factor in the economy of the server, with a similar emphasis on riverbanks and lakeshores that CivRealms had. With an importance placed on farmland, we wanted to counterbalance the potential for mass production with including a crop that will take a very long time to grow, even in the best of biomes, making every decision involving XP much more impactful. However, farming will not be the only way to gather XP. It's possible to find XP naturally in Descent caves, albeit rarely.

What about the other plugins?

They are still around, and we plan on using them very soon!

• The Nether Factory has a very specific niche that simply can't be filled in our upcoming Beta (more on that in a moment!)
• Smithery is a complex plugin to integrate effectively into our economy this early on, as we don't have a full picture on what climbing the tech tree would be like in practice, and how well Smithery would mesh with the rest of the tech tree.

Final Thoughts

CivReign is chugging along quickly toward its Alpha launch. Originally, we intended to keep our alpha closed to our Patreons, their guests, and select individuals we deemed to have created great works. However, we have decided to make a big decision, our next step will be opening the server to the public in a Beta test! Throughout the Beta we will be rolling out updates including implementation of Smithcery, Nether Factories, and updates toward 1.18.2, along with balancing in response to the feedback and suggestions you give us!

We've made significant progress toward finishing our work on the Beta, with only a few major hurdles to go. So, as we get close to opening the server to the public, we also welcome your suggestions to push CivReign as a final product toward our stated goals. We want to build a server based on continuous discourse between the developers and players, that way we end up with a product that we hope will be enjoyed for months to come. We don't yet have a solid date, but we plan to launch in the first couple weeks of April. During the Beta, we plan to be including events and tournaments where players can win real world prizes such as Amazon and Steam giftcards, including build competitions and combat tournaments.

We've also changed the way we will be doing account verification. Prior to the merger with CivRevolution and the subsequent creation of our parent organization, CivUnion, all whitelisting was meant to be done manually. Now, however, we will have a very simple and basic two-factor authentication system via the still priviate CivUnion website, allowing all whitelisting to be done automatically, and, on servers that allow multiple accounts, the ability to link your accounts together for easy moderation.

As always, suggestions and feedback are always welcome!