Greetings Commanders!

Before we jump into today's topic, we know you’ve been awaiting an update on the release date—and the time has finally come! Kaiserpunk will launch on March 21, 2025!

On top of that, we’ve teamed up with a great partner, Elda Entertainment, to ensure we can focus on what truly matters - the game itself! Elda will help us spread the word about Kaiserpunk!

Before we continue, we just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your support so far. We’ve now surpassed 160K wishlists, and we are incredibly grateful for your excitement about the game—just as excited as we are! Without further ado, let’s get into the topic of the day, Warfare.

So, what do you actually need in your capital to build a successful war machine? The short answer: everything.

Your infantry needs food rations – you'll produce them in your factories. Your tanks need shells – you'll manufacture them in your Munitions factories. Your bombers need kerosene – you'll refine it in Refineries. Of course, you'll need plenty of raw and refined resources beforehand to even get to final products. And workforce... don't forget about the workforce to actually do all that work.

Then, once you deploy your new troops to the battlefield, you'll need to produce even more because armies consume vast amounts of supplies to operate efficiently. Remember: logistics wins wars. Simply spamming army units won't cut it. They'll be out of ammo, luck, and life before you know it.

Something we haven't explored in detail in any of our previous blogs is combat – the calculus of it. Don’t worry, I'm not going to bore you with the actual maths (that would be wrong on sooooo many levels). Instead, here’s a quick rundown of what you should keep in mind when assessing a potential battle. A checklist of sorts of what should be taken into account:

• Quantity – Of course. Sending eight units instead of one will make a difference. Let's not kid ourselves.
  
• Veterancy – The experience level of the units involved. More experienced troops perform better: higher attack power, better defense, at the same supply expenses.
  
• Unit tier – It's difficult to beat technological progress. More advanced units are more deadly. Simple as that.
  
• Terrain characteristics – Where will you be fighting? An urban jungle or an open field? The difference is massive.
  
• Supply state – Is your army well-supplied, or are they scrounging for bullets and sharing a rifle between ten infantrymen? Supply chains matter!
  
• Leader – Not you, in this case, but the army general. How experienced is your general? What traits have they acquired during their service? Passive bonuses gained via traits can make a huge difference.
  
• Enemy – Who are you fighting? Are you sure you want to send an army packed with infantry units against a squadron of bombers?

And that’s just for a single army! Battles can involve multiple land, air, and naval forces, as well as defensive garrisons, turning combat into complete mayhem.

Especially since when you're on the attack, you can't know for certain (without a special military base upgrade) what orders will the enemy governor issue. The AI might concentrate its defenses against a single attacking army or maybe disperse its defensive forces to simply block the attacker, gain some time and upgrade its garrison or bring in more armies. It all depends on the situation and on the AI leader. Some leaders are aggressive, others prefer peaceful resolutions. Even when it comes to armies, some leaders will focus more on their navy or aviation. This approach burrows down to the setup of individual armies. You can easily encounter an AI leader who focuses mostly on infantry with the support of artillery.

Then again, you might encounter a Gandhi-like passive resistance leader (not to be confused with the atom bomb-loving Gandhi from a certain beloved 4X game series) who’ll do his best to affirm peaceful relationships with everyone. That’s where diplomatic trade comes into play. You may think this is just all about trade and in a way, you’re correct, but trade in Kaiserpunk can also be used for more aggressive purposes. If you, for example, trade a lot of military gear with an empire, that empire is likely stockpiling the arms for a purpose and not just for show. Doesn’t have to be used against you though. There are plenty of other, perhaps more suitable targets in the world… 😉

That brings us to the last major point for today: location, location, location. In this case in the world. Where you start your campaign of world-domination matters.

• Starting in Europe, Asia, or Africa gives you the most opportunities to spread your influence, but you will face the most opposition as well.
  
• On the flip side, starting in Australia means you’ll have fewer early threats, but you’ll also have a harder time leaving the home-shores. To transfer your armies across the seas, you’ll need to make some significant development, both in technology and industry. But yeah… you’ll be quite a bit safer in the beginning at least.

There’s a whole lot of mechanics that you can play with and use for your strategic advantage in Kaiserpunk. Don’t forget to experiment and have fun 😊.

We’ll also be streaming today at 7:00 PM, feel free to tune in on Twitch[www.twitch.tv] or here on Steam if you like what you see and want to hear more!

More dev diaries are coming up until launch! Join Reddit and Discord[discord.com] to chat more about Kaiserpunk.

Until next time - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games

Greetings Commanders!

Today, we’ll talk about the genre of Grand City Building and share our thoughts on it. Finding the right subgenre for this game has been challenging. Previously we’ve talked about Kaiserpunk as a mix between a City Builder and a Grand Strategy Game, which still holds true, but today we’d like to dig a little bit deeper into it and share our current thinking on the matter.

First of all, we need to talk about game loops, and especially the so-called core loops. As many of you probably know, core loops are a concept used to break down the key activities a player will do while playing a game, often seen over different time scales like moment-to-moment, minute-to-minute, quarter-to-quarter, hour-to-hour, etc. The exact length of the time scales tends to differ depending on the intensity of a game, e.g., shooters often have shorter loops than city builders.

Also, and the reason for this dev. diary, is that the core loops (especially minute-to-minute) tend to be how we define genres for games (and sometimes even name them after, such as 4X), apart from specific features ofc. This means that a shooter will most often have the same core loop; same goes for survival crafting and city builders etc. And this leads us to why we have started with this intro to game design 101. When we say Grand City Building, we are talking about the game’s core loops - and how they are unique.

Kaiserpunk is a city builder with the hour-to-hour loop of grand strategy. If we look at the minute-to-minute and quarter-to-quarter gameplay, our game is clearly a city builder. You place buildings, unlock new resources, research, satisfy the needs of your citizens etc. - all the things required to build a city. But as the game progresses into the hour-to-hour gameplay, things change. Your city is part of a living world, where other budding empires are vying for power in a running time simulation. Your task is to force the will of your city upon the world and become the pre-eminent power, leveraging your city’s economy to engage in trade, diplomacy, and most importantly, warfare. This hour-to-hour loop is what makes a strategy game grand (quite literally, grand strategy is the scholarly term for strategy that includes… well, trade, diplomacy, economy, and warfare). It is also the loop that makes our city builder grand. You are not only building a city - you will build a city to rule the world!

So how does this all tie together? Simply put, the grand part of our grand city builder is the why. In an alternate history where all the old powers went extinct in the Great War, you will forge the world anew. Several other powers are both potential allies and enemies, sometimes both. Through conquest and trade, you will get access to more and new resources, your fleets and armies projecting your power across the world. In the end, you will rise to become a dominant new power - bringing civilization back from the ashes.

The city builder part is the how and what. Every soldier marching will be trained in your military bases, every gun produced, every ration grown, milled, baked into bread, and packaged. Through the choices you make, your city can become the shining city upon a hill - leading the world through diplomacy and culture. Or you can become a warmaking behemoth - your populace toiling away in the massive industries feeding your war machine. Wherever your path will take you, your city is your engine, your tool, and the choices you make will shape your city accordingly. As such, your why influences the how and the what, and the how and the what will shape the why.

Build a city to rule the world - this is what a grand city builder is for us.

We’ve also released a new Feature Spotlight video on this same topic. Coincidence? We think not!
In the coming dev diaries we will talk a lot more about the hows, next one specifically focused on Warfare.

As always, let us know what you thought, and we’ll be back next week!
Overseer Games over and out