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

Greetings Commanders!

It’s been a while since we gave you an update, and we know many of you are awaiting news on the release date, as we've had to push it back a bit. We understand that you're eager to get started, and we ask for just a little more patience - it will be coming soon! The reason for the push is that we want to release the game in a great shape, and we still have some final things we’re working through to fix and improve. Bear with us as we’re working very hard to finalize the last few pieces to get it into your hands. We’ll share the new date very soon and stick to it - we’re almost there!

As we approach release, we’ll now be sharing weekly devlogs to keep you updated on our progress, the game, its features including any changes along the way and our vision. Stay tuned for all the details, and feel free to reach out with any questions or topics you’d like for us to cover!

Kicking things off, we thought it would be nice to share something about us, our roots and why we decided to create Kaiserpunk—what drew us to it and what we set out to achieve.

We, the development team behind Kaiserpunk, are small, founded by three brothers and a gamedev colleague. Before we took the leap into independent game development, we worked at different companies, gaining experience across various aspects of the industry. When the time came to start something of our own, we didn’t hesitate. After nearly two decades and several games, we're now a small, but proud and independent team of 11.

When we first decided to make this game, we knew we wanted to blend two of our favorite genres: city-builders and 4X strategy. We’ve played a lot of both over the years, and after creating two city-building games ourselves, the idea of merging them felt like the perfect challenge. Add the unique backdrop of the 20th century—a time of immense change and geopolitical tension—and we simply couldn’t resist making it.

The fundamentals of the game’s design came together fairly quickly, but as always, the devil is in the details. In a game like this, everything has to make sense; every mechanic needs to fit neatly, or you risk the whole thing falling apart. We’ve had experience mixing genres before, so we knew many pitfalls to avoid, but even then, keeping the design in check without overcomplicating things was a constant challenge.

From a development perspective, one of the biggest challenges has been ensuring that the genre mix feels seamless. If the balance isn’t just right, it can feel like you're playing two different games awkwardly stitched together. Finding that perfect blend was an absolute beast to tackle, but when you finally get there, it feels incredible. We believe we’ve achieved that in Kaiserpunk, and we can’t wait for you to experience it firsthand.

We’re especially proud of what we’ve accomplished with this game. We set our goals high, pushing ourselves to create something ambitious, but more than anything, we’re proud of the dedication of our small team. Every single person involved went above and beyond, and the result, we believe, speaks for itself.

We really hope that you'll feel a sense of accomplishment when you play Kaiserpunk. From placing that very first house to shaping a global empire—not through sheer brute force, but by carefully balancing production chains, managing resources, and planning strategic moves on the world stage—we want every success in the game to feel like your success. You did it.

Of course, with the finish line in sight, the final challenge is tying it all together and ensuring every last detail aligns with our vision. There’s still work to be done, but we’re incredibly excited to bring Kaiserpunk into your hands very soon.

We hope you enjoyed this, and in our upcoming dev diary, we will dive into the details of Grand City Building as a genre. Stay tuned for all the details and feel free to reach out with any questions or topics you'd like us to cover! If you'd like to chat more with us or discuss Kaiserpunk with others, we invite you to join us on Discord[discord.com] or Reddit —we love talking to you guys!

Let’s reshape history together! You Rock!
Overseer Games over and out

We’re thrilled to announce that Kaiserpunk will be featured in TGAGWCAGA 2024—The Game Awards for Games Who Can't Afford the Game Awards! This one-of-a-kind indie showcase is streaming this Friday, December 13th!

TGAGWCAGA highlights incredible indie games that truly deserve more attention while also poking a little fun at the exclusivity of The Game Awards. Entire event seems like a very interesting novelty and we're happy to participate and turn the attention to awesome games coming from small indie studios all over the place!

Subscribe now to TGAGWCAGA’s YouTube channel so you don’t miss out!

https://www.youtube.com/@TGAGWCAGA

Our second Playtest is now concluded! It's been 5 very interesting days for us. Thousands of people joined in and many shared their experience. Hopefully you also had fun checking out the cool stuff from new Kaiserpunk version.

Before anything else, we want to say a big THANK YOU for every single hour you've spent in our game. You noticed some things we haven't, you threw a lot of praises and some valid criticism as well.

In any case, our "storage" is now filled with massive amount of feedback, ideas and reactions. And in this phase of development nothing can be more useful then that, so kudos to you all! We've already started sifting through everything and I can already say huge improvements will come as a result.


First, take down Playtest 2 version, prepare to "open it up" for implementation of all remaining features. Second, carefully analyze everything provided by community and add as much as possible to further improve now tested game elements. Third, after that start looking at setting up long duration tests to finalize balancing and overall pace of the game.

Grand strategy part of the game still has the most missing features, so expect biggest improvements here. Then improvements to UI, hints and advisors. Then introduction of full game stories, advanced diplomacy and advanced trade. And much more...

Just one more thing before we go - to get as much raw data for balancing/difficulty purposes as possible, we'd like to ask you to send us as many save files and log files as possible. You can find them here:

LOG FILE:
You can find it here:
C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\CompanyName\ProductName\Player.log

- the 'username' can be your actual user name
- and the 'AppData' folder can be hidden in Windows so if that's the case, please make your hidden folders visible

As noted above, the log filename is 'Player.log'

SAVE FILE:
Save file will be located in "Saves" folder of the game installation location

YOU CAN PROVIDE THAT AT FOLLOWING EMAIL ADDRESS:
[email protected]



The time you dedicated to helping us gather feedback in this test is very much appreciated. You'll be rewarded by better game once it reaches v1.0. We tried to be active, respond to all your questions, and provide help by updating the version even during Playtest itself. Also, accept our apologies for hickups and occassional problems! It's all part of the process and hope it didn't annoy you too much.

We've just launched Playtest 2 for Kaiserpunk! A very warm welcome to everyone that applied to participate in this event. We're confident you'll have a great time, and we'll get a great amount of your feedback, suggestions and opinions. All of it will be invaluable in plotting the best course for the remaining months of development.

We've started giving access to players that applied in the past week, while everyone that already participated in first Playtest will get access automatically.

Test will last until December 3rd, and time limit on single session has been increased to 5 hours. There is no limit on how many new sessions you can set up and start.


This Playtest version is still not a completed game, but it is much larger in scope, with much more features than before. You'll also notice a truckload of changes to previous game elements - that is all the result of your feedback. Reworked tutorial, added hints, many QoL details, these are only some of the changes. Immense bulk of other new content is here as a result of game being bigger and closer to completion. That means you'll encounter many features you haven't even seen in Playtest 1, so your feedback on that will also be taken to heart.


If you experience any technical issues with Kaiserpunk demo, please help us with additional data so we can jump on problems as fast as possible:

PROVIDE US YOUR GAME LOG FILE:
You can find it here:
C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\CompanyName\ProductName\Player.log

- the 'username' can be your actual user name
- and the 'AppData' folder can be hidden in Windows so if that's the case, please make your hidden folders visible

As noted above, the log filename is 'Player.log'

IF YOU HAVE A SAVE FILE:
Save file will be located in "Saves" folder of the game installation location

DATA ON YOUR HARDWARE:
You can extract dxdiag file by running "dxdiag.exe" from WIndows command lin, then save it as a report.

ALL OF THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE AT FOLLOWING EMAIL ADDRESS:

[email protected]


If you wish to share or exchange experiences with us or other players directly, you can hop into any of our other channels as well:

DISCORD:
https://discord.gg/6FfVfPfDNz

TWITTER:
https://x.com/Overseer_Games

BLUE SKY:
https://bsky.app/profile/overseer-games.bsky.social

FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556840395234

INSTAGRAM:
https://www.instagram.com/overseer_publishing/

YOUTUBE:
https://www.youtube.com/@overseerpublishing4216

After months of intense development, Kaiserpunk returns stronger than ever with its second public Playtest, starting November 29th and running until December 3rd! We’ve poured our hearts into refining and expanding the game based on your invaluable feedback from the first Alpha Playtest, and now it’s time to see how far we’ve come.

👉 Sign up for the Playtest now on Steam: the store page


Short answer: Everything.
Longer answer: Kaiserpunk has evolved into a polished and feature-rich experience. We’ve added brand-new systems, reworked old ones, and addressed the feedback from our first Playtest. This trailer gives you a glimpse of how far we’ve come:

🎥 Watch the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n0Uqk7tnlM

• Flag Design: Create a custom flag to represent your nation.
  
• Heritage Selection: Choose your nation's background—German, Western Allies or Russian. These are just a glimpse and are subject to change before v1.0.
  
• Social Pillars: Align your nation’s political ideology.
  
• Tutorial 2.0: Completely revamped based on early player feedback.
  
• Expanded Maps: Over 20 maps spread across 4 unique biomes.
  
• More Stories: New branching narratives with meaningful player choices.
  
• Diplomacy System: War isn’t your only option anymore.
  
• Basic Trade System: Trade resources you can’t produce on your own.
  
• Tier 3 Production: Build advanced industries and infrastructure.
  
• Enhanced World Map HUD: Redesigned based on player suggestions.
  
• UI/UX Overhaul: A sleeker, more intuitive experience.
  
• Army Specializations: Unlock unique army upgrades.
  
• Tier 3 Military Units and Buildings: Build stronger forces.
  
• Decorations System: Customize your ever-expanding capital city (2 out of 3 tiers complete).
  
• Improved Combat System: More depth and clarity in battle phases.
  
• Upgraded Weather System: A little rain never hurt anyone
  
• Major Optimization: Play smoother, faster, and without draining your system resources. And we ain't done yet 😉

If the first Playtest gave players a taste of Kaiserpunk concept, this new version offers a true window into the game’s core experience.


With many new features completed and polished, we’re once again calling on players to help guide our journey. Your feedback was instrumental in shaping Kaiserpunk after Playtest 1, and this second Playtest will give you an even bigger slice of the action to critique, explore, and enjoy.

Join us, try the game for free, and help us refine it into the ultimate 20th-century strategy experience.

👉 Sign up for the Playtest now on Steam: the store page


Everyone that already requested access and participated in previous Playtest should get access automatically, and we'd definitely encourage previous „Playtesters“ to hop in again since that will give us a direct comparison.

Another note – Playtest version is time limited as before, but time limit for a single session is now increased to 5 hours, simply because the game is much bigger now. There are no limits to how many times you can start and set up a new game.

Take a look, give it a spin and if you have any feedback you'd like to share with us, you can do so on Steam, Discord ( https://discord.gg/6FfVfPfDNz ) or email

[email protected] .

What would be most appreciated from you?

You don't have to do anything except play and enjoy. But if you're willing to assist us more, we'd appreciate the log files from your playsessions (if you encountered any issues), save files to monitor progress and future balancing and any other reports you feel we should know. Details to where you can find these files and where to send them are same as they were for demo.

Any and all constructive feedback to help complete this complex game is truly appreciated. Besides adding a lot of new features, we used the invaluable feedback from the previous playtest to improve the overall experience. We will do so again with this session.

So, mark your calendars and get ready to dive into this hands-on adventure. It’s all happening this weekend, and we can’t wait to see how you’ll reshape the world of Kaiserpunk!

Let’s reshape history together!
Overseer Games

Combat is an integral part of Kaiserpunk and what would combat on a large (world) scale be without the navy? Let's take a dive (pun unintended) into how fleets are assembled, controlled and what you can do with them in Kaiserpunk.

Obviously, as is the case with all other military units, you have to provide weapons or combat vehicles, in this case ships. You could purchase them from other factions or produce them yourself. Don't expect smugglers or passing traders to sell you military grade vessels. That simply won't happen.

If you purchase ships, it's only a matter of waiting for the goodies to arrive, but let's have a look at the more fun part of the equation: producing your own vessels.

You'll need a shipyard. Kind of figures... You'll also need a whole bunch of resources. Military vehicles like ships, tanks, artillery or airplanes aren't produced constantly, like other resources. You have to order them, or to be more precise, you have to give the order for them to go into production. That means you must have the resources upfront and ready. That also makes sense if you think about it, since your military shipyard can't start building anything without the needed resources. It's a significant undertaking... So, as noted, you dish out the order from your governor's mansion to produce a certain number of a certain type of vessel and the diligent workers will get to it. Producing ships takes time, so don't expect your ships to start magically appearing within a single in-game day.

Once a ship is done, it's ready to be included in a fleet. For that to happen, you have to have a fleet first 😊. Much like battalions that use military bases, a single navy fleet requires a single Navy base as its homebase. As soon as a Navy base is built, a new fleet (without ships though) is created. It will automatically be assigned a navy admiral to oversee. All of this works exactly as it does for Military bases and Battalions (land armies). Your next step is to gather enough recruits and train them to operate the vessel (the one you produced earlier). And once all that training is done, you'll have a Fleet ready for deployment. A fleet can have up to 8 vessels. That's where things diverge from regular land armies, which brings us to...

Every army, once created, exists in its own homebase. They are waiting for your orders. And the first order you can, well actually must do, is to deploy it. Deploying an army is a simple affair: pick an appropriate region in the world that you control and that isn't already occupied by another army (of the same type) and give the deploy order. The farther away the region is from your capital, the longer it takes for the army to deploy.

Navy fleets follow this same procedure but use a different set of points for deployment. Battalions are deployed into regions. Fleets are deployed onto naval points, with an additional caveat: not all navy (movement) points are used in deployment. Only points that interact with a nearby land region are eligible. These are called landing points. They represent a direct link between the land and the sea. When transporting battalions via the sea, you can only make landfall from these points. Same thing for getting battalions onto fleets for transport. Additionally, a navy fleet can only be involved in a land battle if it is currently occupying one of these landing points. A single land region can have multiple landing points. This also leans into some regions being more difficult to defend from the sea. Multiple landing points means multiple points of entry…

The whole shtick described above can seem confusing, but trust me, it really isn’t, and you can bet that everything is clearly displayed on the map for ease of use.

Navy fleets use their own movement grid to move across the globe. The grid snuggles the shoreline of all continents, but naturally also connects different land regions across large bodies of water.

Moving fleets works in the same way as battalions. Select the army and click on the point to move the fleet. After the fleet conducts an action, movement included, you have to wait a bit (cooldown period) before you can move it again, but for fleets, this pause is shorter. Fleets simply move faster.

Of course navy fleets have a role in battles. If two (or more) fleets engage on the high seas, you’ll simply have a maritime battle on your hands. Fleets can also be involved in land battles. Remember those landing points? Yup. They’re back again. If a fleet is positioned on one of these, the fleet can attack the land region that the landing point is linked to. Similarly, the fleet can get involved as support army and do some nice bombardment.

Battles involving navy fleets (even exclusively navy fleets), are handled much in the same way as any other battle. They are simply another army represented on the war table with its very own figurine. Giving out orders is still just a matter of selecting the fleet and then their target, be it another fleet, a battalion, garrison or region upgrade.

An essential function of navy fleets is transporting battalions and squadrons across the seas and oceans. Instead of creating a special type of ship to include in the fleet (and taking one or more army unit slots), we’ve opted to give armies a specialization, a special upgrade of sorts. This is designated/ordered on the Naval base info panel. You have two options:

1. Add transport ships to the fleet – Fleet gains the ability to transport battalions
   
2. Add a carrier to the fleet – Fleet gains the ability to transport squadrons

This is a simple and efficient way to specialize your fleets into roles. Now mind you, that doesn’t mean that an army that a fleet is carrying cannot be harmed. Of course it can. Engaging a fleet on the seas and sinking some of its ships will inevitably cause losses on the battalion the fleet is transporting. In fact, if you see a fleet like that approaching, it’s in your best interest to prevent them from making landfall…

The same goes for carried squadrons, even worse, one might say, since air squadrons mounted on fleets can go on the attack, making the fleet a nice moving airbase from which to launch air raids and attacks… as one would…

What kind of master strategist would you be if you couldn’t implement naval blockades? It would suck and would be a completely wasted opportunity. Well, thankfully, in Kaiserpunk you’re more than allowed to do that. In fact, we’d encourage it. It’s a great stress relief (for the blocker though, not the blocked...) and gives you a nice tactical advantage. So how do you do it? Simple enough; just position your navy fleets to cut off viable naval routes. If they want to pass, they’re either going to have to go around (the globe) or fight you for the right of passage.

A nice little touch is that when you arrange a shipment of some kind with one of your diplomatic partners, the convoy transporting the goods is also moving across the world map. If needed, the convoy will go across the sea, which is the perfect opportunity to smack them around and privatize the shipment. It is highly unlikely that you’ll get everything they’re transporting, but a percentage of the loot is still good. Naturally, you can bet that the AI will do the same to you.


Navy fleets, while they cannot single-handedly take over a region, are a perfect addition to your mighty war machine. With them you can harass, pillage and provide invaluable combat support to your battalions. Fleets are expensive to build and maintain, but if you really plan to dominate the globe, you won’t be able to do it without naval might.

Such wonderful topics, don't you think? Let's dive into the depths of Kaiserpunk, far away from the hardships IRL and see how these work in the game.

All your citizens have Morale. It's a general overview of how they feel about you, your reign and your capital. There are some simple rules to remember:

1. If Morale is low, so is your tax flow.
   
2. If Morale is high, you're good to fly.

Wow. So proud of this -_-... Anyway, the above, as silly as it is, is actually true. Good Morale means everything (or most things that are of concern to your people) is working smoothly. Low Morale clearly means you're in trouble, or about to be. Repercussions of low Morale don't happen immediately. It takes a bit of time for it to take effect. This is primarily so you, as the reigning governor, have time to address the problematic issues.

An important aspect directly impacted by morale is Immigration. Immigration is the primary way for you to gain more citizens and you’ll need them for your might machine to remain functional and grow. If a certain citizen class in your capital is miserable, don’t expect more of them to decide to join you.

Several different parts or mechanics feed into Morale, so Morale is basically an aggregate result, an average let's say, with several wildcards slapped on top just to make things more interesting.

Your citizens have basic needs, meaning food. It's up to you to supply this, either by organizing the production of said goods (which is of course preferable), or by purchasing the resources from free traders or via trade deals. If the supply is sufficient, your citizens will be happy. Keep in mind that you don't need to deal with the distribution. Your people will handle this on their own. You just make sure you have enough in stock. What needs those are precisely depends on the citizen class. Each higher class has all the basic needs of the class preceding it and then two more added like a cherry on top.

Laborers

• Vegetables – The most basic food there is, besides picking berries in the woods. Vegetables are easily produced (grown) on Farms.
  
• Bread – While not the most nutritious, and with dubious health effects, it does fill the stomach. Getting Bread will take a bit more work. Plant Wheat on Grain fields, refine it into Flour in Flour mills and then bake the final goodie in the Bakeries.

Manufacturers

• Fish – Lakes and seas are your sources of Fish, as expected. Organizing the production isn't complicated, but you do have to (surprisingly :P) build Fisheries on the coast.
  
• Meat – Ranches are your go-to place to produce fresh, tasty meat.
  
• Water – Unlike Laborers who get by, Manufacturers expect to have running water in their homes. Fresh drinkable water is pumped from Water deposits by building Water pumps (surprise!) and then distributed via Water towers. So we're adding a bit of complexity here. Not too much though.

Technicians

• Fish soup – These guys aren't big on cooking. They're more interested in having stuff premade, just for them. Fish soup is produced in Soup kitchens.
  
• Juice – A nice vitamin injection in the form of fruit juice, produced in Juiceries. You'll also need Orchards to produce the Fruit.
  
• Electricity – We could hardly call them Technicians without them wanting electricity. Similar to Water, Electricity is first produced (in power plants, that also require fuel to run like coal or diesel) and then distributed via Power substations.

Specialists

• Sushi – Yup. Sushi. Guess what resources you'll need for that? Fish and Algae (produced in Algae farms).
  
• Pie – Here's an unexpected wildcard to satisfy the specialists' sweet tooth. Pies. Baked in bakeries from fruit and flour.

One of the things you'll be able to notice is that even waaaaay further down the line, the same basic resources (flour, fish...) come into play once again. It's something we didn't want to lose along the way. Higher, more posh classes want better goods, but these are still mostly produced from the same basic resources.

A very important thing to remember about Needs is that if you don't have enough, your citizens will start leaving the capital. The world is ravaged and horrible, but if you can't even supply them with the fundamentals... then they have nothing to lose and will seek their fortune elsewhere.

Nope, not talking about luxury cars and Steam Decks. Luxuries in Kaiserpunk are more down to Earth. As with needs, each citizen class takes over all the luxuries of the previous class and adds a few more on top.

Laborers

• Clothes – Sure, they have their work clothes, but what about another set? Two even? Without holes? Maybe a different dress or trousers? Take cotton, make cloth and sew some clothes at the clothier.
  
• Newspapers – Gives them a lot of topics to talk about. Refine wood into cellulose, use it to produce paper and the rest is handled by the Printing press.

Manufacturers

• Ale – Something to take the edge off after a long day of work in the factory. Another use for wheat, only this time at the brewery.
  
• Gramophone – For those rare vinyls they find laying around. Appliances factory can get you hooked up.
  
• Radio – Can’t beat the good old radio waves. Produce the boombox in the Appliances factory.

Technicians

• Telephone – Technicians like to talk to their relatives. Mothers-in-law likely.
  
• Fine garments – Only the best clothes for them, made from the finest silk.

Specialists

• Wine – When ale just can’t flush the horrible away.
  
• Jewelry – Fashionable doodads made from silver and gold.
  
• TV – A television set, no smart functions… barely any functions at all, but it does show the moving images.

If you’ve read this far, congratulations and thank you. I didn’t write it in vain. You might be asking “Luxuries look really similar to needs. What’s the actual difference?” Unlike needs, not having luxuries will not make your citizens leave. It does, however, have a big, almost the biggest impact on the amount of taxes you collect from the citizens. The more they spend on luxuries, the more money you collect.

Or simply Health, represents how your citizens feel about the state of public health in the capital. This isn’t a complex matter to handle but can be expensive. To make Laborers and Manufacturers happy and of sane body and mind, build enough Clinics near them. Technicians and Specialists also require a Hospital to be nearby.

Public health is not to be trifled with! Lousy health services will cause disease outbreaks and that can quickly get out of control.

Everybody wants to feel safe. Especially in a place that they call home. And that’s the whole point (well almost) of public safety services in Kaiserpunk. There are several buildings involved in this morale segment. The approach is the same as with the other segments. A higher class of citizens want the same as the previous class and then some.

Laborers

• Fire station – Reduces the chance of fires erupting in your capital, keeps the Laborers happy and jumps into action when a fire eventually does happen.

Manufacturers

• Police station – Reduces the chance of a crime wave happening and keeps the Manufacturers happy. In case of riots, police crews are dispatched to handle the situation. If left unchecked, riots can cause a lot of damage and even escalate into full-blown rebellions.

Technicians

• Prison – Technicians are all about rehabilitation. Or maybe they just want the criminals to be taken somewhere out of sight. Prisons are good for that, which in turn is good for Technicians’ mental health. Prisons, however, can become hotspots for riots and opens up the possibility of prison breaks.

Specialists

• Courthouse – Specialists are keen to handle grievances in the court of law, even just for appearances. I guess when you have everything in your life taken care of, litigation is the only thing left.

Public safety, as noted is just a part of Morale, but it should never be disregarded as unimportant. Your capital can succumb to rampant crime and rioting rather quickly if left to its own devices.

The final Morale category is Education. You’re building a new nation in Kaiserpunk. Education is an important part of that. Your citizens know this as well and are of course interested in quality public education. Again, to emphasize, if they’re left with substandard, poor or even no education, they won’t exactly leave just because of that, so you have ample opportunities to make it right, but don’t recklessly dismiss education as non-essential. Low education can cause tremendous problems in your scientific development. Just as high education can lead to breakthroughs, lousy education can go the other way and have a negative impact on how fast you’re researching and developing new buildings, upgrades, units etc..

As is the case with Safety, there are several buildings linked to Education, one for each citizen class.

Laborers

• Elementary school – Basic education, but still important. Laborers won’t be looking for more than that. As an added mechanic, you can use Elementary schools to convert Laborers into Manufacturers. Comes in handy if you’re having problem getting Manufacturers the standard way (through immigration).

Manufacturers

• Highschool – Manufacturers are interested in making that step forward in their knowledge of the world. High schools have the added ability to convert Manufacturers into Technicians.

Technicians

• University – A nice almost top of the ladder for Technicians to aspire to. A nifty bonus mechanic of universities is Research funding. You can allocate funds (cash) into different development branches to speed up research in those areas. This offers a direct control of boosting development in your capital.

Specialists

• Research center – Specialists have already achieved university-level degrees. What they want is to apply their knowledge on exciting new projects. Research centers, along with satisfying Specialists’ thirst for education, can produce breakthrough points. You can use breakthroughs to quickly boost development of a research branch of your choice.

One additional segment in the story of Morale are the so-called Boosters. These are special buildings that can directly help improve Morale of a citizen class. Or to be more precise, these buildings primarily exist to offset or delay some negative effect impacting your population morale. For example, if a long-running war is being severely detrimental to your citizens’ morale, these boosters can help. They cannot completely offset the negatives, but every little bit helps…

Laborers

• Record label – A simple building, used to distribute records to eager vinyl fans.

Manufacturers

• Radio station – Listeners all over your capital can enjoy the best and latest tunes.

Technicians

• TV station – A good television drama in black and white can occupy time and minds with ease.

Specialists

• Jazz club – This is the place for the discerning customer to take the weight of his chest, have a great enjoyable night and forget about the worries of the world.

As is usually the case in Kaiserpunk, for every positive, there is at least one potential negative. The buildings noted above can become the epicenter of great stories… which includes tragedies as well. Radio and TV stations are perfect entry points for enemy propaganda for example…

No, I haven’t forgotten about the last two. Unemployment is a tricky bugger. You need citizens, workers if you wish. You need them for the capital to have any chance of working in an organized manner and at full capacity. You also need citizens to be recruits and form your mighty armies. Taxing citizens is also your primary income… That said, you can have too many citizens. Apologies for the crassness. Remember… it’s just a game 😉.

So, what happens when you build a bunch of houses or residential buildings and a whole lot of people move into your capital? You’re pleased, taxes are coming in, the treasury is filling up nicely. Great… Have you considered what all those folks will do? No? Congratulations! You’ve just created a problem from nothing. You’re an absolute wizard!

Your citizens generally want to be employed. They want to work. If there are no opportunities for them here, they will of course leave. But they won’t leave quietly. They’ll ransack your capital first, make some nice bonfires, trash the place and then leave… maybe. Maybe they don’t. Maybe, for example, Laborers with a general hypothetical unemployment of 40% look at the Technicians with a 3% unemployment and think “Hmmm… seems to me that the governor’s been pumping cash into their jobs, but not ours. We’re going to take what should rightfully be ours…” which causes bloody clashes between the individual classes… And last but not least maybe, just maybe, the rioters decide YOU are going to leave instead.

Unemployment is not a joke. Remember that and plan accordingly 😉.

With this subheading, we arrive at the final component of morale in Kaiserpunk. War weariness: the feeling of being tired and overwhelmed by the constant war happening in the world, war that for one reason or another, involves your fledgling new nation.

People get tired of war. Winning or losing, they get tired, weary if you wish. And make no mistake, the I’m tired of this c*** starts accumulating the moment a war ensues. It will take time, but ultimately, it will come to bite you. It’s war for god’s sake! People die in wars! Who wants wars to last eternally!?

You might be asking “Is there anything I can do about it?” and the answer is, of course; you’re the governor. Propaganda is your primary tool. Regions that are on the front lines of a war get destabilized. Unstable regions make war weariness grow much faster. Losing battles cause a massive hit to war weariness. Well, a boost, not a hit. Losing an entire region… don’t even ask what this does to the perception of war in your capital…

All the things noted in the previous paragraph also work the other way around. Winning will slow down the accumulation of war weariness. Winning battles, conquering regions, stabilizing your regions etc.. This all helps, but as I’ve said before, this will only postpone the degradation of morale in general. Perpetual war is not a viable or at least a desired state.

The gameplay focus in Kaiserpunk is on efficient production and keeping your citizens happy or at the very least content is an intricate part of that. You can’t have a functioning war machine or a society in general if your folks are miserable. Kaiserpunk will remind of you that every step of the way.