Axioms Of Dominion: A Fantasy DIP Strategy Game

Axioms Of Dominion is a project I got about 40% through and then had to let go for life stuff. Now I have roughly a year where I shouldn't have anything else to do so I'm hoping to release in late 2022 or very early 2023 if I run into serious issues.

I'd advise reading the wiki for a broad overview: https://axioms-of-dominion.fandom.co…_Dominion_Wiki
Here is the blog link: https://axiomsofdominion.substack.com/

This is a fantasy geopolitics simulator that is broadly comparable to CK2+Vicky2+Dominions4+more. As a fantasy game it has tons of magic stuff but the focus is on DIP mechanics.

Diplomacy(foreign affairs)
Intrigue(shadowy affairs)
Politics(domestic affairs)

I have a Substack which can be located by searching the game name in Google.

I have a goal of enabling 40000 provinces on very new PCs but the game is perfectly functional around 14000. I have a major goal of playing an almost purely combat free couple millenia taking down a major empire in the world from the inside. I'd expect an average top tier empire to have roughly 7000 provinces on larger maps if you run history for 4000-8000 years. Anywhere from 15% to 40% of a larger map. What constitutes an empire or even a kingdom is much more fluid and dynamic than in existing games. A 7000 province empire would have something like 10 ~100 province substates at the core, 40 ~50 province "major vassals", and then 200 ~20 province periphery/border vassals. Of course you can fiddle those numbers a bit but that is a good illustration of my goal.

Several of the substack posts relate the very detailed political sim I am designing to make this goal plausible. I still have a few major and a few minor things to talk about on the blog. There is a Fandom wiki that has a few dozen pages on various major and minor systems. It hasn't been changed much since mid 2015 when I had to pause working on the game until now.

Most of the backend stuff is done and I'm primarily figuring out the equations for mechanics, doing all the UI stuff, and getting the AI to function. I expect I'll do a UI theme, smooth out map generation, and maybe polish up the art assets at the end.

The game is turn based with attention points. So you have like 1000 attention points per turn, still testing the proper amount and the costs for actions. I wanted to do a time based system but it is hard to code and people will just get mad anyways. It is a province map style like Sovereignty or Paradox games.

There is a very detailed population simulation which interacts with the character mechanics. Ideology covers almost a dozen areas, Propaganda impacts ideology and religion and the military, there's a Quality Of Life system regarding food variety/quality and material goods plus shelter, Religion ties into both magic and diplomacy/politics, population is where your troops come from and there is a logistics system.

https://imgur.com/a/AlPew
Those are some early maps. The top one almost looks like Europe/Africa/Near East. Maps are generated procedurally as will the world be if you don't start on world creation but run history for a few centuries or millenia.

The magic aspect is highly integrated and very expansive. It impacts every game system in various ways. I have a substack post about just magic. My substack is free for anyone to read. Magic can build roads, discover secrets, troop movements, and other knowledge from distant provinces, change the weather and climate, be used in various enchantments, etc. There is even a cool The Runelords(think that is the right series) inspired magical transference/pacts thing where you can empower your soldiers or other people with the powers of captured, or tamed, magical creatures. Or sentient captives. Strength, mana pool, speed, physical features like scales or claws, etc. And you can do evil mad science shit.

Speaking of evil Axioms allows you to play a truly ruthless tyrant rather than just a good boy. Fear, blackmail, military threats, second class citizens, slaves, etc.

The culture system allows a something like a society that reveres dragons, character secretly captures a dragon, transfers dragon traits to himself, become leader of confederation of tribes. Someone finds out, and can blackmail him, reveal him, kill him and become dragon king themselves, etc.

You can destabilize a society by cutting off their access to a prestigious food resource that is a traditional staple of cultural diet, say cinnamon, assuming the leader has depleted his political capital and put himself in a risky position. Much more detailed example on the blog.

The trade off is graphical sugar, no voice acting or 3d models, random world gen vs handcrafted map, although players/modders can make scenarios if they want, I just don't plan to release official ones but there is mod support.

A stretch goal, well not really since there isn't a kickstarter, if I finish the main stuff early before release date is to integrate a "History" system that records important actions and can be loaded/interpreted by a wiki type program to allow you to read "history books" about the game world. The "simulated" history mentioned earlier is just starting a game with no player or observer and letting the AI play a few centuries or millenia and then picking a point jump in. Player could look at data files in theory but the idea is that you only know what your AI guy knew when you swapped in.

Just did a blog post about the RPG-adjacent systems in the game:
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

Choice and consequence over narrative and static writing.

https://imgur.com/a/23cnnra

Those are the ones I put on rpgcodex. But like I said not super sexy.

Map:
https://i.imgur.com/pJGGiKy.png

Unique colors for province detection on maps
https://imgur.com/q6ueCG4

Icons:

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

The Attention Point System: Or How MoLAoS is destroying strategy games and also all things good and beautiful.

Action Points come to province based strategy games. See, totally appropriate post for an RPG site.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…rogramming-b5f

I have a new subsection of my substack where I'll be trying to post every day but sometimes every other day what programming work I got done that day.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

I wrote a post about how the early era of the game, well before the default starts packaged in the official release, works. This is an era of tribal societies with those in very good geographical locations with high crop or hunting potential starting the rise to the religious autocracies of the ancient world.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…velopment-blog

There is a subsection of my substack for my development blog. Basically talking about what I'm doing. Try to post several times a week. Recently? Just grinding out some code changes from library updates from TGUI and SFML and doing a ton of refactoring of systems that support core systems. Almost got the basic loop functioning after all the changes. Conquering stuff, making deals with the AI, and some of the economic stuff.

My current hurdle that is giving me a compile time based break right now is that when you don't have traditional "nations/factions" as the core of gameplay but pure character relationships, and characters and their associated populations can move around, it is hard to have a good model for who "owns" a province. Been slowly cleaning up code related to that and getting a solid model and figuring out how to display that on a map mode or two.

Especially in the case of mobile, if not actually nomadic, tribes and stuff like that, how do you define control over territory? And since characters and their relationships are what define the political landscape, you can just have giant homogenuous swaths of color in the style of a traditional map painter.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

Did a post about tradeoffs I made so I could complete such a mechanically complex project solo.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

Bringing roleplaying and characters into warfare in a unique way. Well so far.

I wrote an important design post about warfare. Preparing for and declaring war is an interesting process with lots of stakeholders. You don't just click and go. And in the right game that is more fun. Of course for like Total War it wouldn't work. But for a more diplomatic and character based game I think it works.

Laws, Customs, Traditions, And Political Organization

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

Boats! Rivers! More Boats!
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…source=twitter

I also did another post in the magic design series Esoteric Arcana:
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

I did Divination and Weather Working previously, this is on a system somewhat inspired by The Rune Lords fantasy series. You can transfer entity stats, and other aspects, between characters, populations, military units, creatures, monsters, and so forth.

Transfering some charisma from all your vassals to yourself for instance to gain significant diplomatic advantages.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

A post about simulating the rise and fall of empires in an interest and realistic manner.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…e-intelligence

This is a post about more low level mechanics and systems in the Intrigue/Intelligence gameplay. Talks about Missions, Detail Level, and so forth. Spying on characters, surveying provinces, and shit like that.

Here is a couple screenshots for people who want to see basic dev version screenshots for some reason. Technically this shows the Intelligence Network Map Mode and Intelligence Panel but there isn't a ton of stuff displayed here since I'm in the early stages of working on it:
https://imgur.com/a/g6EGR5P

In the first shot the info panels are Provinces, Missions, Characters, Units, and Populations top to bottom. The lowest panel is Extensions, so potential characters and provinces, currently, that you could assign to a new Mission.

On the right is the Display Panel that shows what you've selected, which you'll then assign to a mission with a button at the top. The bottom right is the Mission Panel that shows info on the currently selected Mission.

This is all dev mode stuff, will get Labels, most buttons swapped to images like at the very top of the window, and will be appropriately "themed". Currently is the basic "Black Theme" that comes with TGUI.

Many people argue that Axioms is "not technically an rpg". But here is a post about some very social simulation/rpg elements in the game:
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co…utm_medium=web

I'll copy paste it below for people who don't want to go to a blog:

Social Simulations And Genre Blending: Lower level details on relationships including romance

__________________________________________________ __________________
Background
You can skip to the next heading if you don’t care for this part, as it is pretty long.

There are several interrelated sub-genres of “simulation” and “rpg” game that deal with social interactions. You have anything from The Sims to Japanese dating sims, to dating sims mixed into rpgs, including western games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, to school sims like Academagia and things like Long Live The Queen. I’m not very positive about these kinds of games but not because they are inherently bad. Well, pure dating sims are not interesting to me I guess. The reason I don’t like them is that they are untethered.

The Sims has perhaps advanced a long time since I played The Sims 2 back in the mid 2000s. Back then they didn’t really account for anything but the player family. Unless you added more families to the neighborhood. Jobs, school, cops, etc. They were all fake. Similarly many RPGs only had detailed romance options and little if any effort put into other kinds of relationships. Maybe faction “points”? Meh.

Games like Academagia sort of had “cliques” and “bullies/rivals” and in fact seeing as they haven’t released Year 2 after over a decade the game/series doesn’t even have romance options. Similarly stuff like LLTQ and CK2-3 have very limited interpersonal mechanics.

RPGs and most varieties of sims also don’t have an “outside world” at all. If you are playing an adventurer or a mercenary or w/e you are heavily constrained by handcrafted settings and interactions. Conversely something like CK2-3 lacks an “inside” world. Everything is shallow and limited. There are some interesting mods like the ones by Tobbzn for CK3 that add mechanics that are halfway between vanilla and fully fleshed out.

City builders like Emperor and trading sims like Patrician 3 arepretty similar. You aren’t making connections with rulers, other merchant families, not hiring caravan guards, and so forth. And most city-builders lack a deep Guild system, even something like Majesty 1.

My goal for Axioms is to create a system where all these genres blend together. A lot of people will talk badly about “kitchen sink” games and that is one reason another key aspect of Axioms is creating a mechanical/system “framework” that adds flexibility and cuts out redundancy and integrates the major systems I want to include without being clunky and rigid and requiring piles of distinct mechanics. That is one major problem I always had with Paradox games. It also applies to stuff like unique country flavor. Especially the HRE and ERE.

Relationships And Dissonance
If you’ve read most of my other posts you know that Axioms has a primary mechanic called “Opinion” that underlies all relationships. You’ll also know that I have added Fear, Honor, Trust, and Respect as Opinion modifiers. I haven’t yet worked out the final modifier for friendship or romance. Many games use some sort of “Affection” mechanic but I’m still thinking about the difference between friendship and romance and I think Affection might not be enough. I’d like to minimize the number of sub-factors beyond Opinion. I suspect I’ll have to add something.

I don’t think it is reasonable or necessary to represent the full range of human emotions in a videogame. Especially one that is not a pure Social Sim. I did come up with a mechanic similar to Stress in Crusader Kings. Just as my Secrets system from 2013-2014 was much more detailed than the one Paradox came out with in 2019 the Stress mechanic was more detailed than what CK3 has. In this case the name is actually different.

Dissonance is a mechanic which represents a Character feeling out of sync with the ideals and expectations of their environment. Characters have a Personality which interacts with the Ideology they have for themselves and those around them. They will be unhappy if the expectations put upon them, their own or otherwise, don’t match up with their personal desires and circumstances.

I should make clear here that while this system is more expansive than any existing game it obviously isn’t at the level of granularity of the real world. There will be no Onegin, nor Karenina, nor Zhivago in Axioms. You might, depending on the emergent results of the simulation, get something approximating that kind of Dissonance or ennui but it can in no way match up to a novel in characterization and plot.

In any case Dissonance can impact characters as far as being a ruler, who they marry, the expectations of their society, like being warlike or bookish, and so forth. There is a natural level of Dissonance which all/most characters can sustain indefinitely and then they start to be impacted by it. I am considering some sort of Attention Point modifier here for very low Dissonance. Characters with too much will be motivated to change their situation or act out.

Interactions
Those who follow the blog will be aware of the Social Occasion system in Axioms. This is a system that, as far as I know, is distinct not only in strategy/simulation games but in rpgs and social simulations as well. Those games rarely have a resource/economic model or the sandbox underpinnings to support staffing and supplying a social event. In fact even something like The Sims doesn’t allow this, as far as I know. Again I haven’t been really engaged with the series for a long time. Social Occasions create both broad impact as well as the opportunity for characters to engage on a more personal level.

Nearly all the personal interactions possible at Social Occasions are also possible in individual or small group interactions. Basically you are making decisions on how to spend your personal time and who to spend it with. This is actually the most similar aspect to dating or school sims but with more context and consequence and obviously much less art and dialogue. Think of something like Three Houses, Academagia, Persona, or King Of Dragon Pass. They trade context and consequence and emergence for hand writter conversations and hand drawn backgrounds or character models.

Personal relationships are impacted by a variety of factors. You need some level of “background” like familial connection, long running factional attachment, or similarity of self/circumstantial impact to overcome a lack of direct personal interaction. If you lack that then keeping a strong relationship requires actively engaging with the other person, especially at Social Occasions.

Aside from the value of spending time together and past circumstance another key part of relationship strength is how you impact another character. Do you support them when they are down? Perhaps taking them out to dance/drink or for a ride? Do you engage them frequently but only superficially and without consideration for the circumstances? Are your interactions mostly private or do you often associate in public?

Relevant here is that through the Intrigue/Espionage/Intelligence system you can manipulate relationships very effectively. Figure out what they like and dislike, know when they are having a good or bad time, and so forth. Intersystem integration is a top 3 goal/focus for Axioms.

Putting all that aside the actual character interactions involve written corresponance, visits, long talks on distinct subjects, getting a drink, at home or on the town, going riding or dancing, if possible in your polity, training together, which includes martial, musical, mental, magical, and so forth. You can Bribe, Flatter, Insult others in public, or in secret, and so forth.

All non-public interactions can create a Secret. Friends can betray you or vice versa if the situation is appropriate. You can also engage in romantic or sexual interactions of various kinds. You can give romantic or platonic gifts.

A major value of Social Occasions is that they can provide cover for interactions of various kinds. An affair at a party is much easier than having to come up with some other excuse to travel, especially between provinces.

Characters have Desires and Interests and thus you can, for personal or political reasons, gift a studious mage rare tomes, tell an adventurer of secret locations, or promise a friend to, as mentioned in a previous post on secrets, arrange a loving marriage for a daughter, or son.

Interacting With Interactions
I mentioned above how you can learn information to use in social manipulation with the Intrigue mechanics. You can also interact, as mentioned in a previous design post, with Social Occasions by doing stuff like following traveling characters and ambushing them, or getting them alone at events to blackmail or bribe them.

Additionally you can do the same when two friends go for a ride in the countryside. Murder, kidnapping, etc. You could also, pending some possible feature cuts, meet another character during their interaction with someone else. Or specifically go somewhere with another character as cover for a separate meeting between that character and someone else. I’m sure we’ve all read fantasy novels where this kind of thing occurs. Or seen the Harry Potter movies or all those new fantasy tv adaptations.

Conclusion
I spent a lot of time when designing various systems designing them such that they interact smoothly with at least 3-5 other game systems and massaging the base/core mechanics to facilitate this and to avoid redundant systems. The downfall of many an existing genre blending or kitchen sink game is having too many almost totally rigid and siloed systems/mechanics which make the game complicated for players to learn without providing a proper amount of value in return.

Axioms had originally been conceived as a real time game back in 2010-2012 but I finally came to the conclusion in late 2012 that a turn based core would allow for a lot more of the things I wanted to do in a more elegant and also more performant way. When I played EU4 and CK2 in early 2013 to early 2015 I found that their real time nature did indeed limit them in ways I had forseen and I felt pretty happy about my choices. Playing those games also solidified my feelings about having a bunch of shallow and unconnected game mechanics creating strong negative impacts on user experience.

https://twitter.com/axiomofdominion/…22173292085248

This is a twitter thread with several recent screenshots, keep in mind I haven't done a custom theme/skin and it is using the basic TGUI theme, as well as some discussion on the Social Occasions, Interactions, Attention Points, and what your Character would be doing on a typical turn.