I’ve spent the last week or so mostly on the AI systems and its starting to play an OK game. It was functional previously but got stuck in various edge cases and rarely did interesting things. I expect to be spending more time on this in the coming weeks both from my own observations while playing and, hopefully, from others too.
I’ve also made a bunch of gameplay changes. The early game didn’t have enough variety in the units which led to a pretty mindless pumping out of a single unit type and I found after more playing that (most) resources and improvements just led to busy work so I streamlined that right back to a couple of key resources. That also forced some interesting tech tree tweaks.
Alongside that I’ve continued to refine the UI to promote flow. There are still a few rough spots where I’m undecided on the way to go but I can lose myself in turns now without much interruption which is what I’m aiming for.
I reckon I’m a week or two from being comfortable releasing this in an Early Access form. Its playable now but I think a couple more weeks of polish will make a real difference.
