(Image recognition: Resistance Games) The Crusader Kings series revolutionised the grand strategy by switching the genre’s focus from countries to characters, making war and coups and religious schisms more tangible using their view. But what CK’s design doesn’t seem bizarre is that you rarely know what the characters are doing. There is a big gap between the social simulation and the campaign map, meaning family members could move anywhere across the world without realizing. Where Crusaders are only giving you the highlight reels of their character’s experiences, Great Houses of Calderia plans to give her the live feed. This free-to-play strategy by the Finnish developer Resistance Games takes the structure of Crusader Kings, but isn’t easy to build and puts your family on the map, adding to its presence in the world. “No matter what you do in the game, it’ll always be led by your family,” says Jussi Autio, the game director of the Great Houses of Calderia. If you want to trade with someone, you send your family to the top of the trade delegation. If you hire spies, one of your relatives should do that. And when you fought, your family will be commanding officers.” The Great houses of Calderia are a neotechnic world of resistance’s own devising, based heavily on the city-states of renaissance Italy. The limited magic happens when the davinci-style gadgetries don’t fireballs. Calderia itself is a volcanic island of subtropical shape, so that it is ruled by a larger kingdom, but that isn’t known by the mainland, but it is lived every day by other rival houses – one which you control. Calderia is not as wide as Crusaders, it’s being played on one island with approximately a dozen factions in play. You also control a single “fiefdom”, where you can build structures and produce diverse resources to boost and maintain your subjects’ happiness, and perform special actions. But that smaller scale is the foundation of Calderia’s plan. Resistance Games wants you to know all of the happening on the island rather than a small portion. This is the family member of your house, who is involved in every facet of your daily operations: from passive activities like the supervision of resources to more active jobs like trading or the fight of enemies. They also are not based on the plot, but also directly depicted on the campaign map. Autio is an example of negotiating a deal with a rival house. To do that, your character must cross the map at that house and then negotiate the deal by themselves. Their character traits will influence the success of this deal-making. Next time I start a trade, the resources can’t be teleported. But there’s a trade route, says Autio. These trade routes are, too, simulated, and can be harmed or harmed by other houses. Given the limited number of characters at any time, decision-making is an important part of Calderia’s strategy. If you send one of the characters to the competition, then you’ll get an advantage over that character for other jobs. Your expertise in the world’s development will guide you to the real world, and it’ll lead you to a little more insight into the world’s properties, opening up certain espionage actions to damage that house from the inside, such as sabotage buildings or assassination characters. If the prosecutor is investigating, the prosecutor might find a better way to get the man behind the door, but the matter will not be so easy to get the justice, not in favour of a person who knows that he works in the criminal court. Although the family members of your house can be taught like strategy units, they won’t obey each other selfishly. When they live, they take their character journey, and take their time in life. They might go through Calderia’s fantasy world, join a demise of a Romeo and Juliet-style love affair with a rival house member or join a secretive cult of assassins to become a master murderer like this one in Game of Thrones. Autio says this journey is not just intended to provide more autonomy to characters, it also helps you to know who your family members are, and thus better use them in the world. The journeyed character isn’t exempt from the rules of the world. They can be bullied, threatened or sifted, or intersect with other houses, in ways that alter their relationship with them. “If the character journey takes them to visit another fiefdom, then they might influence the relationship between these two family, too,” Autio said. Indeed, relations are the key to the evolution of Calderia’s Great Houses, not just between characters seen in Crusaders and also among Houses. Combined uprisings and rivalries are the result of a “reputation.” Reputations have to be used as a means of influence. Treating opponents to your court will increase your reputation with that House, which gives you a better chance of getting a trade deal or alliance. If one of your family members botches a trade negotiation, you will be able to accomplish it on the whole but without the expense of a reputation. The rivalry between houses and other houses can be tense in two ways. All of the battles are resolved through a board-game like system which is a bit like playing two games at once. The wall that is mounted on the wall above the castle is also a pier – this pier is an edge of the bridge. During the battle, units can be pulled from one front to another, while units that win on the other front gain stat bonuses before piling into the other front. “The conflict resolution model is five minute, what Total War is the initial half an hour,” says Autio. Instead of simply regaining, the final act of the game will see the island erupt in civil war between the Calderian House and its parent kingdom. Social conflicts can take a little more energy to compare homelessness. They represent non-military events with an element of battle to them, such as royal balls, tournaments or even shaming in the back of a tavern. The system of social conflict wasn’t ready to show up at Resistance’s demonstration, but Autio explains it is probably going to be all in the same way as the battle system, but you’re just putting down witty rejoinders and scathing putdowns rather than ax blows. “The big, big difference is that some social conflicts have more than two opponents,” says Autio. Along with the conflicts between the houses, Resistance Games has big plans for the end of Calderia’s Endgame. Even though a deal doesn’t begin, the island erupts in civil war between the Calderian and its majesty. Depending on your condition, you can either support more powerful houses in the fight against the King or lead the charge for a crown yourself. “We want that game to end with a big bang,” says Autio. I like the sound of the Great Houses of Calderia. I love the character-play of Crusader Kings, and I like to see how much potential it is in a game folding them more closely into a bigger strategy-layer. Being very broad and complex, Crusader Kings are a key in their appeal, but a depth that is powerful, and a good opportunity, especially the ability to look to Great Houses of Calderia and its mates. Calderia did not achieve its character characteristics at the time of the demonstration. But Autio promises to come, along with “hundreds of events that will storify the mechanics.” We have more long-term plans for Calderia that can shape the island and its history, from naming the locations of the estate to ideas for an ambitious legacy system whereby a house you create in the single playthrough will become an AI rival house that you play in the next. “We are looking for a new place to stay, so you may take several playsthroughs to make the mythos of that island yourself,” said Autio. He insists that such features are contingent on Calderia’s reception when it launches in Steam Early Access at some point next year. I’m excited that a developer wants to build a game for Crusaders. While a wide range of games were influenced by Paradox’s revolutionary strategy, from Total War to Old World, nobody outside Paradox has attempted to become the principal of Crusader Kings’ design and move in a different direction. There’s a real killer from Resistance Games, and I’m fascinated by how everything goes out.
