Hey Giants and smaller folks! I’m Bas, a game designer at Triumph studios, you might remember me from some of the older dev diaries such as on the Siege system, Umbral Abyss and some others.
This time, I’m here to showcase some visual improvements we’ve made to the world map, which come with the free update to the game released alongside the new DLC, as well as a new major type of content in Giant Kings: Hand-Crafted Regions!
One of the new Hand-Crafted Regions you may find.
Let’s start off with the new visual updates, shall we?
Arctic and Desolate Mountains
First off, we’ve updated the Arctic and Desolate mountain visuals. The new mountains blend a lot better with the existing visuals of the clime’s other overlays. You can now easily tell what clime these mountains belong to!
The new Arctic Mountains
The new Desolate Mountains
City Sprawl
Next up, we’ve added sprawling houses and structures around city cores. These are spread in the city core’s province and change depending on the city’s culture and tier. Now you can visually see the population settle outside the city as it grows!
Feudal Culture city sprawl at tier 1 and tier 4
Primal Culture city sprawl at tier 1 and tier 4
The sprawl will grow throughout your whole empire!
We're still reducing the intensity, but this should make your domains look imposing and lived-in!
Underground Climes and Walls
The final major visual update comes paired with the Underground rework. While there will be a specific development diary on that rework later. Right now we’ll focus on the Underground Arctic and Underground Desolate clime visuals. Which now have their unique visuals for bedrock and diggable earth.
Arctic Underground with new Bedrock and Diggable Earth visuals
Desolate Underground with new Bedrock and Diggable Earth visuals
Furthermore, Bedrock walls, which are technically part of their own uninhabitable region, now detect what clime is adjacent to them and adjust their visualization based on this. This makes the walls surrounding a cavern look more integrated with the cavern’s looks!
Cavern walls using the clime visuals of the cavern next to it.
These changes not only help improve the visuals of the base game. They also helped us with creating the new DLC content. Let’s go into that new type of content now!
Hand-Crafted Regions
Regions hand-crafted by us developers were first introduced in Eldritch Realms. Where the Umbral Abyss layer was exclusively made up of floating islands that had everything painted and placed by us. As we were busy with these, we already had the exciting idea of featuring this type of content on the Surface and Underground. Mixed in with the regular regions the Random Map Generator creates. As Giants were the ones shaping the land of old in finer detail. Giant Kings seemed like the perfect fit for adding Hand-Crafted Regions into the natural landscape! Imagine us as giants slinging an insane amount of terraforming spells to make these regions
A developer giant looking upon her new creation
Like with Eldritch Realms, our approach with these regions was first to divide them into categories depending on the design goals we had. We ended up with the following categories:
Natural Regions
These regions are the most numerous of the Hand-Crafted Regions we made. Their main purpose is to beautify the world and present interesting economic hotspots that are different from what you’d normally find in RMG. They do not present new locations or events the player can find. This way they are simplistic and we can have a great quantity of them throughout the realms to ensure plenty of variation!
A valley featuring a once prosperous city.
A cavern corridor lined with giant statues.
In order to push their visuals further, we have also made various decorations such as statues, mist, wandering ghosts, little farms and such which we can place in our regions.
These have no gameplay implication other than telling a story and making the regions prettier. Try and spot them when you think you’ve discovered a Natural Region!
A haunted forest filled with bones and ghosts.
A tomb on top of a cliff, surrounded by vast pillars and statues.
We also added new functionality for Hand-Crafted Regions to be able to randomize climes and overlays. This was used a lot for Natural Regions so that the same region can appear in various locations. Or even appear with slightly different layouts!
One of the regions in Temperate
The same region in Arctic. Did you know that rivers and roads in Hand-Crafted Regions will try to connect to the rest of the Realm?
We also added a new overlay and clime in the base game update coming alongside Giant Kings: The Dungeon clime and the Ruins overlay. Both were used to give the world more history of previous empires. They were used a lot in Natural Regions to tell a story.
A Natural Underground Region with Desolate Dungeon clime.
A Natural Region with the new Ruins overlay.
One of our favourite ways to create visually interesting Natural Regions, was to incorporate Ancient Wonders into them and shape the region around them. We even created special visuals for the new Ancient Wonders featured in Giant Kings when placed in a Natural Region!
The Lava Prison ancient wonder with its own hand-crafted region.
Landmark Regions
At Triumph, we’ve had art concepts lying around for a while of gigantic visages and custom assets decorating the world map. With Giant Kings, we finally wanted to realize these concepts. Enter Landmark Regions!
Some very early concepts of immense landmarks on the world map.
These regions were designed to be Age of Wonders’ version of the Wonders of the World. The goal for them was to create big and impressive visual anchors in the world. As well as being an ultimate prize for exploration.
The Grand Statuary Landmark.
Landmark regions contain a single vast structure or natural phenomenon. From a giant raging volcano to a huge eldritch creature trapped beneath ice.
These add a sense of myth and grandeur to the realms. And therefore are also a lot rarer than the Natural Regions, in a medium realm with 5 players. You tend to find only 2 on the surface, and 1 underground. You will be able to find more in larger realms!
Besides being visually impressive, we’ve also given each one their own lore image and text. Giving more glimpses into the grander history of Age of Wonders.
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Several Lore parchments of the new Landmarks. Can you guess what they are?
As Landmarks are this huge and mythical. We didn’t want players simply claiming them like they could with Ancient Wonders or nodes. We also wanted players to be able to benefit more from them over time as their cities grow.
Therefore, landmarks themselves cannot be claimed or annexed, but affect the provinces adjacent to them. You’ll want to maybe settle near them in order to claim as much of the surrounding territory as you can.
Finding these in the early game can really put you ahead of the other empires, since they don't need to be cleared to benefit from them. Hopefully you haven’t reached the city cap yet by the time you find one!
Fated Regions
Finally, we have the most complex of the Hand-Crafted Regions! These regions were designed to contain unique quests, visuals and adventures for players to follow. They are essentially small story realms!
A ruler has just stumbled upon one of the Fated Regions. The Crystalstorm Plateau!
To showcase what kind of adventures and rewards await you in these regions. I’m going to take you through one of them: the Crystalstorm Plateau in the screenshot above!
Beware that the following section contains spoilers, so if you want to experience these new region blindly. Be sure to scroll down until you find the end of the spoiler section!
[spoiler]As you stumble upon one of the Fated Region, you’ll be greeted by an intro event explaining what you’ve just run into. In this case the Crystalstorm Plateau is a mountainous area struck with continuous storms (which will affect us in combat while within the region).
The encounter event of the Crystalstorm Plateau
As we look around, we can see that the region itself is currently uninhabitable and cannot be affected by world spells. Once we’ve actually managed to fully resolve the mystery of this region. This protection will be lifted and we can annex and cast spells to our desire!
We can see the storms wreak havoc in the region and are unable to annex or cast spells… yet.
As we continue towards the center, we’re met with an imposing looking Lithorine Simulacrum. Unfortunately it seems we cannot get rid of him in order to claim this region’s many mana nodes. As a magic barrier protects him. We also learn that he’s evoked by the Storm Clan. One of the clans of Giants you’ll learn about as you discover more Fated Regions.
The Lithorine Simulacrum at the center of the Crystalstorm Plateau
Luckily, just as we step back from the magic barrier and its guardian. A friendly enough looking Swamp Troll offers us a way through, at the prize of a few dozen Lithorine cores. We accept his deal, but other players might want to steal his ward-breaking orb immediately.
The Troll offers us to dispel the barrier.
We go on to hunt down Lithorine. The region has various mana nodes and pickups guarded by them. But while fighting them. We’re getting battered by those crystal storms. Dealing damage but more importantly inflicting Volatile Charge on our units. Meaning we have to split up our units often to avoid damage. Fights in Fated Regions tend to be trickier than normal node fights you will encounter on a realm!
The Crystal Storms combat enchantment active during combat in the region.
After having collected enough lithorine cores. The Troll kindly holds up his part of the deal and destroys the storm barrier for us. Now we get to the final showdown against the Simulacrum!
It’s certainly not an easy fight, as he himself is a tier 5 and is joined by various mid to high tier units. Not only that, but the Crystal Storms continue to batter our forces.
A final showdown against the simulacrum.
After a hard-fought battle. We claim victory against the tempest! A Storm Giant representing the Storm Clan insults us for our deeds. And seems to hint at a rivalry between the clans. And at their ultimate goal of claiming the old Giant Kings’ power.
Each Fated Region will reveal more lore and secrets that Age of Wonders harbors. So for those who are ready to dive deeper into this world, Fated Regions are the place to be!
The Storm Giant berates us before its death. And we get to claim our prize.
Besides some choices of rewards, one of which is actually improving relations with the Crystal Dwelling (more on them later), we also gained the Menhir of Storms!
The Menhir of Storms is an Artifact. Much like Magic Materials. Artifacts grant global bonuses, can be traded with other players and form a collection when you’ve gained a set of them.
Unlike Magic Materials however, they can also be gained by conquering another player’s capital if they had any. And completing a collection will trigger a Happening event! Perhaps the other Giant Clans are harboring more Menhirs to find.
The Heirs of the Giant Kings artifact collection. 2 more to go!
With the mystery resolved. The Crystalstorm Plateau has become inhabitable and open to spellcasting again. We settle on its crystal center and benefit from its abundance of Mana. Most Fated Regions are incredibly good places to settle once they’re cleared!
A new city settled on the Crystalstorm Plateau. We shall call it “Lithorator City”.
And there you have it! The Crystalstorm Plateau has been conquered, a secret of the Giant Clans and their Menhirs revealed. A step towards completing the collection. But the spoilers will end here. You’ll have to complete this journey yourself in your own playthrough. We hope you’ll have stories to share of your adventures in Fated Regions![/spoiler]
If you’ve looked at the example above. You’ll note that Fated Regions are complex and share connections with one another. Therefore Fated Regions aren’t enabled by default. They can be enabled through the realm trait: Legends of Myrrida. This realm trait is also available in multiplayer.
The Legends of Myrrida trait giving you some more info on Fated Regions.
If you also have the Crystal Dwelling enabled in your realm. They can give you hints towards finding the Fated Regions, as well as giving you the option to grant them the revelation of the mysteries you’ve uncovered upon completing a Fated Region. Speaking of the Crystal Dwelling. Let’s dive into that next!
Crystal Dwelling
Aside from the categories above, we’ve used Hand-Crafted Regions also in some other places. Such as the Crystal Dwelling. Which is the new Dwelling featured in Giant Kings.
The Crystal Dwelling in its Hand-crafted Region.
This dwelling, similar to the Umbral Dwelling in Eldritch Realms. Acts much like a free city but is instead inhabited by the new Lithorine units.
By improving their allegiance. They will grant you access to their archive: a shop of unique spells, artifacts of their own, hero items and more!
Like with the Umbral Dwelling, you cannot assign whispering stones to Crystal Dwellings. Instead, you can improve your allegiance by taking on special quests or fulfilling their other requests.
Unlike the Umbral Dwelling, these guys don't do demands, merely requests!
Modding Hand-Crafted Regions
We expect many modders would love to create their own hand-crafted regions. So in the free base game update alongside Giant Kings, we are updating the tools to allow modders to create and implement Hand-Crafted Regions into Random Map Generation. A handy video tutorial explaining the process will be provided with the update, courtesy of Lara, one of our environment artists who has worked on a number of the regions you’ve seen here!
A look at crafting regions inside the Level Editor modding tool.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it! I hope you’ll be excited to see all the Hand-crafted Regions the Giant Kings expansion has to offer. Here’s a fun overview of all the Natural Regions for example. Just to give you an impression of the quantity.
A whole lot of Regions!
Oh, would you look at the sundial! Time for me to leave the rest up to imagination. Tune in next time as Thomas takes a deep dive into the Feudal Culture update, which will be in the free base game update alongside Giant Kings, releasing on the 1st of April (I swear it’s not a joke).
Bonus: You can now download the wallpaper for Giant Kings here!
