BitCraft Empires — A Detailed Guide

Game Mechanics Blog — July 12, 2024

Pre-requisites

Before you can create an empire or have your settlement join an empire you must have a claim with the pre-requisite research completed and be the owner.

After researching the Empire Infrastructure research, your claim will become eligible to be a part of an empire and the empire tab will appear in your claim window UI.

Founding an Empire

If you decide to found an empire it will costs you some hexite shards which come directly from your personal vault, and in term will make you the emperor of the new founded empire, after this point all hexite shards spent in the empire’s system will be charged from the hexite treasury of the empire and never from your personal hexite vault.

In order to complete the founding you must give your empire a unique name and confirm. Once founded you have an empire which you can view details of through the new empire window (which will have a button on your HUD and a hotkey, currently P). Founding an empire will also make the claim it was founded from the capital of the empire, which will be an important geo-strategic location for future empire activities as you’ll see below. For now the capital of an empire can’t be moved and loss of this capital settlement can result in the deletion of the empire if someone deconstructs the capital claim totem (in the future we want to add support for moving the capital at some cost and not have them be deleted with removal of the claim).

In the beginning your empire will have no subjects or territory, before you can start to do anything with your empire you will want to get properly set up.

Foundry

The first and most essential structure that every empire needs is a foundry, the foundry is what allows an empire to turn raw hexite shards and supplies from it’s capital claim into Hexite Capsules which are the main thing used for all subsequent empire activities. These foundries can only be built in the capital and cost Hexite shards from the treasury of the empire (seen on the summary tab of the empire window). If you don’t have enough shards, you can donate more to your empire from your personal vault through the empire window.

You can then go to the build menu while inside your capital claim and under the empire section of the build menu you can place a Foundry. These will build instantly (not requiring a construction site). All of the empire related structures operate on their own permissions system which we will discuss more in a moment, but members of your claim cannot interact with or remove these.

In the foundry UI you can queue the crafting of Hexite Capsules, these cost both hexite shards from the empire treasury and supplies which come directly out of the capital claim, be sure that you don’t over queue to the point of depleting your claim’s supplies.

Until your empire claims some land, only the emperor is able to act on behalf of the empire but with territory comes the ability to delegate permissions.

Claiming Land

Once you have 1 or more Hexite Capsules you are ready to claim some land. To control territory as an empire you need to place empire watchtowers which cover an area of 3x3 territory squares on the map (this grid can be viewed with F2). These can only be placed in a territory which is not covered by another empire’s influence, but they can overlap with another empire’s territory creating a contested no man’s land in the overlap (this area is considered under influence but owned by neither empire).

To actually place a watchtower you must go on the map or physically to the area you want to build at and mark it for expansion, this gives permission for anyone in the empire to establish a watchtower in that territory, however for the emperor and other authorities with permission to mark for expansion, you can skip this step.

By going to the approved territory with a Hexite Capsule you can use the build menu to place it in the world. Watchtowers include a small neutral claim which means they cannot be built near another claim like a settlement or ruin.

Maintaining and Empire

Once you’ve built a watchtower, it is important to maintain it, lest it become inactive or worse captured by a rival empire. Watchtowers are maintained similar to claims by filling them with energy using hexite capsules. There are a few factors which distance the rate of energy depletion of a watch tower.

• First is the overall number of watchtowers you have, the more you get it slightly increases the maintenance cost of all watchtowers
• Second is the distance from your capital, the further a watchtower is from the capital it incurs from increased maintenance cost
• Finally if a watchtower isn’t connected to territory which contains an aligned settlement it is said to be isolated from the empire and will incur a steep energy drain. You can remedy this by connecting it contiguously to either your capital or recruiting another settlement somewhere in the territory it is connected to.

Since Hexite Capsules are created in Foundries in the capital, the further your empire extends the more logistics will be needed to maintain your empire.

Recruiting Settlements to Empires

While there is no need for your empire to have multiple aligned settlements, outside of preventing isolated watchtowers, it can be a way to flex the size and might of your empire. Any settlement can join an empire by going to the empire tab of the claim once they have researched the empire infrastructure research. Joining an empire as your character and settlement are completely separate. It is totally valid to be a member of once settlement on your character, while your settlement is in another empire, while your settlement’s territory is in another empire’s influence, it is purely to show your allegiance.

Authorities and Crown

Now that you have your first territory you can begin to delegate some of the administration of your empire to your Authorities, ranks in your empire with unique titles and permission bestowed by the emperor.

Players who are not aligned with any empire can come to either the capital of an empire or any active watchtower of that empire and swear allegiance to that empire. This makes them an exclusive citizen of that empire. Any citizen can donate and carry out basic delivery actions for the empire. If a citizen donates enough (a threshold set by the emperor) they can ascend from citizen to noble, which is a name-able rank to distinguish citizens who contributed sufficiently to the empire.

While an empire can have infinite citizens and nobles, authorities are unlocked based on the amount of territory the empire has. These ranks can be both given unique titles and also can be bestowed with permissions of the emperor. It is up to the emperor to decide how they want to use these ranks. They can be stripped of all permissions and given a unique title to act as a symbolic rank in the empire, or they could be given many permissions to delegate management and execution of the empire. As an empire grows, use of ranks becomes essential to deal with the vast amount of management needed to control a large empire.

In addition to unlocking more authority ranks as your empire grows you will see that your crown also becomes more ornate as you control more and more territory.

Sieges

An Emperor or authority with permission to mark for siege can either use the map or go in person and do an action on the ground in that territory to mark that territory for siege, this is a declaration that your empire seeks to capture the enemy empire’s watchtower in this area.

Once marked for siege, any member of the empire can begin the siege by bringing a Hexite Capsule to the other empire’s watchtower.

When you interact with their watchtower, while holding a Hexite Capsule, while there is no ongoing siege, and the territory being marked for siege you will get the option to start a siege and be able to place a siege canon somewhere nearby the watchtower, this will act as your point of interaction for attacking for the duration of the siege. Once set up using the hexite capsule the siege will have begun.

By looking in the UI you will see a sort of tug of war between the attacking energy of the cannon and the defending energy of the watchtower shield. The siege will end under two conditions:

1. The defending energy reaches 0 — the attackers win! The watchtower will become the attacking empire’s and any remaining attack energy will more over to energy to maintain the watchtower
2. The attacking energy reaches 0 before the above happens — the defenders win! — the siege was unsuccessful and any leftover defending energy will stay as energy in the watchtower when the siege ends (up to a 10k limit)

The siege cannon charges up slowly over time, and spends its energy to attack the shield. Each attack will be of a certain energy level and that will deplete that amount from both the attacking energy (fired) and the defending energy (absorbed by the shield). In the beginning of the siege these attacks will be for very small energy amounts, which gives the defenders a chance to respond and funnel energy to shore up the defense, but over time the cannon will ramp up and each attack will be stronger and stronger raising the stakes.