Hey all, for this week I want to go into some big ideas we have for Eco 9 with levels of government.We’re exploring ideas about how to bring multiple levels of government to Eco, and how their growing and combining would work within the game. Along with that comes a new approach to property. Check it out and let us know your feedback, this is an initial concept so lots more to be designed still.Eco will be changed to have the following new features:
- Multiple governments will be allowed in tiers: individuals, towns, nations, global.
- Governments start bottom-up, with growing towns merging into nations, and nations merging into a global government.
- Property is controlled by the governments (no longer affected by reading skillscrolls).
- Multiple governments will compete for citizens, offering incentives when new players spawn into their region, or when other players move to them.
- Players are ‘wanted’ in the world....
There are now three steps in processing ore from mines. Each step produces different products and byproducts, requiring different skills and equipment, and each creates various levels of pollution that must be dealt with. The new steps are crushing, which generates crushed rock and crushed ore, and concentration. Concentration produces ore concentrate, and either wet or dry tailings depending on the machine and ore. The step we’ve always had, smelting, will now produce slag as a byproduct instead of tailings.With the addition of wet tailings, we have one of the most dangerous pollutants yet, which will be especially catastrophic if it leaks into the water supply. Concentrating iron ore without water will be an option, but gold and copper concentration will always produce wet tailings. The amounts generated here will be enough that a waste management plan will be needed to keep the surrounding a...
This week I’d like to dive into the core of Eco’s design a bit, and talk about the principles that guide the design and development of the game. These are things that go way back to the beginning ideas of what Eco would be, and are used to this day to determine what we choose to bring next in the game. Game Mission 
The driver of this progression is technology, and as an Eco world advances in technology their ability to impact the world increases massively, for better or for worse. With each advance in technology, you gain the ability to do everything you already do in greater quantities. And with each step in technology, the challenges become greater, making those powers very necessary to continue advancing. This manifests in gameplay in the following ways.
Hey all, for this Friday’s Eco Peak I wanted to talk about the new government system I’m working on for Eco 9.0.The high-level idea is that in the current version of Eco you run a government. In 9.0, you will build a government.First thing you’ll need to do to create a government is form a constitution, which will be an object placed in the world. The value of the building it’s placed in will determine how much influence the government has, and whichever government has the most influence will dictate the rules for the world. Overthrowing the Government This means that governments can be overthrown by making a more powerful one, represented by a more valuable building, and players will need to create fantastic palaces to ensure the legitimacy of their government and prevent being overtaken. (Later, we will allow multiple governments to co-exist and compete, but for now there can Be Only One).I wanted to add the ability to overthrow a government because it fits thematically – if a g...
Eco: The First Three and a Half Years 
The above screenshot comparison (between our Kickstarter and today) is crazy to look at. We’ve been working on the game nonstop since 2015, and it’s improved continuously, incrementally, until it looks like a totally different game. Through that, the core idea has remained constant: a society simulator inside an ecosystem. With the strength of the team and the community that has supported us throughout we’ve been able to do some really fantastic things, and we have much more we want to do. What to expect from Early Access We haven’t set...
World generation has undergone a variety of changes and improvements. Many new parameters have been added to world generation, such as land/water balance, number of continents and islands, sizes of biomes, and number of water features such as rivers and lakes. All of these parameters may be tweaked within the world generator config file. As a result, worlds are much more varied with specific resources only being made available within specific biomes.
I addition, we have reworked the world geology, by adding an assortment of rock types like Sandstone, Granite, Shale, and Limestone. Certain rock types appear only in specific biomes and at specific depths. These rocks all h...