Heartland Frontier is a challenging tile-based 4x strategy game where you fight feudal lords and tribal chieftains in the hope of unifying your homeland and resisting foreign invasion. The heartland is the last true untamed frontier on the continent, a sparse realm trapped between 4 great powers.
Where I use devlogs to basically outline progress and summarise the core features added to the game every week, I will use this thread to hopefully open up an avenue for discussion relating to the game. So every Friday when I add a devlog talking about new content, I will also update this thread with relevant information or things I think will help contribute to the discussion.
Like I have said on the main page, this is my first project on itch and I chose it because I have heard good things from people I know and from what I have seen, it is a far more productive community compared to some other indie communities. If you would like to find out more information about the game, I have centralised pretty much everything here on itch so check out the game's page here. You will find associated devlogs as well as the latest version of the game to download. But from here I will basically outline the core concepts and then open it up for discussion from you guys.
Character Design
I like the idea of playing the same game multiple times, as the player it means I am getting value for money (if I purchase the game) and it also means that I can expect each game to be somewhat different. This is a theme that I want to play with in Heartland Frontier, at the start of every game you design your character from a number of options:
- Class - this determines your combat abilities and how you can react to in-game events.
- Faith - this determines how you interact with other characters and how they treat you.
- Background - this determines your starting position and what resources you have at your disposal.
Holdings
Holdings are basically how you make money in Heartland Frontier, they also determine who can project power. If you have a lot of holdings it means you are able to manoeuvre around the map forcing engagements and picking the fights you want to take, if you have few holdings it likely means you are on the back foot. There are two main holdings you need to worry about:
- Farmsteads - they generate food which can feed your cities and armies.
- Workshops - they generate gold which pays your soldiers and can be used for special actions.
Resource Management
I have tried to keep resource simple in Heartland Frontier. I am not in the business of adding complexity for the sake of complexity. If there is a resource in HF then it is going to be unique and affect gameplay in its own way. As before we discussed how farmsteads produce food and workshops produce gold, the third and final resource is influence. Influence is gained from controlling settlements and it is used for pretty much any complex or special action in the game. If you want to create a faction or found a colony you will need influence to do it.
In addition to resources there are 'Trade Goods' which provide their own unique modifiers:
- Stone - Reduces construction time by 50%
- Sulphur - Enables the recruitment of the skirmisher cohort
- Iron - Reduces cohort training time by 50%
- Gold - No bonus
- Wine - 50% army morale regeneration
- Cotton - 50% army manpower regeneration
- Fur - Increases the growth rate of colonies by 50%
- Ivory - Increases faction member capacity by 1
- Horses - Enables the recruitment of the cavalry cohort
The best way to understand what Heartland Frontier is about would be to watch this video. I play for about 10 minutes and explain some of the core mechanics behind economy and resource management. There are other things I couldn't mention such as class-design, colonisation, fighting wars and recruiting characters into your faction but I am sure I will add another video in the future summarising these points.