Princeps
A hillside of bare earth and overgrown stone, crowned by tall rock pillars, falling to a forested valley with a river winding across the plain beyond.
A medieval settlement sim · in early development

Princeps

Found a village. Raise a city. Answer to its people.

Read the devlog The premise
A note before you read on Princeps is in very early development.

Everything on this page is a work in progress and subject to change: the frames, the systems, the tiers, even the name of a thing. There is no release date and no store page. What follows is where the game is headed, and how far it has come.

The land

A vast, old land, new each game

Every game begins on a land generated as it starts: about twenty kilometres across, with old forests, rivers that find their way to a coast, and stone older than anyone who will live there.

It opens humble. A few households arrive in a wide, airy country, and for a long while the land is larger than anything they will build. Good ground comes in pockets and strips shaped by the terrain, broken by knolls and hollows, wet swales, outcrops and old trees, so the first village follows the land rather than a grid.

The air stays clear to the horizon. What lies beyond your people’s sight is unknown until someone goes to look.

  • About 20 km across
  • Generated as each game starts
  • Forests, rivers, a coast
  • Explored as you go
A blue river winding through dark pine forest, with sunlit meadow and scattered boulders on the slope beside it, seen from above.
The landA river through pine forest and meadow, from the gameplay camera.
Forest and open meadow seen from high above: dark masses of conifers, clearings, scattered trees and boulders.
From the air

Forest and meadow from the camera’s highest reach. What the land holds, from berries to boulders to clay on a riverbank, shows on the land itself.

Ancient stone

The land’s bones

Stone rises across the map, overgrown with moss, grass and trees: outcrops and pillars that help you find your way. Planned: ruins older than the settlement, and a growing town that builds around its old stones, or with them.

Also planned: high ground that matters, where a hill commanding the country is worth the climb, and the hauling, to raise a watchtower.

A steep hillside of bare earth with a band of grey boulders and outcrops, grass and young trees growing between them.
OutcropsA rocky shoulder of hill: stone and earth with the green coming back.
The founding

Found the village

You are the lord: the first House among the households who arrive with you. The village gathers round your estate, as villages once gathered round a villa for protection after Rome fell.

Small log houses with yellow straw roofs on trampled ground at a forest's edge; smoke rises from a chimney.
Tier oneLog houses under straw, smoke from the hearths, a forest at the edge of the clearing.

You say what and where. The households decide who and how.

Mark out homes and workplaces, set the forager’s ground and the woodcutter’s, lay down dirt roads. Every trip is walked over the real ground, so distance costs time and the layout matters.

At the start, everything is what founders can make with axes, hands and the land: logs, wattle and daub, thatch, pegs instead of nails, shutters instead of glass. The aim is that a building shows only what its makers could have made, so iron and glass will have to come from somewhere.

And the year turns. Stores must be laid in before the harvest ends; the first winter is where the founding is being tested now.

A long log hall with a deep yellow straw roof, a porch and a small chimney; a hand cart stands by the wall.
The manorThe lord’s hall at tier one: logs and straw, raised in stages by the people you see building it.
A levelled rectangle of bare earth with a timber sill laid on stones, stacked logs, a mound of earth and a cart beside it.
FoundationsSome buildings need level ground first: the manor’s site is levelled before its sill goes down. Bigger works are planned to ask more of their foundations.
The tiers

From hovel to city-state

The settlement climbs in tiers across roughly five centuries, from households making do to markets, guilds and a commune, and at last a city-state.

The plan: households upgrade their own homes when their needs are met, so a hovel becomes a cottage once its household has come through a winter with grain, clothing and firewood. A prosperous estate draws settlers, who bring more needs, more hands and the next production chains.

A chain is meant to be deep while it is the focus. Once it runs, you will be able to hand it to an office, the reeve first and the guilds later, and it folds into a single line. It still breaks when an input fails, and the break spreads.

The seven tiers, as arched cards. I, Founding, about the year 1000, being built now: homes are hovels; the household makes do with foraging, pottage, firewood and home spinning; proving project, the manor hall. II, Manor village, 1000 to 1100: cottages; the division of labour, with fields and oxen, the lord’s mill, bread and ale, and the smith; proving project, a better hall or the chapel. III, Market village, 1100 to 1200: timber-framed houses; trade, with a market charter, salt and iron, sawpits, coopers and dairies; proving project, a stone church or the market. IV, Town, 1200 to 1300: stone-based houses; the commune and the guilds, with wool and cloth, masons and the first banking; proving project, town walls or a palazzo. V, Republic, 1300 to 1400: palazzi; the city-state, with banking and far trade, great works, art and patronage; proving project, a cathedral dome. VI, Renaissance city, 1400 to 1500: patronage, art and learning; still open, to be found in play. VII, Endgame: a lordship, a regional state, or the republic’s survival; still open, shaped by your choices.

To rise a tier, a settlement will prove it can run there

  1. PeopleEnough of them, and enough homes already living at the next tier’s needs. Households rise first; the settlement follows.
  2. CapacitySteady output, not a stockpile: timber and nails delivered at a rate through a season, by a chain that works.
  3. A proving projectA signature build that spends that capacity and is the visible step: the better hall, the stone church, the walls, the dome.
A row of small log hovels with steep thatched roofs, firewood and barrels in their yards.
HovelsTier one homes: what a household can raise from the woods around it.
A larger log house with a deep hipped straw roof on a broad dirt yard, other buildings beyond.
A larger houseBigger homes are kept for those whose trade or standing earns them, so a street shows its social order.

The founding tier is what is being built and played today. The tiers beyond it are a map of the arc, sketched from history, and will change as the game is played.

The lord and the commons

Your seat, or the community?

The lord is meant to be a character, not an eye in the sky. The founders are close to you. Later arrivals will not be, and they will come with demands you may not want to grant.

As planned, each tier is proved by a signature build, and you choose which: your own seat, first the hall and later a palazzo, or an institution for the community, from the chapel to the market, the town hall and the cathedral. Either opens the tier. They pull the settlement different ways.

The lord’s cut is planned to divide what the land yields between your household and everyone else’s. Hoard, and the commoners’ goodwill drains away; share, and your own House grows restless. Noble families are to come asking to join, with labour, followers and ambitions of their own, and one of their first demands may be an estate to call theirs.

History made this choice more than once. One Italian commune shut its magnates out of government; later, the Medici ruled through the republic’s institutions rather than over them. The late game is meant to stay open the same way: a lordship if the seat wins, a republic if the community does, or something in between.

A balance scale in gold line, its beam level and its two pans hanging evenly: the seat on the left, the community on the right.

The seat

Legitimacy among the Houses, stronger dues and levies, a bigger refuge, the high ground. The cost: resentment, louder petitions, settlers who stay away.

The community

Contentment and loyalty, a stronger draw for settlers, the Church’s favour, market income. The cost: power drifts from you to the commune and the rising Houses.

A petition in the game’s interface style, sealed in red wax. “The cottagers ask for common pasture.” Grant it and the households prosper on land that was yours. Refuse, and the land stays yours; so does the grudge. Two choices: Grant, where goodwill rises and the demesne shrinks; or Refuse, where standing holds and resentment grows.
An illustration of the design, drawn in the game’s interface style. Petitions are planned, not yet built.
The books behind it

Old problems, played

The problems two old books wrestle with are the ones the player is meant to wrestle with.

  • Plato

    The Republic

    A city is born from needs.

    Food, shelter and clothing first, then the trades that serve them; then luxuries, which need more land, and soldiers to take it. The needs that drive the tiers start here.

  • Machiavelli

    The Prince

    The nobles wish to dominate; the people wish not to be dominated.

    Fortune is a river in flood, and the prudent build dykes in calm weather. Hard risks rather than slow growth, and a lord who must choose whom to rest on.

In development

Where it stands

Princeps is being made in Unreal Engine 5, one playable step at a time, each step played before the next is planned.

  • Playable in the current build: the generated land; founding the estate with homes, workplaces, roads and the manor; households who gather, haul and build; the seasons turning toward winter.
  • Planned: the tiers beyond the founding, the Houses and their petitions, the lord’s cut, shared land and its rules.
  • Placeholders: settlers are simple stand-in figures for now, and much of the art will change.
  • Not yet: no release date, no store page, no price.

From the devlog

All posts →

Fetching the latest posts…

Follow along with the RSS feed, or on Offprint.