[previewyoutube=qA9NUb0SztQ;full][/previewyoutube] [h2][b]Salutations, Industrialists![/b][/h2] In today's Dev Diary, we're going to talk about Leaders: the famous men and women of the Nineteenth Century who feature in our game as recruitable characters, ready to assist in guiding your chosen country to a brighter future. We'll give an overview of how the Leader system works in-game, along with some of the kinds of positions your Leaders can hold and the various effects they can have on other systems. We're also excited to share a few portraits in the updated art style. We have planned to change the portrait artwork for some time now, since we realized the previous portraits simply weren't scalable in terms of the number of historical figures we wanted to represent. [i]You can find the full script for the Dev Diary below.[/i] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Let us know if you have any questions or feedback over on Discord. And be sure to wishlist us to stay up to date! [b]Join our Discord community today![/b] https://discord.gg/3d77T9gxDF Speaking of Discord, we have started rolling the Discord roles to our Kickstarter backers! If you have not yet completed the Kickstarter survey we sent out, please do so. If you have filled it out, and are not yet in our Discord server, join and say hello in the main channel to let us know you're there to claim your role! Our Kickstarter officially ended in April, and brought in a total of £31,974 GBP, which is 159% of our goal! We offer the most gilded appreciation to all of our backers and our community. Your support, positive feedback and encouragement, and our growing vibrant community of industrialists motivates more than ever to make Gilded Destiny the most moddable, immersive, fun, and grandest GSG out there. You can access the survey on the Kickstarter website: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gildeddestiny/gilded-destiny-a-grand-strategy-game?ref=bjurrh Finally, if you are interested in what we do and want to join us but do not see a relevant job, send us your resume at jobs@aquilainteractive.io! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [h2]Script for Dev Diary 18:[/h2] Greetings industrialists. I'm Marc, a producer working on Gilded Destiny at Aquila Interactive. In today's Dev Diary, we're going to talk about Leaders: the famous men and women of the Nineteenth Century who feature in our game as recruitable characters, ready to assist in guiding your chosen country to a brighter future. We'll give an overview of how the Leader system works in-game, along with some of the kinds of positions your Leaders can hold and the various effects they can have on other systems. As always, of course, what we show here is still a work in progress, and may be subject to change. In fact, today's Dev Diary is a case in point—we produced a Dev Diary on leaders almost a year ago, and the system has come quite a long way since then, as we discovered what worked and didn't work in relation to the game as a whole. As we mentioned in our most recent Alpha Roadmap update (see the link in the description if you want to check that out), our schedule has had to adjust slightly because the technical team were able to move up the rework of the map. This is great in terms of getting the game optimized sooner than we expected, but it does mean that we had to shift focus a bit to get as much done on the map as we could before handing it over—so please bear with us. If you have any thoughts on this Dev Diary, please let us know in the comments or over on our Discord, where we take note of all feedback from our community. Speaking of Discord, we have been rolling our roles to our Kickstarter backers! If you have not yet completed the Kickstarter survey we sent out, please do so. If you have filled it out, and are not yet in our Discord server, join and say hello in the main channel to let us know you're there to claim your role! [b]Leader Portraits[/b] You might have noticed already that today's Dev Diary features some of the new Leader portraits. As we announced before the Kickstarter, we've had plans to change the portrait artwork for some time now, since the previous portraits simply weren't going to be scalable in terms of the number of historical figures we wanted to represent. The new style has also meant that we can spend more time on getting the features of these leaders as accurate as possible—at least in those cases where there's a reference for us to draw upon. It's also worth mentioning that in the final game, these portraits will be animated, although we intend for this to be quite subtle—sometimes a little goes a long way. [b]Leader Menu UI[/b] So, now that we've dealt with the pictures, let's get into more detail about the UI you're looking at here. This is a mockup the Leader menu—the place where you can get an overview of your currently serving leaders and those who you have 'in reserve' (and you can filter and sort them from these options here, as well as search for a specific leader in the box here). Each leader who is currently occupying a position in government, the military, or research has that position displayed here—everyone else is available to be employed if a position becomes vacant. [b]Leadership Positions[/b] The leadership positions themselves fall into three main categories: government, military, and research. Your government positions include your President or Prime Minister, the governors of your provinces, and the secretaries or ministers that take care of war, diplomacy, finance, and so on. As you'd expect, generals and admirals constitute the military positions your leaders can occupy, while academics, inventors, and military theorists can be appointed to assist with research. Leaders for all of these positions can be chosen by you directly. The only leader type you can't choose to appoint is the monarch (if your country has one), although having a monarch in the first place is something you can change in your Policies (see our Dev Diary on Policies for more about that). Deciding which leaders are best suited for which roles is something you're going to have to determine based on each leader's skills and traits. Skills are pretty straightforward: they have a numerical value, and the higher the value, the better the leader is at performing that particular task. The better they are, the higher the bonus they'll provide—for instance, generals provide a bonus to the Organization of the troops under their command. In certain positions, that bonus will be dependent on a combination of skills, rather than just one. We're still finalizing the specifics of the skills themselves, so don't read too much into the names of the skills shown here, but essentially they cover the kinds of things that leaders will be doing: governing, negotiating, researching, commanding troops, and so on. Certain positions can also increase a leader's skills over time as they are effectively 'trained up' for more important positions—think of how many presidents were first governors or ministers, or of generals who developed greater tactical insights with each battle. Details of the leader's previous accomplishments while they've been in your service are displayed in their résumé (this section here). Unlike skills, traits are much more particular to the individual. Traits therefore confer bonuses or penalties that go beyond the bonus that's applied by simply occupying a position. For instance, certain academics and inventors will have traits that speed up the research of the specific technologies that they discovered historically, while certain generals will have traits that give a bonus to their troops' attack or defense attributes. Leaders can also be affected by external sources, such as events or the traits of other leaders. This little icon here on the portrait is used to indicate any bonuses or penalties that are currently being applied, with a tooltip displaying the details of any current effects. For the most part, having leaders is a good thing—the word 'bonus' has cropped up quite a lot over the last couple of minutes. However, leaders do have an Authority upkeep cost when they're employed in a position (you don't pay any upkeep for the leaders you have in reserve, though). Rather than being a fixed rate, this cost goes up or down depending on the loyalty of the leader—those ministers, governors, generals, and so on whose loyalty is questionable require more effort to be kept in line. The loyalty of a leader is itself dependent on various factors like their Political Opinions, their Culture, and their Religion. Your Policies, and how you respond to certain Events, will therefore make some leaders more or less loyal depending on the choices you make. Another thing worth bearing in mind is the effect that leaders can have on your population. The Political Opinions of your leaders can in turn affect the Political Opinions of your population by making those Political Opinions seem more attractive—after all, they're in more of a position to make their opinions heard. Therefore, there may be times where the best person for the job isn't the one you choose if they hold a Political Opinion that you don't want spreading to your populace. [b]Final Thoughts[/b] Alright, that's it for today's Dev Diary. If what I mentioned in the Dev Diary was interesting to you, and you have experience with historical research, mapping, writing, game design, and have an interest in figuring out the "why" of history, we are always looking for new talent to join our team. Also, if you are in Europe, or otherwise have travel plans this Summer, start planning a trip this August to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany to visit us! We will be showcasing Gilded Destiny and offering a chance for attendees to play a demo of the game. Lastly, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel and, if you have not done so already, add Gilded Destiny to your Steam wishlist. Until our paths converge once more, we bid thee farewell! Thank you for watching. May your destiny be a gilded one. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [h3]Also:[/h3] Be sure to listen closely to the backing tracks in all our videos—they are the pieces you will come to hear in the game, composed by John Skoog. Also, the solo clarinet on this track was performed by yours truly, Marc. Listen to some of John Skoog's other work on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3PGd3lmURa72oFasqK3N7N?si=nDl4DUTRQGKKLaDtGcHBJw John Skoog Music: https://www.johnskoogmusic.com/