[Dev Diary #29] Resource Points: The Backbone of Industrialization

Salutations, Industrialists!

I'm Marc, a Producer working on Gilded Destiny. Today, I’ll explain how resource points act as the backbone of raw-material production. If you haven’t already, please wishlist Gilded Destiny on Steam, subscribe on YouTube. You can additionally join our Discord or Reddit community to stay up to date.

Note: Alongside the video below, we’ve prepared a full written dev diary that walks through each topic in detail so you can follow along even if you can’t watch right now.

Goods Production Overview

The most common way to produce goods is through buildings. These buildings utilize recipes, that is, production formulas with inputs and outputs. When it comes to Resource Points, it's the same concept, but you're directly constructing the building on the map itself, on top of a deposit of resources. The second way goods are produced is through small holders and artisans. These represent the non-industrial side of your economy. They're autonomous and will create goods, sometimes constrained by the available Resource Points in their provinces and market demand. In Gilded Destiny, small holders and artisans provide a baseline of production, but it's simply not enough to keep up with surging demand, and certainly not enough to fuel industrialization. That's where Resource Points come in.

In Summary

• Buildings are player-built structures placed on resource points

• Small holders and artisans are autonomous non-industrial producers active in every province

Finding and Using Resource Points

Resource points are visually represented on the map as 3D models. There are two main ways to find out where they are:

First, there's our handy resource map mode. You'll be able to filter how much information you want at a given time. If you want to view one resource across the world, you can, or if you want to find the combination of Coal and Iron for your industrial powerhouse region, that's also available to you.

Second, you can find them through the Construction Menu, which is also where you'll construct the relevant buildings to extract or harvest those resources. To construct a resource building, simply open the Construction Menu and select the type of building you'd like to construct.

In Summary

• The resource map mode highlights resource points on the map with filters.

• The Construction Menu allows you to construct buildings on untapped resource points or upgrade existing buildings

Design Philosophy: Why True-Location Resource Points?

With our hex map, we can pin every deposit to its real-world spot. We don’t just tell you a resource exists in a province; we show you its actual location, from Napa Valley’s wine slopes to Oil Creek’s pioneering wells. This accuracy adds flavor, gives each province a clear identity, and turns geography into strategy. Of course, this also adds a whole new layer of military strategy—where things in the world truly matter. This means that where you defend or deploy your armies also matters.

In Summary

• Hex map supports precise, real-world placement.

• Accuracy adds unique province identities.

• Geography shapes trade routes and defensive lines.

Province Personality and Specialization

We want to focus on the imbalances, monopolies, and the sheer impact of the Industrial Revolution on your economy. We envision each country and province having a more specialized contribution to the world's economy, rather than everyone doing a little bit of everything.

Our background research focused on identifying significant producers and powerhouses on a global scale for Resource Points. This model emphasizes "scarcity", allowing us to make each province unique rather than a jack-of-all-trades. We want