Free Demo Now Available (and Patch 0.8)

After a full year of development and six months of playtesting, I'm excited to announce that the public demo of Restitutor: Empire Restored is now available to everyone. You can jump in and try it right now!

Restitutor is an incremental grand strategy game. If you're familiar with the genre, you should feel right at home - and the incremental rebirth system ensures each new run grows stronger than the last. If you're new to grand strategy, the public demo includes an expanded tutorial that walks through all the fundamentals. Restitutor is also more streamlined than most established grand strategy titles, making it much easier to learn and get into.

I’ve also recorded a video tutorial. If you prefer learning through video, feel free to give it a watch:

Alongside the public demo, Patch 0.8 is now live. I originally expected Patch 0.7 to be the demo patch, but I managed to fit in a number of improvements that significantly enhance the overall experience.

Diplomacy Improvement

The diplomacy system - one of the earliest parts of Restitutor's codebase - had begun to show its age. Playtesting revealed a recurring issue: after the early wars, by around 350 A.D., NPC provinces often settled into a long, stagnant stalemate where no coalition could meaningfully break another.

This update includes a full refactor of the diplomacy code, making future expansion of NPC diplomatic behavior far easier. NPCs no longer benefit from the old, slightly relaxed treaty rules; instead, all factions now follow the same unified (and lightly softened) treaty system.

To increase run‑to‑run variation, each campaign now assigns a “Historical” attitude bonus (+50 opinion for 10 years) to two random provinces within diplomatic range. This small nudge helps diversify alliances and outcomes across different playthroughs.

To verify these improvements, I ran extensive “NPC warfare” simulations - essentially maxing out NPC aggressiveness and letting the game run until 400 A.D. Below are two randomly selected results, focusing on the Western Empire.

In this run, Germania was largely dismantled, its lands absorbed by Raetia and Noricum. Lugdunensis expanded into Aquitania but simultaneously lost ground to a bold Britannian incursion. In Iberia, Baetica ceded much of its territory to Lusitania, while Mauretania pushed north to claim parts of the eastern coast. Italia withdrew behind the Alpine barrier as Dalmatia seized the northern Apennines and Sicillia dominated the south. Farther east, Pannonia collapsed under Moesian pressure, losing nearly all remaining territory.

In this run, Lugdunensis was shattered entirely, crushed between Aquitania advancing from the south and Italia pressing from the east. Lusitania swept across nearly all of Iberia, while Narbonensis was reduced to a small remnant. Italia expanded eastward but lost the northern Apennines to a resurgent Pannonia. Dalmatia surged north into Noricum, and Sicillia tightened its grip on the southern Apennine coast.

I have also recorded a time-lapse video of "NPC Warfare".

Gameplay Changes

• Every month's war result is now determined by 3 dice rolls (best of 3). This will make extremely "unlucky" rolls much less likely.

• War stability cost now scales with duration: starts at 0.1 (CB) / 0.2 (no CB), down from 0.25 / 0.5, and increases by 0.1 / 0.2 each year. The war‑consequences tooltip now shows a full stability‑cost breakdown.

• Army morale recovery increased to +10/month (was +1).

• Appoint Bishop: costs 60 Christianity Influence and grants +1 yearly Christianity for 10 years.

• Top‑panel resource tooltips (Administrative, Diplomatic, Military) now show detailed breakdowns including monthly income.

• Internal Affairs page redesigned into a side panel.

• Religious Cohesion: measures the percentage of tiles sharing the provincial religion. >50% reduces Governing Cost; <50% increases it (‑5% to +5%).

• Cultural Cohesion: measures the percentage of tiles sharing the provincial culture. >50% reduces Governing Cost; <50% increases it (‑5% to +5%).

• Rebalanced building construction and maintenance costs.

• Bankruptcy's Stability impact is reduced to -10 (from -20)

• Update map colors so that neighboring provinces have more distinct colors.

QoL

• Added monthly Administrative/Diplomatic/Military change display to the top panel.

Bugfixes

• Fixed technologies and upgrades that modify research cost not applying correctly.