Dev Log: Building Princeton - Pursuing Historical Perfection

We apologize for the delay in the Development Log Update. Its been a busy few weeks.

We’ve been working hard on the development of The Glorious Cause, and during our latest dev meetings, we covered a wide range of critical systems. From the Artillery GUI and Main Menu design, to refining movement penalties across terrain like elevation, woods, snow, and towns, but the biggest focus of the discussion was the AI upgrade.

The AI upgrade is being led by our lead programmer, James, who has been doing an incredible job pushing it to the next level.

We spent a significant amount of time defining how the AI should respond to numerous battlefield situations. These start by setting baseline objectives such as capturing key terrain, seizing towns, or outright destroying the enemy army. From there, we broke down how the AI should behave depending on its situation, whether it outnumbers the enemy or is operating as a smaller force against a larger one.

We also went deep into reconnaissance.

Our design philosophy is that Cavalry should act as the primary reconnaissance element, the eyes and ears of the army. If Cavalry isn’t available in sufficient numbers, Dragoons will take on that role. If neither is available, Infantry will step in by detaching elements from the main force to scout ahead, ensuring the army doesn’t walk into a disastrous engagement.

Once enemy forces are discovered, reconnaissance doesn’t stop. These units will continue along the enemy line to determine its size and positioning, giving the AI the information it needs to plan both offensive and defensive operations.

Here is a sample of our design intent:

We are also conditioning the AI to evaluate all of its units, their strengths, stats, and capabilities, and coordinate them effectively in any operation.

For example, if the AI outnumbers the enemy, it will attempt flanking maneuvers. If it is outnumbered but tasked with seizing an objective against a larger force, it will identify and attack the weakest point in the enemy line, break through, and roll up the flanks of nearby units. This allows a smaller force to still achieve victory through smart tactics rather than brute strength.

Here is a sample of that logic in action:

This is only a fraction of what we’ve discussed. We’ve had to account for countless battlefield scenarios like what happens after a unit forces an enemy to retreat, do they advance in line formation or reform into column to pursue? What happens if, during pursuit, they encounter another enemy force? The number of possible outcomes is massive, and the AI needs to handle all of them.

This is just the first step in the AI upgrade. It will continue to evolve and improve as development progresses.

One particularly interesting discussion revolved around combat on bridges.

We’ve all read about or seen depictions of what happens when large formations are compressed into narrow choke points. A brigade packed onto a bridge becomes an extremely vulnerable target, and if engaged by artillery or musket fire, it can suffer devastating losses. We are implementing logic to reflect this reality in-game.

On the programming side, Ben has been doing incredible work pushing through tickets, identifying bugs, and resolving them before they make it into future builds.

He’s been instrumental in helping us define systems like stragglers and deserters, and how players will manage those elements to keep their army combat effective.

He’s also worked heavily on refining movement penalty logic, factoring in unit condition, Health, Morale, and Organization, and raising important design questions such as:

• How severe should penalties be when units are under fire on a bridge?

• What determines the outcome when Infantry attacks Artillery?

These kinds of questions have helped refine the core gameplay systems significantly.

Ben is also taking on a major challenge as we expand the amount of units we are implementing into the game. We’re moving from just Infantry and Leaders in the demo to a much broader roster: Militia, Riflemen, Light Infantry, Artillery, and Division Leaders, with more planned in future updates.

This requires significant restructuring on how unit values are organized in code, allowing us to fine tune them on the fly during playtesting so we get the exact balance for both historical accuracy and gameplay enjoyment.

On the art side, Sophia has been nothing short of a superstar.

She’s been developing maps, creating new units, and building out animations, all while providing critical feedback during meetings that has helped us overcome design challenges.

So a huge thank you to Sophia for all of her hard work.

One great suggestion from Sophia was updating the font to better match the historical tone of the game and improve immersion. So we altered some of the fonts to better add immersion, but Sophia plans to add more adjustments and refinements

Currently this is the current draft of the Main Menu. We expect some refinements after Sophia gives each screen a once over :

On my end, I’ve been working extensively on the Order of Battle for the Battle of Princeton, and updating The Battle of Trenton now that we have artillery units. One key detail Ive been focusing my attention on is identifying the most accurate sources for unit positions and battlefield movements at specific points during the day.

One of the most valuable resources we found was a book by the American Battlefield Trust. It’s currently sold out almost everywhere, but we were able to secure a copy, and it has been instrumental in helping map out unit positions accurately.

So thank you to the American Battlefield Trust, but we hope in the future they make a digital version:

We also used other resources which were extremely helpful such as:

• Ten Crucial Days - https://tencrucialdays.org

• The American Battlefield Trust - https://www.battlefields.org

And a special thank you to Mount Vernon for such detailed maps:

https://www.mountvernon.org/preservation/maps/map-battle-of-princeton-phases-iii-and-iv

I’ve also brought on a contractor to assist with artillery animations, and the results so far have been outstanding.

Over the coming weeks, we’re planning to bring in additional contractors, including bug testers and specialists in public relations and advertising.