Ambitions of Rise and Fall: Bronze Age

R&F's logic of existence is the fact that in almost all current strategy games there is only one logic: growth.
In a sense it is logical in our capitalist world that we worship this concept. Except that there is one concern: the civilizations of the past have certainly risen, but they have also collapsed or experienced periods of crisis.

Moreover, we all agree that games are meant to be played for fun and to get out of our daily lives for a while. There are certainly as many reasons to play as there are players. But these main reasons are the most common. However, strategy games have flaws that come up time and time again.
First of all, we have the Snowball Effect. This snowball effect comes from the continuous growth of the player and AI. Sometimes the player has progressed so far in a game, so far ahead of his opponents, that he knows he has won. The problem is that he knows that it will take him 50 turns to reach the victory board. If not longer. How many people have preferred to stop playing when they realized that they had won but that it would take several more hours for the game to recognize it?

So that's why I wanted to change the game.

In R&F, the idea is to propose an evolving difficulty to the players. A small state with 2-3 territories doesn't work and doesn't have the same objectives and means as a powerful empire spread over several regions. Nor the same difficulties.

The main difficulty of a small state is to maintain itself, to survive, and it aims to grow.

For a big state, its main difficulty is to maintain itself. Aggressive neighbours, factions of the sovereign's court, supplies of vital resources, the big state tries to maintain itself. The risks of revolts at changes of sovereigns in foreign territories too. A big state always wants to grow, but difficulties evolve on its way to greatness.

So the idea is that the player must change his strategy when he is bigger.

R&F doesn't want to be that kind of game where the player, once he has unified a whole section of the map, rests on his laurels and considers victory acquired. Because any large building can be weakened by time. And all it takes is one catastrophe (incompetent ruler, epidemic, war) to send the player's state into a complex crisis that could bring this state to the abyss.

Caution, that's what is asked of the player who will have to constantly modify his strategy to be up to date with the situation of the game.