Hello everyone, today we’re going to be talking about a new feature from the forthcoming Golden Realms expansion, Empire Quests:

Empire Quests reward players for achieving a particular milestone in developing their empires, such as building a Grand Palace in one of their cities, or owning 5 cities. The twist is that, once one player has completed an Empire Quest, all the other players in the game are informed of it, and they will not be able to complete that quest themselves.

This means that other players in the game receive a warning that you are pulling ahead in a particular area or that you are going for a particular strategy. For example, if a player sees you have built an item forge, they may deduce that you’re going planning to put resources into super-equipped heroes rather than army production.

Another goal of the system is to help relieve the sense of isolation players can have when playing games, as it can take a while before running into another player. A warning that another, unknown player has managed to get 5 cities helps remind the player that they’re not alone in the world and gives them a sense of how they’re well progressing against their opponents. Also between allies it creates a form of indirect competition.

Some of the quests come in pairs, where a player completing one quest means that same player cannot complete the other. For example, Prime Evil locks out Prime Good.

While other quests can only be completed far into the end game, and serve to warn other players that they’ve got an awful lot of catching up to do:

There are 13 Empire Quests in the game, each with their own conditions and rewards, with plenty of space to add more in the future! Please let us know what you think in our forums and keep an eye out for the next Dev Journal!