Of Crowns & Chains is a solo-developed grand-strategy sandbox where every battalion (1k soldiers), nation (Europe only for now), and populace is represented and dynamic on a seamless spherical Earth. Lead a nation of your choice in January 1914 and influence the course of your nation and history as time marches onwards.
CURRENT FEATURES
True-Sphere Map (Europe) – No flat-map distortion: Europe’s geography, borders and distances curve naturally around the globe. (Manually-drawn states and procedural pre-generated subdivisions for the rest of the globe are planned.)
Nation Selection & Government Types – Choose any existing European state, each with its own government type, alliances, vassals or personal unions.
Mass-Scale Unit System – Many battalions fit inside a single tile, delivering a grander sense of warfare and allowing more strategic allocations; higher density options planned for both tiles and units.
Ground Combat & Casualties – Units clash, suffer casualties, and gain experience; individual models disappear to indicate losses—no graphic violence.
Realistic Manpower Pool – Eligible soldiers stem from 1914 starting data, age brackets, male ratios, injury level, and conscription laws.
Wars, Ceasefires & Alliances – Secure allies, occupy tiles, and declare wars; hostilities can end in ceasefire (peace conferences in-development). Cascading calls-to-arms can pull suzerains, vassals and allies into conflict; tiles can be occupied and liberated.
SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT
Wishlist and share your thoughts in the discussion boards.
System Changes:
Frontlines on allied territory against non-allied neighbors are now available for player/AI assignment. Allied nations will send units to help an allied nation (player or not) during wars.
[/*]Adjacency check added to ensure nations do not steal occupation of tiles if they do not occupy a tile adjacent to the captured tile. Allies will claim occupation of tiles their units capture if they have at least one tile adjacent to it. Player units will follow the same logic to minimize exclaves.
[/*]Combat simplified. Border clashes (when two units attack one another at the same time) have been removed since it\'s unnecessary. Combat is now attackers vs. defenders.
[/*]Units now evenly distribute across frontlines. Previously, only one unit was sent to cover empty tiles and large stacks did not distribute themselves post-arrival to the front.
[/*]Encircled AI divisions now more aggressively seek to free themselves.
[/*]Frontline assignments now overwrite already-assigned units if they are selected and assigned to a new front.
[/*]Attacking units can retreat at all times (no longer pinned at late stage of combat).
[/*]Battles now last longer.
[/*]
Balance Changes:
Austria\'s initial army was increased from 40,000 to 200,000. Hungary\'s initial army was increased from 30,000 to 150,000. (40,000 and 30,000 was apparently the size of their national forces at the time, Landwehr and Honvd, not including their common army, so these numbers should be more realistic now).
[/*]
Bug Fixes:
Battle indicators were not showing up, but now they are fixed.
[/*]Units were going back and forth while fighting in battles (interpolation bug); now fixed.
[/*]
Changes:
Localized some UI Elements.
[/*]Altered graphics (again) to make borders easier to distinguish.
[/*]
Bug Fixes:
Fixed bug where nations were not being annexed properly.
[/*]Fixed tile adjacencies (Some island parts of Europe deemed accessible by strait were not accessible).
[/*]
Mini-Announcement:
Alpha 1.0.4 introduces a lot of game-breaking bugs, so I reverted the public default branch to Alpha 1.0.3. Alpha 1.0.4.03 can be accessed through the unstable branch.
Optimizations
Ray marching reduced to 8 directions (significantly higher FPS with minimal visual impact).
[/*]
System & UI Improvements
Quality setting now only affects cloud detail.
[/*]Nation borders are now easier to distinguish (graphical/shader changes).
[/*]Units now properly distribute across tiles and use smooth transitions during & after movement (with satisfying position swapping for visual feedback).
[/*]New resolution selector: Normal and Quad Resolution modes.
[/*]Removed the old Tile Density options (preparing for upcoming historically-inspired administrative division overhaul).
[/*]
Gameplay & Controls
Frontline assignment/unassignment and attack-mode switching are now noticeably more accessible (still WIP more polish coming).
[/*]
Bug Fixes
Population pyramid toggle fixed (Age Distribution button now works properly).
[/*]Union Coat-of-Arms animation restored.
[/*]Negative initial deployed unit stats corrected.
[/*]
Quality-of-Life
Expanded audio settings: Master Volume, Game Volume, and Music Volume sliders.
[/*]Cursor now gives clear visual feedback for frontline actions (assignment, unassignment, mode changes).
[/*]
Navy System Work in Progress
Added initial ocean tiles for North Sea, English Channel, Baltic Sea, and several other regions (temporary placeholders).
[/*]Mediterranean Sea tiles coming soon.
[/*]Navy currently re-uses the land unit training system for testing purposes.
[/*]Full custom naval construction (dockyards etc.), AI navy building, naval combat, and troop naval transport are still in development.
[/*]
Major Technical Change
Quad Resolution mode now uses four-quadrant tile index maps (16k 8k 4) 4 the detail, but also 4 VRAM usage.
[/*]
Known Issues
Quad Resolution can cause crashes or failed tile loading on some systems (even higher-end hardware).
[/*]Several new UI elements are not yet localized for non-English languages.
[/*]
Next major focus: completing the Navy system + the full province/administrative division overhaul.
Optimizations:
Merged Country Selection scene with Game scene (now it\'s much more seamless).
[/*]Replaced Main Menu real-time rendering with a pre-rendered background video to decrease lag and battery life strain on laptop devices.
[/*]General optimizations were made with how tiles are handled to decrease load times.
[/*]
Added Tile Density Modes:
[olist]Low (~7,000 tiles, 8192x4096 tile index map; 4096x2048 terrain map and ocean map).
[/*]Medium (~22,000 tiles, 8192x4096 tile index map, terrain map, and ocean map).
[/*]High (~42,000 tiles, 16384x8192 tile index map, terrain map, and ocean map).
The Low tile density mode does not use a 4096x2048 tile index map because that would make tiles too low-resolution (my budget laptop can run this mode at 720p resolution, so I don\'t think further downgrading is necessary). I can add another mode (Very Low) in the future.
[/*][/olist]Bug Fixes:
Fixed bugs that appeared after returning to main menu and starting a new game (e.g. units getting permanently assigned on frontlines).
[/*]Fixed Zoom and Orbit Settings not properly updating values.
[/*]Fixed the issue with the window flickering upon scene change.
[/*]QoL Changes:
Added Language Selection button in Main Menu (top-left Globe icon). Language Selection scene no longer appears on application start if language is already set.
[/*]Added Pathfinding Threads Slider (1 to 50 threads) to Graphics Menu. Adjust this to make the game go faster (at the cost of higher CPU/GPU load per frame) since pathfinding is the bottleneck for game tick speed at Game Speed 10 (I haven\'t changed the A* pathfinding algorithm yet; so there\'s room for further optimization).
[/*]Main Menu is easier to navigate now.
[/*]To address player feedback regarding the game\'s optimization issues, the upcoming Alpha 1.0.3 update on Friday (10/24/2025) will add three tile density modes:
Low (7,000 tiles across Europe)
[/*]Medium (22,000 tiles across Europe)
[/*]High (42,000 tiles across Europe)
[/*]
As of Alpha 1.0.2, the game\'s Europe-only map has 42,000 tiles and uses a 16384x8192 tile index map. This is very computationally intensive and high-end hardware is required to play at this extreme level of tile density (more expensive rendering and pathfinding, more frequent tile updates, etc), hence why the minimum specification requirements are so high as of now.
The lower tile density modes (Low and Medium) will offer higher performance for all systems and they will allow players who prefer larger tiles to play on the map that fits their preferences.
All tile density modes are all planned to have the same states and provinces to ensure macro-level gameplay remains the same across all tile densities, so once historical provinces and states are added to the game, tile density would determine how many sub-province subdivisions (municipalities) each province has.
Even with these tile density modes (and keeping inherent hardware limitations in mind), I\'ll try my best to optimize the core systems to improve the game\'s performance on all tile density modes for broader accessibility.
If time permits, the Alpha 1.0.3 update will also come with bug fixes, optimizations, and potentially new features.
System(s) Changes:
Added Unit Disbandment (Press G to delete all selected units and the soldiers will return to your nation\'s manpower - if the units have already taken casualties, it\'ll return those who are left alive).
[/*]Standing Army is now tracked dynamically (casualties can be seen ticking the standing army statistic down).
[/*]
Optimization:
Deferred Pathfinding Jobs to reduce stutters and lag during major wars. Previously, the Pathfinder was flushing all parallel pathfinding jobs every time a tile was captured, causing major stutters that made the game virtually unplayable.
[/*]Now, every pathfinding job yields one frame.
[/*]This is a temporary fix that slows the tick rate to prevent FPS stutters. A more permanent fix would be the replacement of the A* pathfinding algorithm with something faster.
[/*]
UI Fixes:
The game\'s Aspect Ratio has been locked to 16:9 to prevent unintended UI scaling on monitors with varying aspect ratios.
[/*]
Bug Fixes:
Manpower was not taking Undeployed Divisions into consideration, resulting in recruitment of soldiers in excess of the actual total eligible manpower. This issue was resolved in this patch.
[/*]
UI System Changes:
The UI scale has been increased by a factor of roughly 1.5x per user feedback (some panels have not changed in scale due to limited screen space).
[/*]Settings can now be changed from the Main Menu.
[/*]Added New Graphics Settings: Resolution, Active Display, Window Mode, VSync, Anti-Aliasing.
[/*]Removed Unnecessary Graphical Settings. (Relief Darkness, etc)
[/*]Localized Keybinds to Supported Languages.
[/*]
Minor Changes:
Changed Text Tutorial to include additional controls (X to Halt/Retreat selected units, R to cut selection in half, G to disband units).
[/*]
I\'m aware the window flickers every scene change. I\'ll resolve this issue in the following update.
Bugs Fixed:
Unit Teleportation Bug Fixed
[/*]Military Recruitment Bug Fixed
[/*]
Known Bug:
Static Frontline Assignments Bug: Unit assignments to frontlines are not cleared when the player returns to the Main Menu and starts a new game as the exact same nation as they played the previous playthrough. These assignments cannot be overridden by player assignments, so this bug is problematic.
[/*]This is a prevalent issue that I will fix by removing all uses of static variables (aside from the primary GameState) and switching to an object-oriented approach to fix these \"Return to Menu\" related bugs.
[/*]
Temporary Fixes for Frontline Assignments Bug:
[olist]Play a different country each playthrough.
[/*]Exit the application and open it again every playthrough to avoid bugs introduced by static variables not properly being destroyed.
[/*]Open the console with the graves key, `, right below the Escape key. Type \"country_ids\" to see all of the IDs that correspond to various nations. Type \"switch_country \\[put Country ID Here]\" to switch to a different country. Then switch back to the same country. For example, if I\'m playing as the German Empire, and the units are bugged (going to the same frontline and cannot be overridden). I type \"switch_country 8\" then \"switch_country 9\" to switch to France temporarily, then switch back. This tells the game\'s frontline system to recalibrate and resolve the issue.
[/*][/olist]Scheduled Update (10/17/2025):
I plan to resolve this bug, as well as other bugs, in an update tomorrow. I will also try to fix the optimization issues caused by pathfinding (lots of units + lots of tiles + O(n^2) = lots of pathfinding lag).
[/*]Minimum Setup
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 64-bit or later
- Processor: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7 GHz or AMD Ryzen 3 1200Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics (Integrated Graphics) or AMD R7 360
- Storage: 3 GB available space
[ 6382 ]
[ 5853 ]
[ 1933 ]
[ 2282 ]
Time left:
356104 days, 21 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
356104 days, 21 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
0 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
9 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
37 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
40 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
41 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
1 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
2 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
9 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
15 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
16 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes
Time left:
27 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes
