That Which Sleeps Coming Soon
Before I dig into the details let me assure you that you will have your hands on That Which Sleeps in the next few months. Now that I've completely gutted the prior ambitious simulation we're left with a much more tried and true solution to robust AI needs - meaning that at worst case we're looking at the AI making some dumb decisions as opposed to the entire simulation collapsing. The silver lining is that in the time that has passed I've spent a lot of time refining some of the other components as well as continuing to cram the game full of content.
I'm going to run through some of the most recent screenshots of the game, attempting to explain both how the game as changed and also how I've tried to keep the complexity that the prior simulation solution enabled.
Strategic View - Terrain
A big flat empty Strategic View, something you'll actually rarely use except to admire the destruction you've wrought. Strategic View zooms out to the maximum viewable width of the map - ranging from our smallest map size as shown (2x2) to our largest (6x6). Most of the bells and whistles that are on display at the lower zooms are disabled, except for Campaign displays, environmental effects, and any Epic Wonders that are currently roaming the world. The key to the Strategic View is that we have over 25 different ways to visualize the map, ranging from heatmaps of Statuses, cultures in ascendance, or wars in progress.
Before I jump ahead let me just point out a few of the changes to the main interface - the Planar Movement has been moved to the center of the bottom of the screen, and some buttons for Ancient/Divine/Other abilities were added to the top. More importantly, the way that Messaging works has been changed, with new messages being sorted into relevant chunks of information for X days - critical news still pops up on the right as usual before heading to the proper box, but you can always set which updates should be critical.
Strategic View - Nations
Most of our displays are handled with Soft Borders which allow you to see the gradual shift in control over time, as well as the intensity of changes along borders. However you can enable Hard Borders for a more classic CIV look. Here you can also see that once you are off of the basic Terrain mode you have a variety of options for finding information. The key to the Strategic View is to let the player both quickly see the big picture and interact with high level concepts like culture or religion but also to let you search through the world for specific creatures, events, plagues, or anything you think might benefit you.
This is also usually the first stop in Procedural Mode, trying to understand what kind of insane nations the game has generated for you.
Strategic View - Overlords
Overlords were one of the beneficiaries of my attempts to recapture some of the previous functionality that we would be losing. Mainly it seemed a problem that subtle shifts of ideas were no longer possible by pushing around the proper traits, leading to subtle corruption without reaction. There's a bigger solution to that later but Overlords were given a large buff to their interactions - they have agendas that can send them searching out ancient lore, spreading it, or even purposefully trying to pervert another culture. You can now speak with Overlords and attempt to come to some understanding, or just overthrow them as usual.
Strategic View - List View
Every list of information can alternatively be displayed in a List View by double clicking on any colored Type header - you may also note here the Star Shapes next to the list of quests - these are "Watch" notifiers. If you "Watch" a Character, Location, Quest, or Modifier you will gain much more detailed updates and also be able to list them at the bottom of the screen for quick reference. This is most often used to track Heroes but it can be of use in other situations as well.
Quests got neutered for the purpose of clarity - lesser quests (which ends up being 70% of them) were demoted to "Tasks" which now exist alongside activities and make up the more mundane actions that characters take. The quests that remain are all substantial and demand your attention, making the decision of which to pursue and which to ignore more important. Also of note is that the only remaining quest type is the version where "Evil" (generally speaking you) slowly wins at the Quest, so preventing Characters from participating is all that is required to deny them a victory, or at least to deny them a more sizeable victory as the rewards depend on the % Heroes vs % "Evil".
Strategic View - Underground
Before I move on to more directly talk about the changes I wanted to note that the Strategic View also applies to the Underground map. The Underground has had its own map for awhile but mostly it played second fiddle in functionality to the Surface world - and while that is still the case I made some changes to how it works to give it a much more unique feel. Underground Locations are either Tunnels or Caverns, tunnels are always dug in one of the cardinal directions, adjacent tunnels create caverns. The more Caverns and Tunnels the lower the "Stability" of a given region - the lower the stability the greater the change of Collapses from seismic activities (or other giant disturbances).
Instead of details being found in the Caverns and Tunnels you instead derive your resources from the type of soil - while it lacks the number of terrains that the Surface has their are 6 distinct types for the Underground, one of which is fundamental for Moloch to spread himself across the world.
Basic Culture
Alright, so let's talk about the implications of the changes made and how I'm trying to keep as much of the highlights as possible. The core of the prior system was that the data could define itself based on rules that evolved during gameplay, mimicking the insanity that an eldritch eruption might invoke. It had two major benefits - one of them was that it created truly bizarre end-game situations on a Dwarf Fortress scale, the other being that as the system was entirely built on passing around these tags and computing passed on their weight in a given group it made subtly interfering with cultures, characters, and heroes seamless.
In order to address stability, which is of course the most important thing at this point, I've tied heroes primarily to their culture - this is a departure from how the game once worked where Cultures were a monolithic group and then Heroes spawned with unique personalities. Now the personalities that you see above associated with a Culture are now fixed to a character.
Base Character Personality
So now instead of the Character being driven by their unique personality and choosing actions based on those values weighted against the traits they are in "possession" of (more like they were a container) I've taken from the Strategic AI which always worked great. The personality traits act as weights and the available options are taken from new "Personality Types" that are assigned to a character based on the circumstances of their creation. For instance this Character is a Peasant Hero (overall group) with two additional types that add in possible actions, likely trait developments, and bonus weightings. These are Escaped Slave and Former Gladiator - these were made highly more likely due to the Aventuran culture that the Character comes from, which is made up mostly of escaped slaves. This gets more interesting when you consider that a new Character rising to prominence (which occurs if their is less than X influence taken in a Location) is highly influenced by the current modifiers - so if a Cult Group of Yig is very prominent there the character may start with "Cultist" or "Devotee of Yig".
So that handles some of the subtlety, but we still are faced with fewer options to get involved with a characters decision making. So I decided to have the character represent three of their most desired actions to the player - given sufficient influence you can alter these or at the very least you can work to frustrate the characters to reduce their willpower for eventual corruption.
Base Character Skills
While we're here it's also worth noting how I changed Skills for Heroes. Skills are separate from traits because they are simple numerical bonuses representing leveling up, training, and preparing for certain threats. Every class comes with X slots free (Warrior gives 3 Combat slots for instance), more compex classes give more slots but also reduce the rate of training. Each character can gain up to 3 slots over time with each type, so if, for instance a character gained 3 combat slots worth of experience and became a warrior they would have 6 total (including 2 Tier 3 slots which enhance the numeric bonus granted).
Culture Perversions
The other way in which I've tried to bring back in the eventual acceptance of Lost Arts and Corrupt Lore to a culture is being creating the "Perversions" system - certain things such as Modifiers, Prominent Characters possessing Lost Arts, Overlords, and Challenges can gently raise awareness and then acceptance of one of 9 paths that encompass all of the Lost Ages as well as a few other key Eldritch personalities. In doing so the culture can begin to take actions from these "groups" - pushing them further down the path until they find even their own traits being replaced with Perverted Traits.
Main UI
I should also address how drastically the main UI changed for Locations - I always wanted the "Map to speak for itself" when making TWS, but as it got more complex I realized that mid to late game you could be clicking three times, dragging a scroll bar, clicking again, another scroll bar, just to find what you need. To answer that the UI has been redesigned with the "2-click" mentality, making sure everything is accessible right from the start. Everything you see on the left is a button, opening a details pane with all you could need - the Right Pane will show Statuses, Modifiers, Creatures, Characters, Heroes, and also your Challenges for the currently selected location.
Challenges have been setup into more reasonable hierarchies with the four main being Might/Intrigue/Lore/Command with then several categories beneath. Each of these has its own unique form for taking the Challenge, making sure that both routine actions are made simple and complex ones give you as much information as possible.
Production
You may have also noticed that only Gold is now tracked numerically - but trust me this is not a simplification. All other resources are now produced/consumed/traded by each Location. Now I have no interest in this being an economic sim so it is kept very simple, the main intent is for Locations to "Pull" resources to themselves, and for you to be able to manipulate/contaminate/dowhateveryouwant to the resources being transported. It also makes interfering with a large city significantly easier.
Markets
Hand in hand with the concept of traded resource is trade itself, many nations now depend on trade to survive and disrupting trade is much more rewarding. The key to the mechanic is that the size of the market (all participating locations) provides a massive bonus or penalty to the resulting price - meaning that small actions in key locations can have devastating consequences for some nations. Of course, the AI will take notice of your action.
Ancient Powers
In order to support the Ascendant Ancient One I needed to rework powers to make them more flexible, so I made your path to acquire powers more interesting. While I couldn't make a whole new set of powers I added a series of alternative powers (mostly just passives and imbues) that will let you customize your strategy even better.
Alright, that's all for now. It's been a rocky ride but it's coming to an end soon - I've worked myself to the bone making this as great a game as it can be so I hope you all find that the anxiety we've all experienced has been worth it.
please don't let it be over, let's drag this comedy on as long as possible
.... if you read the update its just tiny little screenshots and loads of meaningless drivel...its almost random game sounding words strung together into long streams of complete horseshit since nobody even knows what the rules actually are, or anything specific relating to the game and how it plays. 
sorta? But more on the 
side
