Anyone who has created fantasy worlds for either pen and paper role-playing campaigns or for video games such as real-time strategy titles or other wargames that allow players to craft their own levels probably understand that getting a map just right can sometimes take a lot of time. Sure, your players will probably never visit some of those far-flung fantasy kingdoms you put on those maps, but knowing that the northern realms are filled with mountains and communities that mine iron is important for the creative process – or so it seems when crafting the perfect fantasy map.
Even as players, maps are important, which is why they are included in just about every single Dungeons and Dragons supplement ever created outside of the core rules. When players are handed a stylized map that mirrors their pending adventure, it helps to solidify the world as a real place that is about to be explored. But as amazing and as detailed as many fantasy maps are, they are rarely the focus of any game by themselves.
That is not the case with Fantasy Map Simulator, which is now available on Steam in Early Access. It’s unique among wargames in that it makes the maps the complete center of the universe in terms of gameplay. The simulation, which can only really loosely be called a game, will automatically draw elaborate fantasy maps complete with a plethora of kingdoms which are in turn divided up into counties, villages and cities. Each of the kingdoms gets various traits instilled in them too, such as what their economy is based on, how corrupt they are, how they view their neighbors, what religion the majority of people follow, their diplomatic stance in the world and a few other key factors that will govern their behavior when the computer is tasked with running them.
Each county located within those kingdoms (which can also be founded based on other forms of government like an empire or a federation) is also unique with an economy based on things like terrain. Counties near the sea might have a maritime economy while those with a lot of green farmlands on the map might grow everything from corn to mangos, which you can see if you drill down and study them. Cities too are unique in different ways, such as if they are a major or minor city, how well they are defended and if they are a capital city. All of that contributes to the overall welfare of the larger kingdom they are a part of, like how a state helps out its nation.
It’s hard to say whether or not all this level of detail changes how things operate within Fantasy Map Simulator, especially in Early Access, because players are given limited information about how the artificial intelligence running each kingdom chooses to operate. You are told, for example, that the Kingdom of the Sun attacked the Theocracy of the Moon, but not why one of those AIs chose to try and conquer another. When a war stops, you also never know what factors went into that. Sometimes it seems kind of random, although one AI normally wins eventually, so perhaps they are simply not sharing their thoughts or showing their work. There is almost no diplomacy outside of war and peace declarations, and the AIs all tend to be pretty aggressive regardless of how the county they are managing are initially programmed.
As you can probably tell from that last paragraph, things within Fantasy Map Simulator don’t stay peaceful for long. While players can take a direct role in any or all of the kingdoms on the map, by default they will run themselves. And that generally means attacking one another. Rebellions can also trigger within established countries where one or more counties will rebel against their leaders, which almost always triggers an immediate war. It’s kind of sad to think that no group of fantasy kingdoms can co-exist in the title, but I suppose if they could, then there would really be nothing going on in Fantasy Map Simulator once the border lines were drawn.
In general, Fantasy Map Simulator seems to be designed for players to just sit back and watch how everything unfolds. There is even a pretty cool mode where you can set a map to become your desktop wallpaper, and the armies will battle in the background for hours on end while you do other things. In addition to just watching the AIs battle it out for world supremacy, players can also grant favors to their chosen nations, like awarding them extra armies or directing them to attack vulnerable countries. But you don’t really have direct control over those kingdoms, so go into this title knowing that you are not about to play Age of Empires or anything like that. At best, you can push the AIs in one direction or another, but they run the show.
Most of the time in Fantasy Map Simulator, countries left alone will start fighting almost right away during their very first year of existence. Each country fights with armies that they can generate based on how big they are and the strength of their economy, and most military units seem to fight until killed. But especially at first, the number of armies per country will be pretty small, especially on crowded maps where kingdoms can’t spread out much. So, there will be a lot of early fighting, but not a lot of territory changing hands.
Generally, if a country in the early part of the simulation is able to grab a few territories, then it will have lost so many armies at that point that it will need to rest up and recover, especially because the newly conquered lands means that it will become slightly more powerful and capable after holding them for about a year or so. However, that country will likely either get counter-attacked by whoever it went after, or likely stabbed in the back by other AIs that see weakness as an opportunity. The AIs are pretty ruthless when they see an opportunity, which is probably why there is so much combat. Eventually, one or two countries will likely break out of that group of tiny nations and begin to challenge the world at large. They may not succeed, but that is how they take their shot.
In addition to the random maps, which Fantasy Map Simulator is good at generating, players can also craft their own or modify existing maps. Modifications can be done at any time, even while a simulation is running. If you want to drop a new country into a group of established lands, feel free to do so. Likewise, if you want to change a nation’s outlook and strategy from being more neutral and building up their infrastructure and economy from within to one where they actively bully weaker nations and expand, then that is completely fine too. Kingdoms all act autonomously, but you are the god here.
While Fantasy Map Simulator is not exactly a game in the traditional sense, it does have some mesmerizing qualities. I had a lot of fun letting created worlds run in the background on my computer, occasionally using my god-like powers to add miraculous armies to kingdoms I really liked or forcing a rebellion on a larger nation that was threatening to conquer the entire world a bit too quickly. But for the most part, it was fun to just watch the AIs battle it out over thousands of years of simulated history. It was kind of nice to be able to just relax and be a passive observer as the history of those worlds unfolded – and a nice break from the more challenging or demanding strategy wargames.