The Realms Beyond

The Realms Beyond is a fantasy real-time strategy game developed and published by 50A Studios for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. The game isn't just the first independent game published by the studio, but it also marks the first time the studio used their own engine, the D4 Shatteray. Revolving around a fantasy world, The Realms Beyond puts players in control of a multitude of familiar factions with several interesting twists of their own as they battle against each other in a bid for power.

It is released on the 20th of May, 2020, and had its first trailer announced in E3 2018. The game is set to have Command & Conquer style campaigns where each factions get to have their own stories in the world that is. Seasonal content updates are also planned, adding new factions and other things to come.

Mechanics
Played similarly to Age of Empires, The Realms Beyond has quite a lot of similarities towards the said game. Players play as one of the factions available within the game and are tasked with building an army to trump the opposing sides. Depending on the mode however, killing all of the enemies doesn't always equate to victory.

Players can build structures that support their faction's power from political to military. With enough political influence, players can persuade other factions to assist them in their quest or even absorb them into one's own fold, uniting two great powers. With a stable economy, recruiting soldiers, building other structures, and doing researches will cost you less resources. And with a strong military force, obvious things happen.

The Politics
Political Influence= At the start of every game, a faction's political influence always starts at zero no matter what. How influential a faction is in the match can be seen in the factions' respective headquarters through the aptly-named Power Meter which measures influence through bars ranging from zero to a hundred percent. Political influence can be extended by giving a helping hand to other factions if they either ask you to be their ally or they accept your offer as friends. The meter will slowly go up as your relationship with the allied factions improve. Before accepting requests from their allies, players can smooth their relationships by clearing out hostile NPC camps that constantly plague the allies' territories.

A friendship can be forged either by sending ambassadors or the leader himself to the capital of the to-be ally. If the player's leader happened to have met the faction's leader in another place as well, then a coalition can be established too. Embassies can be built after the initial creation of the alliance, but only one can be built per faction. The embassy can be upgraded to accommodate more alliances to the point that it can become a League Camp.

In this newfound alliance, the player and allied factions can ask requests and assistances to each other. The player can ask for extra soldiers to reinforce their army and the allies can ask the player to lend some resources to them. While embarking on known quests, the player can invite the allied factions to join in on the quest at the cost of splitting the quest rewards for them. If the player's Power Meter is high enough though, the allied factions may accept the omittance of their rewards.

If the player's political influence reaches the maximum level, they have the option to offer their allies a hand in unity. If they do accept, then expect an entirely new kingdom to be under one's control. If they don't accept, then expect a substantial dip in the Power Meter. The latter can be avoided by opting to form a League however, which doesn't integrate the allied factions but allow for a number of benefits depending on who formed the league the first place. A faction can break away from the League if circumstances force them to and the initiator can in turn disband the league. As said, the creation of a league allows for the final upgrade of the creator faction's embassy to the League Camp. The League Camp maintains the group's solidarity and organizes treaties, deals and offers, requests, and benefits.

With enough political power, players are able to declare peace treaties among warring factions which may include one of their own allies or even utterly stranger factions they have yet to encounter in the map. Players with high influence have a greater chance of making friends with even those who don't favor diplomacy and asking for bigger favors. Hostile NPC camps may even be friendly to the player if they recognize the extent of his/her faction.

As mentioned before, the Power Meter can indeed go down when players start to ignore their allies and refuse their pleas. On the player's side, if an ally refuses their requests over and over again, the player can opt to cut off all ties with them. They will remain neutral, however, and they can re-establish their alliance sooner or later. On the AI's side, their reactions vary. Some may remain neutral just like the player, but some may also be so pissed off they instantly become hostile towards the players.

Backstabbing can be done by both the player and the AI, triggered somewhat randomly but based upon how they treat one another. Once either one of them betrays each other by declaring surprise wars or siding with their mortal enemies, then no amount of apologizes can re-establish the friendship that was established and the Power Meter will crash like a meteor. At best, the betrayed faction will have a neutral or semi-hostile relationship with the other one. Backstabbing a faction that is already in a league will automatically remove both the betrayed and the betrayer, leaving the league's leadership to another faction while demoting the League Camp to its previous state.

Relationships between factions are divided into some categories, which are:
 * Hostile : Utterly disdains each other and are practically at war.
 * Shaky : Not an open war, but both sides clearly don't like taking demands and sharing things.
 * Neutral : As long as they act civil, they're good with each other.
 * Allied : A substantial friendship has been made and benefits are sure to come.
 * Trusted : Brothers and sisters in-arms, an alliance made in heaven.
 * League Member : Fellow members of a grand council. All members' relationships are automatically promoted to Allied.
 * Vassal : A faction is fully integrated into another faction either through conquest or diplomacy.
 * Rebellion : The vassal states attempt to free themselves from their lord, inciting a civil war that puts the lording faction's political status with others on hold. If it succeeds, the lord will be forced to rebuild their faction in another place while the rebels claim their remnants. Attempts to re-establish an alliance between the two can happen but with little success.

The status of a political relationship is also affected by the faction leader the player is controlling. If the leader happens to be a warmongering warlord, then the player will find themselves more likely to be allied with fellow warmongers. If the leader happens to be an absolutely neutral person, then the player can literally ally themselves with any factions present in-game without a problem.

Since the position of leader is occupied by faction heroes and players can have more than a single faction hero in a match, players' leader is determined at the match's start. Players cannot change their leaders in the middle of a match. However, in the case that the leader do die in combat, then the player can determine the next new leader from a pool of heroes the player has trained or recruited. For factions with vassals or they who have recruited heroes from other factions, then it's not uncommon for a foreign hero to take helm of a faction between different races. Territories and Settlements= The player starts a match with a hero, some units, and their headquarters. HQ names vary from faction to faction but they all have the same function in the end. Headquarters act as the foundation of the player's faction. With the headquarters, players can build structures, recruit soldiers, do researches, and run the everyday life of their faction in general. Indeed, the loss of the headquarters will result in the player unable to perform production tasks until it is rebuilt.

The presence of the headquarters mark the borders of the player's territory which gradually expands as they build more structures and upgrade their headquarters. If the player upgrades their headquarters to the max level, then they have the option to fortify their the faction's capital. Fortifying the capital will grant the player a costly option to relocate all their walls to the boundaries of their capital. Though the initial payment is quite high, both new and old walls that the players build or have can be placed down for free for the rest of the match. This only applies for the capital, of course.

The capital acts as the primary political propeller for the faction. Should the headquarters or the embassy and league camp there fall, then the Power Meter will plummet until they're rebuilt. The destruction or siege of a capital may have political consequences as well, with allied factions possibly withdrawing their alliance in trade with the faction that sieges the capital out of fear or power.

There can only be one headquarters in a single match, but players can build town centers should they wish to expand their faction's territories and influence. Town centers can be upgraded in the same vein as headquarters but have less overall building health and border area. This is remedied by building structures within the set territory as long as there are available builders. Each factions have different town center identities just as their headquarters have so, setting each other apart. Depending on the faction's headquarter researches, there can be a number of town centers in a single match.

The Economy
The base currency for every factions in the game comes in the form of gold. Not everyone covets gold for its greedy influence, but ultimately gold is accepted by everyone in the World Beyond. Ironically, it should be known that gold generally serves as nothing but a currency for trading. Aside from that, everything that is built, trained, and researched within a faction are paid with other resources

The game's main resources are gold, food, wood, and ore. Food can be attained by hunting wild creatures that roam the map or building farms and sending fishing ships on a mission. It is possible to sacrifice a faction's own beast to gain food as long as the creature isn't a mounted cavalry unit. For some factions, it is also possible to eat enemy soldiers to increase food. It technically doesn't provide food for the entirety of the faction, but then the food increase is a minor one to say the least.

Wood is attained via cutting down trees, obviously. Civilian units are the most likely candidate to perform the menial task of slashing trees in half, but a select few units can actually gather wood faster while also being able to fight effectively. Wood is mostly used for construction purposes until ores come in play later on.

Ores and gold are gathered from their own nodes scattered around the map. Players can either send out civilian units to mine the nodes until they expire or build a gold/ore mine to provide a steady increase of the said resources infinitely. For the latter, the player must build the correct mine for the correct node, else their ore and gold stockpiles will be hampered. Stationing a civilian unit in the mines will boost the structures' productivity.

Storage structures are required to keep the faction's resource collection, but civilian units don't have to drop off the resources they have gathered. They are automatically added to the storage, but that doesn't mean the storages have an infinite capacity. Storages have to be upgraded just like any other structures, increasing their capacity. Headquarters and town centers also act as storage structures and act as the main stash for resources in the match's beginning.

When resources exceed their storage limit, they are counted as surplus. Every faction's base surplus storage numbers at 200 before they have to dispose it off somewhere else. If the faction does not make use of the surplus or their pre-existing resources, then they cannot gather anymore of the exceeding resources. Luckily, exporting solves this problem. If an embassy or trade center is present, then the faction can donate their surplus for their allies. This act also slightly improves the Power Meter.

Where there is export, there is also import. Imports are the requests that were mentioned in the previous section, asking allies to donate resources or even units. Export and import products (and units) are transferred automatically within a certain amount of time, spawning at the embassy, headquarter, town center, or harbor, depending on where the request was made. Multiple exports and imports can be done at the same time, but only one can be done per structure before going on a cooldown.

Several factions have their own unique resources. They cannot be traded with other factions unless they happen to be the same race in a single match. These resources can be found in the faction pages themselves.

The Military
Statistics= Every faction needs strong armed forces to protect their interests, impose their will upon others, or simply defending themselves. Therefore, it is crucial for every faction to build up at least a contingent of units capable of repelling a small raid. Although there are notable classifications listed in a unit's description such as infantry or cavalry, there are actually no unit archetypes whatsoever and some of them can fill in different roles at once. If there is any cohesive classifications, it's between ground, aerial, and naval units.

In combat, a unit's statistics are divided into health, attack, defense, speed, resistance, morale, and energy. Resistance denotes immunity or reduced damage taken towards a number of attacks or effects. Energy denotes the amount of times a unit can activate their active abilities before having to recharge.

Morale denotes the willingness of a unit to fight for their faction's cause. Every faction soldiers are definitely loyal to their cause, but the lack of a hero's presence can either scare the unit out of the fight, make the unit more susceptible to mental attacks and flee, or even outright defect to the enemy faction. The defection of a unit does not affect the Power Meter however.

Attack is split into melee and ranged attacks, with yet another sub-type differentiating a physical and magical attack. Defense is also split between physical and magical defense, sometimes also stacking with resistance. Finally with speed, speed is separated to walking, flying, and swimming/sailing speed. Many ground units can actually swim through water bodies but with reduced speed compared to true naval units. Recruitment and Progression= Each factions start with at least a single civilian-type unit made for resource gathering. Civilians can be trained at the headquarters and town center. As the player researches through the tech tree provided from the base structure, they can recruit more advanced units from a multitude of different buildings. They can be upgraded through their own structures but the upgrades they receive are limited to the headquarters' level. A level one headquarters allow for, say, six upgrades. A level two and three (max) headquarters however, can grant the rest of the researches in the tech tree.

Other buildings that equate to specialized barracks for specialized units also serve to upgrade such units. The research results will still be in affect even if the buildings are destroyed. Each units take time in recruiting and training and so are the researches. Protect the buildings well and the player will have a strong foundation for their army soon.

Players can recruit units from other races through the mentioned import feature from the embassy or trade center. This can happen if the player and the faction maintain a relationship status of allied, the former having a sufficient amount of influence to ask the other one for military help.

The amount of units a player has is limited by their own population caps. Unlike a few other contemporary games, there is no set population cap for the overall units a faction has. Instead, each units have their own set population limits put by their recruitment buildings. Upgrading these buildings can increase the population cap and some researches can actually increase every units' limit, lessening the amount of restriction. Champions and Heroes= There may only be one leader at the match's start, but that doesn't mean the player can recruit other renowned figures from the World Beyond. A leader can be taken into battle as an individual unit, boosting the morale of nearby units while having powerful abilities of their own. Due to the presence of abilities, all hero units, magical or not, possess an energy stat. Non-leader heroes can be recruited via the headquarters and can ascend to the leader position in case the former hero-leader dies.

Champions on the other hand, are another case entirely. Champions are considered unique units of their own. None of them are named like the heroes, but they can act as effective morale boosters in case the heroes aren't present. Champions cannot ascend to become leaders but they are effective fighters nevertheless. Their abilities are less active than the heroes' as far as they're concerned. But, they have marginally higher stats than regular units.

Consider training champions as soon as the resources allow you to. Heroes are more expensive than champions, but reach for the most accessible one and you'll have a band of fearless warriors soon enough. Should a champion die, players can retrain them at their recruitment center. Should a hero die, only a select few factions have the option to resurrect him or her. Be careful with the usage of champions and heroes. They're expensive and losing them will be a harsh blow to the faction.

Despite their expensiveness and relative incompetence when stronger enemies start to show up, heroes can keep up with the ever-changing tides of war by gaining experience through combat. Heroes can level up to become stronger, going up to level ten at max. As they level up, they will gain ability points they can spend to improve their pre-existing abilities or combat skills. This system mirrors those used in XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. When a hero reaches the max level, they still have the option to gain ability points to complete their skill tree. How they gain so is different for each heroes, however. And champions lack this mechanic. Unit Commands= Aside from cutting down trees, building structures, and attacking enemies, players have a few other commands that can be issued to their troops. Troops can be stationed in all but most defensive structures. When they are attacked, the troops will come out and fend off the attackers. If wounded, units will return to their stations and regenerate lost health after the fight's over. If the unit fails to defend their building effectively and suffer panic attacks, then they have a chance to re-enter the building. There is a limit to twenty units that a player can station. If a building with units inside it is destroyed, then the units will forcibly exit it while suffering a proportion of damage.

Another available order is to patrol. Players can draw a freeform line that covers a whole lot of area and command which units are to go that route. Units will automatically attack other units that are classified as hostile or neutral entities that opt to attack them. Players can assign multiple patrols at once and they will be notified if anything happens to them. Units in some factions have special orders of themselves, and defensive structures can too have specific orders issued to them. Sub-Factions= Subdivisions exist within each factions and they are represented by the heroes themselves. Sub-factions grant additional bonuses to the faction depending on whose sub-faction rules as the leader. Bonuses vary from hero to hero, but they definitely help the faction progress through the match. Like the heroes themselves, sub-faction bonuses change when another sub-faction's leader falls in battle. The next sub-faction's bonus will overwrite the previous bonus.

Sub-factions play a part as well in the vassalage system. The last sub-faction that acted as the leader of the vassal faction will grant their benefits to their new unified faction. If a rebellion occurs, then the sub-faction's bonus will be nullified until the rebels are defeated or they successfully break away.

The Environment
The game possesses a large pool of maps to draw upon that can be played in both single and multiplayer modes. Many of these have different environments ranging from dark forests, damp swamps, all the way to harsh mountainous areas. No matter how hard these maps are, there will be an abundance of wild creatures players can hunt. Not all wild creatures are defenseless though, and not a few of them can kill unwary units.

While there are hostile creatures that are nonetheless capable of being handled by a single soldier, there are also large titanic creatures known as Behemoths that act as quest bosses, treasure guardians, or even simply as a "natural disaster" in addition to real natural disasters. Behemoths are larger than most units and may need a medium-sized army to deal with. As said, they can either spawn as special bosses or outright as regular creatures depending on map difficulty. Killing a Behemoth can yield outstanding rewards, however.

Weathers and natural disasters also occur in several maps. Weathers don't affect all units but they challenge the player in dealing with the new condition. If a light rain happens, then a simple hunting mission won't be interrupted. If a heavy rainstorm happens, then expect lightning strikes all over the place alongside reduced line of sight. They're not as devastating as natural disasters, nevertheless. Natural disasters happen based upon the map the player plays at. Volcanic eruptions are more likely to occur in, well, volcanic maps while avalanches happen in snowy mountains when intense battles happen. Tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires can generally occur in most maps.

Game Modes

 * War of the Realms: Fight in a world torn apart after an apocalypse through the eyes of the last remaining powers of the Realms Beyond. War of the Realms is the campaign for the game and can be replayed over and over again as different factions. Completing a campaign yields different rewards per faction and scattered secrets can be found through the campaigns. Initially there are only three campaigns available to play. Completing these campaigns unlock other factions' campaigns however.
 * War: The basic battle mode of the game, players can set up their own match with up to six AI players with differing difficulties and victory modifiers. Typical methods of winning this mode involve trampling all other oppositions to death or submission. However, it should be noted that the other factions aren't just the only threats running rampart on the map. Hostile creatures roam the lands and they vary from harmless hunting targets to giant Behemoths capable of crushing an entire settlement. Quests can be accomplished to increase the power of your faction and they have to be participated by a hero.
 * Trials: Embark through a series of non-campaign scenarios that challenge the players' skills in winning battles with special modifiers. Completing a trial for a certain campaign will unlock a new unit for them that can be trained in their headquarters.
 * Ethereal Library: Available after completing the player's first chosen campaign, the Ethereal Library reveals the lore of the World Beyond bit by bit as the player progresses through the campaigns. First, they will be given the background of their campaign faction and details about the universe's past via the scrolls they can collect throughout the campaign. Afterwards, the player will eventually be rewarded with the entirety of the universe's and factions' lore. The Ethereal Library also shows early concept arts and various cinematics, in addition to units the player has trained. Players can access the Ethereal Library at any time, inside or outside matches.
 * Multiplayer: Battle against friends or random players across the globe in tense tactical matches taking place in a number of exclusive settings. A single match can accomodate up to five players and alliances can be built with up to two players. Aside from War, multiplayer offers more modes players can enjoy.
 * Annihilation: A spin to War, three players team-up to take down another player's hero who is given a large fortress complete with defences to begin with. The attackers have three attempts to defeat the defender and the latter also has three chances to destroy the opposition. Before the first phase, the attackers and defender can build key structures that can bolster their assault and security respectively. Players start with two builders per faction and can gather resources to construct recruitment and defensive buildings. There is a limit of twenty units for each attacker factions, allowing them to attack in the first phase with 60 units. The defender on the other side has half the amount but starts with many more resources. If the attackers fail the first phase, the defender are given a limited two-stage window to recruit more units to try and destroy the attackers' encampment. In this stage, the defender also receives a substantial amount of resources. If he fails then any remaining units that are outside of the fortress will die and the attacker's next phase will ensue, now having 120 possible units attacking the defender. In the last phase, it's do or die as the defender tries to prevent the attackers from breaching the fortress and killing their hero. Victory is achieved if the defender hero survives the ordeal or the attackers kill him.
 * Rush: Race to victory as four players fight their way through waves of enemies in an attempt to reclaim the artifact. Simple and straightforward, the players chose their factions and train a number of units of their own choosing. Buildings aren't required for this mode but players are restricted to ten units in a single match. Still, if all the players' units die then they can respawn with other different units. The first player to reach the artifact wins. If time runs out and nobody has the artifact, then the player with the most progress will be crowned the winner.
 * Scenario: Not exactly a multiplayer mode, but players can take on an assortment of matches created by other players online. Players themselves can also create their own scenarios that act as challenges to both themselves and other players. From adding varying amounts of creatures to extreme modifiers, this mode is tailored for fun and ridiculousness.

Trivia

 * Chronologically, this is the first original game to be made by 50A Studios.
 * The game's soundtrack is produced by Dynamedion, a team of composers famous for their orchestral tracks in games that include RTS games similar to The Realms Beyond itself.
 * Other than Age of Empires, the game is inspired by Warhammer Fantasy lore-wise and their Total War games for some mechanics.