The Road to War #3: The Great Powers

Welcome back everyone, hope you all had a great Holiday season!

As I said in the last Dev diary today we are going to delve into the Major factions in Leviathans. In the original release of the game we had stated that there were 8 Major powers in 1914. For those of you that never memorized the Gazetteer (what are you even doing with your life?) the 8 powers are Great Britain, Germany, France, Austria-Hungry, Italy, Russia, Japan and the USA. We are happy to say at this point that every one of these factions will be in the Kickstarter. As I stated last time all of them will have very different feels both aesthetically and in mechanical design. What exactly are those different “feels” you ask? Well why don’t I tell you. Lets start with….The British.

For anyone who played the original you already now the basics of the British fleet as there were one of the original two factions. They are all about range and armor. A British Admiral will do everything in their power to destroy the enemy ships before they ever get close, easily deflecting enemy long range shots off their reinforced hulls. The size of the British mains guns on their Battleships are unmatched in all the world. They are not without weakness though as their slow speed and maneuverability means that if the British can’t do enough damage up front their enemies will be able to close distant and fire into weak points in the fleet. In fact this very strategy is center to the 1000 year enemy of the British, the French Empire.

The French, the other faction from the 2012 game, are all about speed. They may fire their torpedoes in the early rounds but the real goal is to get behind enemy ships. Well not as armored as the British, their ships are nothing to scoff at, and in many ways the French armament is better then the British, though only effective at closer ranges.

Okay, with the two fleets everyone knows about out of the way, lets get into some new ones. Next up, the German fleet.

The German captains believe that the engineers hate having any extra metal left over when building a ship and that is why every German ship is covered in it. No fleet is more armored then the German, sacrificing speed for the ability to ignore volleys of enemy fire no mater the situation. To make up for their inability to react quickly they focus on fleet cohesion, having crews solely focused on working with other ships in the fleet. As torpedoes became an even bigger apart of areal warfare the Germans designed a ship whose singular purpose is to protect the slowest ships from being shot out of the air by these weapons.

On the complete other side of the spectrum we have the Italian fleet. Their ships are covered in engines and torpedoes. They can outmaneuver any opposing fleet and their torpedoes can bring down the largest battleships. A single volley at close range into the stern can stop a ship cold. They of course pay for this as it only takes a couple hits to bring down most Italian ships, meaning they have to be more careful then most on where to order their ships.

We are going to save the other 4 factions for next week.

We are incredibly happy to be able to create these fleets and get them out to you guys after all this time. Most of our time is spent trying to make these fleets as good as they can be. We hope you guys will love them as much as we do.

One last thing before signing off, on Wednesday the 8th I will be doing a video with Bonsart on his Youtube channel Radio Retrofuture. We will be talking about Leviathans so you should for sure be there.

Have a great week everyone and talk to you again soon!

Bryn Bills