What's New
Your kingdom begins with a single headquarters. Everything beyond is unknown -- white fog stretching as far as the eye can see, like clouds that have settled down to rest on the land. Somewhere out there are forests, rivers, mountains, and maybe a rival doing exactly the same thing you are. But you cannot see any of it. Not yet.
This update introduces two closely connected systems that change the feel of Novus Terminus: First Flags fundamentally: territory and fog of war. Together, they give every game a sense of discovery and a reason to think carefully about where you build next.
Territory is claimed by military buildings -- barracks, guard houses, watchtowers, and fortresses -- each projecting a zone of control around itself. The headquarters provides your starting territory, and from there, every expansion is deliberate. You place a barracks near your border, wait for it to finish construction, and watch your territory swell outward. The boundaries are not rigid circles. When two military buildings stand close together, their zones of influence merge into smooth, organic shapes that flow around the terrain. It looks natural, almost like a living border breathing with your settlement.
Along that border, physical marker posts appear automatically, lining the edge of your territory like fence posts along a country road. You can always tell at a glance exactly where your land ends. These are not painted lines or glowing overlays -- they are actual objects in the world, visible from any camera angle. And they serve a future purpose: when two players' territories eventually meet, those border markers become the anchor points for trade routes.
Speaking of neighbours -- when your territory touches another player's, the border freezes. You can stack military buildings behind the line all day long, but the border will not budge. Economic power alone cannot push back an established rival. If you want that land, you will need to take it by force in a future update. This is intentional: peaceful expansion works into unclaimed wilderness, but contested borders demand military action.
Everything outside your explored area is hidden behind volumetric fog -- thick, white, and three-dimensional. This is not a flat texture painted on the map. The fog has real depth and volume. Mountain peaks poke through it, their silhouettes hinting at the terrain beyond. Trees, animals, and enemy buildings are completely hidden inside the fog. As you build military structures and push your territory outward, the fog rolls back, revealing the landscape underneath. The visibility range extends well beyond your actual territory border, so you always get a generous view of the surrounding area before you commit to expanding there.
When you lose a military building -- whether demolished by choice or destroyed in combat down the road -- your territory recalculates. Buildings that suddenly find themselves outside your borders get a grace period, flashing a warning. If you do not restore coverage in time, they shut down: production stops, workers are released, but the structures remain. Place a new military building nearby, and everything springs back to life.
Behind the Scenes
The territory boundaries are generated using a technique borrowed from computer graphics called metaballs. Each military building radiates an invisible field of influence, and the territory boundary is the surface where those fields add up to a certain strength. When buildings are far apart, you get roughly circular borders. When they are close, the fields blend together into smooth blobs. The fog of war uses the same system with a larger radius, so expanding territory and clearing fog happen in one step. All of it runs on the CPU with no special rendering tricks -- the border markers are real 3D objects, and the fog is Godot's built-in volumetric fog system driven by the territory data. This keeps things simple and makes the system ready for multiplayer, where the server needs to be the single source of truth for who owns what.
What's Next
With territory and fog of war in place, the next step is soldiers. Settlers will be recruited at the tavern, equipped with weapons at the depot, and garrisoned in military buildings to defend your borders -- and eventually, to push them.