The Mega Empires: The Far East campaign is now running on Kickstarter. Let’s take a look at the designer diary penned by Flo de Haan, offering some interesting backstory on the project and insights into its development.

It was 2022, one year after the release of Eastern Empires, the follow-up to Western Empires. As the COVID pandemic was coming to an end, we found ourselves at a crossroads. There were many directions we could take. Our publisher, 999 Games, had shifted its focus toward Northwestern Europe, while we wanted to go bigger, push further, and aim higher.

Michael Bruinsma, who had been instrumental in helping us publish Mega Civilization, and later Western and Eastern Empires, had sadly passed away after a period of illness, during which he had been largely unable to stay involved.

Michael Bruinsma and Flo at GenCon 2019.

It was Michael, in particular, who had always encouraged us to explore the Far East. But we held off for a while—not out of laziness, but because we wanted to create something truly worthwhile. We had no interest in simply making the same game on a different map. The question was: what should it become?

During the winter of that year, the first brainstorming sessions began. We had seen the success of Eastern Empires, especially during the COVID pandemic, when people couldn’t gather in large groups but only with a few friends. Eastern Empires had introduced an addition that allowed the game to be played with 3 or 4 players: the Market Board.

It’s great to design games for 18 players, but sometimes the future is uncertain… and at the time, no one knew where COVID was headed. Now we know better, but back then the road could lead anywhere.

So the first idea was: let’s create a smaller edition to begin with. Three players? Four? Five? Six? And then the bigger question: was “The Far East,” as Michael had envisioned, really the best direction?

We carried out extensive research into different regions. Africa? Central America? I have always been a huge history enthusiast, with a particular fascination for Central America—especially the Maya. I can even read a bit of Mayan hieroglyphs. I explored the caves of the Yucatán and visited many Mayan cities, their roads long since reclaimed by the jungle.

If I were to create a game set in that region, I would want it to be truly exceptional—and… well, never say never. But in the end, we kept coming back to what we felt was the most compelling historical setting: the Far East, or more precisely, East Asia.

A very early sketch of what the map board could look like. It has been completely changed since.

At the same time, our games have always been developed from a historical and geographical perspective: the West in relation to the East, and vice versa—not “Europe,” and not “Central Asia.” So it felt natural to approach this in the same way: not as a region in isolation, but as the Far East seen from both the West and the East.

Since this would be a follow-up edition, the name The Far East made sense. However, we were definitely not going with something like Far Eastern Empires as a continuation of Western and Eastern Empires—it simply didn’t sound right. It quickly became clear that, if we wanted to create multiple editions under an “XX Empires” line in the future, we needed to make a consistent branding decision now. That’s how we arrived at Mega Empires as the main title, with a subtitle to distinguish each edition.

Funnily enough, that had always been the idea. The West and The East were originally developed as two separate games. It was Michael Bruinsma who suggested combining them into a collector’s edition, complete with a wooden chest, designed for 18 players.

So the research began. Which empires? Which dynasties? Which cultures? Which developments? At the time, I had some basic knowledge—I had paid attention in history class, and the subject had always fascinated me—but I didn’t yet have the depth of understanding I’ve since developed. Since then, I’ve read extensively, watched documentaries, studied images, and even picked up a bit of language here and there. I really wanted to understand the essence of it all.

History in motion: major cities at 1203.

What were the major cities at different moments in history? This isn’t something you can simply pick from a static list, because time is a crucial factor—you have to look at history in motion.

That’s how we arrived at the current set of empires, which generally flourished during the same period, from around 200 CE to roughly 1400 CE—well before Europeans became strongly involved in the region (yes, I know, Marco Polo). But what does the term “empire” really mean?

In China, history is defined by dynasties that succeeded one another, overlapped, and fought for dominance. In the southern islands, there were kingdoms—large and small—often without centralized rule, sometimes occupying the same islands at different times, and occasionally merging with one another. It’s all reflected in the game.

We had to be consistent, and in the end, we chose to call them all “empires.” After all, that’s the name of our game. The true historical background is carefully documented on the back of the player mats, so there’s no need to worry about accuracy. Still, we had to make compromises and tough choices along the way.

There will always be someone who asks, “Why didn’t you include this kingdom or that civilization?” That’s inevitable. We made our selections carefully to create a balanced setup. Some empires are not included as playable factions, but their influence is still represented elsewhere in the game.

Funan empire: one of the kingdom/civilizations left out of the game.

After defining the time span, we still had to leave out some empires, such as the Funan, in favor of others. A tough choice sometimes. Alright. A plan. One fully stand-alone game? It quickly became clear that trying to keep things smaller while still covering the entire region just wasn’t realistic. The idea of creating two separate editions emerged fairly quickly.

And, well — I grew up with Guns N’ Roses. In 1991, they suddenly released two albums at the same time: Use Your Illusion I and II. They even had Civil War and used The School of Athens in their artwork. So why couldn’t we do something similar?

But then came an important realization. We could release two stand-alone games that together form a larger whole—but players would inevitably want to combine everything. How would we connect that to the existing games? That demand was inevitable, not least from ourselves.

The Far East needed to be stand-alone, with new mechanics, new cards, and new calamities, yet at the same time it had to connect seamlessly to the existing world of Mega Empires. Quite a challenge, once again. At that point, we didn’t yet know how—but we would find a way.

A very early sketch to figure out where each empire should be. The Silk Road was not in development then.

By sketching, experimenting, and endlessly moving pieces around on world maps, we eventually reached a conclusion: we needed to add a third element to the new plan, something that would serve as a bridge. The Silk Road, with its wild steppes and its historical connection between the “West” and the “Far East,” was the answer. It even began as the working title The Mega-Mega Connection.

After a series of very constructive conversations with John Rodriguez, it became clear that his ambitions for the project were somewhat smaller in scope than ours. In a friendly and respectful way, we decided to part ways, so that Gerart and I could continue developing Mega Empires together. I would like to take this opportunity to once again express my sincere gratitude to John for the many years of collaboration.

While we were discussing our plans with 999 Games, it had already become clear that our ambitions were also far beyond the new direction they were taking. So we made the decision to part ways with them as well and look for a publisher that would be a better fit. After speaking with several publishers, we found what truly felt like a perfect match in Ares Games. They have a real passion for large-scale, historical, token-moving-on-a-map games, and just as importantly, they have an audience that loves them too.

Flo with Roberto Di Meglio (left) and Christoph Cianci (right), Ares Games's director of production and CEO, respectively.

So we presented our plans, and once we reached an agreement, we were able to move forward with development, which, at least at the time, we felt was already about halfway complete. My cousin Gerart and I founded Colossus Games at the end of 2023 to pursue our new plans more seriously and to embark on this new Silk Road journey together with Ares Games. We are truly grateful for that partnership.

When the actual development began, we created a long list of key developments that defined the period, the region, and the empires that introduced them: religions, insights, and constructions. But the biggest question was this: as mentioned earlier, we did not want to make the same game on a different map. It had to evolve. It had to bring something new.

A wide range of ideas came up during that process. The strongest ones survived, while others were either discarded or set aside for later. I won’t go into those now, because who knows — they might resurface one day.

One of our goals was that none of the Civilization Advances in The Far East would be the same as those in the existing games, although some key features — such as annexation, increasing population limits, and crossing open sea areas — still had to be included. But never as an exact copy of a card. Most importantly, there had to be new effects.

Continue to read - Mega Empires: The development of The Far East - By Flo de Haan - Part 2

Visit Mega Empires: The Far East project on Kickstarter for more information and to pledge.

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