06.10.2025 - Beginnings

So if you are following my github page, you might have seen that I recently finished¹ my first proper simulation project called Rusty Runways. This got me thinking about other projects that I could make, that enable simulating complex environments for AIs and after thinking for some time it hit me!

During my thesis, I was initially looking to use the game Sid Meier’s Civilization, a really popular 4X game. However, since the game did not have a forward model, nor did it have any good adapters for agents, it was just not feasible to train any agent on it, given limited computational resources.

As such, I realized, I could just try to create my own civ clone albeit more limited. This marks the beginning of this dev journey, where I will try to recreate civilization 6, but in a slimmed down version. My key goals are:

• Getting world generation working: World generation should not be too difficult, but I want to allow for the creation of at least 3 distinct map types which I also enjoyed playing, and which allow for interesting scenarios: Pangea, islands, continents.
• Gameplay loop and progression: There are a lot of things to consider and to make sure there are no bugs. In total, I just want to try and port all of the main civ 6 elements that I like, to try and improve the performance and create a fun environment.
• Customization: When it comes to AI training games, not all tools work for one problem / goal, therefore I want to design this game with the idea of customization. This could entail maps, factions, progressions etc (lets see what else I can think of)
• 3D rendering: I am not artist, thats for sure, but getting some basic game setup in 3D so that one can also see what is going on is definetly a must. I did not do that for Rusty Runways, but civrealm does allow you to see how the agents play, and so I really want to do that as well.
• Python: That is something I have done before, but for AI projects like this, it is important to expose Python bindings, as not everyone is familiar with Rust or even wants to work with it.

Next steps

This is going to be my main side project for the next couple weeks / months (hopefully not years), but I will take it step by step. I think the first place to start at is the map itself. Making sure we can generate a map and perhaps visualize it using bevy. Once that is in place, then we can see about other next steps.

For gameplay information / balancing, I think I will just take a page out of civilizations book, and take the same values they are using. This way I do not need to fine-tune things myself.

1. As far as a coding project is very truly finished ↩