In the far future, the last of humanity's great Empires sits on the brink of collapse. The great noble houses fight amongst themselves as they seek their own enrichment while the people of the Empire struggle to make ends meet. Amidst all the political tension, your predecessor has passed away, and you have ascended to the throne.
In Alliance of the Sacred Suns, you play as the young Emperor of an interstellar Empire riddled with social, political, and economic issues. As a blend of grand-strategy and RPG, you will make decisions that influence the future of the realm while managing your court, your relationships with the great nobles of the Empire, and your own well-being.
As a young Emperor taking the throne, you have your whole life ahead of you to return the realm to its once-glorious state. Be wary of separatists who seek to undermine you, and those who do not respect your title. Many are willing to bring a quick end to your reign by any means necessary to further their own agendas.
- Create your own ruler's background to determine who you are, how you were raised, and what you do best. The house you hail from, your culture, and your capabilities will determine how you navigate the challenges of your reign.
- Alliance of the Sacred Suns will see your character age over time with their health either declining or improving based on events that take place, and depending on how actively they rule. Each turn will have a limited number of action points, and while you'll often want to spend them all to make sweeping moves, saving some action points in a turn will allow your health to improve as you take on less stress.
- The Projects you take on as Emperor will help shape who you are beyond your upbringing - will you pursue only the most honorable of projects, or will you occasionally take on Projects with questionable ethics for the greater good? Balance the Honor, Humanity, and Piety of your actions accordingly.
- Managing your physical health and mental well-being is as crucial as passing decrees and sending orders to your governors and fleets. Should you die, you do not continue as your heirs - you have but one lifetime to lead, and just the one lifetime with which to save the Empire.
The Empire has been in decline for generations as you take the throne - the formation of the Great Houses and their growing strength has come at the expense of the throne's centralized authority. The nobles know where they stand in this hierarchy, and though there is a degree of respect for your office, many will use what they have as leverage against their Emperor.
- Maintain relationships with leaders of the five other Great Houses of the Empire to ensure their continued support of the throne. The better their opinion of you, the more they will be willing to contribute in resources and taxes.
- The Great Houses are not one congruent entity - they have their own quarrels and internal politics. This means your relations with one will have an impact on your relations with another, and you will need to balance which of the Great Houses are most important. The resources they are able to provide you and their relative military and political strength are essential factors in choosing your closest political allies.
- Manage your high-level advisors, determine the budget they have to work with, and ensure you are maximizing your benefits from each of their offices while also using them as tokens for relations with the Great Houses. A more capable Finance Prime will be able to wring more taxes out of the Great Houses, while a more capable Science Prime will assist in the technological advancement of the Empire. Poor assignments in any of the offices of the Five Primes can lead to troubles instead.
- All levels of governance are, to varying degrees, under your control. From the aforementioned Primes to the planetary Viceroys, each assignment will have rippling consequences. Take note of a character's strengths and weaknesses as you make them Viceroy - assign them appropriate planets to govern to maximize their output while managing your finely balanced relations with the Houses.
Whether interacting with leaders of the Great Houses, your own family, or citizens of the Empire, you will have many opportunities to define the kind of sovereign you are.
- Just as you can engage in politics with members of the Great Houses, they can be the ones to initiate said politicking themselves. You will often see requests for an audience, or at times demands, and whether you decide to entertain or ignore such overtures will have repercussions for your reign.
- Managing how you spend your efforts and action points each turn will mean you often have to ignore certain requests to make room for others - planning ahead around such circumstances will be vital to maintaining the integrity of the Empire, and your relationships with the Great Houses.
- As time passes between turns, various events at court will see you make decisions that further define you as an individual and your Empire alike. Will you allow healthcare on a specific planet to fall to the black market at the cost of their opinion of you? Will you offer financial support to every Great House that comes begging, just to appease them?
Your Empire cannot remain stagnant, even as it decays from the inside. You must project strength in a variety of ways, for vultures are always in the skies above.
- Use Projects to determine where the Empire's resources are spent, helping the Great Houses improve their holdings in a way that ultimately improves their contribution to the throne. But be careful - projects that help one Great House over another will have an impact on your relations, and while assigning members of a specific house to a project is a great way to quickly improve relations, you're just as likely to sour relations with their rival houses, potentially upsetting the balance that keeps the Great Houses in check.
- Explore neighboring star systems and seek opportunities for expansion and exploitation - some stars are more likely to be surrounded by habitable planets while others are more likely to provide resources of various kinds. Whichever you pursue, make sure you have the resources to do so - materials, operational output, and fleets alike will need to be balanced between the various ways in which you can assert control and show your strength to the Great Houses.
Alliance of the Sacred Suns is built to support modding. Players can access much of the game mechanics and content through text and XML editing. We are excited to see what worlds modders will create using our politics-in-space framework.