Every once in a while, I find out about a game that has very ambitious goals for what it wants to be, and one of those games is Anvil Empires with a massive map to explore, harvest and fight on.

Anvil Empires says that it will be a “Massively Multiplayer game where thousands of players work together to build empires, wage war, and conquer in a persistent online world. March alongside armies of players in massive melee battles and large-scale sieges.” It sounds intense, even for an AAA developer.

Siege Camp, the Toronto-based developers behind Anvil Empires, have already released Foxhole, a similar game with a persistent world at war that is currently a highly rated game on Steam. Siege Camp seems to want to build on what makes Foxhole a good game, where every bullet, shell, and piece of equipment is player-made. And instead of just being at war as in the first title, we get to build an empire in their upcoming game.

While Anvil Empires is still in development and everything is subject to change, I have been able to delve through their dev logs and have uncovered the following:

Players will have to build a Settlement from scratch; every player will have to build or claim a house. There will be house areas where players who want to join a settlement will be able to join a small group of players, two or three, and own a small parcel of land where they are free to build their house and other structures, park vehicles, store resources, and even build equipment such as anvils, sawbucks, or even a small farm. This will allow players to invest in a role and have a stake in building their settlement, as they can collect and make resources that will go straight to assist the settlement or even trade them on the local exchange.

So, if we want to be blacksmiths, we have to start from humble beginnings. We have our small piece of land and want to build some swords to help arm the settlement. We will start out very inefficient as we have to gather materials and build a forge, collect some iron and smelt it in your forge, and forge your ingots from the molten iron. Pound the ingots into blades on your anvil, then cool your blade in a quenching station.

That’s a lot of work, but how you heat and quench your blades will impact the quality of your blades. As you become more efficient and increase your technology, not only will you become faster, but the quality will be even better. There are more than just swords to be made.

As the settlement grows, so too will the technology, as Aqueducts and Canals will be made, allowing advanced powered technologies that will allow more advanced smithing options. And will allow the construction of A water wheel that will allow semi-automated machines to be built and powered sawmills to be created, allowing a carpenter to slowly allow the passive production of chopping logs.

Your neighbor, the farmer, will be able to have canals divert water to their fields to allow the production of more food, the breeding of Horses and Donkeys, and the use of them to transport resources, as well as creating an animal mill.

To grasp a sense of scale, there are approximately 100,00 individual trees that can be interacted with and harvested by players.

With the most recent devlog, releasing information about the raising of animals, they also announced that the new map is roughly 8 times the size of the previous test map, divided with a virtual border between R2 instances. To grasp a sense of scale, there are approximately 100,00 individual trees that can be interacted with and harvested by players. The goal is to build the world of Calligo between many R2 server instances to simulate a vast active world.

The upcoming pre-alpha test will launch on July 25th, 2023. You will be able to request access on Steam close to its release.

Have you played Foxhole Inferno? What are your thoughts? Are you eager to see what the developers can come up with for this very ambitious title? I am! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.