Ascendant Dawn is a grand strategy game I've been developing for about a year. During that time the scope has changed a bit going from a semi fantasy game into a more realistic one. Early on in development the core idea of the game was the same, what about a grand strategy game where you play as a nomadic tribe instead of a settled nation. This was partially inspired by mount and blade which also shares some of the same in development changes going from fantasy with zombies to more realistic but still with a fictional map.

The original map was an entirely cold region of swamps, forests and tundra. However, I thought this area was boring, dull and lacked variety. So I decided to branch out. I created a new map and put the aforementioned terrain in the northern third of the map. I then added several more terrain types. Steppe merges with tundra and covers a huge portion of the map mainly in the center. Grassland surrounds that and merges into two other biomes Mediterranean and eastern. To the south I created a huge desert designed at a difficult to survive in area. Below that I created a small sliver of jungle. The reason I chose not to use a real world area was for a few reasons. Firstly, the real world has a lot of ocean and naval travel wasn't something I intended to add to the game. Secondly, I wanted to explore creating an imaginary area. Thirdly, if I put real life cultures into the game it might cause controversy. Fourthly, I simply didn't think any area on earth would actually be right for the game. 

The starting state of the game also changed. Originally all the factions would start as nomadic tribes however I found it was better to add a number of settlements in. These settlements add flavor to the world and allow the player to trade and raid more easily. Settlements in Ascendant Dawn are all procedurally generated, something you don't see much in large scale strategy games but was necessary as settlements can be built anywhere on the map and the random generation gives personality to each settlement.

I've covered the game a lot more in youtube videos which can be found here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBQrMsAHgv61U-sRNUY6Kzw and there's also a discord server https://discord.gg/WKjbCR9Q38 which is great if you have any questions. 

I'm planning on releasing a pre-alpha of the game for free here soon.