Crucible Of Time

A nostalgic dream brought to life by indie love. Inspired by classic 1990's 4X civilization building strategy games with modern QoL features and the best mechanics spanning 30 years of the genre. 
Discover the optimal army composition for conquering the world with your military might.

Use cunning diplomacy to manipulate your opponents using soft power and trade.

Customize your government with powerful policies and tall vs wide empire bonuses.

Advance your civilization through the ages, well beyond the modern age and into different possible future timelines. 

Tactical Stack Based Combat

Units fight together in groups which means your army composition matters. 

Archers are more effective with a front-line of melee units.

Front line melee units have high HP but lack DPS.

Cavalry units flank ranged units hiding in the back line. 

Siege weapons are glass cannons doing high splash damage but are vulnerable to cavalry. 

Naval Combat
Full combat roles for naval units similar to unit roles on land. Providing transport, front-line, and DPS/Siege options.

Naval goodie boxes and ocean encounters equal to those on the land.

Coastal cities are not saved by only protecting themselves on land and must defend against naval units that can invade and capture cities.

Rivers are navigable by naval units.

Most rivers will lead to the ocean and have fishing hotspots. 

Building cities alongside large rivers gives cities in the interior access to the ocean.

Discover Powerful Relics And Recruit Warlords
Loot ancient ruins, harass local villages, or conquer local warlords to uncover powerful relics.

Relics can be placed into cities providing powerful stacking bonuses.

Powerful warlord camps spawn barbarians.

Take them out and either loot the camp or hire the warlord to join your army.

Trade And Supply Chains
Construct a vast trade network to supply your citizens' every want and need.

Combine natural raw resources into more powerful manufactured goods.

Use manufactured strategic goods to unlock powerful era-specific units.

Diplomacy and Integrity

Each leader has a unique personality with likes, dislikes and various levels of aggression or peaceful pursuits centered around their civilization's unique bonuses.

A nuanced Integrity system that incentivizes players and AI to make deals and keep their word, while still allowing the freedom to choose violence if the situation calls for it.

Trade agreements between empires boosts relations and increases supply chain interdependency. 

The Bronze Age
The first powerful unit available is unlocked by smelting bronze from tin and copper ore.

Deliver tin and copper through your trade network to a city with a Bloomery improvement.

The bloomery creates multiple copies of bronze to trade throughout your empire.

Iron Age And Beyond
The strain on your logistic network doesn't end with bronze.

Iron, Gunpowder, and Aluminum require additional processing steps to create from their natural ores.

As units become more advanced; their supply chains become more complicated and fragile.

Well Beyond The Modern Age
Deep and expansive tech tree that continues past the current era and foreseeable future into multiple speculative timelines based on players' choices during the game.

Expanded depth of post-industrial ages to not skim them over in the late game. 

WWII Era units and technology are not the pinnacle of human achievement. Unlock underwater cities, asteroid mining, space colonies, doomsday machines, AGI singularities, Alien Technology and more.

For more detailed information see our roadmap at
Multiple End Game Scenarios
The actions that you and other civilizations take throughout the game shape your future. Each end game scenario presents the players with a choice. The consequences of that choice will depend on the victory scenario being triggered.
For example you might:
Build a doomsday device and decide if you want to tell the world about it.

Reverse engineer alien technology and decide to unite humanity by revealing it; or turning it into a weapon to conquer the world.

Attempt to achieve world peace with your diplomatic prowess or unite the world under your ideology, but if the vote is not unanimous you'll have to decide to "enforce" your peace by removing the problematic party or try again later.

Online And Offline Civopedia Reference

Every item in the game and it's effects are fully documented with nested tooltip helpers and descriptions.

Full game reference available outside of the game at crucible of time dot com.

Interested in the details? Go check it out!

Current Alpha version contains placeholders that are not representative of the art in the final game.
Full Online Multiplayer Support
Play online with strangers or in private lobbies with your friends.

Modern QoL Multiplayer features plus a few new ones. Including a turn-length tracker and an "AFK Mode" to end your turn automatically while the whole lobby is waiting for you to come back from the bathroom. 

Single Player And Multiplayer Replays
Rewatch every game you play from the perspective of any player.

Relive your best (or worst) moments and capture them in fast forward to share with your friends.

Recap the game with your friends after a long and brutal game of Crucible Of Time.


Current Development Timeline

Human Made
Music was produced by Kura and all art was hand drawn by our co-founder Gunther. Gunther is our 2 man team's Art Director, 3D Modeler, and 2D Artist. Kura is the Programmer and Music Director. If you appreciate it's quality or like what you see please let us/him know. We're looking for feedback for style and polish going into a public release of the Demo in Feb 2027.
Wishlist Now
If you like where this is going and want to help us out. Please wish list the game and join our mailing list on our website.