One wheel, four tables

The idea

The world never changes scale. The zoom exaggerates instead. Close in, the village is true size and lush. Pull back and the estate becomes a miniature: every building swells round its own foot, up to 1.8 times, so a hut still reads from a kilometre up. Pull back again and you are no longer over the land at all. You are looking at a model of the governorate on a waxed table, with banners on brass poles for the estates. One more step and the table is central Russia.

A tabletop is not a paper map. It is a lit 3D model with cut earth sides, in a room. That was the ruling, and it is what made the far views feel like part of the same game.

One wheel

There is no button for changing level. When a view reaches the end of its zoom, it counts further notches of the wheel, and the third one inside 0.7 seconds carries you to the next table. One stray notch does nothing.

While you are placing a building, the swell eases back to true scale, so a click lands where it looks like it lands.

What we measured, and what we threw out

• Kept: a filmic tonemap, one warm sun with the sky as fill light, bounce light close in only, depth haze, and a tilt-shift blur that does most of the "miniature" work.
• Thrown out: full global illumination (up to 1.9 ms a frame, and it leaked light under thin roofs) and volumetric fog (up to 1.4 ms for a haze the cheap fog gives free).
• The governorate table lost two thirds of its pieces in its second version: 92 name cards became 27, and villages became patches of field. It was too crowded to read.
• In the browser the game is allowed to look plainer than on Windows: no bounce light, no blur, no grass blades.

Still weak

Trees are faceted at mid zoom. The swell puts some huts off their painted streets. From the whole board, woods read as dark moss. The Russia table is more map than model from its highest view. We know, and we would like to hear which of these bothers you most.