Last updated March 27th, 2023
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What is Anvil Empires?
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Anvil is a massively multiplayer game of conquest where thousands of players will work together to build empires, wage war, and dominate in an age of conflict. While Anvil Empires will share many elements with Foxhole, including a persistent world, sandbox gameplay, mass collaboration, and a "cog in the wheel" player perspective, it will also be very different in other areas. In Anvil Empires, there will be a bigger emphasis on settlement building and the conflict will support an order of magnitude more players, allowing up to a thousand players to march alongside each other on the battlefield.
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What kind of gameplay activities can I expect from Anvil Empires?
Since players drive every aspect of the conflict, there will be a very wide variety of activities. On the combat side, players will be able to roam the world at sea or on horseback, torching unsuspecting villages and looting them for silver and other valuable resources. Work together with hundreds of players to build siege camps and siege weaponry, in preparation for storming enemy strongholds.
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On the non-combat side of things, players will build settlements and grow them from small hamlets to bustling towns shared by dozens if not hundreds of players. Support the war effort through industries like farming, hunting, husbandry and mining.
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At what stage of development is the project in?
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The game will be entering Pre-Alpha very soon. While there is no definitive timeline yet for how long the Pre-Alpha phase will last, the current estimate is at least half a year but there's a good chance it could take longer. Once the technology and gameplay are stable enough, the game will proceed to an Early Access release on Steam.
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What can I expect from the Anvil Empires Pre-Alpha?
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The Pre-Alpha will be an early in-development demo, where only a small subset of foundational features will be in place. To put things into perspective, the first Pre-Alpha for Foxhole didn't even have any logistics or vehicles, and the world was comprised of just small area of what is seen as a single region today. The initial Pre-Alpha is recommended for users that are comfortable with playing experimental builds with potential game breaking bugs and incomplete features.
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How will Anvil Empires change through Pre-Alpha development?
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Anvil Empires will be an incredibly complex game that will require a lot of experimentation and iteration to get right. There is no existing blueprint for designing a game like this, so ideas must be validated and developed through playtesting in a live environment with at least hundreds of simultaneous players from the community. To meet this goal, the Pre-Alpha will be used as the platform for integrating and testing new features.
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Due to the experimental nature of the Pre-Alpha, gameplay mechanics, features, scope, content, and pretty much anything may change at any time between builds without warning. You may be enjoying an aspect of one Pre-Alpha build, only to have it changed or completely removed in the next. While player feedback will be a vital part of the process, there will also be times when things will change in an opposing direction to meet the needs of the experiment. If you are not the type of player who is comfortable with change, it's recommended to wait until a much later stage of development before joining in.
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How do I participate in the Anvil Pre-Alpha?
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The Pre-Alpha will launch on Steam in April 2023. When the time comes, a public announcement will be made on the official Anvil Empires Discord. Spots may be initially limited, but the goal is to get as many players into the Pre-Alpha as possible. Note that the sign up process used for the prior closed tests will be irrelevant.​
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Do I have to pre-order Anvil Empires or pay in any way to gain access?
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No. The Pre-Alpha will be entirely free. Our goal of the Pre-Alpha is to refine the technology and gameplay and not to monetize users.
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How do I join the community talk about and give feedback on Anvil Empires?
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The best community channels for discussion and feedback will be the Anvil Empires Discord and Anvil Empires Subreddit.
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I heard that some people may have already played Anvil Empires before the Pre-Alpha. What's that all about?
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Previously, there were a series of closed tests and prototypes for exploring early gameplay ideas and for testing the R2 Engine in a real world environment. Those tests were relatively small in scale but were helpful getting development off the ground.
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​​What is the R²Engine?
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The R² Engine is a custom multiplayer engine developed by Siege Camp that aims to put 1000 players onto a dense battlefield in a persistent online world. It was designed from the ground up to make games like Anvil Empires a reality. The Red River Demo was the first big test for this technology.
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If Siege Camp is working on Anvil Empires, what will happen to the development of Foxhole?
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Anvil Empires is being developed by a separate division within Siege Camp. The Foxhole team will continue to support and expand on Foxhole for many years to come with new features, content, and improvements.