Firestorm

Firestorm is a 2004 Aquizireikigs strategy videogame set in an alternate future, where the Brotherly Wars which plagued the Serpentine Countries for the later half of the 20th century where never resolved, resulting in a localised nuclear apocalypse after an unspecied country excalated the tension by trying to reunite the Ex-Aquizi-Martic Commonwealth lands. The game itself was the fourth game developped and published by the then fledgling studio Blacksands Entertainment, and was their first major hit, and the franchise it eventually lead to continues to generate the best selling games of the company, despite limited attemps to diversify their products.

The game, although somewhat controversial at the time, was seen as a warning call advocating for peace in the region. Although many saw it as notting more than an overly pessimistic and unrealistic inflamatory piece, many of the youth semmed to resonate with its message.

Of note, while the video game itself was comparatively limited in terms of graphics and engine when compared to games developped in other alutran countries at the time, which initially hindered its spread outside of Serpentine countries, it has nonetheless become famous and generally rated well by critics.

Setting
In 2071, after decades of increasing tensions between the Serpentines countries, an unspecified country (likely Martland or Aquizireiki) invades its neighbour by controverially using tactical nuclear weapons, thinking that it would go unnoposed by the other powers due to fear. In response however, other countries begin usgin their own nuclear arsenal, eventually resulting in the 7 hour war, which finnally marked the end of the century long conflict, as all side have now been too irradiated too continue fighting.

Althought the situation outside of the serpentine valley remained unclear, it is alluded that the local nuclear exchange spark some global conlicts and a period of increased tensions between all Alutran countries. It would later be revealed in the Lathadu-Wastes Expansion Pack that the rest of the world began infighting over how to deal with the situation, especially the nuclear falout, and failure to coordinate eventually resulted in the near total destruction of Lathadu by hydrogen bombs.

Easter Eggs
Located in Calleebane in the Lathadu expansion pack, there exists the boarded up and fortified remains of the Myrish embassy; including a tripwire near the front door and spike traps lining the perimeter of the foundation. Once the building is entered, several friendly armed personnel will greet you in Myrish, stating that they only kill Martics. Once talked to further, the men and women will reveal that they were Myrish embassy workers and peacekeeping personnel prior to the fallout, and that they will hold out in the fortified embassy until "The Myrish government comes to sweep us up". If spoken to more, the Myrs may give you an additional quest to recover two more of their men who got attacked whilst searching for food 2 days prior, their names being Kjell Sorem and Tom Kallevig. Once found, Kjell will reveal that he is the only survivor and that Tom was killed by bandits. Kjell will follow you back to the embassy while you defend him from more raiders. Once you give Kjell back to the embassy, the Myrs will give you between 16 and 64 salvaged components and a pre-war myrish flag. If you chose to scrap this flag while in sight of the personnel, they will become hostile, no matter your prior interactions. It is also possible, by using a leader with a very high diplomacy stat, to recruit the Myrs as citizens, depending on your faction type and your actions. Notably, a falw in the event related to the recruitment, refer to as Myrsplosion by the community, made it possible to recruit the myrs over and over via opening the carava inventory at specific times. This as been patched after it was infamously used in the official Firestorm Tournament of 2019.

If a caravane is traveling in the wild regions of the northwest of Martland, there is a 0.4%% chance that an event will apear mentioning an explosion sound being heard in the distance. If the player chose to investigate further, the they may discover several burnt, dead bandit corpses, as well as a dead bull and several sticks of explosives nearby. It can be inferred that aforementioned bandits attempted to blow up a cow, but failed miserably.

Gameplay
The gameplay of firestorm is primarily focused around four core elements, which are exploration, polity managment, diplomacy, and combat.

Start
The first prompt you get once the introduction cinematic is over is to choose chose a character, a faction type, and a homeregion. based on the choices you made, different locations will be either available or blocked. The game also informs you as to the advantages and inconvenients of certain locations, such as presence of water, climate, elevation, natural bounty, number of polities present, presence of roaming raiders, and a region difficulty estimate, which all vary based on a randomly generated number, the selected difficulty, and/or the faction type chosen.

Notably, the Lathadu Expansion Pack adds a character creation menu, the possibility to select a seed, additional difficulties (basebuilder, hardcore, and nightmare), and additional faction types, as well as subfactions and special start conditions.

Based onyour previous choices, you will start with a set number of citizens (either referred too as tribesmen, survivors, gang-members, cultists, serfs, settlers or troops based on your faction type), various different ressources (such as metals, plantmatter, rations, water, power, seeds, medicine, scrap electronics, slaves and karma), some predetermined technologies, and a few randnomly generated leaders (specialized citizens able to lead expeditions or manage settlements). Moreover, you will start with preset relations with different neighboring polities based on your previous choices (if any such polity is present in your homeregion).

While traditional starts always provide a settlement to begin with, the Lathadu Expension Pack made it possible to start as a nomadic group, which comes with its additional challenges and bonuses, and was only previously possible via the usage of third party game modifications (known as mods).

Exploration
Exploration is a unique as a mechanic, as it can be either enterely ignored via automation (which was the only option upon initial releash), or become the main focus of the game, depending on the player playstyle. This is possible due to the Sands of Time Edition introducing the possibility to directly control leaders on epxloration missions, as well as the quest mechanic, and the Desserts of Glass Edition introducing Automated base managment via the use of a leaders with a high managment stat.

Exploration is the primary way to obtain more ressources in the early game, as trade is only viable once your polity has grown enough to become influencial, your diplomatic ties good enough to incite traders to come over, and your area free enough of roaming raiders.

Exploration works via the use of leaders to create caravanes (which have various names based on faction type), which are tend able to be used by the player to go collect ressources outside of their settlements, fight hostile caravanes, siege settlements, transport ressources, trade, recruit citizens, be diplomatic envoys (for harder difficulties), and, as of the Sands of Time Edition, accomplish various quests in echange for rewards, the most common of which is electronic scraps, the msot common in-game currency, which is also used in making advanced infrastructure.

Management
Very early on, the player will be asked to make choices relative to their polity (the faction that they control), which can result in various beneficial or detrimental outcomes. The player aims to expend its influence over the wastelands via either conquest, negotiation, trade, or religion, while at the same time trying to grow their faction through recruitment, enslavement and population growth. However, many choices have detrimental effects on the afformentioned mechanics, via modification of polity stats (unity, prosperity, development and health), or by triggering in-game events, such as raids, famines, plagues, civil wars, slave revolts, and other such catastrophes.

Moreover, the chosen difficulty will also impact the frequency and severity of random events (both prompts and in-game events). The Lathadu Expension Pack also added the option to set a disctinct difficulties for each polity stats, which is a feature that has been long requested by the fans ever since the initial releash, and served to allieviate issues with game balance.

Lathadu Expansion Pack
The Lathadu Expansion Pack was released in 2016 as a joint effort between Blacksands Entertainment and Laaghey Studios. While called an Expension, it was more akind to an overhauled edition, as it more than quaaadrupled the size of the gamefiles, and allowed any owner of one of the previous editions to upgrade to the latest edition for a small fee while purchasing the expansion. The official statement inquirering as to the reson for the peculiar name of this seemingly "new edition" was that this was done in order to avoid backlash from the fanbase, as many had speculated that the project would "betray the spirit of the game" due to the contribution and financement from Laaghey Studios.

The expansion itself served to modernize the game significantly while adding significant amount of roleplay content and graphical assets, notably around the presence of other Alutran countries' nationals and their presence in the world. It also served to significantly increase the size of the map by adding various scale options and the Lathadun Wastes region, and also addressed a myriad of issues with the previous three installments, notably via bug fixes and implementing long requested balance changes.

More importantly however, it reworked multiplayer, which had been barely functional since its introduction in Desserts of Glass, making large scale competitions such as the firestorm tournament. This descision has been often praised by fans as a perfect exemple how developers can gain by listening to their fanbase.

The expansion itself was the first official content to have been published after the signing of the Kandi Accords, nearly five years earlier, and was initially pitched in 2013 by Laaghey Studios as a way to capitalize on the now exploding popularity of the game, as it had rapidly become a cult classic in neighboring East Alutran nations. Overall, it was seen by the fans of the franchise as a massive success, and marked the beginnings of Lathadu-Aquizi cooperation on various projects related to the media industry.