In our notes, test worlds have names like "seed 7" and "seed 11". The number is the seed the test world starts from, and it does a great deal of work for us.
A living world is hard to test because it never does the same thing twice. Wars start for reasons, prices move, a lord dies in March and everything after is different. If two runs differ, how do we know whether our change did it?
The seed is the answer. Start two runs from the same seed and they begin identically: same Houses, same places, same first decisions. Change one rule and run again, and what differs between the two runs is the effect of that rule.
It also keeps us from fooling ourselves. A fix that helps seed 7 and hurts seed 11 is not a fix, so the long tests run on several seeds and we publish the worse result in our notes, not the better one.
Age of Medieval is developed by UnderStudio in UnderStudio 2D and published by Brasa Interactive. It releases on 17 May 2027.
Age of Medieval on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3259670/
Official site: https://ageofmedieval.com/
