13 · Monetisation

Status: Skeleton · Owner: TBD · Updated: 2026-09-23

Purpose

Define how the game earns, and the limits the team agrees to in advance — before revenue pressure makes the decision for you.

To define

• Business model: F2P + IAP (assumed), ads?, premium?
• Hard currency name, pricing tiers, regional pricing
• Store structure: bundles, daily deals, first-purchase, growth funds
• Subscriptions / VIP
• Season pass
• Gacha rates and disclosure, if heroes are gacha
• Cosmetics: city skins, banners, castle appearance, titles
• What money can NOT buy — the written line
• Target KPIs and the LTV/CAC model (link the sheet)

Think about

• Write the "never sell" list first, while everyone is still idealistic. It is the only time it can be written honestly. Candidates: exclusive units unobtainable by play, permanent unanswerable power, pay-to-skip-consequences in PvP.
• Cosmetics are under-exploited in this genre and fit this game unusually well. A city is a persistent, visible, screenshot-able possession, and your premise is dripping with visual identity — gilded Pagan temple fields, Majapahit harbours at festival. This is revenue that costs no balance.
• VIP/subscription is the genre's most reliable recurring revenue and also its most criticised mechanic when it gates quality-of-life (extra build queue, auto-collect). Decide which side of convenience-vs-power each perk sits on.
• Regional pricing is not optional for this setting. If your strongest markets are Southeast Asia, a flat USD price wall excludes the audience most invested in the theme. Price tiers and local payment methods materially change the addressable market.
• The whale/F2P ratio is a design contract. A server needs a large F2P population for spenders to have a world worth dominating. Protect F2P viability as a business requirement, not as charity.
• Do not sell the thing your pillars promised. If "thinking beats spending" survives from Overview, then a bundle that flatly out-powers good play breaks the game's premise. That tension will recur every quarter — resolve it in writing now so future-you can point at this page.
• Cultural sensitivity extends to the store. Selling sacred iconography as a cosmetic, or a revered historical figure in a gacha, reads very differently in the culture it belongs to. Route store content through the same review as the roster.

Open questions

#	Question	Blocks	Owner
1	Is there gacha?	Heroes, positioning, legal
2	Ads: rewarded video, or none at all?	UX, revenue mix
3	What is on the "never sell" list?	Everything