18 · Scope & Milestones

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

Purpose

State what is actually being built first, what is deliberately deferred, and how progress is judged. This page prevents the GDD from becoming a wish list.

To define

• Team size and composition
• Prototype goal and success criteria
• Vertical slice definition
• Soft-launch scope, markets and target metrics
• Global launch scope
• Post-launch roadmap, first 6 months
• The explicit cut list

Scope tiers (draft)

Tier	Contains	Purpose
Prototype	One dynasty, city build loop, one battle type, no meta	Answer: is the core loop fun?
Vertical slice	Two dynasties, ages I–II, alliances, one event type	Answer: does it look and feel like the pitch?
Soft launch	4 dynasties, full loop, live-ops tooling, monetisation	Answer: do the metrics work?
Global launch	Full roster, seasons, cross-server, localisation	Scale

Think about

• The prototype must answer one question, not demo the game. For Moksha the question is almost certainly: does the battle layer deliver enough strategy to justify the AoE half of the pitch? Everything else in the genre is well understood and copyable; that is the part that could fail.
• Cut list beats feature list. Write down what is explicitly NOT in v1 — cross-server war, naval combat, the decline/rebirth system, half the roster — so deferral is a decision on record rather than a silent slip.
• A live 4X is a service, not a shipment. The launch team is smaller than the live team you will need in month six. If there is no plan for ongoing event authoring, balance and community, the game decays regardless of launch quality.
• Soft launch needs enough content to reach the retention horizon you care about. D30 metrics need 30 days of content. Shipping a 10-day game to a soft launch market gives you data about a 10-day game.
• Roster size and age count are the two scope levers that move the most. Dropping from six dynasties to four, or four ages to three, cuts more schedule than any feature you will be tempted to cut first.
• Budget the cultural review as a milestone dependency, not a final check. If faction art cannot ship without review, that review is on the critical path.

Open questions

#	Question	Blocks	Owner
1	Team size and budget?	All scope
2	Target launch window?	Everything
3	Soft-launch markets?	Localisation, pricing