Weather is a first-class system in Age of Light and Ruin — not flavor. Every other system reads climate state. A storm cuts navy speed. A drought drops grain yield. A heat wave taxes city morale. A blessing from your sky-god overrides the weather for an hour.
The system is built around four principles:
- Partly random — weather isn't fully predictable.
- Increasingly predictable through research — observatories, almanacs, oracles.
- Affects everything — war, resources, commerce, morale, movement, health, religion, navigation.
- Can be manipulated — by gods (short divine overrides) and by world-collapse pressure (end-times weaponization).
| Layer |
What it does |
| Calendar |
Fixed 12-month, 360-day year. Months bound to seasons. |
| Day / Night |
Each day cycles through Day and Night phases. Length depends on season. |
| Wind |
Continuous direction + speed. Shown via cloud drift. Affects navigation, fire, smoke, projectiles. |
| Seasonal |
Probability distribution of weather events shifts with the season. |
| Climate map |
The map's long-term identity (cold, temperate, desert, monsoon, volcanic) — gates which weather templates are possible. |
| Event |
Actual weather events: rain, storm, fog, drought, snow, flood, heat wave, gale, ash fall, etc. |
So at any moment the player sees: current date, current season, day or night, wind direction and speed, forecast trend, and current active weather.
- 1 in-game day = 108 real minutes on Standard 1× worlds. Speed-server variants scale this proportionally (0.5× = 216 min, 3× = 36 min).
- 1 month = 30 in-game days.
- 1 year = 12 months = 360 in-game days.
- 1 season = 3 months = 90 in-game days.
Months are bound to seasons. The calendar always tells the season.
¶ Standard maps
| Months 1–3 |
Months 4–6 |
Months 7–9 |
Months 10–12 |
| Spring |
Summer |
Autumn |
Winter |
| Months 1–3 |
Months 4–6 |
Months 7–9 |
Months 10–12 |
| Bloom Season |
Dry Season |
High Heat |
Storm Season |
Map-specific season schedule (see source). Rain rhythms drive the agricultural cycle.
Climate translates into four stress axes that other systems read:
- Heat — drains stamina, damages crops, raises plague risk.
- Cold — slows movement, raises food consumption, kills exposed units.
- Flood — destroys roads and farms, but boosts riverine farming for some cultures.
- Disease — endemic spike under poor health needs and certain weather kinds (plague waves in summer monsoons).
Each culture has signature flags that modify how weather hits them:
- Fjordborn — cold-halving (cold stress is reduced by ~50%).
- Sun Dune — heat resistance, desert attrition immunity.
- River Crown — flood-farm boost (flood events grant a yield bonus instead of damage).
- Jade Lotus — monsoon engineering (rain windows boost workshops).
- Cairnveil — fog ambush bonus.
- Condor Crown — high-altitude cold tolerance, thin-air movement penalty for visitors.
- Azure Isles — sea-storm navigation bonus.
- Thunder Lodge — winter shared-stores resilience.
See your culture page for the full flag list.
Research enables foresight:
- Astronomy I — 1-day forecast accuracy.
- Almanac — 3-day forecast.
- Observatory — 5-day, plus seasonal trend prediction.
- Oracle — divine forecast (short, but high-confidence — gates Phase 2).
Gods with weather domains can override weather temporarily:
- Hroth Stormfather (Fjordborn) — calm a storm or summon one over enemy fleets.
- Asha Sun-Queen (Sun Dune) — heat-extend a region (cooks enemy armies).
- Heket Floodmother (River Crown) — trigger a flood window.
- Manaw Mist-Father (Cairnveil) — drape fog for an ambush.
- See full list in pantheon by culture.
Divine overrides cost faith and are short-lived. They are tactical, not strategic.
In the world-collapse phase, climate weaponizes:
- Storms double in frequency and damage.
- Heat waves become global.
- "Black weather" events appear (ash falls, blood rain, magnetic storms — destroy faith and morale).
- Some cultures get end-times divine domains that turn collapse into power.
See world collapse.
Sources: climate.md, rts_weather_design_table.xlsx, metrics.md §13.