UE5 plugin · Grand strategy maps
Dynamic borders and territories are the wall every UE5 strategy dev hits — months of tech before anything is playable. Archway is the way through: drop in your province map, bake, and play it the same afternoon. Borders drawn in shader, built for 60+ fps.
First 100 licenses at $249 — then $299.
Unreal Engine 5.6+one-time licensecommercial on Pro14-day refund
Every UE5 strategy project hits the same wall: borders that break the moment ownership changes, adjacency wired by hand, province data typed row by row until the DataTable becomes a second job.
None of it is game design. It's a complexity tax — two to three months of topology, render paths, and transfer logic before one fun decision reaches the player. Some projects pay it. Many die against the wall. Archway exists so you walk through it — and spend the year on your game.
The wall, up close — five recurring losses
Province IDs, owners, adjacency — typed by hand, broken by every map revision.
Neighbor detection, shared edges, which side owns the line. Simple until runtime.
A static map holds. Dynamic conquest at province scale becomes a frame-budget war.
Borders that never move when players and AI actually conquer, split, or transfer.
One data shape that fights your design every time you add a system or region layer.
Same pipeline at every scale. Free for real prototypes — Pro when you grow and ship.
Drop Archway into your UE5 project. One plugin — the same pipeline from first bake to shipped build.
Bring the province texture and tables you already have — CSV, JSON, or DataTables. This is the end of manual data entry.
One bake builds ownership, shader-drawn borders, and runtime data. Play your map minutes later.
Map modes, live territories, your gameplay on top. The foundation is no longer your problem.
Stop rebuilding map infrastructure. Start shipping your game.
ArchwayCore is the foundation · future modules stack on top · the grand strategy stays yours
In the box
Not a blank plugin dump — a working sample world, so the first bake happens today.
UE5 plugin. Shader pipeline. Runtime territories. You keep the rules, the fantasy, and the UI.
Spline-smooth frontiers that redraw when empires move — conquest, splits, transfers, diplomacy colors.
Borders drawn in shader, territory data streamed at runtime. Dynamic worlds that never stutter.
Province texture and data in; a playable strategy world out. The end of manual data entry.
GDP, culture, control — any layer you expose, one click away. You can't manage what you can't see.
Transfer ownership, recolor frontiers, recompute neighbors from gameplay events — systems without boilerplate.
The whole world state — territories, entities, custom data — persisted without the headache.
Bake and iterate inside UE5. Designers and programmers share one pipeline.
ArchwayCore is the first brick. Future modules stack on top — never a locked grand-strategy clone.
Core ships first. Roadmap modules follow over 24 months for Pro and Studio.
Building shader borders, dynamic territories, map modes, and transfer tooling in-house is a multi-month engineering project — not a weekend material tweak.
At realistic contractor or full-time rates, that work lands around $12k–$24k before you polish edge cases and tools UX. Archway Pro is $299. Founders pay $249 while spots last. One-time. Commercial. The same class of problem, already solved as a plugin.
Don't spend a quarter rebuilding borders.
Spend an afternoon shipping the map.
Ledger — what Pro replaces
DIY estimate
$12k–$24k
Archway Pro
$249
Free proves it at small scale · Pro removes the caps and grants shipping rights
Real UE5 captures land here with the Founders build — conquest loops, map-mode switches, import-to-play. Until then we show the method, not stock empires.
From the workshop
I'm Zero. I spent hundreds of hours on border topology, runtime streaming, and map modes so the next strategy dev doesn't have to — Archway is the tool I wish I'd had when I hit the wall. It's built in the open: Founders get the Discord where first bakes and benchmarks land, and their feedback steers the roadmap. When early builders ship their maps, their words go here. Nothing on this page is invented.
— Zero, Origoma
Built for UE5 map & strategy teams who measure plugins in playable minutes, not feature lists.
One-time licenses. No subscription on Core. Pro is the seat you buy to ship.
The full engine. Hard caps.
$0
non-commercial · evaluation
Not included: commercial shipping · unlimited scale · full map modes · priority support
Start FreeBuild a real slice. Upgrade when you ship or hit the caps.
The seat for shipping map strategy in UE5.
$249$299
one-time · commercial · Founders — first 100 licenses
One-time. The seat you buy to ship.
Seats, onboarding, and source when the team needs them.
from$999
one-time · multi-title per EULA
Team — $999
Source — $2,999
100% of a Pro purchase credits toward Studio within 90 days.
| What you get | Explorer | Pro | Studio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Render quality | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Provinces | 500 | ∞ | ∞ |
| Territories | 5 | ∞ | ∞ |
| Commercial shipping | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Seats | 1 eval | 1 | 5+ |
| C++ source | ✗ | ✗ | Source tier |
| Support | Community | Priority Discord | Email + call |
14-day refund on Pro. Free is the real trial.
If the plugin doesn't fit your pipeline, you get your money back.
Not ready to buy? Start Free with the full engine — upgrade when you hit the caps or ship.
Caps, licenses, networking, and what is not included — spelled out.
A UE5 plugin that provides the map foundation for strategy games. Today it ships as ArchwayCore: provinces, territories, shader-drawn borders, map modes, save/load, and runtime ownership tools. Future modules will stack on that foundation. It is not a complete grand strategy game — you build your rules, AI, combat, economy, and UI on top. There is no in-game map editor in V1.
Same engine, same render quality. Free is capped at ~500 provinces, 5 territories, and 2 map modes, for non-commercial use — enough to evaluate and prototype for real. Pro removes the caps and adds commercial shipping rights, full map modes, priority support, and the 24-month updates window.
No. Free is for evaluation, learning, and non-commercial prototypes. To ship on Steam, consoles, or any commercial release, you need Pro or Studio.
No. Licenses are one-time purchases. Pro and Studio include 24 months of updates and roadmap modules. The maintenance policy after that window is documented at purchase time. A potential future major rewrite (a 2.0) may be a new product; 1.x updates stay with your license.
Unreal Engine 5.6+. We track engine upgrades for paid tiers; Free follows community builds. If you need a specific point release for a studio pipeline, ask before buying Studio.
Pro includes 1 seat — one developer machine as defined in the EULA. Seat add-ons are available. Teams of about 5 should look at Studio Team ($999). Sharing one Pro seat across a studio is not the license intent.
Pro includes shader source as packaged for that tier. Full C++ source is Studio Source ($2,999), source-available for internal use — not for redistribution, resale, or public forks.
Pro: 14-day refund. Free is the hands-on trial. If Pro doesn't fit after you buy, request a refund within 14 days per the checkout terms.
No. ArchwayCore is the map foundation. Future modules, when they ship, are composable bricks — not a forced CK3 clone. Your game remains your game.
Archway focuses on high-performance map representation and territory commands. The networking model — authority, replication of ownership — is your game's responsibility; the docs describe recommended patterns and constraints honestly. Studio tiers include higher-touch integration help.
Founders is capped at 100 Pro licenses at $249. After that, list is $299. When Founders is gone, it's gone.
Not for hobbyists who only need a static map texture. Not for teams wanting a full grand strategy game out of the box. Not for projects outside UE5. If you need a complete GS product, this isn't it — if you need the map foundation done right, it is.
A province map texture (PNG, JPG) plus province data files — CSV, JSON, or DataTables. The starter charts show the path; the system is architected so you can adapt it to your own data pipeline.
Today, not next year
Start Free and bake your own map this afternoon — proof, not promises. Or take Pro now and ship on it: unlimited scale, commercial license, 14-day refund.
Founders Pro is $249 for the first 100 licenses — then $299.
Unreal Engine 5.6+one-time licensecommercial on Pro14-day refundDiscord for builders