MOVING YOUR CITIES - DATE TO BE CONFIRMED We've
had a number of questions about what the mechanic will be for moving
cities once the biomes and faction seeding have been completed.
WHO CAN MOVE CITIES?All cities belonging to any player up until the point we have finished releasing Factions onto the map, which is expected around the first week of October. We will give at least 24hrs warning before the cutoff.
WHEN YOU RELEASE IT, HOW DO I MOVE CITIES?What we're doing for the "free relocation" offer is a grant of a one-shot
Tenaril's Spell of Ultimate Teleportation spell, granted with
the completion of the biomes and factions.
- Prepare to Cast the Spell:
- All
your units must be at home - you cannot have any units abroad. This
includes trade units, diplomatic units, or military units attacking,
occupying, reinforcing or whatever
- You must have cancelled all your trade offers
- You cannot have any reinforcements in your city
- You cannot be under siege or blockade
- You will auto-rescind any sovereignty claims you have from that city when you teleport, and any Sovereign Square Structures you have built will be lost
- You must cast the spell within 4 weeks of being granted it; it's not something you can save up for a rainy day :)
- You cast the spell from your Castle Summary page
- Will not cost mana or resources
- Will take time to cast, and the time taken to cast will have a
minimum time, and then extra time depending on size of
city. We're anticipating somewhere between 3 and 48 hours for smallest
to largest cities. You will be told of the casting time before you cast.
- Whilst
the spell is casting you cannot dispatch units or accept trade offers,
and you can be attacked. Your troops will defend as usual
- To begin casting the spell, simply press the "Cast Tenaril's Spell of Ultimate Teleportation"button which will be on the Castle Summary page
- When the spell has completed casting:
- You will be able to enter the co-ordinates of a square to teleport to.
You will need to do this very
carefully. If you miss out the minus sign and end up in the wrong
location, or make a typo in the X|Y co-ordinates, there is no undo
button and we won't be accepting petitions about mistakes.
- The target square you choose cannot
be within 10 squares of another
player who is either a) neutral, or b) is in any alliance other than
yours - though you can put your city next to another player's city in
your alliance, or one of your own "other" cities. You also cannot target a square that has someone else's sovereignty claim on it.
Exceptions to this rule are:
- you can settle near another non-allied player's town if it is at zero population and the player has not logged in for a period of one week
- you can settle near another non-allied player's town if it has more than zero population but the player has no logged in for a period of more than 4 weeks
- Press the "Check Destination"
button, which will tell you whether the square is a valid location to
teleport your city to. If it is not, you will need to enter a new
destination.
- When the system is happy with your intended destination, a "Confirm Teleportation"
button will appear. Pressing it will take your city's underlying
terrain, units, buildings, technologies and resources (basically your
entire city) with you, and instantly arrive at the destination
- Any inbound units to your city that has now "teleported" will be instantly
returned to their owning town (and the units' owner will get a message
explaining this). This includes any sieges and/or blockades that have
been set up at your town since you began casting the spell
Please note the following:
THIS IS NOT YET LIVEIt's not live yet, and we will give at least 48hrs warning before we intend to put this live.
We
won't be putting out the warning for a few weeks, as we anticipate this
is how long it will take to get the factions seeded onto the map.
THE DETAILS ARE UNCONFIRMED
We might discover there are things we've missed out over the next few weeks, and so this is subject to change.
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE & EVERYTHING
aka Where do I want to live? What will water do? How will Factions work? What will you change in the future?
This question is fraught with difficulty, and we can only offer advice.
The
fact is that we will be introducing different functionality into
Illyriad at later points, and this may change the 'nature' of the
various map locations.
As an example, the East and West sides of
the map may be opened out in the future to new terrain, and perhaps
joined up with the seas and oceans in the south of the world. Or they
may not.
As another example, the first release of Factions will
have every faction as a static entity; so if you choose to situate your
city right next to the Hub of the "Outlaw Bandits" Faction, nothing will
happen and you will suffer no penalty. However, at a later stage we
may introduce some Faction AI whereby the Outlaw Bandits may roam around
their area of the map, intercepting and ambushing trade caravans - and
this *will* affect you (unless you make friends with the Outlaw Bandit
Faction, of course).
As a third example, you might settle by some
tidal sea because you really want to get involved in ship-building and
naval warfare once they arrive - but when we actually come round to
introducing navies we decide that there will be a difference between the
types of boats you can operate on rivers vs tidal water vs sea vs ocean
- and the ship you want to build is a deep-water ship bristling with
ballistas, but you've built your city on a river and now feel anger that
you can't build the ship of your dreams.
What I'm trying to impart here is that, as you all know, we are in a continuous development cycle of adding things to the game.
So the decisions you make now as to where to move your city will
inevitably be decisions you're making without the full knowledge of what might happen in the future. In most cases
we too don't
even know the mechanics of what we have planned to introduce. In some
cases we don't even know that we're going to introduce something at the
moment, because we haven't thought of it yet.
Make plans for the now, and keep a weather eye on the future, but don't expect it to turn out exactly how you planned it.
This piece of advice applies to everything you do in the game - we try not to swing
The Changebat Of Doom too often (sometimes its a
Buffbat and sometimes its a
Nerfbat;
everyone has an opinion on what kind of bat it is), but we will be
changing things, continuously, regularly and comprehensively - as that's
what moves a game along. All of us here in the dev and content team
are gamers - we believe this is incredibly important to make Illyriad
better than the rest - and so we really, genuinely understand the pain
brought by a large release that affects a lot of the ingame world. For
many of us sitting on the other side of the fence has been quite an
eye-opener!
There are a few "general principles" I'd like to
impart at this point that may affect your planning of where to relocate
to, or whether you want to relocate at all - but please bear in mind
that
nothing below is set in stone.
Plan your city move based on the information here if you wish, but we're not guaranteeing anything.
You might wish to leave your city where it is rather than move it.
There are advantages for doing so in that the existing terrain you have
directly around your city (and your sovereign squares) is likely to
contain more diversity than somewhere else on the map.
THINGS THAT MIGHT HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE THAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE YOU MOVE YOUR CITY- NPC FACTIONS & TRADE SCARCITY
We intend Factions to play a major role in Illyriad, and we intend them to ultimately have a very active 'learning' AI.
Each
Faction will consume different kinds of goods in different kinds of
quantities, and will also produce different kinds of goods (regular
goods as well as components for crafting, when this is introduced).
Each
Faction will have its own friends and enemies, and the more friendly
you become with a particular faction the more your relationship with
their enemies will deteriorate - and vice versa.
Different Factions will have different levels of tolerance to outsiders (ie you).
The "danger" to players from nearby Factions generally increases as you move further from the center of the map, though this increase is not linear.
For
example, The Council of Illyriad faction, located in the center of the
map, is tolerant of all players and won't generally interfere in what
they do. However, if you settle your city right next to (eg) the
far-North-East Hub of the Undead Faction called the "City of Eternal
Damnation and Death to all Living Things" then - when Faction AI is
released - you shouldn't be surprised if your life is more difficult
because of your choice.
When we release Factions onto the map we
will provide brief descriptions of each Faction, what the Faction stands
for and who they generally like or dislike. We will specifically mark
those Factions that are best avoided because they hate everyone,
although we strongly recommend that you use common sense regarding
factions nearby your relocation point. An Elf who settles next to a
Goblin Hub Capital City is likely to be sorry in the future.
- WATER FEATURES & NAVIES
Some of the things we hope to do are:
Introduce
restrictions on the type of ship or boat and the kind of water it can
traverse. For example, small fishing boats might operate on lakes and
tidal water, but not seas and oceans; or Barges might only operate on
rivers and lakes.
Introduce canal-building (the "road of the
water") to connect up previously unconnected rivers and lakes - although
this will be a fairly major endeavour.
Allow Sovereignty claims
on water features, and introduce NPC squares on water, and we do intend
on introducing fishing, whaling, oyster farming and a wide variety of
other maritime and freshwater possibilities.
Introduce Siege capable ships - though we're not anticipating introducing amphibious warfare, so you won't be able to Storm and Capture or Storm and Raze from a ship.
Armies will not be able to occupy, siege or blockade from water tiles - although ships will.
Before you all rush off to the sea/river/island there are also downsides to consider; some of which I will outline here:
We
do intend sea monsters, shoals, reefs and whirlpools and the like, as
well as weather conditions from squalls and fogs and possibly up to
hurricanes. Being on the water is a dangerous business, and for those
people who don't like "unforeseeable events", the water isn't
necessarily a good place to concentrate on.
We intend to introduce a slew of new buildings for maritime purposes.
Shipwrights, ship building yards, harbormaster's offices, docks, dockside warehouses, lighthouses and so on.
One thing I can guarantee is that anyone and everyone who wishes to run
water-based units (boats, barges and ships) will need to devote *at
least* one town plot to this purpose.
A player who just needs a
few boats to carry his trade units across a river probably won't need
more than a single "dock" building.
On the other hand, a
full-fledged trading port with access to rivers, tidal waters, seas and
deep (ocean) waters, who wants to use his town as a kind of transport
"hub" - loading and unloading goods and passengers, collecting taxes
& tolls from other players who use the facilities etc should
probably plan on committing more than half his city to this purpose.
The
moon will affect tides, and tides will affect what you can and can't do
on water (depending on ship type) - as will a day/night cycle mirroring
the server clock. Moving a ship to a port at midnight (if the port
doesn't have a lighthouse) might be inadvisable. And yes, before you
ask, we are sympathetic to player's timezones.
If you choose to
be on an Island, you will - ultimately - have additional logistical
considerations. For example, to engage on the mainland you will need to
board a ship with units and then disembark them.
- TRAVEL TIMES & TERRAIN
Pathfinding
(in this context) is a mechanism by which your travelling units will
find the best path from point A to point B. At the moment, all units
travel linearly, directly across the map to their destination, but in
the future they will find their own path.
We intend to allow
players some control over the paths their units take (setting waypoints
for example, or areas / players to avoid whilst moving).
Once pathfinding is introduced, your choice of terrain and the terrain your units pass over will affect movement speed.
The
effect that terrain has on movement speed will follow common sense
principles. Crossing a very high mountain range will take a lot of
time. Going through the thickest, densest jungle will take a lot of
time. Walking across some low hills won't take too long, and crossing
plains will be fast. Boat transport will be the fastest of all.
We
do intend to introduce road-building (of various types of road, from
dirt tracks to paved highways, all with different movement speeds), and
we also intend to introduce canals and locks (also of various types and
speeds). These will be expensive and will require maintenance -
probably in the form of Sovereignty. Roads will substantially increase
movement speed.
We intend to introduce the option for you to charge tolls to players who use your city infrastructure (roads / canals / ports).
For
those in powerblocs (clusters of cities right next to each other), I
should mention that moving through or over cities will be painful -
taking an army through a busy city isn't going to be a quick process.
Cities in the center of powerblocs will have movement speeds (inbound
and outbound) severely curtailed, whilst the units cross the surrounding
cities.
- TERRAFORMING
We do intend on introducing some abilities to terraform, so players get the ability to change the terrain around them.
Some terraforming will be manual labour, and others will be magic-based.
Changing terrain will cost astronomical amounts and will take a very long time - depending on what you want to do.
For
example, sending out woodcutters to fell an entire forest and turn it
into plains will take less time and be cheaper than planting a forest,
managing/tending it - and letting it grow into Light Woods.
For
more dramatic terrain changes, there will be a set of spells in the
geomancy school for these purposes. These spells will cost astronomical
amounts to cast, and will take huge amounts of time.
It is
anticipated that you will only be able to "shift" terrain one step at at
a time. ie Plains to Small Hills, Small Hills to Large Hills, Large
Hills to Small Mountains, Small Mountains to Large Mountains.
The
one thing that needs to be made clear about Terraforming is that it is
not something we want to become the norm for players to do instead of
settling where they want to be and/or moving cities. The costs and time
to terraform will reflect this - for example, think timelines to
terraform a single square in terms of weeks and months rather than days
and hours.
- FUTURE CITY MOVES (AFTER THIS ONE-OFF FREE MOVE)
We
intend to introduce some form of "moving your city" in the future,
which will partially enable a "nomadic" existence. The precise details
of this are (as is everything in this post!) still not finalised, but
one thing is for sure - cities will be penalised for moving, and the
penalty will grow with the city size to move.
You can't expect to pack up a L20 Forge and move it, but you might be able to pack up a L5 Forge and move with it.
- FUTURE MAP CHANGES
We're still changing the map. We're detailing areas that we want to craft in specific ways for specific purposes.
Most
of these changes are to far-flung areas, but please be aware that any
and all areas of the map will be changing - and possibly changing
radically - for the foreseeable future. It is, after all, a living and
breathing world.
We don't intend to change a) terrain you're
settled upon, b) terrain directly N, S, E, W of your city, and c)
terrain that you have claimed Sovereignty on.
Once we've enabled
City Moving we will try and keep changes to a minimum - however, there
will inevitably still be parts of the map we'll be making alterations
to. We'll try and minimise the impact of these changes.
We are
also going to be introducing a wider set of standard world map tile
types, to break up the monotony and busy-ness of some of the new
topographic areas with more interesting features and variation. These
tiles will mostly be cosmetic variations, and the underlying square
won't change (in most cases).
I hope this helps you
understand some more about the future, and helps you see where we're
going with other things. Please bear in mind that we expect that very
few of the items listed above will occur during 2010, so this is a very,
very far-looking heads-up.
Most of all, I hope this reinforces
that we're at the beginning of the process of changing the world from a
catapillar into a butterfly - it's a living world and it's a changing
world, and there is as much wisdom as there is folly in trying to
predict what the future will bring - but it will all, definitely, be
worth it in the end.
Best wishes,
GM Stormcrow
Edited by GM Stormcrow - 12 Oct 2010 at 11:08
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Moving Cities - a heads up 16SEP10
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However, if you settle your city right next to (eg) the
far-North-East Hub of the Undead Faction called the "City of Eternal
Damnation and Death to all Living Things" then - when Faction AI is
released - you shouldn't be surprised if your life is more difficult
because of your choice.
