31JAN20 - REGULAR SEASONAL TOURNAMENTS

Hi Everyone,

INTRODUCING REGULAR SEASONAL TOURNAMENTS & REGIONAL TOTEMS

In honour of Illyriad's 10-year anniversary (the game launched in Public Beta on Feb 22nd, 2010 - I had to look it up on google!)... we're extremely excited to introduce regular King of the Hill-style tournaments to Illyriad with a truly worthy reward - REGIONAL TOTEMS. These totems introduce further potential for long-term, alliance-level, inter-regional, military- and production-based strategies.

The Seasonal Tournament runs 4 times a year, every year, covering the entire months of:

• February
• May
• August
• November

The tournament squares will randomly move within each region at around 10 minutes after midnight (Server Time - UTC) on:

• 31st January - for the February (Spring) tournament
• 30th April - for the May (Summer) tournament
• 31st July - for an August (Fall) tournament
• 31st October - for a November (Winter) tournament

TOURNAMENT RULES

These are our signature king-of-the-hill tournaments, one tournament square per region - but with a major addition: totems.

The following rules are the same as they've always been for dev-run tournaments, and you can skip down to the REWARDS section if you're fully aware of how our king-of-the-hill tournaments traditionally run.

From one second into the beginning of the tournament month, through to Midnight on the last day of the tournament month, any member of any alliance in occupation of these squares receives credit for holding the square. Occupation credit and details will be shown on the ingame tournament pages, as usual.

Credit is based on the length of occupation of each square. Time occupied by an alliance on each square counts towards the Alliance total.

This credit is on an alliance basis - individual players cannot receive rewards from participating in these tournaments.

You are not allowed to leave your alliance, or be kicked from your alliance while you have any armies present on one of the Tournament Squares.

All NAPs, Confeds etc are suspended for the duration of this tournament for any military interaction on the Tournament Squares. The Peace of the Camp rule will not work on these Tournament Squares.

The alliance that holds each individual regional square for the longest period of time during the tournament month is declared the Regional Winning Alliance for the tournament.

All activity on these tournament squares in each region will also be aggregated, so the top 3 alliances that overall have the most amount of possession across all squares will be the Global Winning Alliances, ranked First, Second and Third.

All tournament activity will be summarised on the tournament pages ingame, as usual.

THE REWARDS

The First, Second and Third Global Winning Alliances will receive a medal customised for their level of victory (Gold, Silver and Bronze respectively), as well as the Season and Year of victory embedded into the medal design.

However, the really serious reward here is for each Regional Winning Alliance.

INTRODUCING REGIONAL TOTEMS

Each Regional Winning Alliance will get to choose a REGIONAL TOTEM - an incredibly powerful and valuable landmark that will operate until a later winner chooses to change it.

Once chosen, each region's totem provides an effect on ALL CITIES located in the entire region, until replaced.

Please note that - once chosen - the totem CANNOT BE CHANGED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES until the next regional winner of the next tournament chooses to change it.

THE REGIONAL TOTEMS & BONUSES

Totem	Name	Bonus
	Verdant Growth	+10% Wood
	Earth's Marrow	+10% Clay
	Ferric Flow	+10% Iron
	Heart of Stone	+10% Stone
	Cornucopia	+5% Food
	Inactive Totem	No bonuses

So, to summarize... as the Regional Winner of any one of these tournaments, you can set (or remove) an additional bonus that applies to all cities in the entire region you won. That's pretty powerful!

There will also be a new satellite button off the World Map icon on the top of your screen, which will take you to the Regional Summary page.

This page will summarise (once the first Regional Tournament is completed) the current Regional Winning Alliance, the totem they've chosen, who precisely (in the Regional Winning Alliance) chose the totem, and when it was chosen. There will also be a link to a Regional Detail page, which will summarise the entire totem history for each region. This satellite button and link are not yet live.

FAQs

Q. Wait! This bonus will apply to all cities in the region once it's been chosen?
A. Yep, all cities - not just those of the Regional Winning Alliance. However, the Regional Winning Alliance gets to make the choice of totem for the entire region.

Q. If we win multiple regions can we have different totems in each region?
A. Yes, absolutely! Each region may have different needs, and so it's entirely up to the Alliance making the choice for each region.

Q. If our alliance wins a region, do we have to make the choice of totem within a certain time period?
A. No, you don't. If you don't make a choice, then whatever the existing totem is will continue to run for that region until a choice is made, or until the next tournament - where a different alliance might win the region, and wins the right to choose a new totem.

Q. If our alliance wins a region, who in the alliance gets to make the choice of totem for that region?
Any of the Regional Winning Alliance's SuperUser player accounts will be able to choose the totem for the region after the region has been won.

Q. Alliance SuperUser X made a mistake in choosing our totem! Can we choose again?
A. No. This is VERY important; the first Regional Winning Alliance SuperUser who chooses the totem has cast the die for the whole alliance - and for the whole region - until the next tournament, where they can choose again if they win, or some other winner can choose the totem differently. There's a big "ARE YOU SURE?" popup to confirm the selection. You can't come back to the dev team and say "But we really wanted X totem, this person messed it up!". That's tough luck; and perhaps that person shouldn't be an alliance SuperUser :) Choosing the totem and bonus for all player cities in the entire region is a great responsibility, and shouldn't be taken lightly.

Q. I don't participate in tournaments, why should another alliance have a say in what bonus I get?
A. This is why the totems are either neutral or positive bonuses, rather than penalties. They have to be this way, because they apply to ALL cities within the region. We don't want to penalise players who, for whatever reason, choose not to participate in a tournament. In the end, everyone either stays resource neutral (if the "Inactive Totem" is chosen)... or they get something distinctly useful, chosen by the Regional Winning Alliance. As a neutral/non-tournament-participant you get status quo - or upside, but no penalty.

Q. I'm not a Regional Winning Alliance SuperUser. Why shouldn't I have a say in which totem is chosen?
A. That's the perk of being a leader of the Regional Winning Alliance. However, we can certainly imagine different alliances may implement their own internally-decided ways of deciding what totem to implement for a particular region - ranging from autocratic self-interest through direct democracy all the way to anarchistic random choice. It's up to the SuperUser of the Regional Winning Alliance to choose the totem for the entire region by whatever method they see fit.

Q. Why is the February tournament called Spring as that seems more like Winter to me, same with the August tournament for Fall?
A. This is because the tournaments run for a month before the next Illy season and environmental bonuses kick in. So the change of totem matches the Illy seasons.

The Illy Seasons are:

• Spring is March thru May; so the Spring tournament is held in February
• Summer is June thru August, so the Summer tournament in held in May
• Fall is September thru November, so the Fall tournament is held in August
• Winter is December thru February, so the Winter tournament is held in November

Q. When the quarterly tournament is not running, do these totem squares function as regular tournament squares?
A. Yes, with one caveat... These squares continue to function as tournament squares with the concurrent suspension of NAPs and Alliances on these squares, in order to facilitate (eg) a player-run tournament or perhaps some 'friendly' inter-alliance combat practice. However, outside of the official Regional Tournament Months, players can quit or be kicked from their alliance, even if they are in occupation of these tournament squares. Please get in touch via petition if this is an issue for a player-run tournament you wish to operate, and we can potentially accommodate.

Q. Does this mean that the tournament squares are going to rotate reliably every 3 months?
A. Yes. We think this is a great idea, as sometimes alliances organise their own mini-tournaments or battle practices on the tournament squares, and we've had player-run tournaments in the past. So, having a reliable tournament schedule is important for players to know, so that they can be confident that we won't just rotate the squares in the middle of something they've organised themselves, be that battle practice, or a war.

This means that 4 months of the year are given over to these dev-run Regional Tournaments, and 8 months of the year are provided for interested alliances to run their own tournaments or combat practice on these squares.

Q. These totem bonuses are great and all, but they're pretty generic resource-driven ones. Will there be more interesting totem bonuses available in the future?
A. Yep. We're just starting with these ones as proof of concept; but we have plans to introduce different totems with radically different regional effects in the future.

We hope you all enjoy this new feature of Illyriad, and thank you for your continuing support!

Happy 10th Anniversary!

Regards,

GM Stormcrow, GM Cerberus, GM Thundercat