Eliminate Option to Tenaril After Exodus

Brandmeister wrote: Several steps could be eliminated if we could simply declare any town our capital. Why is it necessarily the first one?

hear, hear.  the devs promised this when they introduced Tenaril's and have never delivered on it.

terraforming opens up sections of the map that would otherwise be less habitable (i.e., sections devoid of 7-food squares), so i submit that removing it from the game would put new players at a further disadvantage, since they now would not only have to live with their first 5-food city, but might also have to make further compromises on a crowded map that no longer offered terraformed spaces as an option.

i agree that the process is arcane and burdensome, but the burdensome part is exodus rather than terraforming.  alliance assistance can make it much more enjoyable, and serves as an excellent introduction to one's allies.  as Le Roux has consistently pointed out, there is no issue reaching the population for 10 cities with one located on 5-food, so it really should be optional.  furthermore, the vast majority of players will never reach the point where it matters, as in the usual player churn they move on well before maximising population has any bearing on their play.  i was one of the early proponents of the technique, but i do not push players toward it other than to explain how it works--because for most players it is a burden they needn't bear.  it seems to me that where the "fun test" is failed is not in the mechanic itself, but in the community's insistence that everyone is served by pushing it on new players.

I wholeheartedly disagree with Rill.  

Several steps could be eliminated if we could simply declare any town our capital. Why is it necessarily the first one?

I agree that exo/tenaril decreases the initial growth rate of new players but there's a positive side to it too. Exodusing at an earlier stage makes new players aware of the cost of exodus and thus hazards related with bad city placement. I still see a lot of new players in some of the most respected training alliances having cities on a 5 food square surrounded by buildings/mountains (ask any illy warrior why is it bad).


However I don't agree that by following this route players are getting bored or there's a risk of getting bored. For me, it depends on the individual alliances. I think most of the players will agree that Illy's UCP is its amazing community and the same goes with alliances for me.New players and old players both derive fun from AC activities. I don't wanna indicate that gameplay is totally irrelevant here, it could also be made fun at the same time. In Den, We are conducting a harvesting tourney which gives our new players a chance to explore the harvesting part of the game on their own.This increases their illy learning and at the same time competing in a tournament brings in the fun factor.





Edited by Gossip Boy - 21 Mar 2013 at 11:37

A possible solution for the problem created for the newbies through loosing the ability to terraform would be letting every new town start on a 7-food tile, so the one Tenaril every one has would be a onetime terraform for the newbies. Though possibly this would make terraforming through alts even easier, what surly isn´t intended...