25MAY14 - Broken Lands update |
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GM Stormcrow
Moderator Group GM Joined: 23 Feb 2010 Location: Illyria Status: Offline Points: 3926 |
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Posted: 25 May 2014 at 03:34 |
Hi all, Just wanted to bring you all up-to-speed on changes to our planned release of the Broken Lands expansion to Illyriad. There are a number of things to run through here, so please bear with me. New player influx We've recently had a large influx of new players, and Elgea is now getting pretty full. Finding an unsettled area on Elgea for new alliances is proving extremely difficult, and I don't think anyone will doubt that all the "best" locations are pretty much taken. We want to expand the landmass, and implementing our original plan for the Broken Lands - where, essentially, everyone in the game could start again from scratch with a further 2 pairs of 10 cities on another continent - isn't really a solution to this issue. Expanding Elgea What we really need right now is an expansion to the current continent of Elgea. However, this has many difficulties in implementation due to matching the boundaries of the pre-generated fractal terrain (which was generated, sadly, from a now-lost seed, so can't be recreated). What we do have, though, is a continent to the South of Elgea - the Broken lands - that some of the more eagle-eyed amongst you have already spotted is nearly ready to go. We've seeded most of the terrain, most of the food squares etc... and whilst it's not completely baked yet and we have a few clean-up processes to run through (faction hubs, new terrain types to load up etc) it's practically there. So what we're going to do is release the Broken Lands continent as a pure expansion to Elgea. This means that:
In essence - because of our space limitations on Elgea - the two things that we aren't implementing for the Broken Lands are a) the PvP-free zone, and b) allowing Elgea players to start afresh with a further up-to-20 cities. Broken Lands map data The BL map (in terms of terrain types and seeding of eg food values) is still in some state of flux, and I wouldn't put a huge amount of weight on what's currently there. However, this state of flux will reach equilibrium in the next couple of days, and I will then release a datafile for those of you who are so minded to analyze it. There's a generic large map of the Broken Lands available here, but to see it in more detail, simply go to the world map ingame and head south! In Summary There are arguments for and against releasing the Broken Lands like this, we know - we've had them internally for weeks now. After much deliberation, we feel this is the best balance between opening up new space for new players to grow into, as well as providing veteran players the opportunity to leverage their existing capabilities, networks and relationships to project their influence and power (or take the opportunity to regroup!) at much greater distances from the madding crowd. I'm sure there will be many questions, to which the answer to most will be "imagine if we'd just added more space to the West/East of Elgea - that's what this Broken Lands release will be like, in terms of core gameplay". With very best wishes, SC
Edited by GM Rikoo - 25 May 2014 at 23:15 |
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Rill
Postmaster General Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 7078 |
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Will new accounts still "spawn" in Elgea? I can see benefits for either answer, just wondering which one you're planning.
If new accounts spawn in Broken Lands, we might need extra turbo speed for care-a-vans.
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GM Stormcrow
Moderator Group GM Joined: 23 Feb 2010 Location: Illyria Status: Offline Points: 3926 |
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Great question.
The plan is to only spawn new accounts in Elgea; BL will be an optional "move-to". |
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REX_GAMBIT
New Poster Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Status: Offline Points: 15 |
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Are there plans to increase movement speeds of units? It takes days to travel to other corners of maps right now. Expanded map will cause huge logistic and strategic problems just because of the size and travel speeds. May be units can get bonus speed if they are travelling farther than X number of tiles (say 1000)?
Edited by REX_GAMBIT - 25 May 2014 at 05:17 |
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GM Stormcrow
Moderator Group GM Joined: 23 Feb 2010 Location: Illyria Status: Offline Points: 3926 |
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No plans at present, Rex. I expect most players who wish to be on both continents will want to establish local (continental) hubs on BL, and distribute resources from there initially. Over time it'll become less relevant, I'm sure. However, I believe the sea gap between the continents is actually one of the substantial plus points of the BL release in this form. Regards, SC
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Aurordan
Postmaster Player Council - Ambassador Joined: 21 Sep 2011 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 982 |
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Well this is reasonable, and honestly in a lot of ways a better implementation than what was being planned. I am a bit sad we won't get the from-scratch restart. Is it possible a new world/reseeded version of Elgea could fill that void?
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Flavius Aetius
Greenhorn Joined: 24 Apr 2014 Status: Offline Points: 53 |
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I may be mistaken, but I thought that the developers do not believe in new servers?
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Spheniscidae
Wordsmith Joined: 01 Mar 2012 Status: Offline Points: 117 |
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So...after all the hype, nothing for established players with 10 cities then - unless you want to exodus your cities to BL.
Way to go, devs, way to go.
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Cilcain
Wordsmith Joined: 13 Oct 2012 Status: Offline Points: 106 |
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I was thinking that too..... How about increasing the city/account limit to 15? That way, both established and new players could have a stake in BL, although the presence of established players would be limited to the 5 extra cities (unless they exo). |
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Spheniscidae
Wordsmith Joined: 01 Mar 2012 Status: Offline Points: 117 |
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Or alternatively, maybe 1 free tenaril per 5 cities (so players with 10 cities get 2), with the stipulation that these may only be used to transfer cities from elgea to BL.
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