The Sovereignty Stew consists of many ingredients:

There have been many young, thrusting and dynamic chefs who have arrived on the scene with their new version of the basic stew that we all know and love so well, producing amazing dishes from the recipes available.

Whilst some new chefs have contributed to the stew's development in unexpected but flavoursome directions, others have remained in the kitchen - whilst abandoning their stewmaking halfway through - so that they might move onto other recipes.... but this has left the poor kitchen staff with a mess to clear up.  

Yet other more-established chefs have fought over ingredients in unexpected ways, throwing down their tools and leaving the kitchen halfway through their preparations, like a horribly sabotaged version of Masterchef... leaving the kitchen staff to clean up the ensuing culinary disaster!

And in an exciting twist, half way through the competition, Oh my!  The judges replaced all the chefs' kitchen equipment with a new set of sovereignty UI pages! 

Oh wait, dammit.  UI isn't a kitchen metaphor.

What I'm trying to say here is that the recipe is sovereignty itself, the dishes are the sovereign structures, the ingredients are the maptiles, the chefs are the players, the devs are the kitchen staff and the flies are the bugs.  Chefs who abandon stewmaking but remain in the kitchen are those who run out of Gold and RP. Chefs who fight over ingredients are those who counterclaim sov, and the devs changed the kitchen equipment sov page a few months ago. 

Which means the devs are the judges and the kitchen staff.  No wait again... that can't be right.  

The stew is sovereignty, the recipe is the codebase, and the ingredients are the maptiles. Or are they the new resource tiles?  No... no.. I can do this...

Oh, double dammit. I can't.  And this horribly extended metaphor started so well.

Ignore the Poetic Version.

Here goes again.

There are a few issues with sovereignty upkeep after some sets of circumstances, and this has left some extra knock on effects to other towns.

IF your sovereignty page shows:

... then you are probably affected by this.

There are some 120 players owning about 140 towns with about 700 squares of sovereignty between them.

Before anyone oils up the torches and sharpens the pitchforks, whilst the sovereignty hasn't cost them anything in terms of RP and Gold, it also hasn't given the players any production structure town benefit benefit either. 

This Saturday, 1st December, we're going to remove all these sovereign squares, and the structure on them, from the game.

We've put in a bunch of bug-catching code in various critical points in the sov decision-making process so we can then work out more about how these "orphan" sovereignty squares came about.  

We're pretty sure it's through a combination of towns:

... but we'd like this confirmed on live before saying "yes, it's all good".

So. 

We think some of the flies in the stew (slap!) um... bugs in the sovereignty code will still be there come Sunday, but many existing issues directly affecting players will be gone, and we'll be able to track back the events of what might cause these issues much more carefully when they happen again in the future.

I'll make a post once the actual changes have been made, sometime on Saturday.

Best,

SC

SC

EDIT: Added to main post as tldr;tldr;

Players who were affected by it have received ingame mail explaining what we've done.

Thanks for your patience.

Best,

SC

I built negative troops. In two of my cities (soon to be three) I was building Mangonels. After completing those I had a large number of Trueshots queued. The transition from Cats to Archers went fine but when I switched my sov layout from Assembly Yards to Target Ranges my queue changed from 70/ xxxxx troops produced to -350 / xxxxx troops produced.

The number of negative troops does seem to be decreasing (or the number of troops is increasing depending on how you look at it) but as a test I removed 50 Trueshots from one of my armies and they disappeared and failed to show up in my Unit Pool.

Weird bug but because the number of troops left to complete now shows (xxxxx + 351) there isn't any real impact other than the time it takes to dig myself out of the negative troop hole.

Luna

Gotcha, Done. 

BUT its been 4 months.. hitting 5, I don't remember which The Dude asked me "why are you still here (sic) living with the glitches?".

And why would I do that? explain .. like one square over? move to another area? Exodus is really painful imo.

And I was explaining how it hindered my gameplay. Doesn't that count and what I've lost in PAYING FOR IT (gold/rp/mana)?.. and you say 4 months ago  I should have exodus'd and been happy to do that? You are not feeling my pain. How would I know it would take 4 months to even get acknowledged.. I talked to the right people WAY before this. I like the game, not the glitch. Do you feel it will never be fixed, so why b**** about it? C'mon.

I don't know when or whether this glitch will be fixed, but the track record for fixing sovereignty glitches is not particularly good (it usually takes months or years, if it is fixed at all).  My personal approach would be to assume that it will not be fixed in a timely manner and then figure out how to move on.

My purpose is not to argue about whether this is "right" or "wrong" or "bad" or "good."  I'm just speaking from my observation of this sort of thing, and I'd recommend that you take steps, even though painful, to change the situation in a way that you can control.

Exodusing her city and then re-Exodusing back to the same square would resolve the problem without the negative effects described by TD.

On another note, there are multiple players with "dude" in their names in Illy, as well as of course The Duke.  The_Dude is well aware of this, so is perhaps poking gentle fun at himself in his suggestion that confusion about his identity is in any way related to the new player guide.

I am not poking gentle fun at myself.  I have heard from many, many players over the last year and half or so questioning my identity.  This is promoted on GC daily by the false statements in the new player guide.

If you have an open petition about a sov issue, please feel free to update it. We are aware of continued issues in the system and will hopefully be able to address them yet again. Thanks for your patience.

Luna

Rill, its not one city.. its two, not even CLOSE, that are affected, its not one sov that's affected, its more in both cities. I have leveled them up, and never get the option to level up the building "type" on the sov. Did I notice it right away? no. I just leveled up the option to sov, had to wait the day, 2, days, 3 days.. and never noticed as I'm a busy girl, and when I noticed, I could not, and the gold and rp was being extracted, I placed a petition. When it happened in 2nd city, I updated said petition.

Exodus is not really an option I'm going to take. I'm giving the Devs the benefit to fix it. I would have appreciated an acknowledgement BEFORE I found this thread..and again thanks for thanking me for my patience Luna. I was not dissing The_Dude, but merely indicating I believe I have seen The Dude, perhaps I should check glasses, cuz it may have the The Duke.. no matter who said it it was said, but I wasn't degrading anyone .. Ya'll are tops in my book.

I think the Devs know I'm disenfranchised... I'm sure I'm top priority. KIDDING!.  But do hurry up.