Eliminate Option to Tenaril After Exodus

Killjoy :P

Angrim wrote: 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.

Angrim, I feel that way about a number of so-called Rules that new players are told to follow. I think the huge Illy players sometimes forget how boring the first few weeks can be, and give advice that makes it even more boring. When GC tells someone that they will be ready to start playing in 'only' another month of steady grinding, I think we lose a lot of energetic new players who want to begin with a little excitement and interaction. The obsession with terraforming and 7-food tiles is a great example of that phenomenon.

The Duke wrote: If having "a little excitement" is making stupid moves you will regret later and have to correct then by all means go ahead- but dont say we didnt tell ya so;p

So noted, but I don't expect to have any regrets.

I've been here six months, and I'm on city #5. I have no particular hesitation about keeping my original city. If I ever choose to build #7,8,9,10 I think there will be plenty of time to correct non-ideal placement of a single city. I haven't used my Tenaril spell yet, and probably won't unless a really interesting location becomes available. But on the slight chance that it happens, I would value the magic much more for that purpose than for shifting around a single 7 food tile.

I should be clear, I'm not questioning the usefulness of terraforming. It is a good tool for experienced players who have committed to the long haul. It's just that newbs get fed a diet of really bland advice--prep your 2nd settlement for terraforming, don't have an army until 5000 population, focus primarily on leveling resource plots, don't claim sov under 10000 pop, ad nauseam--and most of that advice is only relevant if you're a player who sees investing a year to attain 10 cities as your personal endgame. If a newb happens to be a player who's interested in trading, exploring, hunting, crafting or other non-military, non-alliance activities, the GC environment can be discouraging.

I chose to ignore the standard wisdom about how to start Illy. I've had a lot of fun. But in all honesty, after hearing so many people in GC tell me that I'd have to invest a year, and do things The Right Way, and follow a very bland path to maximum population, I thought long and hard about hitting Abandon. I'm glad I stuck around, and I'm really glad I didn't listen to their advice.

How prevalent is it to create a new account, exodus/tenaril for the terraform, and then abandon? It seems rather against the spirit of having only a single alt. I was under the impression that terraforming was typically used just once in order to locate a 7 food plot close to some high value boost tiles like dolmens, barrows and so forth. Creating large numbers of expendable alts is an industrial process that seems more like an exploit.

Since you have to join someone's alliance in order to Tenaril within 10 squares of them, shouldn't it be obvious to the devs that some alliances have a constant churn of new accounts joining, using Tenaril to drop a 7 food tile near an established player, and then abandoning immediately afterwards?

I don't just think that Rill's suggestion shouldn't be implemented; I think that it must not be implemented, because it would unbalance the game.