Major Release 14SEP10 - World Topography

Are there still "someday" plans to allow people to use magic spells to impact terrain and biomes?

Zangi wrote: EDIT: Another random roll chance, but conforming with the terrain around them. Purely optional choice by the players on a city by city basis.

I'm sorry, but there's no way that this is, was or could be feasible.  It would also set a highly unfortunate precedent by allowing players to essentially "opt out" of forthcoming changes. 

We very much hope that the future distribution of Factions, trade hubs and allowing players to move their city locations will alleviate many of the current concerns players have with the map changing around them.  This is, incidentally, precisely why it was so important to get this change out earlier rather than later.

Aelfric wrote: Any chance of introducing terraforming in the future?

and

HonoredMule wrote: Are there still "someday" plans to allow people to use magic spells to impact terrain and biomes?

Yes, very much so - as well as other "terrain impacting" possibilities, such as cutting down forests to make plains, and/or building canals to connect to rivers.

We're still thrashing out the details of these, though, so I'm not willing to say more.

Starry wrote: What disturbs me, is many in my alliance have built up entire hubs and city defenses based on their surrounding terrain and low and behold, that terrain has changed.   Yes, some sovereignty squares are still there but others that players may have been interested in taking, are gone.       I appreciate all the hard work you do on this game but this change is a bit too much for my liking.   Sorry. :(

We do appreciate this - but there was simply no way of introducing a 'real' world geography without wholesale change to the terrain.  The new geography will suit some people better than others.

As mentioned before, I do think that allowing city relocation will alleviate this issue somewhat; although with the new geography I really should mention that a single location that has nearby access to forests, hills, mountains, rivers and plains all at the same time is going to be extremely hard to find - and, as far as the "new world" is concerned, existing players who have had:

• their sovereign claimed terrain,
• their chosen direct city square terrain, and
• the N,S,E and W squares' terrain around them

preserved from these changes are much more likely to be advantaged by a multi-terrain immediate environment than any new player from here on.

I also strongly recommend that players spend some time looking at the new world geography and seriously evaluating whether moving elsewhere on the map is, actually, of benefit to them in terms of diversity of terrain.

Of course, this is harder to do when we haven't released biomes, factions and trade hubs - and I'm sure we'll also have people express complaints when these are released as well; when they suddenly find themselves in the "Goblin" heartland whereas they really want to be in the magical Elven forest areas.  This is unavoidable, and we hope you understand that.

Aelfric wrote: Will I be allowed to make my cities submersible? That way, they can be moved to bodies of water.

It is something that's crossed our mind, Aelfric - there is a Merfolk faction in the works... However, it's not set in stone that we'll allow players to do this, even if I woudn't write it off entirely.



Edited by GM Stormcrow - 14 Sep 2010 at 17:42

I'd love to be in the magical Elven Forest area.  So I can wage proper war with the tree-hugging hippies.

Akita wrote: I'm not sure the change went down quite as planned...

They never do!

Akita wrote: Seems like at least some squares directly N/S/E/W of cities were changed (either in type, resource count or both) instead of remaining unaffected as they were supposed to, while some cities themselves have changed terrain type but retained the initially settled resource distribution. No idea how many people were affected by this oddity.

No one has yet Petitioned this.  Does anyone have a specific example or an X|Y that we can check into?

Akita wrote: There are also unusual variations in the same type of tile. Take for instance (I just took a relatively random walk on the map from 0|0 diagonally up and right) a look on location... http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_map.asp?Radius=6&CenterX=85&CenterY=60 ...at the "light woods" (which are supposed to be now 7 wood, 3 clay, 5 rest), there's five of those types of tiles in view, and none is directly near a city nor is any of them claimed by sov... yet only one of them has the expected resource distribution, the other four are quite erratic.

Yes, we're aware of this.  These tiles will be reset to their proper resource assignments (or if settled/claimed will be reset to the type that matches their resource levels) sometime tomorrow morning. 

Akita wrote: Also, "unique" resource squares (dolmens, ruined towers, ancient forests, etc) got their "preferential resources" scrambled around (most dolmens seem to now like wood more than food, a lot of ruined towers look like they now prefer food instead of stone, etc).

For aesthetic purposes, some NPC terrain icons and underlying square type icons were changed - for example, Ancient Forests (Wood Heavy) on Plains squares looked fairly terrible, and so were changed to Dolmens.  However, we didn't want to change the underlying resources under these NPC tiles as people might have settled specifically to get that unique resource combination nearby. So we left the underlying resource distribution the same.  This is why Dolmens in Plains topography will also have some propensity towards Wood, and why - outside of currently sov claimed squares - you won't find (m)any Ancient Forests in Plains topography any more.

Best,

SC

Yeah I was surprised to find a rather iron rich plains :-)


Are we going to be able to claim sovereignty on rivers to get extra food from fishing or gold from panning or something?

To harvest north of the river I am south of I assume someone will need to build a bridge of some sort? Can these bridges be built by anyone? Then Destroyed by anyone? I'm about 20 terrains south of the river, to bridge it would I need to settle/capture close to the river?

I know it maybe early days yet but I'm not going to be able to settle many more settlements and would like to know If I should settle north to have some advantage on river bridges. There's a spot where river is only 1 terrain wide and might be a nice tactical place to be. Build a bridge, charge tolls, maybe smash with siege any other bridges nearby :-)