April Conquest Update
Over the past couple of months, we have been discussing and taking on feedback about how to make Lokas conquest system even better. This is still continuing and evolving as we slowly dig deep into the intricacies of the system that people like and dislike. With conquest being such a complex system, no changes are simple, all come with their own upsides and downsides. As always it's a balancing act. We will be trying a few new features this month as we want to change things up, test things out and see how certain features work in reality (rather than just on paper). It is important to stress that these aren't set in stone forever and may change next conquest cycle depending on feedback. There are lots of different lines of thinking and concepts, so it's very possible we will try some more out in future months.
Capital Bountifuls
Get that bread
Get that bread
In order to satisfy some of the long-lost nostalgia for the Big Server Fights, but not betray some of our old thoughts on keeping the continents separate, we've arrived at a middle ground after countless discussions with the big players on the Conquest Scene presently. The new system takes the concept of Bountiful Territories and expands it to be more meaningful and involve more of the community.
- Bountifuls appear roughly 2 to 3 times on every continent each month.
- They appear on neutral tiles and are effectively owned by the capital of that continent.
- Because they're effectively owned by the cap, they respect the cap's vuln times and can be modded.
- Like with normal Bountifuls, these stay on the continent for up to 5 days. If it is not attacked in those 5 days, it expires and the capital of that continent wins it by default.
- When a bountiful is on your continent it takes ALL of the resources generated by your (the capital + its alliance) industries and stores them in the Bountiful node. Only by attacking it can other continents get the loot.
- Only other continent capitals can attack cross-continent bountifuls.
- All fights for these take 2 hours to come online, and will ping @everyone in #general in Loka Discord.
- This is effectively an auto-reins.
- The winner of the fight, regardless of which side will claim all of the loot in the Bountiful (Industry production + the rest of the loot it started with, same as current bountifuls).
Coalitions
Two become One!
Two become One!
- A very simplified version of Alliances, Coalitions allow Balak Participants to form a pseudo-Alliance in order to combine their forces.
- In order to form a Coalition, both capitals must choose a continent policy to form a coalition (effectively losing 2 policies between them). Once Truce ends, and both Capitals have successfully received their Coalition policy, they then have until the following Sunday Night to actually form their Coalition.
- Much like Conquest Locking, if EITHER Coalition-capable Capital performs an "action" on Balak like placing a neutral before they form their Coalition, then they are then LOCKED OUT of forming one. TL;DR You MUST form your coalition before setting up neutrals or you will VOID your ability to form a coalition.
- There will be a shard cost of 5,000 shards on top of the policy that both capitals must pay to form a coalition.
- Behaviorally, Coalitions are still like Alliances. Either capital in a coalition can place inhibs (they share the same single pool of attacks/defenses) but they always place on behalf of the leader. As stated before, Balak will show the names of the Alliances, (or single-town if not in one), rather than the lead town as the Alliance/Coalition acts as a single unit on Balak.
- If a coalition wins World Capital they can only pick 1 world policy whereas a non-coalition can pick 2.
Other Changes
- Starting this month (so effectively for May) Rivina winners will no longer go to Balak the following month.
- Instead, they will get a choice of mini policies/rewards to pick from
- The strength swing for fights overall have been reduced.
- This should provide more of an incentive to gain a lead earlier in the month as there will be less extreme strength changes on the last few days of the month. This affects both Balak and Continents.
- The maximum number of continent attacks per day has been reduced from 5 -> 3 and the maximum number of defends from 7 -> 5.
- We did not think it was realistic to expect a town to be in this many fights in one day. It almost equated to fighting for the entire duration of your vuln window.
- Only defending towns can call reins on continents.
- We felt it was unrealistic and frustrating for a starter town to be able to place on the continent cap and call reins once per day to claim a tile. This is even more prominent with our change to the maximum number of attacks per day, as 1 reins call now makes up 33% of your attacks, rather than just 20% previously.
- Towns can now only vote for who gets extra policy picks if they have existed for at least 1 month.
- On continents and Balak it will display the alliance as the territory owner rather than the town.
- The War District at spawn now displays the leader's heads of the losing sides on spikes (last months losers on Balak)
- The War District Town Portal is now LIVE!
- This was actually supposed to exist when the War District released, but we were very slow.
- When you are a participant in an active reins fight you will now spawn in the war district when you die or go through your town portal.
- There is a town portal in the big tent in the War District that you can run through.
- This is intended to keep people doing reins fight in the same general area, as opposed to running all the way from the center of Aladra every time.
- For each consecutive month a town remains World Capital, their cap on continental territories owned will increase by 5. If they lose world capital their continental territory cap returns to 30 when truce drops.
- There will be numerous changes to Continent and World Capital policies for this months winners (TBD)
- The buff tile on Balak 'Double Daily Dock Blocks' will be replaced with a new buff (TBD).
The full patch notes will be posted in the 'Official Update Thread' in the coming days. Some of these changes are already implemented, but the major ones like Bountiful Invasions and Coalitions will be implemented over the coming days.
A final note on 1.15. We have been working on updating Loka to 1.15 for the vast majority of this month and had hoped to update at the start of this conquest cycle. Unfortunately, we are still not 100% confident about the performance of 1.15, despite making massive improvements and optimizations. We expect to do another public test very soon, to put it through its paces and see what the remaining issues are, if any. We hope and are trying to update very soon but won't push it if it means server performance becomes very unstable.
