In just over a week's span, two updates gave kingdoms two new buildings, adding some convenience and some complexity. The lesser of the two buildings, the Embassy, gives ally kingdom members a way to easily travel from their land to the others'. Basically a permanent invite, kingdoms can share land, in a way, and make brick for each other, likely by running each other's dungeons. In addition, members can request passage to kingdoms on the other side right from their own embassy, which, if it becomes popular, could increase the inflow of passage requests that a kingdom needs to field.
Some strategy and security discussion on the forum made a few interesting points. Since the Embassy rides on top of the existing passage permissions, an embassy could be built within range of a sunken city (if a kingdom has one), while keeping other kingdom structures private. Non-members could then be generating brick without any worry they might be roaming around where they shouldn't.
The likely more obvious point of the embassy, of course, is wartime management. Before, helping an ally fight off incursion involved waves of invites from individuals, interspersed with mass invites within kingdoms (once the first member traveled). Now, such "invites" can be granted ahead of time; a kingdom under siege can simply message ally kingdoms, who can then respond at their own pace. Simple invites will still occur anyway, but at a much lesser travel cost.
The bigger game changer is the new Kingdom Archive. Kingdoms can gain levels, up to 6, with their own version of pages appropriately named "kingdom pages." At each level, a kingdom can gain a new perk by spending a measly 20,000 bricks and a hefty 1,000 refined oil. Many of the perks might be expected, or even cliche: attack and defense bonuses, increased brick earning, and changes to range/distance mechanics are common. A select few did catch my eye, however, as they address interesting dynamics offered by the social nature of the game.
"Tower Watchman," a level 3 perk, grants that "Kingdom Towers take half damage when there is a single Member within its radius." The wording would suggest that additional members would negate the bonus, allowing some strategy considerations. Members could spread out across an attacked area to gain the bonus, jumping on invites when particular towers face significant opposition. Or, if the direction of a coming attack is known, members could cover a long stretch of the kingdom's border, in hopes the first attack wave is better stemmed until the invites go through.
"Favored Odds" (level 5) grants a healing bonus to the smaller opposing golem army. This could be used as another stalling tactic, like Tower Watchman, but could be devastating if the smaller army's golems are stronger. Granted, most golems brought to war will be +5, so this is mostly for balance when one side outnumbers the other.
"Shock Team" (level 6) adds a decent incentive for kingdom members to act together in real time: "When all active members are nearby, each Member receives +4 Attack and Defense." Smaller kingdoms will probably eat this up, as fewer actives means an easier time having everyone in game. The opposite is just as true, so more populated kingdoms will probably go wanting. Like Favored Odds, the wording lacks specifics on distance, and similarly acts to balance battles between differently sized forces, since smaller kingdoms will generally have greater ease gaining the bonuses. And if a large kingdom does manage to pull it off, it's a good reward for good coordination.
No comments:
Post a Comment