Hello everyone! I'm happy to announce the official start of Strategus Round VIII. What happens next? There is a week of frozen map that gives everyone opportunity to grind some ticks (ticks from previous strat got reset as well) and silver, AND, what's more important, have some time to adapt to changed map and make plans/diplomacy. You generate silver from playing other game modes, you don't consume ticks, you don't generate hourly silver/troops.
Recent important changes:
· Binational fiefs mechanic added. Occupied fiefs can now sell equipment of both nations: fief's original gear and occupier's national gear.
· Default goods production in all fiefs has been boosted significantly. From default 200 s&d (supply and demand AKA goods) daily production to 300 for villages, 400 for castles and 1000 for towns. It gives bigger opportunities for trading and makes "s&d stealing" less a of thing.
· Default prices of goods in fiefs are changed: 10 silver per good in villages, 15 in castles, 20 in towns.
· Map movement without horses is a bit slower now, on the other hand effect of horses (especially fast horses) is slightly increased.
· Fiefs on the map are rebalanced. Smaller nations got their number of fiefs highly increased to compete with bigger nations.· Everyone starts with 1 troop and 1 silver. Grind your way to glory, especially with increased silver gain from playing other game modes.
-Dave
Other changes made as development of Strategus continued:
12 unique Nations are added: Swadia, Rhodok, Khergit, Vaegir, Nord, Sarranid, Yamato, Berezium, Tianxia, Ferocia, Staufen, Lallan
Each faction (clan) and fief has its own nation. Fiefs can only sell/upgrade items of their nation's and common items (construction equipment and some basic items)
Heroes can only use their nation's and common items. Although they can loot/buy/sell other nation's items and convert them to them to their nation's items, or simply treat them like goods
Completely reworked fief locations to provide strategical advantages
Switching between heroes that can take part in Strategus now takes only 1 hours instead of 72 to let mercs pick the most fitting character for certain battles
All regions will use the same map (former EU map)
Battles now only happen during 4 hour prime time for each region. If attack is launched less than 20 hours before prime time, it will get postponed to the next day's prime time
XP rewards formula change. Overall XP increase, huge XP increase for lower tier gear battles, slight XP increase for shiny battles
Mercs autohire until roster is filled with people or gets updated during last 30 minutes before the battle
Strat Equipment Buff: HP increased for most offensive equipment
Change to Looting Mechanics: you now loot 25% of silver if you successfully perform a raid or win an open field attack (10,000 silver is the minimal number, if 25% is less than 10,000 - you get 10,000; if target has less than 10,000 silver - you loot it all)
Gold (not silver) reward (5-100k of cRPG gold depending on performance and battle size) for merc participation in strat battles added: Formula is 5000 + (kills* 300 - deaths * 100) + (amount of ticks player received during the battle * 500)
Merc gold reward is tripled for defenders if it is a successful AI defense and doubled for defenders even if AI lost
Strategus Tick Generation during Strategus Battles added
Added freeze of Attacker&Defender troop generation until fight is over
Added a softcap of 1500 troops per hero. Wage for 1,500 and below stays the same (174 silver per hour for 1500 troops), after that it rapidly goes above (1600 - 460, 1700 - 1356, 1800 - 3133, 1900 - 5989, 2000 - 10094, 2100 - 15597, 2200 - 22630, 2300 - 31317, 2400 - 41772, 2500 - 54102)
Increased Fall Damage so it's more dangerous to jump from the walls
Strategus map only shows approximate numbers of Troops and Gold other heroes have
Catapults are now more powerful in the damage they do to walls
Added item conversion mechanic: you can convert looted/bought items to your equal or cheaper national items of non-loomed level (broken gear will get converted to +0 too)
Using construction/siege equipment and throwing weapons now generates additional XP (all throwing category didn't generate XP at all in the past)
AI now adds immersive different public messages to promote their defences
Defenders now require 2 players to cap flags of attackers (it is now required to have a teammate within 350 range (around 3.5 meters) and no enemies in order to put a flag down), attackers can put down flags alone just like before
Added Vicinity mechanic showing the closest fief to a hero (a subject to change and add mechanics over it, planned to decide battle region and prime time based on fief vicinity if attacker and defender have different regions)
Made Strategus map much more comfortable to use, removed unnecessary elements from it (like header with black background) and added a fullscreen toggle for a more comfortable map overview. Keep in mind that you can access Strategus Map without outside UI at
http://strategus.c-rpg.net/ Make sure to refresh your page with ctrl + F5 combo
Looted gear of foreign nation is calculated as cargo and doesn't influence your level of arming (so having even a lot of gear of foreign nation and none of yours will still list you as unarmed)
Equipment help formula is adjusted so that it helps with equipment more often, it is a subject to change though but it is better than before. Also help equipment will become worse over time
Selling price of items in fiefs is decreased from 40% to 20% to make it less attractive to sell gear rather than merge/convert it.
It is now impossible to attack if your army is too lightly armed (considered as naked or extremely underarmed like equipment for 10% of troops) to stop trolls from suicide bombing armies to hold them up
Default loom level of gear that fiefs sell is now 0 instead of -1
Used equipment that you loot now degrades 1 loom level instead of previous 2, it makes it more useful with synergy of converting items to your nation
Improved visual part on the map. Now hovering on players on the map uses better colors. Amount of troops is now more obvious and shows the approximate number (numbers below the . Gold approximate amount is also shown now.
Pseudonyms are fixed. Using pseudonyms also hides your title and clan banner
Added Faction button to all fiefs so that if faction owns a fief anyone can apply to join it by clicking on a fief info from anywhere on the map
Field battles now also reward with captured troops: if attacker wins by capping flags - half of survived defenders get converted to attacker's army, if defender wins by capping flags - 1/4 of survived attackers get converted to defender's army
I thought I best make an actual announcement about this as nobody seems to know what the fuck is going on! -Yeldur