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Dear orkfians,

The age changes are announced a bit early because they are so extensive. You now have a chance to prepare your tribe for the upcoming changes. The age will not end for at least a week.


Buildings

New building: Bastion
Max 25% of land. Reduces damage from thievery, magic and attacker sources to buildings with 1.5% per % run. Does not affect unit losses through being attacked or having lightning bolts thrown at you.

Guard Houses
Removed: 1% provides 2.5% reduction in thievery damage. It is now possible to run 25% Guard Houses. 1% GH now provides 3% resistance to thievery (= blocks 3% of enemy ops).

Churches
Removed: 1% provides 2.5% reduction in magic damage. It is now possible to run 25% Churches.
1% CH provides 3% resistance to magic damage (= blocks 3% of enemy spells).

Walls
Removed: 1% walls gives 1.5% lower land losses (when attacked)
Removed: 1% walls gives 1.5% lower military losses (when attacked)
Removed: 1% walls gives 1.5% lower building damage (when attacked)
It is now possible to run 25% walls.

Weaponries
Removed: 1% weaponries gives 1.5% increased land gains
Removed: 1% weaponries gives 1.5% increased building damage
It is now possible to run 25% weaponries.

Barracks
Remove: Each barracks holds up to 100 offense specs/thieves, 75 elites or 50 defense specs
Remove: 1% barracks reduces military training costs by 0.5%
Remove: 1% barracks reduces military upkeep by 2.5%
It is now possible to run 25% barracks.
Add: 1% barracks decreases the cost of training, building and exploring by 0.5%.
Add: 1% barracks increases the citizen, mp and tp regeneration rates by 0.5%.
Add: 1% barracks reduces the military maintenance costs by 0.5%.
Add: 1% barracks reduces the military losses by 0.5%.

Markets
The building type Markets is removed from the game. Already built markets in your tribe will be magically transformed into barracks when the age changes are implemented.


Mystics

Race spells

Elves: Deep Forest. This spell makes your forests grow faster, giving you +2500 wood per update, 5% additional defence and 1-8 acres randomly. Lasts 1-10 months.
Removed are: -10% exploration cost, -20% land lost to enemies on invasions.

Winged: Brood. Gives +10% base citizen growth, reduces military training time to 2 hours and gives randomly 1-8 acres per update. Lasts 1-10 months.
Removed: -50% training time for basic military

Orcs: Mortality. This spell enables your troops to slay immortal units when attacking or defending and adds 5% offence to your troops. Mortality also negates Fountain of Resurrection. Lasts 1-10 months.
Removed: Cover of Mordor with all its effects.


Spells

Meteor Storm now destroys labs and barracks rather than markets and barracks.

Unresearch is removed.

Mortality is removed

New spell added: Rupture. Destroys Bastions.


Races

The following races are taken out of play:

High Elf
Oleg Hai
Templar
Brittonian


The following new races can now be chosen:

Rept Hai: Venom Attack (1-4 updates). Double military losses on enemy when defending.
0/0; 50 cr.
7/0; 650 cr.
0/7; 800 cr.
8/2; 850 cr.
0/0; 250 cr.

Uruk Hai: +25% base unit losses.
0/0; 50 cr.
8/0; 850 cr.
0/7; 700 cr.
10/4; 1300 cr.
0/0; 250 cr.

Vikings. Deals double military losses to enemy when attacking. No increased resting time on destructive attacks. -25% base unit losses.
1/1; 75 cr.
7/2; 675 cr.
3/7; 725 cr.
9/3; 1100 cr.
0/0; 250 cr.

Ravens: 1 hour attacktime, even on retreats. -25% damage on destructive attacks. -10% base unit losses.
0/0; 30 cr.
4/1; 400 cr.
1/6; 620 cr.
5/5; 850 cr.
0/0; 200 cr.


The following changes are made to existing races:

Dragon - Black dragon 10/40 850 cr --> 900 cr.

Mori Hai – Removed: +1 food per thieve per update
Mori Hai – Removed: homes count as 1/5th weaponries. They still count as 3/5th hideouts.

Wood Elf – Removed: 2 hour return time for thieves.

Dark Elf - Mana regenerates 75% faster then normal -> Mana regenerates 50% faster than normal.

Undead - Zombies 9/0 -> 10/0, 1150 cr. Vampire 1300 cr -> 1250 cr.
Undead - Can now cast Pestilence, Heal, Seal of Deflection and Fountain of Resurrection.

Owl – Removed: +20% thievery plans per update.

Spirit – removed: +25% mage level bonus.
Thieves 0/3 400 cr --> 0/3 300 cr.
Phantom 5/0 450 cr --> 6/0 500 cr.
Ghoul 6/3 600 cr --> 6/3 650 cr.

Starting militaries have also been updated accordingly for the new races. The starting military of two races is changed as well:

Wood Elf - from 14000 to 15500 elites.
Undead – from 20000 elites to 15000 elites and 7000 off specs.


Other

Building cost formula

Because the building type markets is removed, a new building cost formula is put in place.

((Acres ^ 0.96) / 10) = crowns
4*acres^0.4 = wood

Examples:
400 = 32 crowns + 44 logs.
1000 = 76 crowns + 63 logs.
2500 = 183 crowns + 92 logs.
5000 = 356 crowns + 121 logs.
10k = 692 crowns + 159 logs.
15k = 1022 crowns + 188 logs.
25k = 1668 crowns + 230 logs.


Exploration cost formula

The explore cost reduction by markets is removed. The cost of an explore is therefore changed from (size*9) per acre explored to (size*7.5). With the cost reduction, you would have attained this running 12.5% markets.

Citizens held by non-homes
Non-homes currently hold 10, 15 or 20 citizens. This is changed into 10 citizens for every non-home building.

Names
Homes, farms and citizens lose the names specific to their race: they are now simply homes, farms and citizens.

Fame
The offense bonus from fame is removed.

Pillage
Pillage no longer destroys markets. Pillage therefore does not yield soldiers anymore.

Science
Add: 1% warding science now blocks 1% of thievery operations and magic spells.
Remove: 1% warding science increases the effectiveness of Churches and Guard Houses by 1%.


Sneak peeks

The exploration formula is up for a change on the long term; currently the cost goes up too fast exponentially

Science might be up for a change on the long term. Very much development stage though.

Fame might be up for a change on the long term. Very much development stage though.

Brood is likely to get an extra trait on the long term.

The war system is up for a change on the long term.

Heritage is up for a change on the long term.

High Elf, Oleg Hai, Templar and Brittonian will be brought back in age 45.

Races not yet taken out, that is Mori Hai, Dark Elf, Wood Elf, Light Elf, Owl, Spirit, and Eagle. will face some severe changes. Picking them will be a gamble; however, if the changes are too big, we will take out the race in age 45 instead of changing them.

Voting will come back on the short term, thanks to robokop fixing alliancesatwar.com!

~ Staff

Q. What happens to my existing markets?

wooow... so many of changes!


ask : is it cost for wood still none to dwarf or draggy?

Ah.... this age is gonna be fun! Wanna try ravens.

h412ry: Dragons still have no building costs, dwarves still don't have to pay wood to build.

Sweets: markets are magically transformed into Barracks.

Fame
The offense bonus from fame is removed.

that just benefit the explorers even more then it does already..

So, outside of % of houses allowed, racial characteristics and Elendian there is no longer any way to increase total population?

Also, removal of the +1 food per thief on the Mori Hai is a double nerf. Not only do they now have to build farms but well over 10% of them on land already eaten up by 45% homes. Their homes should at least reduce food consumption a bit...

Reduced food consumption is an interesting idea :p
But actually MH aren't being nerfed but rather being changed gradually. You might have noticed that almost every race got downtuned quite a bit after being taken out. We're trying to keep the explorers balanced by gradually 'nerfing' them without taking them out completely.

I just think it rather odd that all other races with non-standard populations get some sort of adjustment to food, whether less or more. BTW, what exactly are the perceived “explorer races”?

I suppose it's nice to see your enthusiasm for change and it must take a lot of time but seriously it's getting ridiculous - it's become like playing a completly different game each age so I don't know how people who are not super geeky are supposed to stay interested when the rules are rewritten so often.

LOL, did you not read that attackers can now build 25% weps? That just benefit the attackers even more then it does already, to say in your own words

and weaps got down tuned alot aswell Darkwing :)

And defenders get 25% walls, so no it doesnt help a bit, and Hes fame that they get 50% more fame is kinda useless now when they dont get it to off aswell...

this just makes me sad, you are making the game more complicated which is a bit of a deterrence for new players to wanna try playing this game...

kiss

What happened to using a K.I.S.S principle? Trying to attract new players when drastic changes are being mate constantly is insanely hard to do. I just had a group of 3 friends i was trying to show the game go. “Way too complicated for a text based game. Too many variables” and 1 of them is a game tester for microsoft

Yea, wtf staff. Who the hell is in charge? The game shouldn't be changing so much every couple ages, does all of Dev have an insane case of ADD?

Moris Hai sux worse now...Same with WE....Dissapointed in that
I think this is going a bit far..Way to many changes for my liking, I also pity any new players coming its gonna suck...May have to set out a few ages to watch all the mistakes...Saddens me deeply..

Mori Got nerfed x2
WE wtf is the point in playing the now?No 2 hr return time.
Spirits get nerfed, last age u give them a bosst now u take it away..Like make up ur mind already
Now Owls got nerfed like last age (1/2 of normal self op gains) So now ur taking away the bonus to regain TP..wow

Usualy u guys come up with a few good changes but I for 1 am severly dissapointed in these changes to the races.

I find it hard to think this will attract new players or beginers..

Age changes aren't attracting or deterring new players. That just makes no sense. It's mainly the steepness of the learning curve of the game that deters new players. This is the thing we're trying to tune down by overall standardizing alot and removing exception (to exceptions (to exceptions)).

When I joined this game every race had 1-2 lines of special features, IF any at all. Now each race seems to have 5-6 lines. That can't be good for new players really.

can we update the guide with the changes to the mori and other races that had changes but can still be played
also will the britts lose the thief gained from guard houses or will it just be altered to get it from the other building to replace the guard house

Jolten nailed it imo KISS. Seriously a wall of text that takes a good half hour to read! Worst of all a lot of these age changes could be changed next age along with another wall of text that must be taken into account. I've been playing this game for many years and yes something must be done. I'm mot complaining so much about the changes more the manner in how its done. Personally I think the changes should occur all at once (if given plenty of time to review) or in much smaller incriments. I do fully understand the hard work and dedication show by the staff and it is greatly appriciated but at the end of the day this is a game and while it is fun I find it hard to accept such overwhelming changes repeatedly.

imho i welcome these changes. i'm always looking forward to the end of the age to see what changes are there so new strategies can be formulated every age. keeps the interest going for me, instead of following the same strat over and over again for ages (literally).

i do understand from a beginner's point of view it could be hard to comprehend all these at a go though

well if they are doing a ton of changes like this it should be at least able to take a poll or something..I like some changes but not to this extent..

The poll tool is broken

KISS is the principle we're working with. The simple fact that there's a lot of changes shows how complicated the game is. We're making it a little less complicated each age.

Lots of people are saying it's hard to keep track of all the changes. Well, maybe you should count the amount of times it says “removed”.



We decided to go on this track a couple of ages ago. Since then we've changed half the races. We're rounding up the race changes next age and we've already rounded up the building changes.

The defense for our policy is simple. Back in, what, 2005, Martel changed classic into AatW without changing the game concept. That caused the game to run crappy. We're now implementing changes to make the AatW concept work. The other option is to simply go for the old orkfia.

I understand the process of change may be hard. Imagine how hard a job Dev has for keeping the whole thing balanced - no doubt, there'll be some errors. However, as long as the target situation turns out to be a lot better than the original situation, I think it's worth the process. We're a game with 100 players atm. We can try hard to keep them, or we can try to fix the game and turn it into something worth the effort. Advertising a broken game simply won't make players continue playing it. So you fix the game, then advertise.

I hope it's easier to appreciate the changes now.

Ok Bolle thnx for the explanation, if you guys really are working towards KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid for those of you not into the acronyms) then it is worth it and indeed a necessary evil we can endure for the long term good. I will have faith in you all and hope that this time next year I can understand what the bleddy hell is going on.. please don't lead us down a blind alley ;)