New Features up Today

As you may have noticed, the look of ikariam (particularly the town hall section) has changed drastically this morning. Here is the description of upcoming changes that was posted on the Ikariam message board:

Quote :

The following features are planned for the next time and are still in developement. We wanna bring them online step by step with the time.

This should give you a small overview about the "what comes next"...

* Action Points

Limited numbers of actions (Fleet movements, Military) at the same time per town, depending on the Town Hall´s Level in it. Systems with their own limits (espionage) are not included in it.

* Corruption

The bigger your empire becomes, the more ressources you have to spend for upgrading your administration or to remove the corruption. This happens by upgrading the governor's seat - the colonial variant of the palace.

With that, we want to reach:
New colonies are not immediately productive to 100% - the extreme power and production increase by an additional colony will be reached a bit slower. Colonies gets more expensive until they are really useful, but without elevating the palace´s costs too much and don‘t making the steps unreachable for Casual Players.

* Piracy

You will be able to send buccaneer fleets, to attack other player`s transport fleets on their way, and protect trade routes with your warships.
For this fight we will implement new looting rules, which will be transfered (later) to the ground troops too.
Trading fleets which ship into blockades get in a battle and are able to loose charge. In Sea battles, ressources can end up in the sea, get lost or be taken to a nearby coast.

With that, we want to reach:
- It becomes easier for newbies to start the “economic war“, without complicate blockade- / military manoeuvers.
- Transports without escorts are dangerous. Self-sufficiency also needs expenditures – eventually more than local purchase, in which the traders have to take care about the goods arrival themselves. Traders have to arrange security or get help from fighters. Trades and Transports are to safe at the moment.
- More Sea Battles -> because of the high upkeep for both sides less Gold in the world -> because of the sulphur costs of the ships more sulphur is used ->
-> thereby we expect some deflation and sinking market prices, while the value of sulphur should increase a bit in comparison to the rest.
(Probably not yet on the same Level, but a first step to reach it).
- As a result that ressources can be lost, more materials get out of the game.

* Restructuration of ressource system

8 new buildings are planned, which will affect the ressource production and the ressources costs on a colony. Because a complete reconditioning of the balancing is necessary anyway, both will be done at the same time.
The constructions will be more expensive. With this, the rate for building time to costs will be changed – shorter building time with higher costs. Longer “Saving Phases“ appear during the ressources for the next level have to be protected.
Beside, we correct some estimatations that have been done before the balancing release.
(The ressource Level on the players islands on each level was estimated, but affected all cost functions of the game – now we can balance it with real data, which should have relatively strong effects on the price organization.)

With that, we want to reach:
- By changing the costs/time relation the game will get more difficult, and looting, piracy and defense becomes more important. This changing should increase military expenses and make sulphur a very demanded good.
(Until now this relation was adjusted very good natured, to make the game not to dificult for casual players and newbies – you almost allways have enough ressources for the next building.)
Because of that, the need to loot or to trade was minor. At the same time, the need to defend was not very high – because it didn`t interfare.
- Because of the new buildings we can remove the marblecosts in the beginning – the more buildings we implement, later we can include the marble into the game (the total marble use for the building constructions stays the same, but it gets distributed on more options). This removes the advantage from marble islands at the beginning.
- The game duration until you reach a completely upgraded empire gets clearly longer.
- The additional construction options should open some exciting strategic upgrading options.

* Tutorial / Barbarians village / Noob Protection

We want to implement a Step-by-Step Tutorial, that will help new players to get introduced into the game and include everything from assignment of the workers up to military troop construction.
For all new players (also the ones that skip the tutorial) there will be an babarian village (NPC) on the islands to practise attacks and fights to loot some ressources for a faster start, without getting another player annoyed.

This village will not be a shared ressource – all players have their own barbarian village with an adapted difficulty and rewards, but the village will not stay forever.
Within the tutorial the barbarian village will be used to try out attacks and fights.

We also plan to implement a Noob Protection, to guard new players completely, and later on to punish unfair and unjustified attacks (we must punish independent of the points, for example, also not punish threat attacks to upgrade ressource).

With that, we want to reach:
- Easier game introduction
- Nice side effect: we could increase the costs for initial buildings due to the barbarian village as a generic resources generator, so that these are not only "peanuts" in the next colony foundation, and some more luxury goods will be provided in addition to the minimal bonus in researches, without filling up the warehouse of the player and so be a more profitable target for attacks.

Upon investigation of the Action Points.

Each town has a number of action points = to 2+1 point per 5 levels of your town hall, so a town hall level 5 has 3 action points, level 10 4 action points, so on.

These action points are used to make trades, military movements, etc. When you send out a trade ship it will cost 1 action point, that action point will be returned to you once that ship returns. Meaning you can only have so many actions taking place at the same time as you have action points.

Not quite as crippling as I first thought. I'm still investigating this to give us more info on how Action Points Work.

well there's the answer to my question in another thread....
guess i had better go remove it :p

I also noticed something about the resources. They don't seem to show the real amount. I tried donating the amount that appears, but then the game said I didn't have enough. took me a while to figure out that the real amount appears for a short time while the page is loading and then changes. It always seems to show higher than what it really is. Is that a glitch or sumtin? it's quite annoying

There are several bad bugs currently... I am hoping they fix these in the next day or two...

also, the action points are destroying me.... The way I designed my towns, I have to sent out tons of ships to all my places a few times a day. This worked great for me, now it doesnt. My 35 trade ships are now sitting idly waiting for action points to return.... The way I setup my towns is ruined now. I had a giant trade building on my capital where I purchased and distributed goods to my other colonies. Now I can't do that without using up all my action point.

Sigh. =( If they don't change this, I will have to spend several days completely re-doing my towns, upgrading trade ports, shipping ports, etc.

Plus I need to spend the next week upgrading the stupid governor thing. The thing costs a FORTUNE. When they upgraded it, it knocked all my towns into unhappy and I lost people due to the corruption. It was hard enough saving up for a 4th colony, now I have to save up for more than that for governor buildings...

This upgrade is kind of killing things for me... If I had set things up differently it might not be so bad, but I DEPEND on the ability to send out tons of different ships to different places. I spent so much coin on buying all those ships too...

I understand your distress, my towns are very far away from each other so I have to wait for the points to return so I can make other movements. It's something we will have to adapt to and please ask us if you need any resources or any help adapting.