Changelog/2023/January 15

PATCH   **Season 3: Warfare**
*Updated: January 15, 2023*

## Welcome

Today's post is all about Warfare and everything we have done to improve the systems etc!

Firstly, I will go over an important island feature
**Credit and thanks to:** Unknowncmbk for re-adding target select and tying match quality to it and spawning. davidlang55 for balancing crux damage based on player count, and difference and adding gold for cruxes! Balancing help from Uncurse, Aiboh, ShadowTan and plenty of their alts.

## Island Level

Maxing all buildings to level 4 doesn’t provide anything interesting for players. So what we have introduced is an Island level. The island level determines how many buildings you can build and upgrade. Each tier counts as one point. Once you’ve hit the max, you can no longer upgrade or build any more buildings. This provides a really interesting strategy for the game, you can no longer have all tier 4 buildings! Which building tiers will you have to forgo to prioritise a tier you want? The level for Season 3 is 40. I wanted to make it a lot lower, but I got told off. This number is restricting enough to make you think of a strategy but not too much that gameplay isn’t being impacted. Oh, I forgot to mention, you can build your buildings over the Townhall level. You can have a tier 4 Weaponsmith and a tier 1 Townhall if you want!

Example of levels:
Tier 1 - Townhall, Logging Camp, Fletchers = 3 levels
Tier 2 - Armoury, Weaponsmith, Bank = 6 levels (2 each)
Tier 3 - Siege Workshop, Alchemists, Mine = 9 levels (3 each)
Total Island level of 18! Island Level does not count Tower and Wonder

Now onto warfare.

## Warfare

No real gameplay features have been added to warfare, it is still the same you know and love. Due to the nature of the game it is uncommon that you will get a perfect war. Perfect is defined as the exact player count, same armour, and weapons. We have however added a lot of balancing mechanics to improve situations for those imbalances.

### Target Select

We have moved back to the target select option for warfare. No more queue. If there is an available match, it will be shown in the menu. The targets shown to you are based on match quality, similar to last season but with improvements to the algorithm.

## Balancing Player Numbers

Difference in player count is the biggest complaint we get. Only allowing wars with equal players would not work, people can always join late for wars once war is declared which changes the numbers anyway. We’ve added different types of balancing to even some things out

### Spawning

We restricted players in the war last season which people really did not like, the difference could not be more than 2. We believe we have come up with something much better!

All players regardless of numbers at the time of war declare will spawn at the start of the war. We take the smallest team size and set the max players that can participate. For example, if the attackers have 2 people, the defenders cannot go over 4 alive people, which is the max team size. You see I said **alive** there right? You can go above the max team size, but the others will be spectating. You can have 6 defenders on but only 4 will be able to participate. If one dies, a new player will be respawned at random.
Let’s say the attackers with 2 people let their other members know they are in a war and one gets on, that brings the total to a 3 v 4 alive (excluding 2 specs, 6 defender total). We could increase the max team size, since the minimum has changed (from 2 to 3), to allow the other spectators to play but this would be unfair considering a 3v4 is fair player difference.

So, just a little bit more, hang in there. If Attackers get two more people on, that brings it to a 4 v 4 alive and 5 v 6 total (incl specs) both teams are now above max team size, which was 4. Since both teams are above the max team size a new smallest team size is found, which would be 5. This then scales and stops when both teams are at 7. Over 7 players and we disregard balancing numbers.

## Damage to Crux

There are two variables that change the damage/healing you do to a crux.

The first is team size.
While larger islands are better for Island Clash for many reasons. We understand that there are islands that have less than 4 people on. In warfare, if your team is 1, 2 or 3 players you will deal more damage to cruxes. This also applies to healing, you will heal more damage. This scales from 1 dealing the most, to 4 being default damage. This means that 1-2 players can have a ‘normal’ war being able to take a few buildings out. Rather than sweating because you can’t break cruxes fast enough to even get a star.

The second variable is a difference in team size.
While we have balancing changes in place to numbers, we wanted to still implement this especially for larger player differences. Player difference applies specifically to both teams. We look at giving a buff to attackers if there are more defenders and to defenders if there are more attackers separately. Each variable scales differently. We buff defenders, if there are more attackers, heavier than we do for buffing attackers if there are more defenders.

### Smaller notable features:

#### Warfare leavers

If you are in a war and the other team leaves, after a certain amount of accumulated time passes, you who stay in the war will win by default! You will gain all the spoils from winning a war.

#### More gold

We love gold, gold was hard to come by last season. We think we’ve added plenty now. Both of these were shown off in the season 3 launch trailer!

#### Gold for Cruxes

You will now receive gold based on how many cruxes you have destroyed or protected. This total is divided up and shared amongst your team.

#### Warcamp gold!

The War Camp has a new feature that gives gold at the end of warfare based on its tier.
Tier 1 - 20 gold per player
Tier 2 - 35
Tier 3 - 50
Tier 4 - 65

That is the last S3 big update post. The Conquest update will be coming soon, after the trailer, on the 17th of January. Aaaaaah.