G
Guest
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Hello Leaders,
Welcome to the August State of the Nations! I hope everyone is taking advantage of the building discounts, increased resource production, and other sales and events of the Summer for the Ages. In this post, I’ll be discussing the latest two releases, 5.7 and 5.7.5, as well as taking a look at what’s to come in 5.8 - Combat Intel. We’ve got a lot to talk about today so grab a snack and let’s dive right in!
As mentioned in a previous State of the Nations, 5.7 - Allied Front was focused on improving Alliances. We added Rubies and Alliance Perks to reward players that actively participate in World War with their Allies. Rubies are an Alliance-focused currency which right now can only be acquired through World War and spent at Marco Polo, the Traveling Merchant. In the future we’ll add new ways for you to earn Rubies and new places to spend them, which you can expect will remain tied to Alliances.
Alliance Perks reward Alliances that earn XP through World War and level up their Alliance. Perks provide all players within an Alliance with various bonuses. While most of the Perks are World War focused, some are more broadly useful. For example, the level 10 Perk automatically upgrades all donated troops to Global Age rank if they were below it. Unlocking this Perk allows lower-Age Alliance members to donate more frequently without worrying about filling up donation space with weaker troops. Currently the maximum level for all Alliances is 10, but you can expect to see this cap increase at some point in the future.
With 5.7.5 - Higher Learning we introduced Mystery Chests. Mystery Chests are not completely new to DomiNations. We’ve had random drops in the game for a while in the form of Shipments, General rewards from Expeditions, and to some degree even the random Trade Goods a player can earn after they finish a PvP battle. Mystery Chests take the best of all of these and combine them into a clear, straightforward system. You can already find Mystery Chests among Marco Polo’s wares, and in future releases we’ll be adding them elsewhere in the game. One example might be a World War Chest that, in addition to the rewards you already get from World War, has a chance to reward you with more resources, extra Rubies, or possibly even Troop Tactics.
In 5.7.5 we also updated League Rewards. Players in higher Leagues now gain much better loot from both the League Boat and the Victory Chest. For example, players in Kingdom III (2000 - 2199 medals) can now earn 2,750,000 Food or Gold or 13,750 Oil from Victory Chests! We also added National Trade Goods as a reward for higher Leagues. In 5.8 and beyond, we are planning to continue improving League rewards by adding things like Troop Tactics, Tactics, Blessings, Troop Recruits, Mercenary Contracts, and Mystery Chests. We are hoping to incentivize players to challenge themselves by climbing the medal rankings instead of just raiding easy bases in lower Leagues.
While not officially part of the release, after 5.7.5 we turned the World War Replay beta back on. Hopefully everyone is enjoying them as much as we are. The beta runs until September 12th, at which time we’ll be turning the feature back off. There’s good news though! With the release of 5.8 - Combat Intel we will end the beta period and turn World War Replays on permanently. We will continue to identify and fix bugs with the feature as they arise, but we feel that it is clean enough now that it can and should remain active.
Before we get into 5.8 - Combat Intel, I’d like to mention another update which we are planning to release first. In a few weeks, after Summer for the Ages concludes, we will put out the 5.7.5 Balance Update. This will be the first of a new type of release that will not require you to update your game, unlike full releases such as 5.8. In this very first Balance Update, we will be making two changes. The first is that we will be turning on the World War tiebreaker that resolves stalemates based on time elapsed in battle. The second is that the citizen costs and times for Expeditions will no longer increase as you level up your Dock. Though low-level Expeditions have become a little more expensive, high-level ones are now much cheaper. This should encourage players to upgrade their Docks, since there is no longer an incentive to keep it at a lower level. Moving forward, you should expect to see more Balance Updates like this in between full releases.
Let’s finally talk about 5.8 - Combat Intel! As I mentioned above, 5.8 will include the permanent release of World War Replays as well as more improvements to League rewards. Beyond that, 5.8 will also add a new building in the Global Age and a new University Leader.
In 5.8, players in the Global and Atomic Ages will get access to a new defensive building called the Missile Silo which heavily punishes clusters of attacking troops. The Missile Silo begins each battle inactive. Deploying troops or tactics of any kind will generate “threat,” and when enough threat is generated, the Missile Silo will arm itself and begin laying waste to the enemy army. The building scans the entire map to find the biggest cluster of hitpoints in the attacking army to fire upon. When it finds a target, it locks onto the location and fires. The attacker can see where the Missile Silo is firing a few seconds before it launches, so you may be able to save your troops with a well-timed Rally. You may also be able to guide the Missile Silo away from your troops with a well placed Decoy. After the Missile Silo has fired, it will take some time to rearm, then begin looking for a new target. The Missile Silo can be built and upgraded once in the Global Age, then upgraded again in the Atomic Age. We’re eager to see how base layouts and attack strategies change with the introduction of this deadly new building.
We’re also adding a new Great Leader to the University in 5.8: Moctezuma. Once you’ve upgraded to a level 2 University, you can begin researching his skills, which are mainly focused on improving your economy. For example, you can gain a 90% reduction in hunting, mining, and gathering time, a 50% increase to your Oil Well capacity, and 30% more power from Coalitions. His capstone, Triple Alliance, provides you with an extra random National Trade Good whenever you earn at least one National Trade Good from battle. Since the extra National Trade Good is random, this will help improve your income of all National Trade Goods regardless of the popularity of specific nations.
So, what’s next? Well, there are a lot of things that we’re excited about beyond 5.8. As this current World War Replay Beta period comes to an end we’ll be compiling all of the feedback, bugs, etc. into a plan of action for how to improve the feature. We’ll also be doing the same thing for Summer for the Ages. We’re also mapping out what will be in the 5.8 Balance Update, with a few things currently planned. We’re going to be changing the Tactical Helicopter to make it less efficient at raiding Oil. We still want it to be a valuable troop, but we feel that the stats that it released with were a bit too strong. We will also make APCs spawn their first set of troops faster, which will make them useful more quickly.
Lastly, we’re going to change how the Castle handles garrisoned Generals when it is destroyed. Instead of being lost, any Generals remaining inside of the Castle will be released onto the battlefield which is similar to how the Stronghold functions with donated Troop Tactics in World War. However, unlike the Stronghold, the Generals are injured in the destruction of the Castle and will appear with less than 100% hitpoints. Defense-minded players will find with this change that the Generals they’ve invested heavily in will be able to more effectively defend an attack. An attacker’s ability to Sabotage a Castle and destroy it before any General has spawned continues to make Sabotage an incredibly strong Tactic, too strong in fact. One Tactic can shut down the damage that the Castle deals along with what amounts to millions of resources and weeks of time invested into Generals. Sabotaging a Castle and destroying it will still incapacitate a defensive building and will deal significant damage to the defender’s Generals, but will no longer completely shut down an entire aspect of defense.
Beyond 5.8 and the 5.8 Balance Update, we’re also working on changes to the offense/defense rating system for World War. The ultimate goal here is to surface these values to players so that they can better see why two Alliances have been paired up for World War. TinSoldier recently posted a detailed explanation pointing out some of the misleading assumptions that players have had surrounding World War matchmaking. He does a great job out outlining why looking only at Age and player level can lead to inaccurate assessments of matches. Unfortunately, the values that are actually used for World War matchmaking, namely offense and defense rating, are not surfaced anywhere in the game. I’ll go into more detail about this in the future, but I did want to mention that this is something we are working on.
Finally, I wanted to take a moment to address a few community-related topics. First and foremost, I hope everyone can see the impact that TinSoldier has had on our forums and social media pages. While you may not always agree with what he has to say, he has done a great job increasing the frequency of replies to player questions, comments, and feedback. We plan to expand on his valuable work. For example, in the coming weeks, you can expect to see a post from TinSoldier outlining the details of our next developer Q&A. While we are still finalizing the details and exact location of the Q&A, you can expect this one to be opened up to a wider range of topics than our previous one.
There is one final change I’d like to announce before we wrap up. This will actually be the last State of the Nations that’s explicitly tied to a month. The next one will be the “5.8 State of the Nations” and will be posted after 5.8 - Combat Intel has released. Why the change? Well, the State of the Nations has always served to talk about what’s going on and what’s coming next in DomiNations. It will still do that by reflecting on the previous release and previewing what’s to come in the next release. With 5.8 currently planned to come out at the end of September, the 5.8 State of the Nations will be posted in October. In the months when we don’t have a State of the Nations, we’ll be looking to answer player questions in other ways. For example, the above-mentioned Q&A will take place in September in lieu of a State of the Nations. The goal here is to continue to allow the State of the Nations to serve the function it always has while supplementing that information with updates that are more of a conversation and less of a big wall of text.
That’s all I have for now. As I said, this one is pretty lengthy, but it’s all important and worth talking about. Thank you for sticking it out to the end. As always, please feel free to leave comments, questions, and feedback. TinSoldier will be jumping into this thread to answer your questions and comment on your posts. Enjoy the rest of the Summer for the Ages!
Thanks,
Brian
Welcome to the August State of the Nations! I hope everyone is taking advantage of the building discounts, increased resource production, and other sales and events of the Summer for the Ages. In this post, I’ll be discussing the latest two releases, 5.7 and 5.7.5, as well as taking a look at what’s to come in 5.8 - Combat Intel. We’ve got a lot to talk about today so grab a snack and let’s dive right in!
As mentioned in a previous State of the Nations, 5.7 - Allied Front was focused on improving Alliances. We added Rubies and Alliance Perks to reward players that actively participate in World War with their Allies. Rubies are an Alliance-focused currency which right now can only be acquired through World War and spent at Marco Polo, the Traveling Merchant. In the future we’ll add new ways for you to earn Rubies and new places to spend them, which you can expect will remain tied to Alliances.
Alliance Perks reward Alliances that earn XP through World War and level up their Alliance. Perks provide all players within an Alliance with various bonuses. While most of the Perks are World War focused, some are more broadly useful. For example, the level 10 Perk automatically upgrades all donated troops to Global Age rank if they were below it. Unlocking this Perk allows lower-Age Alliance members to donate more frequently without worrying about filling up donation space with weaker troops. Currently the maximum level for all Alliances is 10, but you can expect to see this cap increase at some point in the future.
With 5.7.5 - Higher Learning we introduced Mystery Chests. Mystery Chests are not completely new to DomiNations. We’ve had random drops in the game for a while in the form of Shipments, General rewards from Expeditions, and to some degree even the random Trade Goods a player can earn after they finish a PvP battle. Mystery Chests take the best of all of these and combine them into a clear, straightforward system. You can already find Mystery Chests among Marco Polo’s wares, and in future releases we’ll be adding them elsewhere in the game. One example might be a World War Chest that, in addition to the rewards you already get from World War, has a chance to reward you with more resources, extra Rubies, or possibly even Troop Tactics.
In 5.7.5 we also updated League Rewards. Players in higher Leagues now gain much better loot from both the League Boat and the Victory Chest. For example, players in Kingdom III (2000 - 2199 medals) can now earn 2,750,000 Food or Gold or 13,750 Oil from Victory Chests! We also added National Trade Goods as a reward for higher Leagues. In 5.8 and beyond, we are planning to continue improving League rewards by adding things like Troop Tactics, Tactics, Blessings, Troop Recruits, Mercenary Contracts, and Mystery Chests. We are hoping to incentivize players to challenge themselves by climbing the medal rankings instead of just raiding easy bases in lower Leagues.
While not officially part of the release, after 5.7.5 we turned the World War Replay beta back on. Hopefully everyone is enjoying them as much as we are. The beta runs until September 12th, at which time we’ll be turning the feature back off. There’s good news though! With the release of 5.8 - Combat Intel we will end the beta period and turn World War Replays on permanently. We will continue to identify and fix bugs with the feature as they arise, but we feel that it is clean enough now that it can and should remain active.
Before we get into 5.8 - Combat Intel, I’d like to mention another update which we are planning to release first. In a few weeks, after Summer for the Ages concludes, we will put out the 5.7.5 Balance Update. This will be the first of a new type of release that will not require you to update your game, unlike full releases such as 5.8. In this very first Balance Update, we will be making two changes. The first is that we will be turning on the World War tiebreaker that resolves stalemates based on time elapsed in battle. The second is that the citizen costs and times for Expeditions will no longer increase as you level up your Dock. Though low-level Expeditions have become a little more expensive, high-level ones are now much cheaper. This should encourage players to upgrade their Docks, since there is no longer an incentive to keep it at a lower level. Moving forward, you should expect to see more Balance Updates like this in between full releases.
Let’s finally talk about 5.8 - Combat Intel! As I mentioned above, 5.8 will include the permanent release of World War Replays as well as more improvements to League rewards. Beyond that, 5.8 will also add a new building in the Global Age and a new University Leader.
In 5.8, players in the Global and Atomic Ages will get access to a new defensive building called the Missile Silo which heavily punishes clusters of attacking troops. The Missile Silo begins each battle inactive. Deploying troops or tactics of any kind will generate “threat,” and when enough threat is generated, the Missile Silo will arm itself and begin laying waste to the enemy army. The building scans the entire map to find the biggest cluster of hitpoints in the attacking army to fire upon. When it finds a target, it locks onto the location and fires. The attacker can see where the Missile Silo is firing a few seconds before it launches, so you may be able to save your troops with a well-timed Rally. You may also be able to guide the Missile Silo away from your troops with a well placed Decoy. After the Missile Silo has fired, it will take some time to rearm, then begin looking for a new target. The Missile Silo can be built and upgraded once in the Global Age, then upgraded again in the Atomic Age. We’re eager to see how base layouts and attack strategies change with the introduction of this deadly new building.
We’re also adding a new Great Leader to the University in 5.8: Moctezuma. Once you’ve upgraded to a level 2 University, you can begin researching his skills, which are mainly focused on improving your economy. For example, you can gain a 90% reduction in hunting, mining, and gathering time, a 50% increase to your Oil Well capacity, and 30% more power from Coalitions. His capstone, Triple Alliance, provides you with an extra random National Trade Good whenever you earn at least one National Trade Good from battle. Since the extra National Trade Good is random, this will help improve your income of all National Trade Goods regardless of the popularity of specific nations.
So, what’s next? Well, there are a lot of things that we’re excited about beyond 5.8. As this current World War Replay Beta period comes to an end we’ll be compiling all of the feedback, bugs, etc. into a plan of action for how to improve the feature. We’ll also be doing the same thing for Summer for the Ages. We’re also mapping out what will be in the 5.8 Balance Update, with a few things currently planned. We’re going to be changing the Tactical Helicopter to make it less efficient at raiding Oil. We still want it to be a valuable troop, but we feel that the stats that it released with were a bit too strong. We will also make APCs spawn their first set of troops faster, which will make them useful more quickly.
Lastly, we’re going to change how the Castle handles garrisoned Generals when it is destroyed. Instead of being lost, any Generals remaining inside of the Castle will be released onto the battlefield which is similar to how the Stronghold functions with donated Troop Tactics in World War. However, unlike the Stronghold, the Generals are injured in the destruction of the Castle and will appear with less than 100% hitpoints. Defense-minded players will find with this change that the Generals they’ve invested heavily in will be able to more effectively defend an attack. An attacker’s ability to Sabotage a Castle and destroy it before any General has spawned continues to make Sabotage an incredibly strong Tactic, too strong in fact. One Tactic can shut down the damage that the Castle deals along with what amounts to millions of resources and weeks of time invested into Generals. Sabotaging a Castle and destroying it will still incapacitate a defensive building and will deal significant damage to the defender’s Generals, but will no longer completely shut down an entire aspect of defense.
Beyond 5.8 and the 5.8 Balance Update, we’re also working on changes to the offense/defense rating system for World War. The ultimate goal here is to surface these values to players so that they can better see why two Alliances have been paired up for World War. TinSoldier recently posted a detailed explanation pointing out some of the misleading assumptions that players have had surrounding World War matchmaking. He does a great job out outlining why looking only at Age and player level can lead to inaccurate assessments of matches. Unfortunately, the values that are actually used for World War matchmaking, namely offense and defense rating, are not surfaced anywhere in the game. I’ll go into more detail about this in the future, but I did want to mention that this is something we are working on.
Finally, I wanted to take a moment to address a few community-related topics. First and foremost, I hope everyone can see the impact that TinSoldier has had on our forums and social media pages. While you may not always agree with what he has to say, he has done a great job increasing the frequency of replies to player questions, comments, and feedback. We plan to expand on his valuable work. For example, in the coming weeks, you can expect to see a post from TinSoldier outlining the details of our next developer Q&A. While we are still finalizing the details and exact location of the Q&A, you can expect this one to be opened up to a wider range of topics than our previous one.
There is one final change I’d like to announce before we wrap up. This will actually be the last State of the Nations that’s explicitly tied to a month. The next one will be the “5.8 State of the Nations” and will be posted after 5.8 - Combat Intel has released. Why the change? Well, the State of the Nations has always served to talk about what’s going on and what’s coming next in DomiNations. It will still do that by reflecting on the previous release and previewing what’s to come in the next release. With 5.8 currently planned to come out at the end of September, the 5.8 State of the Nations will be posted in October. In the months when we don’t have a State of the Nations, we’ll be looking to answer player questions in other ways. For example, the above-mentioned Q&A will take place in September in lieu of a State of the Nations. The goal here is to continue to allow the State of the Nations to serve the function it always has while supplementing that information with updates that are more of a conversation and less of a big wall of text.
That’s all I have for now. As I said, this one is pretty lengthy, but it’s all important and worth talking about. Thank you for sticking it out to the end. As always, please feel free to leave comments, questions, and feedback. TinSoldier will be jumping into this thread to answer your questions and comment on your posts. Enjoy the rest of the Summer for the Ages!
Thanks,
Brian
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My heart started beating real fast and I may have even salivated. I'm sure I will regret feeling this way when the reality of a missile incinerating my troops comes to light but it will be fun to see it working on my base.
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