I hope you're ready for some research! This is the second of three major sequential upgrades that we've been working on. This feature upgrade will be active on today's new Speed World and also unlock on the currently live Classic World #3.
As this is a substantial new feature, please bear it mind there may be some rough edges. It will take some time to tune / balance, we've started conservatively with the numbers and will adjust from feedback. Keep up posted in #general and #bugs!
Research Centre Update + Speed World #7 Launch
Alongside our Research update, we'll be launching our next Speed World where cosmetic victory crowns will be awarded to the top 3 players!
Research Overhaul
Visit any Research building and behold the marvellous and compellingly named "RESEARCH" page. Here you will find a new research tree that will unleash powerful and GLOBAL effects to all of your settlements and armies.
Time To Cash In!
Finally you can exchange those Grisly Tokens you've been hording for reasons that are, well, frankly dubious and quite grim really, but here we are.
In exchange for Tokens (and a small donation of your general currency), you will be able to purchase Nodes from the Research Tree in the relevant 'flavour' of the Faction that you've been pulverising the most. As you work down the Research Branches, you will discover increasingly powerful nodes and effects.
Be advised, each Node purchase will increase the cost of the next. So it would be wise to plan ahead and determine which Faction(s) are likely going to be your biggest adversaries for the current game.
Also you can't Research your own Faction. Weirdos.
Milestones And The Rest
The experience from enduring (or inflicting) relentless savagery from countless battles is channel down to your armies! As you purchase more and more Nodes, you will level up and hit up to 6 'Milestones'. Each Milestone allows you to recruit promoted units right out of the gates!
Initial Nodes are immediately available when building the Research Centre, however in order to progress deeper into the Research Branches, you will need to level up and unlock the perks via our traditional system every 6 levels.
You can research one Node at a time per Settlement. You can research additional Nodes if you have idle Research Centres across different settlements. Levelling up the Research Centre increases the speed of research.
We plan to add several more Nodes in the near future. We're just getting started!
Flurry World #2 Closing
Thank you very much indeed to the guinea pigs esteemed pioneers that braved the high octane wilds of our experimental 100x recruitment Flurry World!
The team and myself have been genuinely thrilled with the stability of the servers over the course of the week. This gives us tremendous confident for scalability in the future, and now frees up a lot of overhead to allow us to focus on forging more great new content and pushing the boundaries on future experimental game modes. Watch this space!
General & Fixes
- Persistent Leaderboard bug (hotfixed)
- Alliance invite crash (hotfixed)
- Increased unit travel speed on Classic World #3 by 20% (building and recruitment reduction had only been applied)
- Classic World #2 reward currency has now been issued for top 10 - top 3 will be contacted next week to discuss hoodies!
- Research building costs have been relaxed for lower levels. Can still upgrade 30+ for scaling Tech Level, will not boost Researching speed however
- Factory requirements more stringent on Speed Worlds (requires Research building - same as Classic World)
- Relaxed Storage building requirements
- Relaxed Watch Tower building requirements