I intend on pre-ordering Ashes of Creation soon but in the meantime, I have been reading through the Wiki for the game that I was kindly linked. However, I have come across a mutually incompatible situation in the Wiki's explanation for two separate but directly entwined situations and I was hoping maybe someone here has newer and perhaps further clarified information.
I apologize that this so long, but the length I feel is required in order to properly elucidate where I am encountering stumbling blocks and hopefully answer
the three questions at the bottom.
I'm going to directly quote from the Wiki the two relevant passages and further explain my confusion below.
From the section on Guilds:
Over time you have betrayals in the mafia guild and they splinter off into two groups and join the other side or it's like weird things that can occur in that regard... – Steven Sharif
From the section on Zones of Influence:
A Vassal Node cannot declare war on their Parent Node or any of its Vassals. Citizens of Vassals are bound by the diplomatic states of the Parent Node.
Both of the linked citations for these passages are accurately transcribed.
Now here is the confusion:
If a Vassal cannot attack a Parent node then how precisely could the first quote occur? If a Vassal cannot attack a Parent node then there is logically no way for the "splintering" as Steven says to occur. There are roughly 100 nodes (from what I read in the Wiki) which may seem like a lot but I've played MMO's with far more landmass and I've seen how quickly real estate actually goes. If we were to take this in a realistic scenario (six months, a year, or more post-launch) where a guild splits due to internal conflict then there would not really be any unoccupied Nodes that such a group could occupy due to the Zone of Influence mechanic naturally oppressing them as a matter of course. Presuming they could find a Node that wasn't directly linked to the primary antagonist of such a group in the first place.
Example:
The group splinters and one-half of the guild decide they want to follow one guy, but to do this they must locate uncontested Nodes that are not tied to their former guildmates via the influence mechanism. They locate a node far off that isn't directly occupied (it's Tier 0) but a node right next door is Tier 3, this would by default prevent them from making any progress beyond what their neighbors direct because of the system artificially handicapping them to Tier 2 until they can rank up said neighbor via the passed on resources/experience deducted from the vassal's town after capping out. And worse, they cannot claim the land of neighboring nodes nor attack any nearby vassals because the guild that's already Tier 3 has also pushed them into their zone of influence as well. As it stands, the explanations given in theory kill the prospect of the sort of big splits leading to massive competition between guilds in the cradle and just reinforces the status quo.
What if the nomad guild just attacks the aforementioned Tier 3 node to claim it for themselves?
Not a bad idea, really, but in all likelihood, any vindictive or highly competitive (or both) guild would just back up a targeted third-party guild that the nomads were attempting to defeat and whose land they intended to occupy through the guild war system via an allegiance. Meaning any attempts to occupy new land could be thwarted due to the other half in this split being able to intervene when push came to shove. So attacking a different guild's node isn't really a solution to the problem, and this of course presumes that said target wasn't already in the zone of influence of a bigger fish, thus rendering the whole plan moot.
This isn't a make-or-break thing for me, but I'm trying to determine what is correct and hopefully answer the following three questions:
- Can Vassals attack Parent nodes?
- Can Parent nodes attack Vassals?
- Can an Occupied Node be given its own autonomy or can an Occupied Node declare independence?
