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Zone of Influence question

It appears that the Zone of Influence (ZOI) of a Village will be the node the village is in.

For a town, will the ZOI extend one further node in each direction (so extends to adjacent nodes) unless the adjacent node is already the ZOI of a different town?

For a metropolis, how many nodes away from the center node will the ZOI extend?

I am eager to see how the ZOI will impact play.  The first few days of the game will see the rise of many villages.  Those villages which manage to be the first to rise to level 4 (towns) will then halt the further development of adjacent villages since they fall in the ZOI of a town.  If the citizens of those villages want to grow, they will have to siege and win against the town, forcing it back into village mode, then they can advance to town and make the former town part of their ZOI.  Small wars galore.

However, once there are several towns, their borders will touch.  If town A expands first and covers the next door village with its ZOI and the node just beyond that village grows to a town (B), then town B will have to de-level town A in order to expand its ZOI to include the village between them.

Towns will start popping up a week or two from launch.  So we will start seeing small scale warfare between towns trying to outgrow neighbors within the first month.

But wait, there's more!  Successful towns will grow and approach metropolis size, but nearby towns will be doing the same. Towns will have to fight each other to have the ability to first reach metropolis size.  We will see larger armies a few months after launch.  Some towns will win and grow.

But wait, there's more!  Metropolis will want dominance, perhaps.  Then we will see the large wars, fights of empires, alliances made and broken.  Here I particularly love that the total number of metropolis is different from either the number of types of nodes and also different from the types of races.  Which types of nodes will turn out to be the most powerful?  Military, with the armies?  Economic, with the riches?  Costal cities with navies?  Divine nodes with the Gods' help?  Scientific nodes with popularly elected leaders who rule by consent and can motivate citizens?  Will the non-military nodes ally against the military ones?  Will guilds of mercenaries fight for the highest bidders?

You can see where I am going, the Devs are brilliant!

Comments

  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited November 2018
    They have not given any fast answers as to exactly how a zoi is shaped and may "pop" beyond it is an internal mechanic and players will have no control over it or a visual indicator like "This node is now under the zoi of that node...suck it bitches!" How a nodes zoi is formed has been said to not be a circle of overlaps, but follows terrain and other guidelines that they have internally, but players will not be made aware of to reduce those trying to "game the system."
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited November 2018
    Only 5 metropolises per server i think. But yeah this games primary mode of pvp combat is greatly influenced by nodes or the economy in general.

    There is also a waiting period between sieges for the same town t avoid too much chaos ;)
  • Sorry, didn't see the question.

    My apologies, I got carried away.  Two questions, one in each of sentences two and three.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited November 2018
    @TauTau Yeah, I saw when I went back over it a little more carefully and edited the answer. Hope mine helps, but like most things it is all a bit weak atm till we get in and get to play around with it to see how it all works beyond concept leaks.
    As to the "small wars galore" comment, like @VoidShadow said there is a time gating mechanic on sieges. The initial declaration takes an equivalent amount of resources to what it took to level that node, and the siege declaration banner requires components from various master crafters to be made. People are not going to be running around the first couple of weeks burning stuff down for shits and giggles. Calling for a siege will not be just you and a couple friends being bored that day and deciding "fuck it, lets mess with RainbowValley!" Then there is the cooldown period that is 10X the declaration period. For a metro that works out to almost a two month window between sieges if people were able to marshal the resources to try and keep on under siege as often as possible.

  • If the ZOI follows terrain and natural features that will be brilliant, and historically proper. If that's how IS is doing it, for me that shows how much thought was put into the system before they started development. That goes a long way with my 'piece of mind.'
  • Excellent information, thanks very much!


  • I am a bit curious about how the ZOI will effect the level of content. So we know harder content and monsters will spawn near metropolises vs villages. We also know that each zone will have a range of difficulties (i.e. near the road will be easy monsters, deeper into the woods will be harder and up the mountain may be harder still). I just hope that the increased difficulty of content near a metropolis will extend all the way to the furthest nodes within its ZOI (even if they are encampments). So the harder content of a metropolis will spread players out within its ZOI and not cluster them in the metropolis itself and the immediate surroundings.
  • I drew this before we knew that ZOI's would follow terrain features, and that there would perhaps be a 5 metro limit per server.  That 5 limit may be more guided by where on the map the Metro areas are then on any hard and fast limit.  It was also drawn before the node levels were known which is actually L0 through L5 instead of L1 through L6.

    However it gives you some visual clues about how node development around the metro area's might work.
      


  • Nice graphic, dmgavin, thanks.

    But you are assuming that the metros are founded equidistant from each other.  In the turbulent world of AoC any node might be the one which starts to grow.  So it is likely that some growing nodes might be more distant from each other thus leaving semi-wild areas, or villages, between them.

    On the other hand, growing nodes might be pretty close to each other so that, as they grow, the towns and villages between them could fit into either metro's ZoI, thus becoming contested. 

    Perhaps four cities will be founded in nodes so close to each other that only two have any hope of becoming Metros.  The growing cities are thrown into conflict, either tear down your rival or be torn down yourself, like Rome versus Carthage, only one can survive.

    The Dev's design is subtle and powerful to provide us with a game with wonderful replayability. 

  • Glad you liked it, what we do know for certain, is that after L1 node (wild) that the node's cannot touch another node of the same level.   So cannot have 2 L2's next to each other, etc...  That's sort of what I was trying to show in my simple graphic.  In actuality, some of the L2's on that could be replaced by an L4 because there isn't another L4 adjacent to them.

    I was trying to keep the graphic simple though, and as I said, it was drawn before we knew there would be terrain factors involved in the ZOI's.  That might also mean that climate factors also may have an influence on how ZOI's are arranged. 
  • I've been curious about this myself. How they plan to depict the node upgrading itself. If the town's were actually instanced zones it'll be easy, but open world I don't know how they make those updates happen in real time outside a cut scene or something. But then who sees this cut scene? 
  • The only comment we have so far is that the transition won't be instant, will make sense visually, and won't be "jarring." Sounds like they have a plan envisioned.
  • It seems to me, a little more every day, that in fact most of this was thought out before they even got into developing it. Although that should be the norm I don't think it has been. Also, it is apparent that those most invested in Ashes success play it and want to play it. That helps so much too. I am still 100% stoked about this game.

    To the actual topic,

    I didn't know that two level 2 zones couldn't 'touch.' I thought the rules, as of now known, were no over lapping ZOI's and a level 3 node locks others at level 2. It's been a while so maybe I am a bit behind on the ZOI info.
  • @Azathoth Nope, Steven recently clarified that zone "locking" starts at level 1.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited November 2018
    I also vaguely remember Steven saying he was thinking about doing something interesting with "wilderness" nodes where no civilization has sprung up (via locking mechanics). So the nodes that don't even have encampments of NPCs. I took it to mean that they may not be the easiest content in the game as would be deduced from the difficulty scaling as nodes level up. 

    No I don't have a reference for this, I just vaguely remember something being said like that (which may not even have been said) and that was my interpretation (which may have been wrong).
  • Preserving the existence of wilderness area between areas of development is wonderful.  It could be that you have to watch out for PvE as well as PvP while escorting a caravan from city to city.

    And the players planning to attack a caravan might also get bogged down fighting wargs and undead in the wilderness while they wait for a caravan.

  • For certain we have to watch out for PvE as well as PvP while escorting/raiding caravans... fauna as well as environmental hazards/disasters.
  • I vaguely remeber (might be wrong) that steven said somewhere, that the ZOI-system won´t be a simple system. Like you can´t look the ZOI mechanics up in a wiki and then outplay the system. Currently can´t find the reference.

    Because of this i doubt, that the ZOI will be as simple and symmetrical as shown by @dmgavin.
    I know you tried to keep it simple and did this before terrain factors where known. I just think that even without terrain there may be more possiblities how the ZOI are distributed.
    dmgavin said:
     



  • Augentier You are right, that chart I had made was done long before they said much about ZOI's so it is dated.  And it was based on what was known then, which was only that you can't have adjacent nodes of same level.   It was also done before they showed the node map, which indicated the nodes would probably be grid (Long/Lat) based, also done before we knew there would be only one Metro node per ZOI.

    With terrain and other factors involved in ZOI's there will be more complexities involved.  

    But it does show what the basic of non adjacent nodes of same level means.  Perhaps I should retire the chart, but it seemed to help answer the persons question on them.

    I think one of the strategies' will be is where to place the metro node with the ZOI.  If you build it up against the edge of the ZOI and a mountain range, it may be harder to assault.   But that also may mean that it has less influence on the outlying area's on the other side of the ZOI.

  • Thanks dmgavin.  But the 'strategy' would be more appropriate for Civilization than for Ashes.  Why?  In Civ the player makes 'God like' decisions.  I suspect that Ashes will be far more chaotic. 

    Virtually every node will start with encampments, many will become villages, some towns and cities.  But the ones that rise and fall will do so because of guilds, economics, player friendships, strong personalities of leaders, and all kinds of other unpredictable factors.  Perhaps the location of geographic features like oceans and plains will also be determinates. 

    But it will be difficult for a group of player so say 'let's settle here and turn this great spot into a metropolis'.  They will try, but 50 other groups are saying the same thing at other nodes.  What fun we will have!

  • @TauTau It will be fun.  I'm sort of wondering if things will get so chaotic at some area's, that no one can ever get their metro built :D 
  • Some further thoughts about adjacent nodes.  A costal node may be adjacent to nearby island nodes but certainly not to those across the ocean because the ocean blocks adjacency.

    Will tall mountains block adjacency?  Will a wide or swift river block adjacency?  We know that they will define node borders.

  • If they are following terrain, I am sure a tall mountain will be a border. Historically rivers were also used as borders. So my bet is both of these things could very well be boundary lines.

    I would be okay with it taking a long time for any establishment to hit the metropolis level. I want it to happen, but would be happy if it took a long time for one to finally appear and stay, and we didn't always have 5 at a certain point in the games future.
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