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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
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🏰🤔 Let us know what you think the fourth and fifth Node stage names should be!
🙌 Glorious community! We plan on removing a Node stage after the Village stage and want your feedback on what the progression should look like.
🏰🤔 Let us know what you think the fourth and fifth Node stage names should be!
🏰🤔 Let us know what you think the fourth and fifth Node stage names should be! 32 votes
Town ➡ Metropolis
18%
6 votes
Town ➡ City
56%
18 votes
City ➡ Metropolis
25%
8 votes
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Metropolis – Don’t remove this.
It’s the capstone. Losing it would flatten the game’s highest ambitions.
It’s central to regional control, economic influence, and world identity.
If you remove this, the world may feel smaller and less impactful.
🏘️ Town – Removing this is tempting, but risky.
It’s a transitional tier. Some might call it “just a stepping stone.”
But… town-stage nodes are where civic identity often starts to matter: markets emerge, conflict intensifies, and things feel alive.
Without it, the leap from village to city could feel abrupt.
🏙️ City – If one must go… this is the least painful.
Hear me out: removing “City” (or merging it downward into Town or upward into Metropolis) could tighten the pacing without gutting either end of the experience.
The distinction between a large town and a city may be cosmetic or marginal to gameplay if not well-supported.
City might feel like a redundant tier—too late to be formative, too early to be climactic.
✅ Vote to remove: City
Metropolis is irreplaceable. Town is emotionally and strategically meaningful. City is the one tier that could be folded into another, depending on how the devs rebalance node powers.
Alternatively, a unique building could be introduced—one that only a single City node can construct. This building would elevate the node into a Metropolis, unlocking significant advantages and prestige for the server. Imagine traveling across continents just to participate in the siege against the dominant metropolis—an event that could shake the balance of power across the entire world.
And at level 5 (City tier), nodes could gain distinctive names depending on their specialization, adding flavor and identity to each type:
Node Level 5 Specializations:
| Specialization | City Name | Flavor Description |
| Divine | Sanctum | A sacred city filled with divine influence, attracting pilgrims and radiating spiritual power. |
| Military | Bastion | A fortress city engineered for war, with formidable defenses and elite troops. |
| Economic | Metropolis | A bustling hub of trade and commerce, influencing markets far beyond its borders. |
| Scientific | Citadel | A city of knowledge and innovation, home to advanced research and mysterious discoveries.
This system not only enriches gameplay but also lays the groundwork for deep server-wide narratives.
But that wasn't really the question. Though none of this gamebreaking for me. I'd like Metropolis retained as it really does signify the pinnacle of habitation. Big, sprawling, even slightly out of control, too big to administer without some level of corruption and less welcoming for it. I like that.
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
Thats kinda scary how accurately that reflected my thought process lol
Encampment -> Village -> Town -> City -> Metropolis would be my preferred option if we had to just remove one of the current settlement types.
Also the alternative name for Expedition makes no sense, how can something be called a Crossroads before people have settled enough to make a single road, let alone multiple roads crossing each other.
My ideal progression would be:
Wilderness -> Camp -> Village -> Town -> City -> Metropolis
(And yeah I'm changing "Encampment" to "Camp", at the moment it just feels like the name is longer to make it sound fancier......but it's a group of tents, it isn't fancy)
EDIT: Just to add another bit, I don't think we should get rid of the later stages because they feel like a natural progression, of course a settlement goes Village -> Town -> City, and Metropolis has always been sold to us as the peak of node progression, it would be crazy to take that away now. When we'll have 5 of the top tier node in the world, City just doesn't sound special enough, we want a Super-City.
I can get on board with that
It sounds the most common and approachable.
Metropolis sounds too grand and abstract - to me anyway.
My understanding from the initial question before the repost was that it was one of the later stages being removed, but if all stages are up for grabs then this sounds pretty good too.
I guess it depends on which stage (in terms of content, not just the name) is actually being removed though, cuz yours sounds better sequentially I think, but if they remove a large content area from the sequence but keep the "larger area names" by removing expedition, then it kind of inflates the naming a little throughout the sequence to where the smaller areas will have a name that used to be for a slightly larger area (like city now being the name for what is now actually a town from the old sequence), which might feel a bit off.