Intercontinental links, permanent strongholds and # of continents

[texico]

I saw the hex system of territory control in the GDC video, and it looks amazing One of the best-looking development moves for PS2 imo and that much more fluid, moving front line looks awesome, plus it'll be nice using all of the terrain, there were a lot of interesting terrain formations in PS1 that never got any fight time because they didn't lay between facilities. So well done

However, while it looks great on a continental level, i've been wondering how things are going to work between continents. Have the devs released any information?

As I understand, there's no more link system, but the collective time bonus of hex territories is an incentive for empire's to not just attack random facilities in the middle of the continent instead. But if there's no link system, and each continent now has an unconquerable "base" for each empire, doesn't that mean that people can just attack any continent they want all day long? If that's the case, the two problems I can see are annoying people hacking bases all over the place and therefore defenders always having to go all the way over there to kill one guy or something stupid, and the other problem is that it's much more likely there will be fights on all continents at all times, which will surely just act to spread the fights thinner?

In PS1 continents were of course locked (in terms of capturability) if your empire didn't have the link to get there. Therefore fights were usually concentrated on one continent. True, if there were more people, there'd be more continents, and sometimes you'd get two active conts, but that's only because one would be pop-locked.



This locking system actually had another big bonus when you think about it. Depending a little bit on your empire, there were some continents that you visited a lot of the time and where "normal" gameplay took place. Usually that's Cyssor, Ishundar, Searhus and Oshur. Other continents were rarer, and therefore, it probably actually took a whole YEAR, maybe more to have experienced every "fight" (for each and every facility on all continents from all directions), and some of them only once. At first that seems like a negative, but remember that every new fight felt like absolutely brand new content. I remember the first time I fought on Nexus after having looked at it on the map for several months, and I lapped up every single second.

Also, because of the way the link system worked, each empire had home conts that absolutely felt like their home turf, and it was always extremely difficult to try and beat an empire on their home (which made it all the more satisfying when you managed it). For some reason as an NC, Solsar, Esamir and Forseral were rarely fought on while Hossin, Amerish and Ceryshen were more-so.

The result was that some maps felt almost like premium content. You log on and see the NC fighting on Forseral and you're inclined to play for 12 hours because it's a fairly rare experience


I'm wondering therefore if with no sort of "link" system between continents to restrict what you can play, and continental strongholds so you can always spawn on every cont, there's going to be fights on all the continents most of the time, you're going to be playing on them all regularly, no empire has their own "turf" and the fights will spread thinner across more space.

Also, this is why I wonder if starting with only a few continents is a bad idea. If for example the game launches with 3, everyone will play all these continents fairly regularly, then when a new one is released, everyone might crowd that continent at first, then fights will spread out to all 4, and so on, rather than PS1's system where a number of continents are staring you in the face and you're looking forward to playing them, and each empire has their own favoured continents.







So yeah, I really like the hex territory system, but in a similar way I hope the continents themselves are treated as actual territory with bonuses, favoured maps per empire and maps that are played on less than others depending on your empire, rather than just the staging ground for battles. That's why I feel a little concerned about the permanent strongholds and the possibility of only a few continents at the start; I don't want the game to feel like it's just a battle for a continent when in PS1 it was a battle for the whole of Auraxis.