Confirmed: 9 Sanctuaries at launch.

[acosmo]

With Amerish, Ceryshen and Indar planned to have three empire footholds each, there will be a total of nine sanctuaries.

The answer here though is that less is more. Right now there is no sense of a home continent. There is no way to even win 1/3rd of the game. Sure your empire may be able to take X number of hexes, but in the end what does it amount to? Leaderboard scores and resource farming? New weapon and vehicle unlocks? That's not why we want to play this game. We want to play this game because of the massive scale of it. We want to play this game because of its persistence.

9 sanctuaries will prevent us from having the game we want. With each empire having a foot hold on each continent, the soil near the warpsanc shields edges will hardly ever be contested by another empire. The battle will shift on a much smaller scale. There will be no home continents. What kind of home is a home you share with an enemy? Even if you wipe them off of every hex, two enemies will always have a techplant behind a star wars force field on your continent. In this kind of world, why bother fighting if not for unlocks and resources? There is no strategic progression.

This problem has a simple fix. Only one empire foothold per continent with the other empires only having transit gates.

This way, more of the map is fought over and there is greater room for strategic progression. In a one empire foothold per continent setup an empire's effectiveness can be judged by whether or not their home continent is secure and not just by the number of hexes they have. What hollow satisfaction is gained from a larger number of controlled hexes or a larger number of acquired resources is dwarfed by the pride gained by keeping one's home continent secure.

This setup also elegantly solves the twofold problem of continent locking. No empire will ever be locked out of the fight, but at the same time, every empire has an opportunity to have an inch of security to hold on to. The battle is given weight and value with all of the good aspects and none of the bad. If your empire is doing well and has bases on each continent, your empire is rewarded by ease of deployment. If you empire is doing poorly then your are punished by only being able to deploy to your home cont. These punishments, however, do not affect the 30 minute player negatively. They actually put the casual player in the most intense (last stand/alamo-esque) battles while forcing more experienced players to help their empire out fight alongside their colors where it matters most.

tl;dr 9 sancs vs 3 sancs.