Intro
Please note that this is just a sub-post covering only a puzzle-piece of my Land-Speculation.
To start on the "Front Page" or to return to the Overview-Post please click on the picture below:
For those of you who have read my previous posts about Stronghold Kingdoms it should be no surprise for a medieval strategy game to contain some sort of Combat-System.
For those who have not read my previous posts, I would highly recommend doing so to get a better understanding of the following system.
So here is how the Combat works in Stronghold:
Peasants to the Medieval Lord are what air is to humans; a neccessity. They are the heart and soul of every village and army.
Each village requires a certain amount of Peasants in order to run the various tasks and buildings found there. Those that do not find jobs around the village can be recruited into armies as various troops or simply left in their hovels to work the land and pay tax to their lord.
As described in more detail in my Post
#4 Buildings each village has a popularity which depends on several factors like Taxes, Food-Rations, Housing-Capacity,... :
If the Popularity is positive: right now and that attracts people so new workers arrive to town more frequently (as seen on top of the picture)
If the Popularity is negative: Peasants will flee from your village over time resulting in a lower production of resources cause you lack the workers.
So following this logic a village can attract more Peasants than it needs workers, thats important cause you also need Peasant to train them to become a military unit like an Archer or a Swordsman. Of course each one has its own use-case and is weaker/stronger.
Armed Peasants are cheapest but in big numbers they could kill a Swordsman.
An Archer might die to a Pikeman, however placed on a defense tower out of reach he can be deadly. The usual I'd say
So in order to recruit you have to have 3 very important things:
- Peasants you can train
- The needed Weapons for the Military-Type
- Gold to recruit a unit (kinda like their Pay)
So how you can obtain Peasants is already described above.
Weapons are kinda like the items & spells of Stronghold. You can manufacture/craft them in your village if you have the building for it. E.g. ( see my Post #4 Buildings ) you can craft weapons in military buildings. However every weapon costs Wood/Stone/Iron, so you would also have to maintain a steady resource production.
So now over time we managed to build up an army. What are we going to do with it?
You can battle of course. But I will divide it into 2 different parts. But first the Basics:
Basics
Above you can see how almost every battlefield looks in Stronghold.
The goal for the attacker is to get one unit within the very middle part.
Within the White rectangle is the defense-zone where the defender is allowed to place units and buildings (walls, towers, turrets, traps...)
The attacker is allowed to place his units on the outside of the white rectangle.
And thats pretty much it. Easily explained but very complex nevertheless.
So why can't you see anything on the above picture you might ask. Well as explain in my Post
#5 Transport & Markets there is this scouting mechanic in Stronghold.
Its actually quite logical, as you dont have any intel about the enemy defense structures you can't see any buildings or units. So you can send scouts to take a look. The harder the defense of the enemy the more scouts are needed to come back with a report. So a fully mounted castle can't just be scouted with a single unit.
Of course you can also send your units without any intel but that could lead to a loss or more casualties than needed.
So lets take that Bandit Camp and send a scout.
So what does that tell us? As we can see the bottom left corner is heavily guarded. There are more armed peasants to go against and its harder to break through the towers. So the report helps us decide where to attack best. In this example it would be best to send the troops from the bottom right. Maybe with some catapults aiming for the thin wall.
Cause remember, the only goal to win is to reach the inner part with just one unit. If you manage to do so its an auto-win.
PvP
So the example above was just an A.I. enemy (a Bandit Camp). When going against real players every castle can look different.
E.g. the left castle-layout focuses on water as an obstacle to give the archers within more time to shoot the enemies wheras the right one has instead more oil Pots to burn armies coming from any angle. Quick note: below you see the "colapsed view" where towers and walls are minimized for easier viewability.
So when building your castle-defense you have tons of possibilities:
Increase the number of defensive troops within a castle
Are placed in the grounds of the castle in order to injure any attacking troops which walk over them
To place boiling oil pots around your castle, you will first need to place a Smelter. The more Pots you place the more smelters you need.
Oil pots may be placed on any stone wall or tower. When an enemy unit comes near the Oil will fall down and burn any unit on the ground.
Slows down enemy attackers and need to be dug up in order to pass.
Turrets are special towers which contain automatically-firing archers (good against Troops)
Tunnels are exits outside the defendable build zone, where armed peasants may emerge. That way you can fend off catapults from behind.
A ballista tower is a powerful auto-firing ranged weapon (good against Catapults)
Bombards are powerful auto-firing ranged cannons (good against troops, does damage to area but fires more slowly)
All these castle-buildings are at your disposal providing tons of possible castle-designs and layouts. Over the time there were several high-end castle builds that emerged but sometimes you can still find new and interesting takes from players.
Thats why blindly attacking another player without any intel is almost never a good idea.
However no castle is indestructable. Sometimes you just have to send several armies to attack the village in waves.
Capture : Allows you to take over the village you are attacking. To succeed, you must reach the centre of the keep and have a captain which survives the battle
Raze : Allows you to eliminate the village you are attacking. To succeed, you must reach the centre of the keep and have a captain which survives the battle
Pillage : Allows you to steal a certain percentage of goods from the village you are attacking.
Ransack : Allows you to destroy buildings in the village you are attacking.
Vandalise : During this attack, troops will simply continue attacking until they reach the keep.
- Gold Raid : Can only be used if you are in charge of a capital and steals gold from other capitals.
Reaching the centre of the keep automatically results in a win. For Pillage / Ransack / Gold Raid your troops must stay within the castle's white line for a set amount of time for the attack to be successful. The more buildings you attempt to ransack or the more gold/resources you want to steal, the longer this time becomes and the more challenging the attack will be.
Allthough the PvP aspect of Stronghold makes the game really interesting I don't think SL will implement a PvP system anytime soon. However I can imagine seeing a PvE mode:
PvE
In Stronghold there are not only human players on the world-map. You can find various A.I. enemies like the ones below:
Enemy AI randomly spawns on the world map. Some may be attacked by players in order to gain rewards; however, they can also attack players, robbing them of honour and resources, and occasionally destroying village buildings.
The different A.I. enemies also have different influence on the players.
The main motive for a player to attack such enemies is:
- Removing negative Influence on Production in the tract
- Quests (Which I will talk more after the Enemy-Descriptions)
1. A.I. Siege
Enemy siege camps periodically spawn on the world map, sending out simultaneous attacks against all villages within the parish. The attacks gradually become larger and more difficult to defend against, before the finally ceasing and leaving the parish. The strength of attack depends on the player's rank. Players can gain honour by successfully defending against these attacks and lose honour if the attack is successful.
Enemy siege camps cannot be attacked, they just vanish on their own after some time.
Enemy siege camps do not cause negative popularity.
Its basically a constant threat to put a little pressure on your castle defenses. Otherwise every player would be fully protected all the time. I could potentially see SL doing something like that, maybe Chaos-Legion forces that attack from time to time and if you dont have the cards to defend it gives you a negative bonus on production or something like that.
I guess destroying / downgrading buildings / steal resources could be a little too far, depends on the challenge
2. Wolf Lair 
Wolf lairs are some of the weakest targets which players can attack. The number of wolves found in a lair depends on the average rank of players in the tract a lair spawns in. The higher the average rank, the larger the wolf lair. The only way to know the size of a lair in advance is to scout the target.
Wolf lairs do not attack players castles
A wolf lair in a tract causes negative popularity resulting in lower production
3. Bandit Camp 
Bandit camps are medium strength targets which players can attack. They are like Wolf-Lairs, just a little stronger. The size and strength of a bandit camp depends on the average rank of the players found in the tract a camp spawns in. The higher the average rank, the larger the camp and the more troops it contains. The only way to know the size of a bandit camp in advance is to scout the target.
Bandit camps do not attack players castles
A bandit camp in a tract causes negative popularity resulting in lower production
4. A.I. Castle 
AI castles come in various shapes and sizes, as well as housing several different opponents.
- AI castles will attack players within that parish with either pillage or ransack
They are the strongest A.I. enemies following the typical Stronghold difficulty-levels
Rat (easiest) | -10 to popularity
Snake | -18 to popularity
Pig | -25 to popularity
Wolf (hardest) | -32 to popularity
Also their castles and defense are built differently
THE SNAKE 
THE WOLF 
THE RAT
THE PIG
QUESTS
Quests are the most important part of the PvE-System in Stronghold.
Quests are tasks that are undertaken by players in which they achieve certain targets in order to attain different rewards for completing those targets.
However you can only work on one Quest at a time.
Looking on the screenshot above it shows my account where I am already doing the last few quests in the end-game, hence they are already more difficult to acchieve like: "Destroying 10 Castles of the Rat" which when completed rewards me with Gold and Card-Packs.
Some Quests, but not all, appear multiple times but the targets and reward increase with each level.
The very early quests act as a form of tutorial. They are very easy to complete and incentivize you to try all the different aspects of the game. Like building a certain building in your village:
So there is a wide variety of quests to be done:
- Destroy certain A.I. enemies
- Doing certain PvP tasks
- Building certain buildings
- Forage a specific amount of a resource
- Earning a specific amount of Gold by trading
- ....
And many many more which are really fun and rewarding to persue. Some Quests also have a specific time-frame you have to do certain things, like destroy 20 Wolf-Lairs within 24 hours.
And the Rewards you get can be all kinds of things, different ressources, gold, other currencies, Card-Packs or even a ticket for a Spinning-Wheel where more prizes await you. Sometimes you also have the choice between two prize-options.
However not all Quests are available to players at once. Quests become available as the player ranks up (there is a whole ranking system that enables you to have more quests and allows you to have more villages) and also when previous Quests are completed.
And these Quests are probably the biggest thing I would love to see when it comes to Splinterlands-Land. Having various tasks to do and increasingly publish new ones. They could even be offering fun and challenging Season-Quests for all players combined with some sort of Land-Expansion-Leaderboard.
For me that would be the perfect opportunity to give the land-Expansion more depth in gameplay.
The worst case scenario that could happen for me would be that the land-expansion offers no PvE element at all. Because then it would probably be just:
- You have 1 Building spot per plot (so not really much choice)
- Upgrading Building is a ...-Sink
- Getting tract/region bonuses is a ...-Sink
- Resources and Crafting happen automatically with totems and cards as boost so its actually just a Staking-Reward-Mechanic
- No Pve/PvP/Voting-System
And thats it....
Cause just imagine how the gameplay would look like, maybe exciting for one or two days but after its just a sit and wait game that offers no further gameplay.
So for me its save to assume the Splinterlands-Team will come up with something fun to do for us gamers offering a variety of tasks and angles of the land-expansion you could play.
I would also love to see different A.I. enemies like the above A.I. layers of Stronghold and therefor a detailed PvE system. Looking at you Boss-Monsters 😉
An initial idea I had for such PvE Plots would be something like daily quests. E.g.: Stake cards on a plot adding up to 20 Melee Damage to fight a monster/enemy. The cards staked would be locked for a specific amount of time. You could also gamble and stake less damage, however the odds of success would be smaller. So if you want to be sure you would have to stake more Damage to suceed.
Or maybe its also going to be: the better/rare the monsters, the better the rewards. And those quests would be randomly spawning on the world-map and everytime a quest is completed the land owner of the plot its located on gets a reward/share of the loot.
That way you could actually also allow non-land owners to participate in parts of the land-game because the land-owner also gets rewarded. It would be a great opportunity to bring in more players when there are quests or tasks you can do even without owning a plot on your own. But like I said it would have to go hand-in-hand with a share-system for the Plot/Tract/Region owner.
You could even take that further and on top of these little quests, create community events like Boss-Monsters where players have to unite their power and defeat a big enemy. They could even have like a week time to beat the monster (cause it has a ridiculous amount of HP/Armor) and everyone who participates gets a certain share of reward/loot.
But that was really just a quick idea of mine. There are endless possibilities to add PvE battles/missions.
A potential Location of such Boss-Monster Fights can be found on the land-Eye-Candy that the team shared with us.
If you look closely you can spot the special location of "Mox City"
Mount Mox is mentioned a couple of times in the lore because there the tournaments of the Splinterlands take place so maybe "Mox City" is just the location where tournaments are held.
Though it could also be a hint for a potential PvE area. And who knows maybe they even add specific battles where you can only fight with your gladiator-cards making them also powerful within the land-expansion and intertwine the Brawl-System with lands or you could have multiple locations on the map where you can play different mini-games. I think there is plenty of room and potential.
Basically I think of the land-expansion as a game on its own, seperated from the card-game but they both use the same cards. So a player not owning 2 sets would have to choose: Do I play the card-game or do I use those cards on my land. Hence why I think there needs to be this PvE elements, to compensate the strategy of the card game. Cause the most boring thing would be that you just put your cards on your land, basically locking/staking them without much further do do and without further choices or actions available.
So you made it all the way to the very end and because of that I want to thank you so much. I really appreciate you powering throught the differnet articles (even if you skipped one or two 😉)
I know that from time to time I elaborated on some Strongholds mechanics a tad too much but I hope you may have found one or two parts interesting. And who knows, maybe while reading this I managed to bring you some ideas about the land-expansion aswell.
Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on land and how Land in Splinterlands might work.
Please let me know what you think in the comments. I would also love some feedback so I can improve my posts so feel free to leave those aswell.
Thanks for the support
Yours, Moriarty (THE GRANDMASTER)
