It's that time of year again... Santa and his little helpers are creating an uproar all over the world and people are going crazy. They are dancing and singing in the streets and handing out all sorts of useless presents. Those who hear the songs or receive the gifts suddenly turn green, red and white and go out to participate in the chaos as well. Nation leaders are calling for an emergency meeting on how to stop this wickedness of spreading in their territory and how to prevent their armies to fall prey to the insanity. But will they manage to set aside their own differences and work together? Or will they make use of the situation to end long lasting rivalries?
Background Info
As been the case for a few years now around Christmas, TLK activates a special game mode called 'Pandemic'. This is usually done to keep the game interesting and fun while the active player count drops due to the holidays. Unfortunately this year might be a bit different as most of the world is in lockdown due the real pandemic. None the less we'd like to continue this tradition as we know many people like this temporary change of gameplay.
Age changes
First and foremost we won't be bringing any major changes to the 'Pandemic' game mode itself. It's gone through a few iterations in the past and we are happy with where it's at. Why change a winning team ... . For new players the gamemode itself will be explained further down. Only thing we 'tweaked' a littly bit is the AI commanders that are available to pvp. Specifically because of the recent changes to ranks and soldier levels.
Being somewhat a special and 'less serious' age means it's an excellent opportunity for us to implement some of the more serious code changes we had waiting to be released.
- For those who haven't yet heard, a player called 'Mikayel' has been working on a new map for TLK. We won't be sharing any details on that yet, but he's been very demanding about having more options available for terrain types. Our current code and database structure isn't very flexible however. And although adding in more terrain types wouldn't have been 'difficult', it would end up in more messy code. As such, we been reworking how we store terrain info and terrain bonuses for both nations and soldier types. This makes for cleaner code, more flexibility, and a happy Mikayel. Terrain however is used in many places and as such it's quite a 'high risk' change.
- Another big thing we are working on is 'the new client'. You've been hearing about it for a while already and i'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's nowhere near done. One of the bigger changes we'll be doing with it is related to battles and how players train. The current battle results window is very static and doesn't allow for much modification. Training is also very demanding on your fingers and mouse. These are 2 things we are looking to change. This however calls for some more 'backend' changes to how battle results are stored. Those backend changes are 'done' and we'll be pushing these changes to the game already to make it easier and faster for us to work on the new client. For the current client this changes nothing however. We'll save battle results in both the old and new format and the current client will still be using the old. But any change to the battle engine is considered 'high risk'.
- Up to 4 'AI' controlled countries can be brought into the game.
- Every 2 ticks these pandemic nations can spread to 1 or more neighbouring territories.
- It favours territories that has players in it. The more players the more likely it will spread. So be careful keeping your main army next to its borders.
- Players inside a territory that has been infected will be kicked to capital, the same as if they were sf'd. They will however not have injuries or deaths.
- You can pvp 'AI' commanders at the border. They pack quite the punch, but the rewards make it worth the risk.
- Retaking pandemic controlled territories can also result in some nice and unique rewards, such as extra mp's!
- Special medals are handed out to top nation HC and top pandemic pvp'ers
Age 371: Random: Pandemic will kick in on day 2 and will be pretty bad ass. Working together won't be a choice but a must. Number of starting countries will be limited.