The alpha conquest server is available for players with active premium access.

There's still a little bit of time to change game mechanics before the start of round 1, so any strong opinions should be posted right away.

I'm not sure how I feel about this new server.

I like the bots being added to give the server more market stability, but this makes the game too similar to Classic and Express IMO.

The benefit of Tournament was you could get to a higher server level and limit some of the interaction you get with players who would prefer to focus on attacking other players/ruining resets, etc. So you could kind of choose if you want a high-level netting country by playing the same country and getting into A - or create a new country and know you'll need a bit more military in a lower server.

This removes that filter and makes min/maxing a country much more luck based depending on who decides to hit you. That's a big component of Earth, but I feel like we already have non-alliance Servers with that focus in Classic and Express.

Tournament I want to love, but it has a hard time holding my attention these days. I think bots just playing in the same market but not available as targets will have a lot of unforeseen interplays and exploits, but just making it possible to actually sell all of your tech or on the flipside have enough tech to buy will be huge.

I see what you're saying, but there's frequently lots of action in game A as is now. Llaar, rockets, nitell, lots of people have warred in A plenty.

I have only ever warred in Game A, lol

I'm a big fan of a player grabbing server with a workable market. The tourney market was definitely too illiquid.
The strategy element changes now - it's unclear how to play to win this server! That's exciting. (:

I'd say this might turn out 2 ways: 1) either this becomes a classic with a far more liquid market, allowing more strats to be played, and the way to win is to bottomfeed countries and break out (much harder without def allies), or 2) run the optimal all-x country and avoid wars at all cost.

Will be fun either way!

Not that I plan to do this often, but there are some unique benefits gained when creating a new server. It is significantly easier to try new things and to make changes. Some of those changes typically move to all game servers and improve the game experience overall. For example, the advanced ingame search was developed as part of Cooperation server development because it was easier to do that than force a hosting site to support a new server. That ingame search is now available everywhere else and was also supported to the support the new FFA bulk attack NPC page.


I agree that the Tournament server had some unique elements to it. In my mind, here are the relevant questions:

1) Is there a feasible path to improving the server?

2) Do the unique elements offer enough value to justify our limited number of server slots?

3) Is the balance of the unique elements positive or negative?


I have my own answers to those questions, but I don't want to get too far off topic. I'm sure that you can figure out what I'm implying here.