New Endgame: Temple hunt – Part 3

If you have not read the first post or the second post about the endgame please do so to have a better understanding of how everything will work.

New Endgame – Part 1

New Endgame – Part 2

Part 3 – Olympus

Continuing with the information about the new endgame we now focus on the specific aspects of Olympus.

Olympus

Olympus is different from other temples in a few aspects, first it does not have a fixed position, and second it does not provide buffs when conquered.

Olympus still has a patron god, the main effect of this is to limit the mythical units that can be used to support it.

Olympus is unlocked 72 hours after all regional temples are conquered.

Where is Olympus?

Olympus has no fixed position, it appears randomly somewhere in the map and remains there for 15 days (may change). 

Every time Olympus changes places a few things happen.

  1. The alliance holding it (if there is one) loses control over it.
  2. The units in Olympus are regenerated to 80% (may change) of initial value.
  3. The selected god of Olympus is changed.
    1. This impacts on what Myth units can be sent to support it after it is conquered.

There is only one Olympus in the world, players will have to fight each other for the control of it.

Choosing a random location

When choosing a location for Olympus, the system will look for areas of the map within the populated region, where there are no islands. That means Olympus will be positioned over the water.

Olympus must never be positioned outside the area of the unlocked islands.

When choosing a position, the system will look for a different Ocean of the previous position (if there is one).

Random location and advantages to “lucky alliances”

To mitigate the advantage given to alliances that happen to be near Olympus when it spawns we are thinking of a few different systems.

  1. Maximum travel distance: This means that all players within certain distance will use their regular travel times, but anything above that will be reduced to a maximum value.
  2. Exponential travel speed: This is just a different version of what is said above but feels more natural as the travel time to Olympus would be faster the further away you are from it. Of course further players would never get to Olympus faster than closer players.

I am also open to suggestions that would improve the experience in this aspect. Along with the travel speeds we will mitigate the advantages by having Olympus change locations at least 3 times before an Alliance is able to achieve the winning condition.

Conquering and Holding

Conquering Olympus works the same way as conquering other temples, there is absolutely no difference in that aspect.

When an Alliance conquers Olympus a timer starts counting the time while said alliance has control over it, if the alliance reaches a predetermined duration of control, said alliance wins the world. When Olympus changes locations or gets conquered by another alliance, the timer stops but it is not reset, when the same alliance conquers Olympus again the timer keeps going from where it stopped.

Initial control objective: 30 days (this is not a final number and will be affected by world speed)

The first 24 hours do not count for the timer as Olympus will be protected by a shield.

Olympus curse

The Olympus curse is a malus constantly active in Olympus, it takes the form of a power that kill units stationed in the temple in randomized intervals.

Effect: 5% of the units stationed in Olympus are destroyed every hour.The exact moment when units are destroyed is randomized, it can happen anytime within the hour. This happens once every hour. This power is permanent.

Feedback

Please let us know what you think, just remember we are not developing this yet so there might be some drastic changes based on your feedback and on unforeseen technical limitations.

As a Game Designer, I work to improve Grepolis in any way I can. I mostly listen to the community and find good ways to make players life easier and more exciting.

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10 comments on “New Endgame: Temple hunt – Part 3
  1. Mim le Fay says:

    If I loose Olympus concerning it switch, what about my units?

  2. The Exalted One says:

    Hi Bernard,

    First of all, good to see that there is actively being worked on new content for the game. Second i’ll share some thoughts/feedback I had:

    1 – Taking away the incentive of attacking eachother

    The other endgames give players incentive to attack and conquer eachother. I feel like temple run lacks that. You can fight for position around the initial temples but the olympus is a random spawn. Once the olympus is active every player/alliance that wants to conquer it should focus on that rather than conquering eachother.

    2 – Players trying to paralyze the world

    What if a big group of players realise they can’t win versus another group and just try to paralyze the world. The olympus curse is definitely a necessity but if there’s an alliance that can hold it for 30 days with the curse, why wouldn’t there be one that holds it for longer just to mess with others? Maybe the curse could slowly increase overtime as nobody conquers it or if a certain alliance holds it for too long? (This is an extreme example ofcourse)

    Despite these two small remarks I have to say the endgame looks well designed at first sight. One worry I have is that it might end up being more of a PVE endgame rather than PVP, while in its essence it really is a PVP endgame with a small side of PVE it might not feel like that since you are not directly attacking other players.

    To end this terribly long post I have one small question:

    In order to win an alliance has to hold the olympus for 30 days. If the olympus moves and Alliance A held it for 7 days before that. After moving Alliance B holds it for a small period but then Alliance A takes over again. Does alliance A have to hold it for a full 30 days again or still only 23 days despite Alliance B taking over for a short period?

    Thanks in advance.

    • bernardgra says:

      Hello The Exalted One,

      About your first point: Yes, this endgame is a bit more focused on PvE than PvP, but that is the intention. We wanted to bring a new way of playing and strategizing, and I feel like even with the focus being more PvE there is plenty of PvP to be had. As soon as the Large Ocean temples pop up, there will be fights to win them over since there is only 4 of them, also when Olympus pops up then only one alliance can hold it, so there will be fighting.
      The way I see it we have now one engame about building (World Wonders), one endgame about fighting players (Domination), and now one endgame about fighting NPCs (Temple Hunt).

      For your second point, I am not sure I completely understand. I mean if we find out that the curse is not performing its role, which is to force alliances to react to attacks and position their troops in real time. We will adjust it. Also we have to remember this is still theoretical, if we find out its not worth to have a curse at all we ca still change it.

      And for your last question, Alliance A would have to hold only for the 23 days. The idea is that alliances will have their own “time bank” of how long they hold Olympus always accumulating, so if they lose control of Olympus by attack or by Olympus changing places, the time they had until that moment is saved and they continue from that. The first one to get to 30 days (or whatever number we decide) wins the world.

      Thanks for the feedback,
      Cheers

  3. Mim le Fay says:

    Dear Bernard and team,

    first of all, I want to say: Thank you for sharing your ideas with us.

    Secondly, I want to say that this should not understand as a challenge of change to do, but as you really know, Grepolis is a game, with limited units, so I really ask myself, do you have made calculate, how many units needed, to play all this PvE tasks?
    Although reading this a couple of times, I have not been catching the high number of units, you need for all these challenges. Let’s add it together:
    You have to defend all the alliance cities, because you need it to create all the attack units. Then you have to have units, for defending the small ocean temples, right? After this, you have to conquer at least two larger temples for winning and after conquering you have to defend it.
    At least, you want to conquer Olympus and you wants to defend it. Unfortunately, you defend units are after 24 hours destroyed by 70% just by the game themselves. To hold it in mind, every day you have lose 70% of your units, without any benefit, right? Furthermore, there should be a lot of attacks from revival alliances and last but not least, the Olympus Temple spawn at least 3 times during duration holding period, so I have at least to conquer Olympus for additional three times? I guess, Grepolis is not made for training such multiple units for all this PoE fights, as of course, the engine has no limit, right?
    What happens, if another alliance conquering during this time all my small and middle temples? And what happens, if there are conquering all my alliance cities, where the units can be only trained? Do you have calculate the duration of training all this units. I guess, the destroying via engine and compititor is much faster, is it?

    At third another question for revolt worlds. What your ideas in conquering. Have to do every player first of all run a revolt and after this he can conquer the city for the alliance or will it be enough, if someone from the alliance have trigger it and someone else from the alliance can conquering?
    During this revolt time, is it possible for all other player from the whole world you defend Olympus, right or will it have done by the engine? Will the units destroy as well 5% for per hour?

    And last but not least if my alliance own Olympus city how could I see in time for defending, if my rival sends attacks and the travel distances is for everyone the same? So, attacking units will be arriving in every case arriving before defending units can arriving and defending, right?

    Thanks for answering
    Mim

    • bernardgra says:

      Hello Mim le Fay,

      To your second point: All very valid concerns, the way I see it this will have to be an Alliance effort to both conquer and defend the temples. But one thing I expect is that the temples will start losing importance throughout the progression of the world. Since there is no requirement to keep small or large ocean temples after Olympus spawns, I expect that alliances will start removing defenses from small temples and moving them to more important temples. The temples do provide buffs that are important for alliance competitiveness, but I expect that once the larger ones are there the small ones will have way less focus, at this point it will become a reaction game where you keep the most important buffs under close watch. So near the end of the endgame I would expect that an Alliance (in a winning position) needs to use the units mainly to conquer and defend 2 Large temples and Olympus, I think that is feasible with cooperation and effort.
      In terms of holding Olympus I think the challenge will be coordination, with the curse it is not a good idea to have units in there all the time so there will be need for a close watch of the enemy movements to be able to plan the defense accordingly.
      I am not sure I answered all your questions, so if I did not please write me again. 🙂

      To your third point: For revolt worlds, as of now, I am thinking that we keep the same workflow as with regular cities where every player needs to start their own revolt to be able to conquer it, but if we feel the need for it, we can also change that. And for Olympus it would work the same way, yes, all players from the world would be able to defend Olympus when its is under revolt, and 5% of all the units there would be destroyed per hour.

      And to your last point: Yes, that is currently one of the ‘Cons’ of Olympus right now, this is also one of the reasons I want to have Olympus change positions and have a regular travel time for everyone up to a certain distance, and them maybe limit to a maximum travel time. But I am not yet perfectly happy with this part of the system and am still trying to find better solutions.
      So how it currently is, when Olympus spawns the alliances that are close to it have a temporary advantage in conquering and defending it, until it changes positions and offers that advantage to another alliance.

      Thanks for the feedback,
      Cheers

  4. Mim le Fay says:

    Dear Bernard,

    Thank you for your answers.

    Actually, I thought first, that you have the travel time was freeze and all player have the same. Which make it difficult to defend it, but this was a misunderstanding and gave me the idea for the following sentence. Mostly in all fantasy books and movies the Olympus and all other homes for gods are on another area like for example in the clouds or on a really special place. Which make it not necessary, to do it on a single small rock with own travel times so let’s do it on an own level, like you do it for events, use normal units which could destroyed as well as win and come back, cap or freeze the travel time for attacks and reduce the travel time for the current defending alliance for a few minutes, so they could react, if they would it.
    Alternatively, you can use the conquered temples as a gate to Olympus, so you can use normal travel times.

    But I am not sure, what other Grepolis Players thinking for this and it will be fine, to hear more feedback for this.

    Kind regards
    Mim

    • bernardgra says:

      Hello Mim,

      I quite like the idea of using the other temples as gates, Im not sure about the technical feasibility of it, but that is quite interesting indeed. I will consider the consequences of that.

      Thanks for the feedback,
      Cheers

  5. Die-Melder-Bireme says:

    I think it’s great!!!!
    but. . . now to the remarks^^

    If I understood the system correctly, it’s about clawing the buffs as good as I can and then concentrating on Olympus.

    But the temples are irrelevant when it comes to victory, if you leave out the buffs.

    To control and hold Olympus there are 2 options:

    My Ally dominates the area where Olympus is, so we have the best reaction time. (lucky)
    The current LZ options won’t change that much.

    or

    2. we ourselves + BND/BND’s dominate so strongly that we can conquer and hold the Olymp without problem. (unlikely but possible)
    _____________________

    Location of Ally and complications?
    (I just wrote this about it here)

    The small temples are no problem, because they appear everywhere and each Ally can get a few.

    The 4 big temples are the first problem in my opinion.
    They appear at 4 places and an Ally can control 2 pieces, the distance is so great that the Ally would have to split into 2 areas from the beginning to control them, you don’t have to because the buffs for a victory are not so important^^ (currently)

    The Olymp is a big problem because of the LZ for some Allys it is simply not takeable/stable.
    ________________________

    But now to Olympus and winning. . . .

    In my opinion, Mim le Fay’s suggestion to be able to react faster/better about the temples is also the right way.

    Follow?
    There are 2 fronts once the Olymp and 1x the fight for the 4 big temples. . . . that would be times more variety^^

    How should the temples exert influence?

    Heavy question^^

    My idea that came to my mind 😀

    The more small temples an Ally controls, the faster the att’s/ut’s run to the big temples.

    belongs to an Ally a big temple so she can send over this her att’s/ut’s to Olymp -> speed?

    Example: my units run to the temple (when I’m near) about 15min. (anti-timing active)

    now you have to add a fixed +runtime for the command from temple to olymp, if i start from speed 3: 2 or 3 hours in rotation (anti-Timing disabled, otherwise you can never timen^^)

    so through every Ally that controls a big temple has the possibility to conquer the Olymp but the Ally that is closest has or should be able to react faster (which is why the LZ has to be reworked if necessary)
    ___________________

    Result:

    At least 2-5 Allys have the ability to use "low”; LZ against Olympus and all temples retain their relevant roles until the end of the game.

    Alliances are formed not only because of neighborhoods but rather because of the location to the temples.

    ____________
    Please note:

    1. morale deactivated when conquering temples!

    2. if i understood it right, is there an overview that att’s/ut’s will be sent to the temple/olymp but the colos won’t be displayed as a conquest rat?
    As soon as the colo has landed (during siege) the ticker is displayed normally?
    If so, I would always place a BND player at my temple who would post such a ticker to me so I know when the Kolo arrives. (I thought I’d post it before no one thought to fix it)

    3rd Deff at Olympus, wall?
    found nothing about whether Olympus has a wall so whether kicking a colo or blocking is better (relevant for bela)

    Suggestion: this should be adjustable, Ally can build a wall for Ressis Construction time / Departure. . . everything has to come naturally.

    I hope it’s understandable what I was going for^^

    • bernardgra says:

      Hey Die-Melder-Bireme,

      Thanks for the feedback, this is all very good. I will not get too much in detail on it because we did some very drastic changes in the past few days, but you can be sure that I will consider it. Please let me know on the new post (when it comes) if some of your concerns are still unattended.

      Cheers