Hi guys,

Endless Legend Shifters is coming out in a few days!

We've introduced you to the Allayi faction and their gameplay in our previous blog post, but today, we'll talk about the enhanced winter season, a mechanic very important and unique to Endless Legend. We've worked on making this season mechanic richer and more interesting, with more control for you over the elements, so let us know what you think!


ENHANCED WINTER

Winter is a hugely important part of the lore of Endless Legend, but it has been sometimes perceived as simply being a slower version of summer. This is something we wanted to address. Different sort of play should take place depending on the season. Winter must provide new opportunities, not simply be dreaded and endured but influenced, planned for and taken advantage of. Exploration and de facto map control (that is controlling a region without actually settling in it) are also something we wanted to push a little.


PEARLS OF AURIGA

Pearls are secreted by Auriga herself as a sort of dying gasp; she stores energy during the summers and delivers it to her “true children” during winters. For factions, pearls then become a way to connect with Auriga and benefit from her power and to get her help.

The goal is to encourage exploration and de facto map control, especially in winter, but also give players something to look forward to in winter, enable to play with winter and to unlock new game elements.

Feature Overview
The Pearls of Auriga appear on the first turn of winters on various terrain tiles until being collected by players directly on the map:
  • Pearls appear in the same tiles each winter through the same game.
  • Each region receives around the same number of Pearls each winter.
  • If not collected, Pearls can stack on tiles, so if many winters pass a tile can contain a large number.
  • Building cities and districts will block Pearl spawn points.

Pearls can only be accumulated by moving an army into a tile where there is a Pearl. Once a Pearl has been collected it is removed from the map: first come, first served. In order to collect Pearls players therefore need to plan their movements and equip their armies with winter in mind.


ALTAR OF AURIGA

This is a new screen to which you get access only by building a very unique Empire district named the Altar of Auriga. This new district requires a few pearls to be built but is available in the construction list from the very beginning of each game.

Blessings
Any empire involved into the collection of the Pearl of Auriga can first expect to unlock new powers and constructions called Blessings. One again, the goal is to encourage exploration and de facto map control, especially in winter and give players something to look forward to when winter arrives.

Feature Overview
"Auriga Pearls" appear on the first turn of winters on various terrain tiles until being collected by players directly on the map:
Players will want to collect Pearls whenever possible, as they will give access to a set of Blessings:
  • Pearl Items
  • City improvements (including one to defend cities)
  • Unique City districts
  • Defensive Towers
  • Stockpiles (thus allowing Pearls to be converted into :fids.


Voting
Voting is a new mechanic giving players a say in which winter effects are added to the game. The goal here is to foster earlier interactions and conflicts of interest between players: to put players in opposition with each other rather than the game system.

Feature Overview
Auriga Pearls can also be used to "pray" at the Altar of Auriga. Each empire can invest Pearls in order to back one or several of a short-list of three winter effects. On the first turn of summer a new set of three winter effect candidates is drawn and revealed to all the players:
  • The cost of a prayer increases with each turn of summer in order to encourage early voting.
  • Players can pray as many times as they can afford, but do not see other players' votes until the beginning of their next turn.
  • On the first turn of winter the candidate winter effect with the most prayers is applied.
  • The two losing events are returned to the draw pool, but will come back with a higher default amount of votes if they are selected several times in a game.



ADVANCED WINTER

Shifters introduces the possibility to set the harshness of winters for a game, mainly playing on different starting effects, frequency, duration and their randomness. Apart from that a new variety of effects has been introduced for a more advanced vision of winter. With this, we'd like to encourage the use of the Altar of Auriga by introducing new, highly asymmetrical effects that polarize players, & increase replayability by introducing a wider variety of different effects. And make winter more interesting, obviously.

Feature Overview
We also want different effects to appeal to different players at different times. This should lead to strategic, defensive voting, secret agreements and so on (and yes, we have thought about how the AI will handle all this!). The idea is to add more variety to the impacts of the winter effects which, up until now, have tended to be exclusively economic and negative. The new winter effects will affect players in a much more asymmetrical manner, penalizing one play-style or context and rewarding another. Here are a few examples of some of the additions:
  • +15% on Hostile Minor Faction unit attributes / -50% Assimilation cost.
  • All borders are temporarily opened.
  • -5% Empire Dust per war declared / +50% on Diplomatic Points earned.
  • No Reinforcement flag on armies / -50% Unit Upkeep in armies.
  • Armies invisible on Forests.
  • Frozen Lakes and Seas!
  • And more.