Spoiler New Guild Expedition Buildings! (GE Update?)

[drakenridder]

For those who missed the video, from my understanding:
GE5 plays like all other levels, with the following tweaks:
1.) every 4th encounter you’re “defending”
2.) every 4th encounter you can battle it out, like any other ordinary battle in the game. Except you’re military buffs are coming from you’re city defence.
3.) you can negotiate like any other regular encounter in GE, including every 4th encounter
4.) you can construct fortifications prior to solving “defending“ the 4th encounter. Giving you benefits like an additional attempt during negotiations and/or extra military buffs. From the video +/- 33%
5.) the map design is of a lush jungle cause the ground is very fertile, due to volcanic activity (in GE4)
6.) new avatars, chain building and powerful mysterious temple hidden deep in the jungle

In short:
From my understanding the only new things are: every 4th encounter works with defence buffs, you can strengthen your position with fortifications. That's practically the new thing and couple of new buildings. Which we already knew for a while.

1) Will your AO work in GE 5 in the defense role as it does in city defense for your main city?

Logically it’ll do; AO works for both defending and attacking army. So, should work too in every 4th GE5 encounter. Unless specifically excluded from GE5’s 4th encounters. Like PvP arena

2) Can you set up your GE 5 defense to use advanced-age warriors in an attempt to overcome lower boosts by city buildings you have?

From what I’ve seen in the video the battles are simple like any other ordinary battle. Only difference is the defence buffs are used instead of the attacking buffs. If you got advanced units compared to you’re current age, it’s likely to be possible

 

[planetofthehumans2]

5 hours remain !

But probably not this week if nothings been announced.

 

[Astrid]

@Xiphos not sure what to do here on beta

First I will do negotiations obviously but as time passes by I will improve the city defence too. I will also pay more attention to buildings that come with city defence boosts and I hope to be able to get at least one extra Buccaneer's Boathouse in the summer. This building is a killer with that attack for defending army

On live, on my main world I will start improving my city defence, for me it's a challenge and I like it, I have several Appleton's Cottages in my inventory and I will start adding ritual flames, upgrade my Terracotta Army as high as possible, etc. All I want is to keep my attack and defence for attacking army just above 2000 / 1500 while improving the city defence.

 

[CrashBoom]

I am already preparing on my live world
I am not selling defense bottles anymore

and fighting isn't very difficult in SAJM. not even when defending
1 harpoon grenadier + 7 rogues
so before the opponent makes his first damage he already took damage from 7 retaliations

 

[ShadowPhoenixx95]

So - alternately - we're learned to fix that by having it net down to "collect on time" and don't worry about 5 FP plundered if you happen to miss a collection. The city space for fight-forward buildings and economic offering is the BEST use of land squares for ATTACK as the MOST LIMITED resource in the game (land) calls out for efficiency.

That's what FoE is, was and seems to be. Some people are already cashing out of city building for economics, and going pure war - as there so much focus on new war venues recently - the game's cash cows.

Gotta disagree here.

That's neither what FoE was nor what it seems to be, just It's current State because most People are Indeed playing full war without acknowledging any Playstyles besides that, because it was the easiest way to play the game for the longest, or ever since the Future Eras were Released and Arc made it unnecessary to farm Treasury goods as well as the Storyline giving out Troops way ahead of your Era. Giving you ridiculously high Numbers of Fights in GbG, as long as you're able to Obtain AF Troops in IE and like Camp there forever.

But was that really what the Game was supposed to be?

It was never Advertised as a War / Army Game, but as an Empire Building Game. Which doesn't break it down to 'You gotta Fight' imho.

Yes, there were many strong Military Empires - but there were also numeral 'Merchant Empires', building their wealth on Trading.

Which is also what you CAN do in the Game, but just no one does. I don't know if it is because it's more complicated, or because no-one ever did a Video Playtrough for it, or just because People gonna start mocking you as soon as soon as you're doing anything that doesn't fit the fighting norm, or some combination of those, it just doesn't get done.

But back to Topic. So, FoE isn't a War Game, but an Empire Building Game, and a Game about progressing through the Ages. They even had the Slogan 'Decide if you want to be a Trader or a Fighter'. At least it got and gets advertised as that. Yet, the most efficient way to play it is to not progress through the Ages at all, but Camp in Iron/Late Middle Ages/Industrial/Future, cause those are the easiest eras to fight in, where you can get the most Advanced troops. Just building up your Attackbonusses to 2shot every enemy in Industrial with the Arctic troops you can get being the 'Ultimate Goal' to Achieve.


So, the Question here is:

Is that really how Inno intended their Game to be played, or is them 'Re-Inventing' City defense as an actully valuable stat their try to cut back on those massive Attack Numbers in high-developed fighting Citys, thus making Camping and building up Attacknumbers in Industrial less effective and therefore less Attractive, while (finally) giving the Game back some Balance to the Trader's side by (seemingly) not touching the Negotiation Mechanic at all?

Edit: Just Ironed out some typos

 

[CrazyBoy08]

Hello, is it only for me, or GE5 is not for today ?

 

[ShadowPhoenixx95]

Hello, is it only for me, or GE5 is not for today ?

If it actually were to be Released today, there would have been an Announcement by Juber, not just a Video Anouncement that gets deleted like an hour later.

Seems like the Anouncement and the Videoupload were a Mistake, as estimated yesterday.

 

[shad2389]

on my main world i think to prepare for this i'll just continue my actual plan that i had befor this spoiler was created : my plan was to get to virtual future then work on my goods GB's maybe use some upgrade kits to get more goods from present era and previous era instead of having them in FE and i'll negotiate no need for me to redesign my main world only for GE5

 

[Markus Stormrider]

maybe a good idea: can the virgo project be (slightly) repurposed to work with GE 5? it would be a formidable weapon to have as a defensive structure if it can insta-wipe half an enemy army in one shot

however, my guts tell me that this 'defense' thing is going to work with multiple waves, so it will probably only work on the first wave, and not the second (and third?) wave after.

 

[Owl II]

Devs have already tried once to stuff the defense of the city, seasoned with PVP arena, down the players throats. It didn't work out. My guts tells me they will fail again this time. Amazing thing is we have to do GE for the second week with an incredible bug. With an unacceptable bug in a normal situation. And my guts tells me that the players will rebel if they bring this infection to live servers again. Although.. when developers were scared by a revolt of players?

 

[DEADP00L]

I ask myself 3 questions with this principle of defense:
- will we have a third defense army composition after the blues for the city and the oranges for the arena?
- if 2 waves are possible, the defense being favored will we have 2 compositions to prepare?
- since we are defending, the dead troops will be lost or not, as in any defense?

 

[drakenridder]

@DEADP00L from what I’ve seen and understood from the removed YouTube video:
1.) No 3rd wave, just 2 waves battles like any other GE encounter before
2.) From what I’ve seen in the GE5 video, no. Just ordinary 2-waves battle
3.) Like the other answers no. From what I’ve seen are GE5’s 4th encounters just ordinary GE encounters with the only twist that you can construct fortifications and using your blue swords/shields (defence buffs) instead of you’re regular red swords/shields (offensive buffs) to solve “defend” the encounter

In short the 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th encounters in GE5 are like all other GE encounters. Key twist: you’re army is buffed by you’re defensive buffs (blue swords/shields) and you can construct fortifications to increase you’re military buffs for that encounter or obtain an additional turn in negotiations

 

[mcbluefire]

<Yawn> oh, let's all go out and rush to add defense boosts so we don't have to negotiate in GE5. Not gonna happen.

 

[UBERhelp1]

Unless the negotiation costs are insane, I just see myself negotiating rather than "defending"

 

[MooingCat]

For those who missed the video, from my understanding:
GE5 plays like all other levels, with the following tweaks:
1.) every 4th encounter you’re “defending”
2.) every 4th encounter you can battle it out, like any other ordinary battle in the game. Except you’re military buffs are coming from you’re city defence.
3.) you can negotiate like any other regular encounter in GE, including every 4th encounter
4.) you can construct fortifications prior to solving “defending“ the 4th encounter. Giving you benefits like an additional attempt during negotiations and/or extra military buffs. From the video +/- 33%
5.) the map design is of a lush jungle cause the ground is very fertile, due to volcanic activity (in GE4)
6.) new avatars, chain building and powerful mysterious temple hidden deep in the jungle

In short:
From my understanding the only new things are: every 4th encounter works with defence buffs, you can strengthen your position with fortifications. That's practically the new thing and couple of new buildings. Which we already knew for a while.

Logically it’ll do; AO works for both defending and attacking army. So, should work too in every 4th GE5 encounter. Unless specifically excluded from GE5’s 4th encounters. Like PvP arena

From what I’ve seen in the video the battles are simple like any other ordinary battle. Only difference is the defence buffs are used instead of the attacking buffs. If you got advanced units compared to you’re current age, it’s likely to be possible

I am pretty sure all encounters in GE5 will have the new system, the check in the code for the new GUI elements is:

this._isLushDifficulty = d

Which seems to only check if it's level 5 or not, nothing specifically for every 4th encounter.

 

[CrashBoom]

yes
they showed a big encounter (4th) having it
they didn't show small encounters

and for the fortification
maybe you only buy it once per week and it counts for all encounters
(I only saw that I can buy it but not that it wouldn't be there in the next one)

 

[MooingCat]

yes
they showed a big encounter (4th) having it
they didn't show small encounters

and for the fortification
maybe you only buy it once per week and it counts for all encounters
(I only saw that I can buy it but not that it wouldn't be there in the next one)

These two info texts suggest it's per encounter:

GEFL|Activate/Deactivate the confirmation window that appears when you have at least one unused fortification building slot left (per encounter). This only applies to the fifth level of the Guild Expedition.
GEFL|For this enounter there is at least one empty slot left to build a fortification. Are you sure you want to continue?

 

[drakenridder]

I am pretty sure all encounters in GE5 will have the new system, the check in the code for the new GUI elements is:

this._isLushDifficulty = d

Which seems to only check if it's level 5 or not, nothing specifically for every 4th encounter.

They said in the video: "unlike the previous 4 levels, you have to defend every 4th (big) encounter in GE5. If you typically negotiate, don't worry, you can also negotiate." After that they explained that you could construct fortifications to help you "defending" in the 4th encounter. It's a big bummer that at the time I hadn't the time to record their original video or though much about the red flag of it not been announced on the Beta forum. Still though, if the video was still up, everyone could've know and watch it for themselves. I'm 100% sure that they where saying it was only applied to every 4th encounter in GE5, not the other encounters. It's possible that they've changed their mind and have changed the GE5 entirely or not. At this point we won't know till they're finally Beta testing it.

 

[MooingCat]

They said in the video: "unlike the previous 4 levels, you have to defend every 4th (big) encounter in GE5. If you typically negotiate, don't worry, you can also negotiate." After that they explained that you could construct fortifications to help you "defending" in the 4th encounter. It's a big bummer that at the time I hadn't the time to record their original video or though much about the red flag of it not been announced on the Beta forum. Still though, if the video was still up, everyone could've know and watch it for themselves. I'm 100% sure that they where saying it was only applied to every 4th encounter in GE5, not the other encounters. It's possible that they've changed their mind and have changed the GE5 entirely or not. At this point we won't know till they're finally Beta testing it.

I have the video downloaded, the video said:

"But here's the catch, on the newest fifth level you will need to defend your position, instead of attacking the enemy forces. Don't worry, you can still negotiate."

When talking about fortification they mention GE5 encounters, nothing about every 4th one.

 

[drakenridder]

I thought they've stated it to be 4th encounters. For sure they've been using a 4th encounter as an example. Real bummer that they've removed it. Would've greatly helped out. Unsure how I could've remembered differently.