By Espark on Mon 08 Mar, 2021.
Ai-Mo Times
Jan 12th 2023
“The only literate tribe deserves the best in information and entertainment.”
The Ancients - hopes, dreams, and confirmed details
On October 20th, 2022, Midjiwan first leaked the news of a new tribe in a voice chat session saying, “I’m playing around with Electricity as some kind of electricity weapon.”
On Dec 26th, 2022 we got an official teaser for the Ancients, “Some say the Ancients weren't actually wiped out that day at the Plains of Razul, but went into hiding to plot their revenge..." Official lore describes the ancients as the original or proto-tribe that all other tribes descend from. All the modern tribes think of themselves as direct descendants of the Ancients and that all the other tribes are pretenders. However, the Ancients are definitely bad guys.
Unfortunately, details about the tribe’s abilities, resources, units or tech are still not public. Also, there is no official date for when the Ancients will be released in the game or even for beta testing.
Fan Speculation:
The lack of official news hasn’t stopped fans from speculating. The most common theory for the Ancient is a chain lighting weapon.
VoidVortexVrack speculated, “Being that the new tribe is heavily rumored to have some sort of lightening theme and some game-changing mechanics, it will probably get the "special tribe" treatment and have some of its units and techs modified. It might have a unit(s) that deals chain lightening damage. I could see that mechanic being applied to its archers and catapults”
LostBrickPlacer also expected chain lightning attacks. “I'm hoping for some way to chain damage among adjacent units, like a bolt of lightning that'll do group damage to units jumbled up close to each other and maybe something against water units, because of conductivity or whatever.”
Another popular idea is a dinosaur unit. T1MBEE said, “a special Dino troop would be cool” and ̔឵឵Jerry#4490 said, “Dino having their own unique skill”
Predictions from Walthrus, resident Ai-Mo sage and all around keeper of wisdom: -I'll be honest here, I don't want them to have a status effect. We have enough already with the last two tribes, no need for something like "electrified" -exactly 1 flying unit. More would devalue the mechanic -some additional interaction with ruins. At the most basic they could get Elyrion ruin vision, but maybe they could use a ruin like a village or something. -an alchemist/artificer mindbender replacement. -I really really like the sort of look the hoodrick skin has, playing around with the base body more. I hope they do some of that along with the lightning club seen in the teaser. -reworked temple mechanics of some kind, it just feels right
Galadro wants to see a new way to grow they tribe. “[I’d like] another variable like stars, something you can spend or earn. I have also seen a bit of turn play with the latest special tribes. For ely its taking turns to grow a dragon and sanctuaries, for polaris its freeze for a turn. For cymanti its the fungi and decompose. I would love to see turn or another variable that is influenced by time be introduced as something you can earn and/or spend.”
One their from Dirtyfrog on reddit focuses on ruins. “If it's confirmed that the ruins are the remnants of old Ancients structures, and ruins can be found on oceans, does that mean the Ancients had aquatic cities or outposts? This would be something else interesting and unique to their civilization.”
Potential Rider Roads Nerf
In addition to the tribe, the community manager confirmed that a nerf for the rider/roads meta is being tested.
As to the idea of nerfing rider/roads, Galadro said, “[I have] mixed feelings, it'll be annoying to adjust to the change in meta and come up with new strategies, but overall, it should give a good chance to players with less cities who try to rush getting as it will be harder for players with riders and roads to expand. Only problem I have with that is that the games will probably take considerably longer like we saw when diplomacy released and the chop meta ended.”
Bokoboy said, “There's a very fine line between a nerf making pretty much no difference, and it making rider/roads pretty much obsolete. I'm interested to see how close they get to that middle ground”
Callmesuanifyoulike said, “Midjiwan made an excellent game, and has attempted to destroy it ever since. He has shown he has no idea about the actual game play. As for creativity in tribes, A+ , music is fantastic. Just stop tinkering”
Vlad said, “they should just remove roads from the game. all these do is overcomplicate the game ez”
Awesomeguy22 said, “Midji better not be nerfing my roads”
Road to Riches Event
To help celebrate the Yadakk tribe moon in January, the Roads to Riches economy bot allow users to mimic the tech tree in Polytopia to become fabulously rich in fake, digital currency. The event was based on the Luxi-bot from MAy 2022. However, instead of using the UnbelievaBoat economy bot, the R2R bot was designed and managed by a server mod, redish. Redish began working on the Yadakk economy bot, which would eventually be called the R2R bot, in July 2022. Redish and Espark were the primary designers of the economy bot system. Other contributors included Tanya the Evil, Jusnip, McGoon, Krab King, PunmasterTurtleKing, and Pixel.
During the month of January, users spent their stars in the shop to either increase their tech or buy units. For example, users could buy a spear to access the hunting tech which gives them the hunter role.. Players could also battle bots in PvE. Another way to gain cash was through daily events. Events present a day in the life of Polytopian scenarios where users can make choices that may give rewards or penalties.
236 players participated in the 30 day event. During that time, the bot commands channel, #roads-to-riches-commands climbed the channel activity leaderboard to reach 3rd place for most messages in the server.
JCello said, “Hmm the event was fun! The mechanics were awesome and I had a fun time. Though it can get boring when you're doing the same thing over and over again.”
Loom55 said, “[The Road to Riches event] was pretty good, very engaging. However it was the kind of thing where if you missed a day you were going to be further behind and the snowballing of it just makes that worse. On the other hand I am no developer and have no idea how someone would fix that. It did encourage planning your moves and knowing what you wanted to do, which very well reflects Polytopia itself”
The second place winner, MRB said, “I liked it.I thought at the beginning that optimal techs were all that mattered, and only realized you could make a profit out of cities way later. Yet I didn't take the time to think my techs through and ended up having a slightly sub-optimal income, but somehow did take the techs that were important for battles. So yeah, luck's the main reason I ended up second rather than first or tenth.”
The event stopped at the end of January. However, There are plans to update and expand it. The developer of the bot, reddish, confirmed he is still working on improving the bot. “I’m gonna continue developing it, pvp is next step, but i need test subjects, so every so often I’m going to restart the economy and pass an update“
If you want to keep playing Road to Riches, the bot has migrated to the Yadakk Grand Bazaar, the Yadakk tribe-server.
Artist Discussion Comeback
Conflicts about how to best set up the artist channels in Polymain have been tossed back and forth for years. As early as 2020, artists complained that discussion was drowning out the art. In January 2021, a second channel called #art-discussion was created. However, chatting continued in the regular art channel and the discussion channel was rarely used. A year later, the discussion channel was archived due to inactivity.
Towards the end of 2022, the chatter in the artist channel got increasingly off topic, making it difficult to find and follow the actual art being posted there. In Nov 2022, ~you, aka Swapblock, made a request in the feedback channel called Artist-Corner-Rework. He suggested a whitelist for users with an artist role, limit the art channel so only artwork can be posted there, and create a separate channel for chat and discussion about art. An initial poll of community members in November showed a majority wanting to keep the channel how it was. However, others argued that the poll was flawed and not enough people were allowed to vote.
Most community members agreed that the art was getting buried under chatter. Some mods and community members wanted mods to tighten the standards for topics in the art channel. One former mod said, "The simple solution [is] just moderating the existing channel better.”
In January 2023, the artist channel was changed to add threads for chatting. An admin wrote, “[The art channel] will be only for posting art. Any discussion or other chat will be limited to threads there. We are also implementing a 5 minute cool down. This will allow more focus on the art itself.”
There was an immediate and strong backlash. Within a day, the changes limiting chat to threads were reverted with mods agreeing to keep an eye on the channel stop off topic posts. However, the problem persisted.
As one mod summarized: "A long time ago we had two channels, one for discussion about art, and the other for posting art. The art discussion never got used and was deleted. Fast forward today we now have an art Channel that has more off topic conversations than art. So, people wanted a rework. They want either a separate channel again, threads and heavy moderation (current solution in progress), or just to leave it as is. Now this is apparently the hardest decision in the world, any option made will result in the casualties of like...10 which is like the entire art corner population. Scary stuff, and the mods wish to avoid that from happening. So here we are ringing our bells like town crier's trying to find a ebic solution. Now it seems all the funny threads are causing lag issues for some, so it seems the threads may not be as epic as we thought. Now by the time I'm done with this there will probably be more goofy lore added to this 2000+ message thread. I love lore”
On January 19th, a very active artist said, “The clutter is getting annoying. Like people post chats and convos but I'm mainly talking about unnecessary image posts and reaction gifs that have grown in use over the months.” A new feedback thread was started. Over a dozen members of the Polytopia art community were asked to help craft a poll with options to improve the art channel.
Within a week, the community agreed on a poll and got responses from the most active people in the art channel. The majority voted to split the art channel into two channels - art showcase for only for art and art-discussion for chatting about art. Mods would keep an eye on the showcase channel to stop chatting there.
When asked how the art channels are doing now, Moos2, a frequent contributor to the art channel and the main proponent of the changes, said, “I think the change to the art channels is a solid positive, now it functions right. It's better than it was before anyway”
Draws4 said, “I like the direction that it's gone in. It seems to have opened up to a new collection of artists, and art is getting more starred”
Not everyone liked the changes. Ciru bug said, "The changes needlessly complicated a system that was fine beforehand"
Tanya the Evil, one of the other big advocates for changing the art channel, said, “If I'm being honest, I've found myself using the art channels less and less since the split. While my few visits have left little doubt that the changes were for the better, I can't help but wonder if there are unspoken voices that dislike the current changes. Personally, I never had a problem with the old Artist Corner, and I even preferred it. But I was seldom posting in there, and I do think the opinions of those actually active should weigh more than my own, and it was those people who wanted alternatives, so maybe it's for the better?“
Opinion
By ForeverBlue
Alright first i must preface this with the fact that my complaints and grievances of the server comes by me from me and from nobody else I will like to add that I take responsibility for any and all things said in this opinion piece and nobody else shall bear any responsibility for this piece :flareglee: if any of y’all would like to take responsibility for the things said in this article i am accepting offers :eewee: anyway with that being’ said i would like to also add that i am saying’ these things from my point of view so others may have opposings points of view and i am obliged to respect that that being said my first point i would like to make is that the situation in polytopia general seems pretty complex right now and given the complexity i think that is contributing to many of the things going on the server that being said i think that point has been made and i would like to move on thank you another thing that i would to point out is right here
This shows the message accuracy and complexity and whatnot of polytopia mods by quarter as you can say January through march was my most active and i have a sneaking suspicion that it will be my most active here too and well let’s just say i have a theory that that might be due to the fact that i get depressed at the start of the year and i start talking in polytopia more in polytopia when i am depressed and leading to the next thing i think we could quite possibly and significantly improve the activity of the channel if we figure out some way to stagger when mods are depressed or something like that so they talk more when that occurs i dunno how depression works very well but it’s just a thought i have a preliminary thought if you will :lil_googer:
Alright so i’d like the record to say i have lots and lots more to say but for the record i would also like the record :mischief: to state that :flareglee: i am currently on vacation in miami :gorm: florida :coot: and i am unable to completely convey my thoughts :glacecry: :glacecry: so please, if you have any questions about any more of my opinions and questions :ezramath: then please i emplore you to reach me at one of my 2 designated approved forms of communication :GlaceonBeans: the first being twitter dms because i really really find discord dms scary and overwhelming :zoomies: :skillissue: so please dm me at twitter you can reach me @CiviProshi :eeweeshiny: you may also send me a letter through first class notarized mail :eeweeletter: at my address 500 S Capitol Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46225 :sylvWriteFast: and i will try my best to write back within 3 business days thank you :sylvgiggle: :eewee: :absolpassion: :lil_googer:
Espark speaks of truth t her actions contradict Hypocrite revealed.
Credits
ESpark is the editor in chief of the Ai_Mo Times. A big thanks to Artemis for setting up and maintaining the website for the newspaper.
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