By Espark on Sun 12 Sep, 2021.

Ai-Mo Times

Sept 12^th, 2021

“The only literate tribe deserves the best in information and entertainment.”

Polytopia News

Zoythrus Story Hour Recap

On Wednesday, Sept 8^th, hours after the Balance Pass 2 was released, the community manager, Zoythrus, hosted a voice chat session. Here are some of the highlights from his talk:

• The ∑∫ỹriȱŋ are supposed to be a conservation tribe. So, deforestation is a horrendous thing. Wanting to remove forests while playing as ∑∫ỹriȱŋ is not looking at the game from the proper perspective. Zoythrus had originally suggested that ∑∫ỹriȱŋ should not be able to chop forests in response to the then-current “pure-chop” meta.
• The point of the special tribes is to do something different and play the game differently than you would with a regular tribe.
• Stealth? The answer isn't no. We aren't too sure. It may come up in the future.
• The phychi buff was added because no one likes them. Everyone told them that getting phychi was very rarely worth it. No one wants Archery anyway.
• Cymanti’s navy is supposed to be a combination of phychi and raychi. The devs wanted to make phychi a set-up mechanic to lower defenses.
• The devs wanted to find out where people play the game and then say, “Don’t do that.” The devs know that Meditation and Spiritualism and other aspects of the game are not balanced yet. They will come back to those things later.
• Midjiwan tried mind bender dash and said it was the worst thing ever.
• The tech stealing upon meeting a new tribe was stopped for a few reasons. First, they wanted the tribes to be more unique. Second, they were tired of people asking for certain tribes as opponents (or allies) in their games, for example Quetzali to give shields. The devs want players to pick a tribe to play for its own sake, not because of its potential synergy with another tribe. Third, they don’t ever want a player to have tech, not because they chose it, but because it was given to them in a trade.
• Diplomacy is still not ready. The devs are not happy with it. They have been testing it for over 2 years. It has the potential to really change the game, so they need to finish adjusting the rest of the Tech Tree with Balance Pass updates to make sure Diplomacy can compare to Chivalry or Trade. It has to be a worthy tier 3 tech but not so strong that it becomes the new meta. Best case scenario, Diplomacy might be ready in a couple months.
• The presence of villages was never supposed to influence the position of ruins. They don’t want players to be able to predict the location of villages or ruins.
• The map generation part of the game is not linked to the version of the game. That’s why the Balance Pass changes leaked into the game before it was officially released. It’s just the way the the game is set up
• Spiritualism—they may drop that tech or replace it.
• The devs are still not happy with the way the game is. That is why they keep making changes to it. They don’t consider the game done.
• They are still experimenting. Midjiwan prefers to make changes to the game and see how the community at large reacts. He throws things at the wall and sees what sticks.
• Since the server is based on a video game community, fan activity is bound to the pace of updates. The gaming industry is beholden to creating new content and updates. Since Midjiwan has brought on some new staff, they hope the pace of updates will increase.
• The devs are aware of the risk of players boosting their in-game ELO by creating extra accounts and deliberately losing. They plan to create some safeguards so players cannot exploit loopholes in ELO.
• Skins (cosmetics) are confirmed to be on the to-do list, eventually.

Team Switching Survey Results

On Sept 5^th, the Ai-Mo Times posted a link to a survey to collect attitudes on switching teams in PolyChampions. An announcement in the PolyChampions server was posted along with the survey link on Sept 10^th.

As of Sept 11^th, 190 people had filled out the survey, 166 of which were players on PolyChamps teams. The vast majority of respondents were very satisfied with their current team. On a scale from 1-5, with 1 being not satisfied and 5 being very satisfied, both players who had switched teams and players who had not had the same average satisfaction score of 4.4.

34 respondents reported switching to another team in the past. The most common feeling about switching teams was excitement about joining a new team. Most did not experience frustration or impatience although almost half felt guilty. Most players who switched teams felt it had been easy or very easy to switch teams.

Mosty PolyChamps players who answered the survey did not report thinking about switching to another team or going inactive. Of the 166 respondents on teams, 11 (7%) admitted to sometimes thinking about making an alt to joining another team.

Finally, most players felt that it was somewhat difficult to switch teams.

Some comments from the survey included:

People should be dedicated to a team. I have been on mine for over a year and I have not once thought about leaving it and only got taken off my old team for inactivity because of college/life. I think switching teams is really hard because you have to leave the people you played with for a long time.

Why so much team switching? I feel like if your team doesn't perform then you can just switch teams to a better one. I feel like it defeats the purpose of having a draft, free agents, etc. If we can just switch teams whenever we want, why bother with all that process in the first place?

While good players should be traded for good value, player trade fees ought to not be exorbitant. The FAT system is best used to invest in new talent, and any player transfer system that makes it more appealing to recirculate existing talent ever bringing in new players is unfavorable in my opinion.

It's already easy enough to leave your team, you can basically ask and be gone within a few days in most cases. It doesn't need to be made easier.

Switching teams is good, but there also needs to be league balance, if you were able to switch teams so easily, there would be an even bigger divergence in skill balance between teams, as players that don't want to work as much will just want to join the best teams... I don't think that players should be able to just switch teams in an instant or even make it “easier” to trade. I believe that if you're drafted onto a team, you should work to make that team better; don't just quit on it immediately and switch to some better team.

Please keep in mind that this survey had significant limitations. 166 respondents represent less than 15% of the total members in PolyChamps server. It is likely that these respondents skew to more active and satisfied players who read the announcements. Players who are not engaged in the server would be less than likely to fill out the survey.

Overall, the vast majority of survey respondents were satisfied with their team. Players who had switched teams felt it was relatively easy, although some did feel guilty about it. Most feel the way trades are done now is fine and the system does not need to be changed.

Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey and for the PolyChamps mods for posting the survey link in the announcements.

Quetzali tournament

Attention all birb lovers! The moon above Quetzali is nigh, and the All-feathered wants to find the mightiest warriors and leaders to fight by her side. Let the Quetzali tournament begin!

1v1 Quetzali tournament overview:

Quetzali mirror matches. Random map types. Restarts are allowed only once before turn 3. The rounds will be played depending on the number of players. If more than 18, there will be groups and then a tournament.

Time out rules: * 1^st TO: Warning and skip if wished * 2^nd TO: Skip wothout warning * 3^rd TO: Kick if you wish to

The prizes include either Nitro or a Quetzali merchandise of the winner's choice.

How to join? Fill out the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JFFLBZJ Contact Detective Dumb for more information.

Ai-Mo News

Congrats to our new Ai-Mo tribe leaders: Etch-a-Sketch and Nox. Also, 1Chill|God of Tripods and Pi-Kappa were reinstated as tribe leaders. The previous two had been elected as TLs before, but had left and rejoined the server. They have all helped and contributed to our tribe in the past. It will be great to see where they help lead Ai-Mo going forward.

Fan Art

By king circusto#6825

By Aetholis1#7565

Fanmade Tribe

Deep beneath the square, a race of insects gained intelligence after discovering a mysterious substance. They watched the creatures of the world above, and slowly learned their ways and their powers. Over the eons, they grew in power and size. Now from below the square, they rise to gain power over the tribes that they idolized.

The Hyvers start out with modified building techs and a different tech tree. The “Hives” tech allows you to build hives, which cost 2 stars and can be built on any empty tile. “Swarm Tactics” allow you to upgrade your hives for 3 stars, which gives 1 more population to the city. These hives can then train a unit. “Colonies” tech gives you “Destroy Building” and allows you to build colonies, which cost 20 stars and can be built once per city. They give +2 stars for each building touching it and +1 star for each building in the city.

Tribe Tech tree; Source: Polytopia FMTs.

Tribe Warrior; Source: Polytopia FMTs.

Set of several structures and Super unit; Source: Polytopia FMTs

Mute ban column

Disclaimer: Many mute and ban commands are executed in admin-only channels. Some fields below will show “unavailable” if the commands were not performed in public channels. In some cases, the data can be inferred from context and will be enclosed in parentheses.

Credits

Thanks to all our contributors: Espark, Druid, Tintin, Noru, and Tmas. A big thanks to Artemis for setting up the website for the newspaper. Also, thank you to our faithful readers for encouraging the paper to continue.

If you want to submit a piece to the newspaper—art, news article, opinion piece, puzzle, etc.—let us know in #article-suggestions.

Keep up, Ai-Mo!