The news team
Main editor: Hopla Spell checkers: Mogwai IronMan7 Reporters: Gabriella IM_Mike Joffer Mirarik Corsini Graphic designer: Hopla
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News
Welcome to another issue of the Ikariam Scrolls. First of all, we wish to thank you for the massive amount of attention you gave to the previous issue of the Ikariam Scrolls, over 4000 views and counting. Secondly, this month has been full of changes in the team. We welcome to the team two new Trials Moderators: MiloÂŽ and Disconnect. We hope you do well. Also, a third almostnewcomer, we welcome back Mortanus, who has rejoined the team as a moderator. Additionally, two moderators were promoted to Globals Moderators, we congratulate Vayus and Atina for their promotions. On the Game Side of the team, a new Super GO has stepped up, we congratulate jErCeL for his new position. On a sadder note, two teamlers have decided to leave the team. We say goodbye to TwistedFairytale who left the role of Board
The News Team............................................2 Vacancies.....................................................2 News............................................................3 Interview with Motopia................................4 Version 0.5.8: an update for our fighters......7 Interview with Disconnect............................8 Joffer’s Ikariascope.....................................10 Monthly interview......................................11 Wordsearch solution..................................12 Bingo.........................................................13 The final word............................................13
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Administrator and oder? who left the role of Super GO. Best of luck to both of you in your future endeavors. Thirdly, version 0.5.8 was announced to be rolled out in the test server on August 13th, bringing lots of improvements, most of them to the battle system. You can read more about the new version on page 7. And last, an update was announced for the Ikariam Mobile Application. Read more here.
Interview with Motopia
This time we had the pleasure to interview long time player Motopia. - For start, thanks for doing the interview with us. - Would you please tell us something about yourself? Motopia: I live in Lawrence, KS with my wife of almost 8 years. Most of my free time anymore is spent cooking, watching Netflix with the wife, or playing games on my PC. - How long have you played Ikariam? Motopia: About 5 years now. - How did you find Ikariam in the first place? Motopia: A couple of my co-workers were playing and recruited me one day. - Could you please tell us about your playing style? Motopia: I'm primarily a fighter and my playing style revolves around that. I grow my cities bigger only so I have more income when I need to fight. I place them so I can't be overrun easily if someone decides to attack, but close enough I can respond quickly when they do. I like to have no cooldowns on Forge and Poseidon miracles so I go fast and hit hard. I'm also usually the strategist for my alliances. I'm mostly known as a General but anymore I prefer to just be Home Secretary. It gives me a chance to keep the weirdoes and spies out of the alliance chat. - Why have you gone this way? Motopia: I'm just very competitive player. I don't like to lose. - Do you prefer Naval or Land war? Motopia: I actually prefer naval fights. There is far less risk in a naval battle. Your navy can always withdraw if you get in a bad spot, and you don't have to deal with walls. - Could you tell us a little more about some of your favorite tactics? Motopia: A lot of the time I will have an observer in a city and I can see enemy ships incoming. Instead of engaging them directly, I time carrier waves (1 ram, 6 carriers) to hit them just seconds after they land in the city. There is a 12 second delay before their boats will station after a battle, so they will have no hope of escaping them once they hit the port. This helps kill off their subs/rockets so I take less damage in the long run. I try to do this anytime I have extra carriers in my navy and I'm not far from home due to their long travel time. Most of the time when I'm outnumbered I do my best to be annoying. Most people fight by sending their troops/navy in waves anymore. I keep half my forces out of combat and then hit the town they are waving from. It disrupts their waves and often forces them to withdraw. If I manage to take the town from the, their returning troops scatter and I'm no longer outnumbered :) There is another tactic I have been using I call the "mouse trap". Once combat starts it allows me to destroy any boats left and doesn't allow the enemy to white flag. The only way out of it is with a lvl 5 colossus.
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Another thing I do, when fighting in multiple areas I keep a spare group of carriers in the area I'm not fighting in. That way if I need to hurry across the map I can leave them behind and get to the next battle faster. - In what servers do you play? Why have you chosen those? Motopia: I started on Eta with my co-workers. I also played for a short time on some of the newer servers, but I never stay around more than a few months on them. Currently I'm playing on ARES as dragonborn. - In what alliance are you in? Could you please tell us a little more about it? Motopia: On Eta I'm in Offler's Titans, it was my first alliance and will be my last. I joined them a few weeks after I joined the server, back before mergers when it was known as Praise Offler. I got into a fight with one of their members and after giving him a good beating their leader Detritus asked me to join. A few months and a few wars later the current general had to step down and I was asked to take his place. Anymore I just maintain the Home Secretary position and let other guys handle the general postion, while helping with general strategery. POFF has transformed over the years from being mostly traders and builders to now being one of the premiere military forces on Eta. We have however remained pretty friendly to the new player. As long as someone is active and willing to learn they can probably get into POFF. I can train people to fight, I can't train them to be active. On ARES I'm in the appropriately named ARES alliance. ARES is actually an alliance on Eta and has been POFF's closest ally for years. A bunch of us from different alliances on Eta just decided to stick together, and have been adding worthy fighters as we find them. I'm also home secretary here, and I'm much more picky about who I let in. - So you also play on Ares, what are you plans there? Motopia: I would like to finish with as many badges as possible. Right now I'm focusing on building a good economy first, I will focus on the points later. - Do you prefer newer or older servers for playing? Motopia: They both have their advantages. Newer servers are a lot more fun and active with new challenges. On older servers I can get 8 hours of sleep... - What do you think in general about the idea of Gameforge to implement such warserver? Motopia: I think it was long overdue. It is a nice change of pace, and the idea of earning badges is cool. My only real complaints about the war server right now is inactives and protected mode players. I think the deletion process should also be 3x speed to clear up room for active players faster. Protected mode players that are just hording gold are going to end up getting badges over players that are actively pillaging and protecting their gold, which seems silly. - You help around people a lot in the Help and Questions forum on board. How did you find your way in there? Motopia: I just stumbled onto the boards shortly after I started playing. I started there asking stupid questions, so I figure I should probably answer a few! 5|Page
- Do you think Ikariam (the game and the board) offers enough help and advice for new users? If no, what could be improved? Motopia: There is a ton of information in the help section, but I can't imagine that a new player reading it would understand much of it. The tutorial is also fairly limited only exposing the player to early game buildings and troops. I think Gameforge should consider adding a tutorial each time someone finishes a new research project that introduces a new unit or building. The boards have a ton of information also, but no FAQ section. Of course this section could be difficult to implement because everyone has different opinions on some subjects. - What is your take or newest features in the game - the new battle system (version 0.5.8), Piracy and Helios tower? Motopia: 0.5.8 will introduce some things I have wanted for a long time, the end of slinger spam and the ability to see who owns what troops on the battlefield. Pretty happy about that. I like the overall idea of Piracy, but I think it needs to be looked at again by the developers. Capture runs are not a good way to promote activity, having to click a button every 2 min and 30 seconds turns the game into a chore and is not fun. The constant need to train crew is enough incentive for a pirate to log on whenever possible, but doesn't involve watching a timer to click a button. Passive capture point and gold generation from the fortress would increase participation. I'm seeing some Helios tower's on ARES, I still think they are a bit too expensive but maybe worth it if you have an island full of alliance mates sharing upkeep cost. I don't have one myself. - Is there something you would like to see change in the game? Motopia: Walls need to be redesigned. Sometimes they are useful, but most of the time they actually end up causing the defender to take more damage. This can happen because they are too small and they get wiped out in the first round, causing the defender to lose all their ranged and artillery units at the start of the battle. They can also be too large and cause the defender's front line units to get bottlenecked in the open wall segments, causing them to die at a very fast rate. This can be fixed by giving the wall it's own space on the battlefield, or just not having the defenders units fill the front line openings until the wall is completely down. - Who has had the greatest influence on you, in Ikariam? Motopia: Probably Trix, the diplomat of POFF. She has kept me from starting a lot of wars while in the middle of other wars... but sometimes she is not successful :O) - What is the funniest thing that has happened to you in Ikariam? Motopia: Every one of our war planning meetings ends up being pretty hilarious. Let me summarize: Detritus: People are bored, who should we go to war against? Me: EVERYONE AT THE SAME TIME!
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Trix: NOOOOO - Do you have any advice for new users, starting to play? Motopia: Build big warehouses and hideouts and stay active. If pillagers can't see your loot and don't get any loot they will stop coming by for visits. Pay attention early on what islands you are planting on, you want anvils and dolphins! -Interviewed by Hopla
Version 0.5.8: an update for our fighters! Another month, another version of Ikariam. The announcement of version 0.5.8 brings minor, but handy features and some bug fixes, which might be appreciated by the Ikariam fighters. The performance of the battle system has been optimized in order to decrease the chances of crashing. This is an important fix because the bug that would crash big battles is affecting more and more alliances as Ikariam continues to grow. Since these adjustments have been made in the underlying code of the battle system itself, it is hard to tell exactly how often the battles will crash – but it will definitely be less frequent. There were no changes to the battle system itself, so there is no need to be concerned about having to master new battle strategies or fighting techniques. There have been two small updates to the detailed battle report. The first is that the tool-tips, which you see when you navigate your cursor above units, will now show both upgrades (offensive and defensive), instead of the higher of the two. It will also show the owner of the corresponding units. While it was already possible for our smart players to guess whose units or ships are being used, this adjustment provides a better overview in the bigger battles where it could sometimes be required to scroll back twenty or even fifty rounds to get a full overview of events, like ammunition reloads. For our curious readers asking how you could already tell which player's units are being used: its is possible by looking at the Hephaistos usage per individual field, amount of troops in waves, moment of arrival in a battle, losses mentioned next to the morale bars and of course changes in offensive or defensive points. A smart general can still use those details to his advantage and will now have a better overview of the battlefield. The second update to the detailed battle report is that it is now easier to scroll through a detailed battle report. An iterator that makes it easier to easily navigate rounds has replaced the old method, where you had to navigate round by round. It will always show you the link to the first and last round and if possible, the three rounds before and after the round you are currently viewing. If there are more rounds, all other rounds will be indicated as et cetera. These changes to the battle system code and display might require combat reports to use a new format for storage, which is why GameForge will be cancelling all running battles and delete all existing and archived combat reports when the update is installed on the servers. The archive option has been removed for over a year since it wasn't working correctly because the layout uses older versions of Ikariam.
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In the new version, several bugs have been fixed as well. The most conspicuous of them is the one that flesh rebuilds in barracks will no longer be categorized as a part of waves, but will instead be categorized as one wave running inside the town itself. This is a fix to make a trick/exploit that made it sometimes impossible to pillage or occupy a player because the defender was building hundreds or even thousands of slingers to extend a battle indefinitely! Other smaller bug fixes solved a problem where defenders couldn't always export battle reports under certain circumstances. Also, the rebellion button is greyed once again, when you have no troops to start a rebellion. At this moment, it is unclear to us when the new version will be implemented. You can find the full change log, which gives a more detailed overview of the fixed bugs, here. -Written by IM_Mike
Interview with Disconnect This time we had the pleasure to interview one of our new Trial Moderators, Disconnect. - So, can you give me a brief introduction about yourself? :) Disconnect: My name is Kristian, 24 yo and lives in a small village in Sweden, called Ljusdal. - Nice, sweden is beautiful - Are you a student right now? Disconnect: No I'm unemployed at the moment, but maybe I got a job as a supporter next month. - Nice. :) - So, what’s your history with Gameforge, which team did you join first? Disconnect: I joined the BitefightSe team first, I believe it was in October last year. - Oooh, and what got you into Ikariam? Disconnect: Actually it was my brother who told me IkariamSe was looking for new mods, and I wanted a new challenge. :) - Nice, does he play Ikariam? Disconnect: Yeah he's a go and mod :) - Ooooh, it runs in the family - And how about .org, what caught your attention here, and made you want to join? Disconnect: It was when I found out .org was looking for new mods, I've never been mod at an English-speaking comm so that's a challenge I really wanted to take. - Nice :) - And how have you found your time here so far? Disconnect: Well, both up and down. But mostly up. I really enjoying my stay in this comm :) 8|Page
- What do you find challenging in moderating? Disconnect: To develop myself and develop my skills :) - Ooooh, and which skills do you think you have been able to develop? Disconnect: To keep calm even if the users are really mad. - :D I imagine that is a challenge faced quite frequently. Disconnect: Never seen it at Ika.org but in Ika.Se.. . - And is there any advice you would give to anyone thinking of joining the team? Disconnect: Yeah.. Apply. :) you're gonna get the opportunity to work with a really great team, and (most of them) really great users. :) - I think thats about it, you can sleep now :p -Interviewed by Mirarik
What does the new Ikariam Mobile Application update bring to the table? Feature- Piracy - Capture quests and Raids are now possible Feature - Application can be moved to the SD Feature - Hardware back button now works properly with the application Change - The Size of the application is significantly reduced. Bugfix- Several minor bug fixes
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Joffer’s Ikariascope This Ikariascope describes the current influences from the planets and the Zodiac, which can be felt by all people, no matter what sign you have, because of your birth in a specific time of the year. The Ikariascope describes the trends for the coming month. It is like fashion; lots of people love to follow the main stream but everybody is free to swim against it. The month of September will be dominated by two signs of the transfer to the sign Libra. Zodiac: Virgin and Libra, because the Sun moves through the sign Virgin until September 22, then it will trasnfer to the sign Libra. The sign Virgin is characterized by a big love for detail and a big fear for risks. It is the harvesting person, who separates the wheat from the chaff. Virgin is able to distinguish the good from the bad, but doesn’t like to take important decisions. Virgin is more likely to be the person behind the scenes. When Virgin rules time is favorable for inspection of the alliance: which members are doing well in the alliance or who needs to be kicked? Ruler of Virgin is Mercurius. This planet goes through the sign Virgin until September 9, then it will transfer to Libra. It will be hard to make decisions. A long time will be taken to weigh pros and cons. The sign Libra is characterized by harmony. Libra will always search and care for balance and peace. She loves beauty and searches to gratify her senses. Time to upgrade museums and taverns! She hates to hurt others. That makes that it takes long time to make decisions. Ruler of Libra is Venus. This planet goes through Libra until September 12, then it will transfer to Scorpio. From that time, jealousy will come up and finances, in Ikariam gold stock, will become very important. Venus and Saturn will be conjunct on September 20. That is the time to consider decisions to make
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sure that there will be enough gold income on the long term. Trade Mercurius is ruler of trade in Ikariam. As written above, this planet takes on the characteristics of Virgin until September 9. Trade treaties and prices in trading posts will be considered with criticism. After September 9, Mercurius will get the characteristics of Libra. Thus, will take a long time to decide whether to buy or to sell stuff. Building Venus rules the building activities in Ikariam. This planet goes through the sign Libra until September 12 and means it’s time to upgrade museums and taverns. After September 12, Venus will go through the sign Scorpio. Then, gold stock will become very important. Time to upgrade buildings that will increase gold income such as city halls, museums, taverns, and governor’s houses in cities where corruption is. Fights Mars is the ruler of fights and wars. Mars will go through the sign of Leo in September. That makes the fights and wars be fought with full confidence and determination. Large armies and fleets will be built in a way that you can’t be beaten. Wars under great leadership will be ultimately successful. Of course, large armies and fleets will cost lots of gold. So this makes gold stock of big importance, which coincides with Venus in Scorpio.
Monthly Interview Nick in the game? My Nick name in all the 5 worlds I play in is Gabbz World you are playing in? Alpha-BAUN Gamma-LAW Zeta-AOW Omikron-BANE Phi-NOW If you had choice for your new colony, on what island would you do it - sulfur or crystal? And why? Me personally, in ALL the worlds I play in, I would plant a Sulphur as I already have 1 Crystal town in each account. But in my opinion you should have at least 1 crystal town as it is needed for research, When you upgrade Grs For some troops/fleet etc etc. As I like Fighting more than Farming I like to have quite a few Sulphur towns. In the older worlds I play in, you can only get a Forge miracle on a sulphur island which is another reason I like having more sulphur towns. What do you think about piracy? Is it helpfull? I am aware this new feature has had mixed reactions but whoever has won it before will know how helpful it is.... In the first few months it came out I done it properly (Coming in the top 10) but after that I have just been occasionally sneaking in the top 50... Because I'm lazy :P The rewards are high to be honest which is a good thing if you play it properly but for those people who spent years growing there account without the befits of Piracy must feel it's unfair that people grow so quick with it. And the members who have no Mobile colonies would find it much harder to win as they cant raid as effectively as people who plant several mobiles around the world and do 'sly' raids. Also the members who get fed piracy points by friends or alliance members have an upper hand to the people who cant take advantage of that. What would happen in the future with the bashing rule, which has been removed? What is your opinion? I have really noticed the Bashing Rule go... When I had to attack some one while it was around, I would just go and do it, Attacking some one 6 times in 24hrs is not bad 8-) So like I said, to me it never made a difference... Does the player depend on the alliance or alliance depends on the player? It, to some extent depends on the purpose of the alliance. If the alliance is full of people who build build build with just a couple of fighters, and end up being forced to go to war, In theory the alliance would have to depend on those players to protect them.
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But then on the other hand, If you have a training alliance where a bunch of players help new players grow and learn things about the game, in that situation the player would depend on the alliance.... Works both ways For some reason it's hard to answer this question :P Which is why I am just saying random stuff Make a wish of our audience. I wish, all you Brethens and Sistrainiens (Basically the audience, I am trying to use big words) can Fly one day. But on a serious note, I wish none of you ever quit this game -Interviewed by Gabriella
Wordsearch solution Here is the solution for last month’s worsearch. In addition to words highlighted there, we also accepted the word ram, which wasn’t originally meant to be there but on a funny turn of events, still ended up there.
List of words: Tender, Technocracy, Optician, Academy, Cook, Ikariam, Occupation, Marble, Swordsman, Future, Architecture, Xenocracy, Ram. The winners of the puzzle were Whocai and Play. Congratulations, you should recive your coupons shortly. 12 | P a g e
Bingo For this month’s challange we have prepeared a Bigno. All answers can be found in the issues of the Ikariam Scrolls – this one and all previous. To submit your answers, send a PM to Hopla with number of box – answer. You’ll find the number of the box in lower left corner of every box. In order to win the prize, all answers have to be correct. The prizes are 10 EUR coupon for the first person to send the correct answer and a 10 EUR coupon to one lucky person who has sent the correct answer. You can send the answers for 7 days, starting from the moment the Ikariam Scrolls is published. Who is the Main Editior of the Ikariam Scrolls?
Does Motopia prefer Naval or Land war?
By what signs will September be dominated?
How many views did the last issue of the Ikariam Scrolls get?
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Which team did Disconnect join first?
How did Polandpoland find Ikariam?
Does Sampisa like ice cream?
In what servers does King Petal play?
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Does Motopia help people in the Help and Questions forum? 9
Arround how many Help and Questions threads have been there? 10
Who is Dustwolf’s favorite player?
What has been the longest running competition on Ikairam.org board? 12
Where can you comment about the articles in the Ikariam Scrolls? 13
How did Mogwai find Ikariam?
When was the Ingame CR converter announced? 15
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What version did Dutch01 like the most? 16
The final word
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e wish to thank everyone who helped along to publishing this edition. We hope you had fun reading it. If you wish to comment on any of the articles you can do it here.
If you have any ideas about what to write, who to interview or you think we should interview you, please leave a PM to Hopla with the info what should we do and why. Any hints about anything interesting are welcomed aswell. If you want to have your own add in the classifieds section leave a PM to Hopla. Remember to see what we need, to publish your ad, in here.
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