Today's update focuses on making alliance defenses more accessible and convenient, but by doing so, it also changes a few other things.
The Tavern
First of all this update fixes the Tavern. The Tavern was so good that players hesitated to report its bugged features and enjoyed it instead. This is bad of course, and the hangover will be significant. From now on, the Tavern will be increasing speed of reinforcements by +10% per level up to +200% at maximum level, making total maximum speed of reinforcements 300% (100% default + 200% bonus), thus basically increasing speed by x3 (not x11 like it was before bug fix). Also, the Tavern will no longer speed up naval and aerial reinforcements.
The Lighthouse
In order to compensate for the Tavern decrease of power, we looked around and found that powering up the Lighthouse was a natural step. The Lighthouse bonus to all naval armies sent from the town increased from 1% to 2% per level. Furthermore, an additional +10% speed bonus was added to reinforcements, which is similar to the Tavern bonus, except it works for naval units only. This will make seashore towns a little bit more desireable.
Invading Enemies
Since the Tavern fix made the reinforcements much slower, we added another feature which will give more time to react on incoming attacks. First of all, enemy armies are slowed down when they are detected, not when they enter your domain. This adds an additional 2 to 8 cells around your domain, depending on your tech. This is especially helpful if your country is squeezed from a side by a neighbor town, thus making your domain small and enemies detected very late.
Furthermore, the slowdown of enemies on your territory is increased from x2 to x3, which means they will move slower once detected, giving even more time to react and put defenses in place.
Hopefully this will compensate for the Tavern fix and defending will not become more difficult than it was.
New Units Auto-Sharing
Now you can allow units to be auto-shared after being retrained. This way your allies can move your troops after you have ordered them and temporarily quit the game due to some outside reasons.
Visible Defenses
Alliance Commanders can now see walls and towers of the alliance members at any time. This information will allow them to be smarter about defenses in cases where the town being attacked has few or no towers and it would be better not to waste reinforcements there.
P.S. Keep in mind that this update is aimed at helping defending alliances. This has nothing to do with collectivism vs leaderism debates - as the leaderism alliance can do just as well defending in certain situations. Please do not bring that collectivism vs leaderism debate up again.
