FROM THE BLOG

Some Changes to run by the Community regarding Builders and Bridges

So you know that point in the game where you’ve just got your tower repaired from the last wave of enemies, cleared away any mess and you’re back inside? I can’t think of anything that ruins that more than spammy enemy builders.

I’ve just come out of a game where we spent 40 minutes or so repeatedly clearing drawbridges and ladders from our base, only to have an enemy builder come back and spam another 10 or so before getting killed. It’d then take us time to clear those ones out again by which point the builder would be back, spamming bridges at our wall.

Now, this doesn’t strike me as fun. At all.

As such, a few proposed changes:

• Builders would only build while standing still (ie on solid ground, not pressing any buttons, not getting attacked) – this means no more jump building, no more spamming stones while running away in tunnels, etc. Ladder or bridge scaffolding would probably be more or less necessary to build a big castle or even a tall wall.
• To compensate for castles being harder to build, the builder’s construction radius would be larger, perhaps almost double what it is now. Ideally you’d be able to build quarters and a roof for it without having to move.
• Constructed Blocks would no longer get support from background dirt, only natural blocks would – this means castles in caves can fall down if they aren’t held together with background stone walls like outside. Basically, tiles underground would work the same way tiles overground do. The background dirt would just prevent overhangs of dirt from falling down.

I think this will make battles involving builders far less frustrating, and will make structures underground far less overpowered, as well as drawbridge- and ladder-spamming being less effective because the builder in question will have to actually be standing still at the bottom of the wall, not jumping at it spastically.

That said, I might have overlooked something, so I figured I’d run it by you before we make the changes. What do you think?

EDIT: A revised #1:

• Builders have to charge up to build (based on the block they were building, ladders would take less time than stone blocks) and have limited movement while charging (much like a knight when charging their slash) (the time taken would be based on a serverside variable so that you can have instant building in some servers).

The build radius would still probably be increased to prevent the need for jump-building.

Geti