Avalon Lords – First Look

Welcome to the First Look at Avalon Lords!

Today we would like to give you a first look at Avalon Lords and tell you more about some of the in-game features that will be available at launch and give you an idea of what you can expect from Avalon Lords. As you know, we recently merged with the team from The Alliance Games, which has given us the opportunity to expand the game and make more content available for launch. Let’s take a look at what we have in store!

A seamless, integrated world

When we started creating Avalon Lords, our main goal was to create a MMORTS that brought something completely new to the genre so today we are giving you a first look into our vision.

To start of the first look, we will talk about the world itself. As a player, you will not be constrained to a set size plot of land where you can’t see your neighbors or explore the surrounding countryside freely with your troops. In Avalon Lords we want players to leave behind the feelings of restriction you get from a lot of prior titles in the genre by taking a completely unique approach that allows you to physically explore your landscape. Exploring will be essential for finding other player’s cities and capitals.

Intricate city building capability

While building cities will be fun and easy to get into, with a wide range of buildings to unlock and implement, optimizing your city will be a challenging puzzle that tests your strategic skills. You will have to take advantage of the surrounding landscape to build strong, defensible cities from a wide range of available buildings, with no restrictions on where you build. We’ll also be making a variety of skins available.

Logistics, trading and diplomacy

We’re now able to add real time travel across the landscape, allowing you to see what your neighbors are up to and bringing you into contact with other armies to battle or ally with as you explore the world in real time.

In Avalon Lords, when you send your troops across the map to attack, they will actually travel across the map in real time, and possibly be intercepted or ambushed on the way. Imagine a MMORTS style map that you can cross with your army, passing other player’s territories and cities on the way. You will be able to post scouts and create bottlenecks, cut off enemy supply lines, or offer them safe passage for a fee. You’ll also be able to take advantage of the terrain and dive for cover, or attack and steal from other player’s trade caravans to take precious goods en-route to their destination. By combining the AI system with armies that actually march on each other in contiguous geography, there will be a huge range of strategic options to explore.

Player built roads with movement boosts

As a player you will be able to build your own roads, allowing you to trade and send reinforcements to your troops on the battlefront. This adds an extra gameplay element, allowing you to decide whether to take a fast but obvious route, or a slower one that potentially allows you to remain undetected for longer. You can also send trade carts across the map to sell items to fellow players or resupply troops far from home.

AI and control of units

The Avalon Lords combat system was pretty cool before we expanded our team, but now we’re also planning to add a sophisticated AI and a system that allows you to program the AI yourself if you want to really get hands-on. We want you to have enough confidence in your setup to know that even when you are offline, your armies stand a good chance of surviving and keeping your city safe until you return.

Each faction has a wide range of units to choose from, some of which you can read about in our gameplay section. We’ll also be adding one special super unit per faction, and including detailed unit grouping.

Combat

Armies can either be placed into strategic formations that we provide you with, or organized according to your own style of play. Figure out whether you want to go on the offensive or play it safe, and combine forces and resources with your friends to forge mighty empires.

Massive multiplayer gameplay

Avalon Lords will have an empire and alliance system that allows for massive cooperative efforts. You’ll be able to join a guild-like empire, and you’ll also be able to participate in multiple alliances to achieve a variety of objectives.

Resource generation

Resource generation will be carefully balanced, with both combat costs and rewards. Types of resources available in each area will vary, giving players an incentive to explore and conquer new territories.

We hope that you enjoyed the first look into Avalon Lords. We’ll be bringing you more information in our upcoming Developer Diaries, and releasing a Gameplay Trailer in May. In the meantime, check out our forums, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages, where our dedicated Community Team will do their best to answer your questions!