The Arrival of Influence

With the deployment of Early Enrollment v6 scheduled for Thursday 26 of March we will deploy the first iteration of the Influence system, which Companies will use starting in Early Enrollment v7 (scheduled for 16 April) to claim and constuct Holdings and Outposts.

Actions that count towards Achievements generate influence. The more of those things a character has done, the less Influence each additional act generates, but the amount of Influence generated never drops to zero. Even if a character has earned the maximum number of levels of an Achievement, continuing to perform actions that were related to that Achievement will gain influence.



For example: Killing a Goblin with a Hunter’s Longbow is an action that is tracked by the Longbow Expert Achievement and the Goblin Slayer Achievement. That action will generate some Influence for the Longbow Expert progress and the Goblin Slayer progress. Even if both the Longbow Expert and Goblin Slayer Achievements have been maxed, the action will still generate a small amount of Influence for both.

The Math

The formula for Influence generation is:

Each Achievement action that is a "counter" (i.e. x of y) completed provides: 0.033 / (current Achievement level^1.5) points of Influence

Each one-off Achievement action (i.e. find a Fane in the wilderness) completed provides: .33 points of Influence

This system rewards characters who are constantly pursuing new Achievements and new players are one of the best sources of Influence.

The total amount of Influence a Company can have is:

The square root of (number of people in your Company-5)x300.

So if you have a Company of 6 people your max is 300 Influence, while if you have a company of 105 people your max Influence is 3000. This does mean if you have a company with less than six people you cannot earn Influence. You can still form a company, but you need more people to claim and hold territory.

Using Influence

Companies gain Influence, not characters. If a character leaves a Company and joins a new Company there is no effect on either Company's current Influence totals.

You will be able to see the amount of Influence earned by your Company on the Holdings tab of the Company Info panel.

The first thing Companies will be able to do with Influence is gain control of or construct Holdings. Holdings have many in-game mechanical effects depending on which Holding has been constructed and they will eventually include trainers, crafting facilities, etc. Outposts can only be built and controlled by a Company that also controls the Holding in the same Hex. Outposts produce special resources needed for Holding and Settlement upkeep. Building these structures requires that a Company invest Influence, and the invested Influence cannot be used for other purposes while it is invested.

Claiming or constructing a Holding will require investing 100 Influence. In future updates additional Influence can be banked to upgrade the Holding.

Claiming or constructing an Outpost will require 50 Influence. In future updates additional Influence can be banked to upgrade the Outpost.

Future updates will also allow the investment of Influence to declare feuds on other Companies.

A Company's total Influence includes any invested Influence. When a Company is at max Influence, additional Influence gained by its members is lost.

A blog describing Holdings and Outposts will be released later this week.

Setting Starting Influence

To get everyone started in the Influence system we are going to be running a process to allocate starting Influence to all Companies that exist during the April 2nd downtime based on the total Achievement points earned by the Company members and the size of the Company. Larger Settlements may want to reorganize Company membership ahead of that process. To be certain that all changes are correctly reflected in Company composition at the start of play on Thursday 2 April you may wish to have completed all moves of personel on Wednesday 1 of April.

Update

In EE6 companies smaller than 6 people will be able to earn Influence, but this will be fixed at the beginning of EE7. Companies smaller than 6 will not benefit from the bootstrap bonus.