Goblin Squad Member
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Ladies and Gentlemen,
The EBA has established our borders, shown on the following map, for resource, escalation, and holding claims. We consider anyone harvesting resources, attacking escalations, or establishing holdings to be hostile, unless given prior permission from EBA leadership. Any non-hostile individuals are free to travel our land, trade, buy/sell at auction houses, as well as bank.
You may contact any of the following people for more information about the above statement:
Cheatle - Brighthaven Rep.
DeciusBrutus - Phaeros Rep.
Erian El'ranelan - Keeper's Pass Rep.
Fierywind - Brighthaven Rep.
Nihimon - Phaeros Rep.
Teribithia9 - Hammerfall Rep.
WxCougar - Keeper's Pass Rep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Shifts in the treasure given from escalations, depletion of resources in hexes, and the ability to establish holdings necessitate that any settlement properly define its area. The EBA, being an alliance dedicated to Good and Freedom, is not looking to simply harass individuals in our territory, but rather provide clarity for all to avoid unnecessary conflict. We look forward to productive conversation with folks interested in operating in this territory. Independent parties wishing to work in the area can look to any settlement for membership. Friendly companies and settlements can check with any of the parties above for information on how you can safely operate in this region. Indeed, knowing where you are as a friendly party will allow EBA to provide support if you run into any trouble.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let us broaden this otherwise declaration of lines on a map.
How does one go about obtaining permission to harvest in your "claimed' territory. Are there limitations? If not, do you trade? trade what for what? rates?
Who speaks for the EBA? Are request completed by committee or still done at the individual settlement level? Just yesterday a Phaeros officer, who I will not name, plainly stated they have policies that the rest of the EBA do not. Where is the consistent message? Will Phaeros honor something agreed to by another settlement in the EBA.
Help me, help you.
Atheory
Allegiant Gemstone Company
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are an alliance, not a nation, and so each settlement is free to manage its own affairs as it sees fit. We hold to a unified approach for mutual defense, favored trading to alliance members, etc. And so, if you are looking to trade "with the EBA" such does not exist. You would trade at a settlement level. I believe you will find that across the entire EBA we can offer pretty much all goods. And as a merchant, you can certainly work the contacts to find the best deal for you among our members; we do not have any alliance-wide monopoly controlling trades.
As for operating in our territory (harvesting resources, targeting escalations, or establishing holdings) you can get with any of the folks noted above. All deals are, at present, on an individual basis. We can certainly consider company and settlement level agreements if such become of interest. The terms of the agreement will cover what can be done and any associated costs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Settlements have some autonomy and their own policies. As a whole, an announcement like this is a broad policy that the entire EBA supports.
If you would like to obtain permission on a small scale, Settlement leadership can work with you, and will let the entire leadership know about any permissions they give. Large scale operations in our territory will be, at what you call, a committee level.
Agreements will be honored, but right now we are ironing out some of these processes a bit more, so if anything changes we will make sure to give you prior notice.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let us broaden this otherwise declaration of lines on a map.
How does one go about obtaining permission to harvest in your "claimed' territory. Are there limitations? If not, do you trade? trade what for what? rates?
Who speaks for the EBA? Are request completed by committee or still done at the individual settlement level? Just yesterday a Phaeros officer, who I will not name, plainly stated they have policies that the rest of the EBA do not. Where is the consistent message? Will Phaeros honor something agreed to by another settlement in the EBA.
Help me, help you.
Atheory
Allegiant Gemstone Company
I was the Phaeros officer that you spoke to. The policy that I mentioned was one that was adopted in the interim until an EBA-wide policy could be solidified. Since the latter has now happened, the former is now moot. Phaeros is 100% behind the EBA policy as outlined above, and we will both protect the territory from hostile actions and welcome with open arms any peaceful explorers or traders.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks for the clarifications - I will communicate with my members.
There surely are some low key gatherings happening in the Hammerfall area. We also have on a regular basis tended to the monster hex N NE of Hammerfall to prevent it spreading in our direction while Hammerfall was less active.
I thought I flag these up so that EBA is aware and that we can discuss what is allowed to carry on and what to cease doing.
I won't be able to stop anything of this instantaneous as communication with everyone - especially less organized members - takes a while. But I will start the process.
Does everyone else count 138 whole hexes? Is that 18 half hexes, and is there anything in those?
Just so I can get a sense of what's left in the world, how many hexes are on the map?
Is there any truth to the rumor that there is a whole row of hexes to the right of the map that don't show up on our map? I haven't been able to get there to investigate, yet.
cool. yes I meant column. sloppy writing..
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Goblin Squad Member
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Does everyone else count 138 whole hexes? Is that 18 half hexes, and is there anything in those?
Just so I can get a sense of what's left in the world, how many hexes are on the map?
138 hexes is accurate. By my own count (not counting "half-hexes", which are actually walled off in the game), there's a total of ~798 (memory is a bit hazy) hexes. I think Lee Hammock quoted a number in the 800s in his recent video interview.
For the mathematically declined, using those figures, this is roughly a claim on ~17% of the total map area.
We'll need 1104 hexes if each of 32 settlements claims 34.5 hexes.
Yay! I foresee much PvP at that rate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We'll need 1104 hexes if each of 32 settlements claims 34.5 hexes.
Yay! I foresee much PvP at that rate.
There will be more space for settlements on the edges and less for settlements on the inside of the map.
There will be more space for agressive / large settlements and less for settlements that are less active.
There will be more space for settlements with dead/inactive neighbours and less space for settlements with neighbours which develop their settlement.
So taking this into account it is approximately right. I haven't had the time to investigate each individual hex bordering us or counting the number of our hexes after I draw a similar boundary to our northern neighbour.
But I'm sure we will get an agreement as long as the Spire hex is either halved or doesn't belong to anyone.
Now I will need to start counting for EL and either stay very quite if the number is too large or will have to shout THIS ISN'T FAIR if the count is too small ;)
Joking aside - there will never be a fair solution where everyone is the same. The distribution of active settlements is just not even enough for this.
We'll need 1104 hexes if each of 32 settlements claims 34.5 hexes.
Yay! I foresee much PvP at that rate.
I look forward to the day when the various currently-inactive settlements each have the population of the EBA average.
In a recent Thornkeep fireside chat there was talk of the knowledge of players with 10 to even 40 accounts.
Those players have no realistic way of utilizing territory any more than a player with one account, but they can certainly swell a settlement's population numbers.
Luckily, the math of the DI points game mechanic may force people to shed at least the non-craft/non-refine alts out of settlements at which point we *might* have a more realistic idea of how many real players are in each settlement. But that could be months from now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree that inactive members may at some point skew the calculus on "populated" settlements, versus "active" or "successful". One player with 10 to 40 accounts will not be able to exploit their own accounts effectively. Settlements are better off with 100 active players with only 100 accounts than 500 accounts and only 50 players any day.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In a recent Thornkeep fireside chat there was talk of the knowledge of players with 10 to even 40 accounts.
Those players have no realistic way of utilizing territory any more than a player with one account, but they can certainly swell a settlement's population numbers.
If an organized settlement has even distribution of gatherers among active players, while a small number of people play a large number of crafter alts that continually keep their crafting queues full, they can easily make more efficient use of territory (hexes/account) than a group made of single account holders that rarely play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In a recent Thornkeep fireside chat there was talk of the knowledge of players with 10 to even 40 accounts.
Those players have no realistic way of utilizing territory any more than a player with one account, but they can certainly swell a settlement's population numbers.
Luckily, the math of the DI points game mechanic may force people to shed at least the non-craft/non-refine alts out of settlements at which point we *might* have a more realistic idea of how many real players are in each settlement. But that could be months from now.
I have heard of one company composed entirely of one person's alts, numbering more than 20. That company is not part of either EBA or EoX; it's certain that every or nearly every settlement suffers from alt inflation to some degree, and I sincerely doubt that any one group suffers disproportionately.
And, like you, I look forward to influence and DI that will at least somewhat reflect actual playing people.
Can you imagine someone joining a large group thinking they'd have lots of company and find that as member #121 they had ONE person to talk to? :-)
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Let us broaden this otherwise declaration of lines on a map.
How does one go about obtaining permission to harvest in your "claimed' territory. Are there limitations? If not, do you trade? trade what for what? rates?
Who speaks for the EBA? Are request completed by committee or still done at the individual settlement level? Just yesterday a Phaeros officer, who I will not name, plainly stated they have policies that the rest of the EBA do not. Where is the consistent message? Will Phaeros honor something agreed to by another settlement in the EBA.
Help me, help you.
Atheory
Allegiant Gemstone Company
Someone other than you would contact the settlement nearest the location you wished to harvest with their request. Requests will be evaluated on an individual basis.
Trades are also negotiated individually.
In no case should members of companies or settlements hostile to EBA or Phaeros expect to be granted privileges or safe passage.
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Phaeros is a blowfish settlement. We puff up real nice and spikey-like whenever a hostile character gets near us. Then we blow them up. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I want to make it clear to everyone that the Everbloom Alliance is friendly to strangers and welcomes visitors. While it is necessary that we make this kind of announcement publicly, the EBA is still operating on a "Not Red Don't Shoot" policy. The purpose of this notice is to inform folks what kind of actions can move them into that "Red" category.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Presumably, gathering and trading by parties considered hostile to EBA will be done via alts, that may even be in a company aligned to an EBA settlement.
So all of this posturing is really pointless, and actually rather puerile.
Thanks for your comment. We'll keep that in mind when we start having other posters reprimand us for making an insufficient effort to disseminate this information more widely.
Al, what name should we write down for your Company-that-is-in-the-EBA-but-isn't-really? Also, what are the names of all of the alts you operate in-game currently? Could you please update us on a regular basis when you make those changes? Nah, that's too much work. We'll just let the spies be spies, the honest folks be honest folks, and everyone else be dead.
Seriously, the purpose of this post was a fore-warning, so when we see a character we don't recognize in EBA territory doing things without permission and whack it, folks can't say we did anything "un-lawful" or some such. I believe the term here is "covering our asses." In that context, the less-than-iron-clad enforceability of the policy is moot.
Also, we are creating an extra space for spies and infiltrators to operate in, if that is their game. You're welcome for our efforts!
I should also add that known allies of Golgotha can expect to be killed outright without notice.
For those who don't speak EBA I'm offering some translations:
known allies of Golgotha = wearing the same color as Golgotha even when we've never seen the guy before and even when it is outside of the territory on that map.
killed outright = 1.5 to 3 hours after first being spotted (if you're bored/patient enough to wait around for our form-up); unless you're some random dude in blue near Iron Gauntlet, then BLAMMO!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lawful you say? That may be, but it sounds like EBA is starting to wander dangerously close to Lawful-Evil.
The types of action you describe are pretty much spot on for a description of how the Hell Knights operate in the Pathfinder campaigns.
This is actually a fair point. Xeilias may have to update our branding language where we claim to be the largest evil organization in the game.
Allow me to be the first to welcome our Lawful Evil Overlords!
What are Golgotha's colours? I'd like to not wear them.
Unfortunately, we can't depend on the opposition not to switch to our color, so we have to change it up frequently to at least have a chance at better IFF at the beginning of engagements.
Also, some armors have a look that doesn't change much when you change colors.
e.g. Pot Steel Plate seems to look bluish to me no matter what "color" I choose.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wonder what Erian has to say about that, considering they apparently allow all non-aggressors welcome to Keepers Pass, his own words.
I'd say:
(a) If you are an unknown entity and you are just going through EBA territory, you are safe. If you are attacked without cause (e.g. you weren't harvesting on EBA territory, or after being found to harvest you stopped), let me know and I'll find out why.
(b) If you are a known ally of a hostile group and wish to visit, let me know and I'll be happy to escort you in and out personally or otherwise provide escort. The Ring of Gold focuses on hospitality, to friend, stranger, and enemy alike. We can't have meaningful conversation otherwise. I'll walk Phyllain, Midnight, or anyone else straight to The Laughing Ogre Alehouse for a drink and talks. I can't guarantee the safety of known hostile parties otherwise entering our land, of course. The way to guarantee that safe passage is to not be hostile.
The Keepers desire to reduce and eliminate conflict across the entire region. We are not, however, ones to allow our non-aggression stance to be abused so otherwise-hostile parties can take advantage of our good nature.
I can truthfully say that I look forward to the day when I'd actually need an escort in order to reach a settlement.
And I'll be the first to admit it is still easier than I'd prefer for folks to slip into Golgotha, especially since we've lost most of our Mordant Spire road checkpoint.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... when we see a character we don't recognize in EBA territory doing things without permission and whack it...
Please understand this should not happen without warning unless you're a known ally of Golgotha, or another known enemy.
As I said above - and I really hope this messages gets through all the bluster - the EBA is friendly to strangers and welcomes visitors.
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Goblin Squad Member
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unless given prior permission from EBA leadership
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Cheatle - Brighthaven Rep.
DeciusBrutus - Phaeros Rep.
Erian El'ranelan - Keeper's Pass Rep.
Fierywind - Brighthaven Rep.
Nihimon - Phaeros Rep.
Teribithia9 - Hammerfall Rep.
WxCougar - Keeper's Pass Rep.
Thanks Cheatle, I have been waiting/hoping for an official policy announcement.
Can you clarify that the statement above means the list also presented? Alternately, if that list is not the EBA leadership, can you clarify who/what is?
