here's how the gameplay works.
each player starts with either a warlock or a knight. nothing less and nothing more. so there are just 8 starting positions. what i need to know is if it's possible to limit the starting terits to just 1 regardless of the number of players. that means that in a 4player game people won't get 2 knights/warlocks. as far as i know it's possible but i need confirmation.
every is terit is a village/town and they all start neutral. neutral values will have to be carefully decided and analysed for each terit but it will be done.
some villages are special and they have a big farm or a mine or they train griffins and flying monkeys.
each player gets 3 armies from the knight/warlock and can use those armies to expand. getting a farm/lumberyard/mine will give +1 for each village that is connected to it.
let me give an example. let's say i start in the lower left corner of the map with the warlock Leja. i move left and conquer the lumberyard in Okkyna. this will give me an extra +1 since my village (Leja) now receives lumber from Okkyna. next turn i get Vikt and Znigors. now the lumber is delivered to 2 more villages so that's another +2. but Znigors is an assassins camp so each turn i get a -2 on the overall bonus and a decay of 5 to any troops hosted in that terit. then i take the farm in Ve. now the food from the farm gets delivered to all the villages that form a chain connected to this farm. this means Znigors, Vikt, Okkyna and Leja. so an extra +4 and the lumber gets delivered to Znigors, Vikt, Ve and Leja so +4. on top of the +3 from the warlock i get 3+4+4=11 troops. minus the 2 for the assassins that's a total of +9.
now i feel the need to get even more so i move for the capital in Tombi. the capital doubles the bonuses from any resource as long as that resource is connected to it. so on top of adding a new place to take food and lumber to, i also get double bonuses for farm/lumber/mine.
so that +5 for lumber +5 for farm which are doubled to +10 for each and i get a total bonus of 3+10+10-2=21.
but some other player comes and takes my port in Vikt. now food from the farm only goes to Znigors and the bonus is not even doubled cause i lost the connection to the capital and the lumber is delivered only to Tombi and Leja so just +2 which is doubled to +4 since the lumber mill is connected to the capital. so when i ended my turn i had +21 but by losing just 1 terit i'm down to 3+1+4-2=+6
basically this scenario can happen at any time since the map is very open thanks to the huge number of ports and especially thanks to the bombardments.
you have to plan every move and make sure no terit is left unguarded cause your whole economy might go to the crapper.
PS: in case anybody is wondering why terits are colour coded to form continents, it's because i'm afraid the current bonuses won't be possible in the xml so i might have to limit the farm/lumber/mine bonus to just the villages in the same continent.
oh and they also act as a psychological stimulus for attacking. it's like when you start in the red continent and you see another player taking a red terit you feel like he's tresspassing even if you didn't own that terit and you'll seek vengeance. or i might be crazy