I believe these new continents aren't available from beginning because they technically won't exist. It is supposed to take months until players will research sufficient technologies to sail deep sea and discover new continents. And that will give extra time to devs to create these continents with their unique (new) content.

About taxes, I do not understand the mechanism much yet but I think only people renting land or doing business will pay taxes... but I would like to learn more.

So, here is the thing, the game is not going to be pay to win. They don't want that, but they are going to reward those individuals that help start the game by allowing them to be the first sets of nobility. The nobility don't have to work for their current status, but if they want to be able to be kings, dukes, or counts in the next life, they have to participate in the stories. This is much harder to do when you know that even one death in the game = permadeath.

So it isn't pay to win, anyone can take everything you have and make it their own, after all out of the 100k players per server that SBS intends to have, less than 5k settlements will be available, meaning that only 5% of the population will have any form of control over anyone else. The other 95% are more than capable of removing those aristocrats and nobility from their positions if they don't like them.

Our job now is to lay the foundations of the culture in game. We could see a lot of griefing against nobility, but if the nobility are playing a vital role that the community enjoys, others will protect them.

Buying any title doesn't mean anything if you aren't a good enough leader for any people you have recruited. I could buy king tier, assuming I even had the money. And lose it in the first few months. Within that someone could start a year after launch and be one of those true leader types and work his/her way up towards being king/queen.

Plus the world is going to be bloody huge. For a niche game, I would be surprised if every noble title was taken. Sure maybe kings will be on NA servers, but everything else duke and below will be spots left. So things will be changing. I would be surprised if kingdoms are ran by the same people within a few years.

Posted By DrTank09 at 10:10 PM - Sat Feb 25 2017

>This is much harder to do when you know that even one death in the game = permadeath.

If you are going to say something like that, better you add context to it. Since the only spot I know that causes perma death is in the ocean. Not even a king can get perma death in one death.