Nearly every Roman town of any size had an amphitheatre. We can work that into the lore. The arenas are left over pieces of a formerly great and united, continent spanning civilizations.

Pity they didn’t also have the Roman habit of bathing.

When they showed off the Architecture tool it stated that there was plenty they could do to change the visual textures for the outward appearance of a building that both made it show off the quality of the materials used but also how well it could withstand the elements.

It is my hope that each of the boiomes has a few varieties of stone to them that would be native to where the arenas go up so they arent just a copy/pasted across the world but somewhat styleized by the stone local to the county, duchy, or biome they are in.

It would be nice if each of the biomes were different. Heck it would be nice if we got access to the architectural tools to make such buildings ourselves so that SBS does not need to waste so much time on that stuff and instead just make the professions to go with it.

It comes a time when you just have to ask why SBS isnt allowing the players to crowdsource a ton of this stuff through the architecture tool? Why are they spending so much time on structures anyways when they could let us help them do all that stuff and just let us sell the blueprints on some marketplace and SBS gets a cut for nothing or then turn around and offer players the chance to buy the mats required to build it during expo for even more money?

EverQuest Next Landmark opperated on that model and tons of people who arent as inclined to make things bought the blueprints to own the buildings. SBS could get a bunch of additional income or a library of non static structures and the players could just as easily buy or design and spend money or make ep off every sale.

It just really strikes me as strange that during each of their fundraisers they dont sell things that will pull in money or just dont expect to make money at all in the case of this years KSV. It just does not seem like they want to take full advantage of the tools at hand or the potential for things inside the game. I just find it really odd over the last few years. /shrug

So "they dont sell things that will pull in money" I think is part of your failure to analyze this properly, they obviously want things to sell during they also want to balance what will be being added to the world, otherwise why bother with quantity limits on anything right? For the architecture tool that's obviously what it will be used for ingame but that will also be tied into the skills of the architect modeling a structure so its not something really useful for your suggestion. Unless you think it would be fun for them to let us all try to see how many variations of a lean-to we can make?

I think of the time and distance scales of the game as being reduced somewhat from their nominal dimensions, simply to make it possible for single-character experiences to be possible. This resembles the scaling factor in miniature wargames. So, a parcel does not actually represent a 64x64m square, but a tract 7x7 times as large, or even more, to account for the RL-to-Elyria time ratio at the smallest scale. With that in mind, it is not at all unreasonable that every town could have an arena, among other oddities.

Another way to think of it is that the horizon on such a small globe as Elyria would not be nearly as great as it is on Earth. The formula for distance to the horizon on any spherical globe is:

d = SQRT( h^2 + 2hR ), where d = distance to the horizon, R = radius of the globe, h = height of eye of the observer, SQRT means "square root of", and ^ means "to the power of".

I shall leave solutions for various values of R and h to readers sufficiently interested in commenting intelligently regarding this post. I shall leave official determination of R (if it has any meaning with respect to Elyria) to SBS. It should be apparent from the formula, however, that d should decline as R declines, where h does not vary.

if you go by the walking speed on the CoE wiki you can walk at a pace of 1.5m per second.

The origional figures for counties were that they would roughly be 1x1km and you could potentially walk that in CoE in 11:07mins and faster if you run. Obviously some counties are bigger than others but depending on the layout of a duchy you could pretty much walk across a duchy in just over an hour and faster if you run.

If you consider that you can ride a horse and walk at about 10+/- mins per km or about 5+/- mins trotting per km you can run through an entire duchy in about 30mins.

Using the continental figures of 196km/92km size you can walk from the northern tip to the southern tip of the continent on a flat plane in just over 12 hours and much faster of you ride a horse. You can walk the 92km width in just over 12 hours and much faster if you ride a horse.

The world is really a lot smaller and close knit than it appears to be. If you are a traveler or merchant trader you will see the repitition much faster than most npcs or people who do not travel much.

Posted By Melkar at 06:43 AM - Tue Nov 19 2019

Using the continental figures of 196km/92km size you can walk from the northern tip to the southern tip of the continent on a flat plane in just over 12 hours and much faster of you ride a horse. You can walk the 92km width in just over 12 hours and much faster if you ride a horse.

I think you mean 36 hours from top to bottom.

Apologies,

For some reason off the top my head the starter continent was 192x96km when it is actually 256kmx196km. Even still walking on a flat plane @ 1.5km/s (wiki figure), 256km can be traversed in 23:24:27. There is no telling how many obstacles will present themselves in each of the servers but you could pretty much march an army to anywhere in elyria in 24-36 hours.

And as far as horses go in rl (I have not seen any speed figures) a horse can do a four beat walk @ 6.4 km/h average, a two beat trot @ 13-19 km/h average, a three beat gait @ 19-24 km/h avg, or a gallop @ 40-48 km/h average. Also the fastest recorded sprint distance for a horse is 88 km/h.

Which certainly makes that 24-36 hour walk much shorter depending on many factors. But still the starting continent will still be much smaller than it seems.

@Melkar,

I doubt that even a single character on a horse would be able to cover that distance in a single sprint. Besides, how likely is it that a large group of players could sit with their fingers on their "W" keys (or equivalent) for that length of time? Real life happens, after all.

I think a more realistic expectation for force-marching an army would be close to the Roman Legionary standard.

According to Vegetius, during the four-month initial training of a Roman legionary, loaded marches were taught before recruits ever handled a weapon; since any formation would be split up by stragglers at the back or soldiers trundling along at differing speeds.[1] Standards varied over time, but normally recruits were first required to complete 20 Roman miles (29.62 km or 18.405 modern miles) with 20.5 kg in five summer hours,[2] which was known as "the regular step" or "military pace". (The Romans divided daylight time into twelve equal hours. Depending on the exact day of the year and the latitude, the length of a "summer hour" would vary. Five summer hours is therefore not exact, but could indicate a time of approximately six modern hours.) They then progressed to the "faster step" or "full pace"[3] and were required to complete 24 Roman miles (35.544 km or 22.086 modern miles) in five summer hours loaded with 20.5 kilograms (45 lb). Training also included some forced marches of 20–30 miles, often followed by the construction of basic defenses for an overnight position.

So, a forced march across not-too-difficult terrain should be expected to cover not more than 36km per day. Marching the length of an Elyrian continent would therefore take about 6 days, and across the breadth perhaps 5 days at its widest and 1 day at its narrowest. Also, bear in mind that repeated forced marches fatigue an army. And yeah, I did consider that the Roman standard counts the time needed to build fortified camps every night. That's because if an army really means business, it has to assume that other armies mean business as well.

Horses, so I've heard, are more fragile than humans, and don't hold up to forced high-speed travel nearly as well. The Mongols were able to accomplish it by equipping each warrior with multiple horses and by using a notably hardy and resilient breed of horses.

I am just trying to give a picture of how small the starting continent is along with Deftly's OP on how often you will see the same buildings during long travels. It may seem bigger than it is but if you are just passing through you can potentially fly through a county sprinting on a horse in 5-20mins is what I was getting at and the amount of structures you will see depending on the total distance you intend to travel.

I am not trying to get too hung up on the hard limits of stamina in travel as there are too many unknowns at this point to really say anything on daily or finite figures until we get our hands on the game and people actually attempt to travel from north to south.

Most settlements and cities wont be in the polar extremes of the north or south and it will drastically cut down the travel time depending on how far a person, group, or army intends to travel. Even 30km a day is about the size of some of the biomes.

Obviously there are a number of factors that go into travel such as stamina, weight, supplies, terrain, road conditions, weather, limited night vision, fortifications, or hostile citizens, bandits, etc that will all play into travel time barring delays, equipment failures, combat, resupplying, or halting to rest.

Though there are also way to mitigate stamina drain through skills, conditioning, nutrition, bards, talents, relic grade items or mounts, etc that could potentially extend progress in travel as well.

It is unlikely any large group without advanced notice of their approach will be recieved kindly by any domain passing through duchies, biomes, or kingdoms. There is no hiding large groups or armies unless they are all positioned slowly in small groups at a time and building cities in plain sight as either check points for sprinting through duchies or kingdoms. And like everything in CoE it requires patience, planning, and execution.

If there is formations, groups, etc that have a follow function while you are an opc or for npcs to travel as companions then it wont require everyone to be pressing "W" for 24-36+ hours and doubly so if you can just have a macro keyboard/mouse or a button in game like most other games have where you keep walking.

I personally would say sooner or later an arena will be in nearly every town+ but you do not have to expect that they will be as large as the colosseum in Rome. It has “just” the height of a two story house and will fit on two parcels of land. I would expect that there will be in not so distant future after release private buildings that will be larger than the current arena and that way I do not think they will stand out that much.

But as far as I understood this is even a scheduled behavior for mayors because at least the NPCs will need entertainment and that way as a mayor you will need to build buildings that offer distraction. The only reason why this might be different would be if communal buildings would not just offer benefits but also disadvantages. E.g. a communal tavern needs a constant delivery of beer or the bonus to the feel-good factor will turn negative. Or that an arena used for combats will attract NPCs who like combat (e.g. soldiers) but discourage others (e.g. researcher) while if the arena is used for poetry it is reverse.

If we are talking about major structures I would see the monuments more as something like that. You might be able to build as monument a 5 story arena that needs 6 parcels or a cathedral or a marketplace or a university or a park or a sanatorium or a garrison or… all with a similar size. While you might build e.g. multiple arenas in one settlement you can most likely just built one of the monuments and that way this could be more something special to think about.

Arenas provide entertainment -- and can do so even if they never have a capacity crowd. Having an arena in every town, especially if there are player driven events (like a cycle of fairs or traveling shows (I'd love to hear a real, traveling Hrothi opera troupe of players who can actually sing)), doesn't seem wasteful or immersion-breaking to me at all. More like point of civic pride -- like churches were in the Middle Ages, for similar reasons. We can even use them as a whetstone to our imaginations -- asking "now that we have all these arenas, what can we do to use them" -- and, in using them, we can jumpstart and maintain real community building centered around the local arena and following the connections created by having troupes use arenas in different places.

Having a mill or a foundry or some similar intensive and expensive-to-build industrial building in every town seems more wasteful and immersion-breaking, so I'm glad SBS offered an arena rather than a mill.

Posted By Beathan at 2:17 PM - Wed Nov 20 2019

Arenas provide entertainment -- and can do so even if they never have a capacity crowd. Having an arena in every town, especially if there are player driven events (like a cycle of fairs or traveling shows (I'd love to hear a real, traveling Hrothi opera troupe of players who can actually sing)), doesn't seem wasteful or immersion-breaking to me at all. More like point of civic pride -- like churches were in the Middle Ages, for similar reasons. We can even use them as a whetstone to our imaginations -- asking "now that we have all these arenas, what can we do to use them" -- and, in using them, we can jumpstart and maintain real community building centered around the local arena and following the connections created by having troupes use arenas in different places.

Having a mill or a foundry or some similar intensive and expensive-to-build industrial building in every town seems more wasteful and immersion-breaking, so I'm glad SBS offered an arena rather than a mill.

A coliseum arena less immersion breaking than a mill? I don't think it is. If you think about mild to low fantasy, you see more farm structures than you would see huge arenas like this. I know it can be used for entertainment but an arena or building of this size wouldn't be added on to a small town. They would have a small theater and the main city would have this big grand theater. It's not immersion breaking to have an entertainment building but one of this size it feels as though it could be if you just keep seeing it in every town you stop in.

Posted By Melkar at 7:04 PM - Tue Nov 19 2019

Apologies,

For some reason off the top my head the starter continent was 192x96km when it is actually 256kmx196km. Even still walking on a flat plane @ 1.5km/s (wiki figure), 256km can be traversed in 23:24:27. There is no telling how many obstacles will present themselves in each of the servers but you could pretty much march an army to anywhere in elyria in 24-36 hours.

No, it is not 256km x 196km. But even if it was, your math is still off. People don't walk at 1.5km/s, they walk at about 1.5m/s.

256km = 256,000m
256,000m / (1.5m/s) = 170,667s
170,667s (1minute/60s) = 2,844.44minutes
2,844.44minutes (1hour/60minutes) = 47.41 hours.

For the record, the Colosseum in Rome is 189m by 156m. It would just barely fit on a plot that is the minimum size of a village, with a little more than 3 half-parcels left.

Posted By Deftly at 10:41 PM - Wed Nov 20 2019

A coliseum arena less immersion breaking than a mill? I don't think it is. If you think about mild to low fantasy, you see more farm structures than you would see huge arenas like this. I know it can be used for entertainment but an arena or building of this size wouldn't be added on to a small town. They would have a small theater and the main city would have this big grand theater. It's not immersion breaking to have an entertainment building but one of this size it feels as though it could be if you just keep seeing it in every town you stop in.

Just to repeat it this is not a coliseum it is an amphitheater with the height of a two story house and I would say most medieval windmills would be higher than this arena. Also as a reminder there is a requirement that the settlement has to be at least town size to place this arena. Your mill might look good in a hamlet or village but we are taking about larger settlements and I would guess just in the beginning the arena might stand out as one of the larger buildings next to the tavern and town hall who will most likely have a comparable size but it will not take that much time till players and NPCs will be building larger houses that will overtop the arena.

I think you either overestimating the size of the arena or you simply want to fan the flames. It is just a two story building that needs two parcels to be placed and there will be most likely multiple building that are way larger than this arena.