Castles & Keeps

When the exploration companies launch their expeditions to survey the land, they will discover ancient structures—mighty Castles and smaller Keeps—hidden deep within the wilds of Praetoria. Battle mages may find that their plots contain one of these ancient buildings during the surveying process!

In spite of their great age, these structures are held intact by a powerful magic that also binds them to one another, allowing communication and even transportation between them. It is unknown who built them or why they were erected, but they seem to be placed in specific and purposeful locations around the continent, creating a magical network that spans from coast to coast.

Each Tract of land (100 contiguous plots) will contain exactly one plot with either a Castle or Keep on it, and there is only one Castle in each Region (1000 contiguous plots). This means that, with each Region, there will be exactly 9 Keeps and 1 Castle.

As the battle mages lay claim to these structures, an organization will be formed to keep their incredible powers secret. Many land owners will dedicate their resources to protect Praetoria from those who would seek to take it from them, using the magic of the Castles and Keeps to meet danger wherever it may arrive.

In time, this organization will become known as the League of Verico.

Land plots with either a Castle or Keep will still require cards to work on them, a power source and/or Runi, and staked DEC in order to produce resources for the plot owner, however they will not need to be cleared like other plots and they produce resources in a different way.

Rather than producing resources directly like cards working on other land plots, cards working in a Castle or Keep building will instead work to maintain and operate the magical network between the buildings throughout the continent. In doing so, they will retain a portion of the resource production taxes collected from the other land plots in the tract or region for the Castle or Keep owner. Please note that any resources collected via taxes which are not captured by a Castle or Keep owner will be burned.

While Castles & Keeps will not receive any production boosts for their rarity, worker cards will still receive a base production boost or penalty based on their terrain preferences, and players will be able to boost the production of their workers further on Castle & Keep plots using Runi, Titles, and Totems in the same way as with all other land plots.

Castles

The total Resource Production Tax rate is 10% for all Grain, SPS, and Research produced on land plots (see the Taxes section for more details). 20% of that total tax income in each of those three resources from all land plots within the entire region (except for the Keeps) is available to be earned by a Castle owner. This means that a Castle owner has the potential to earn up to 2% of all of the resource production from the other 990 plots in the region (1000 plots in total minus 10 with a Castle or Keep which don't directly generate resource). Put another way, a Castle Owner has the potential to earn resources equivalent to nearly 20 other plots (990 plots * 2% = 19.8 plots worth of production).

The amount of the tax receipts that are captured by the workers in a Castle is determined by the Production Point output of those workers using the following formula:

[tax receipts] * 0.2 * PP / (PP + 10,000)

To take an example, let's say a player harvests 10,000 Grain. The total tax receipts would be 10% of that or 1,000 Grain. If the Castle owner in the region in which the harvest took place has workers that produce 50,000 PP in total, then the amount captured by the Castle owner would be: 1000 * 0.2 * 50,000 / (50,000 + 10,000) = 166.67 Grain

Castles will also additionally act as a Keep with regard to capturing taxes from the land plots within the same Tract as the Castle building. The calculations for how Keeps capture taxes from the land plots within their Tract are described below. This effectively gives the Castle another nearly 5 land plots worth of resource income, for a total of roughly 25 plots worth when added with the ~20 plots worth described above.

Additionally, Castles will have 10x increased chances of finding Totem Fragments and 3x increased chances of finding higher rarity fragments, as specified on the Totem Fragments page.

Keeps

As mentioned above, the total Resource Production Tax rate is 10% for all Grain, SPS, and Research produced on land plots. 50% of that total tax income in each of those three resources from all other land plots within the Tract is available to be earned by a Keep owner. This means that a Keep owner has the potential to earn up to 5% of all of the resource production from the other 99 plots in the Tract. Put another way, a Keep Owner has the potential to earn resources equivalent to nearly 5 other plots (99 plots * 5% = 4.95 plots worth of production).

The amount of the tax receipts that are captured by the workers in a Keep is determined by the Production Point output of those workers using the following formula:

[tax receipts] * 0.5 * PP / (PP + 5,000)

To take an example, let's say a player harvests 10,000 Grain. The total tax receipts would be 10% of that or 1,000 Grain. If the Keep owner in the region in which the harvest took place has workers that produce 50,000 PP in total, then the amount captured by the Keep owner would be: 1000 * 0.5 * 50,000 / (50,000 + 5,000) = 454.54 Grain

While it may at first appear that Keep owners receive more than Castle owners for the same worker cards, please keep in mind that Castle owners receive a cut of the taxes from ten times more plots than Keep owners do, as they collect from the entire region whereas Keep owners only collect from their tract.

Additionally, Keeps will have 3x increased chances of finding Totem Fragments and 1.5x increased chances of finding higher rarity fragments, as specified on the Totem Fragments page.