This keeps being brought up as part of other topics, so I'm giving it its own as I couldn't easily find one just for this already started.

For the purposes of commune defense, we would very much appreciate if Prime Serenwilde would be all one zone. That would allow us to scent, hear trees falling, flow in forest, and moonbeam as it would all be one local area. General information about how many possible ways there are to get into our territory on Prime to follow:

First, being on the Moon River is being in the Serenwilde (except for part of the northernmost stretch). I remember a few weeks ago when a geomancer tainted the Moon River down to Moon Falls.
Anyway, no totems are able to be on the river, and no totems are able to be in non-forest parts of the Serenwilde ... so I'm considering land locations more than river and going on the possible defenses that can be set down or not on the land, not whether we'll have an active druid to hold a demesne on the river to make sure no one sneaks in.

From my map, there are 11 places to step into the forest of the northern Seren from the road/hills plus 3 forest places to swim to from the river. So if you're just counting being in the river as being in the Seren, that's 12 entrances ... or 14 possible totemable spots in the northern Serenwilde. Southern Serenwilde has 6 forest places walkable to from the road, the southernmost point of the beach, and again the river. That's total 8 spots, one of which isn't able to support a totem, or add an additional 8 for exits along the river, 4 of those which also can't support a totem.

And let's not forget that the Moon River connects from the Inner Sea all the way up through under the road to the Moon Lake in the northern half. If someone knows the path and wants to swim or waterwalk up the river, add 14 more points in northern where they can step from the river onto land, 7 of which can't support a totem.

Summary:
28 northern land entrances
15 southern land entrances

That means I count 43 total land entrances into Prime Serenwilde, 13 of which can't have totems


Please make Prime Serenwilde all one area.

You have flow, and if you have totems you also have SPRINT. Which lets you, if I'm not mistaken, get from north to south very very simply and then lead the hordes of forestal defenders into whichever area needs it.

So no, you don't need it. Please name specific instances where the north/south serenwilde distinction impacted noticeably on your ability to defend.

Flow only works in a local area. Furthermore, it doesn't work if someone were to walk in one of those 43 areas and taint/flood/infest.

Sprint doesn't allow anyone to follow you nor does it allow you to accurately get to an enemy. In this case, the argument is that it would let us get from southern serenwilde to northern serenwilde. What good does this do if you can't then get to the enemy?

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It impacts our ability to defend quite often. First, it is easy to sneak into an area that has many many entrances because it isn't viable to have guards or totems. Some of the areas aren't even forests themselves so totems arent possible (for example, accessing northern serenwilde by the moon river). Given that Commune don't have scry or farscout, we can't exactly be constantly detect people either.

Second, there are many sections of northern serenwilde that aren't forests. Thus, we cannot have totems. These same sections also have to be constantly re-forested by a druid just so we could potentially flow, wisp, etc.

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Examples:

A while back, a geomancer (Urazial, I think) snuck into Northern Serenwilde and slew someone. He had tainted an area. Everyone had to move from Southern Serenwilde to Norther Serenwilde. We couldn't flow, we couldn't wisp, we couldn't even have totems in the Centaur Hills. All he had to do to escape was spore out.

Zakarij (or however is his name is spelled) stole a colt from Northern Serenwilde and put it in the Magnagoran zoo. It just is not possible to have totems and guards to cover that area. Having it be one big area wouldn't change that too much, but it would least make it easier to detect people in your own damn forest.

Although I agree that Serenwilde doesn't need this change in order to remain quite defendable, for the sake of fairness I believe they should be combined. Either that, or split Glomdoring.

Flow only works in the local area. Northern and Southern are different local areas, so it doesn't work between them. Sprinting works if you know a path that lets you sprint and you don't run into a cow on the road that stops you. And the road isn't our territory so I think the only way to get guards there is to go through the river or cut up through rifts to Ethereal and back.

A few specific instances we've had that I've been around for include a geomancer tainting all the way down the Moon River to the falls in the northern part, raids where trees were cut down and no one heard them falling because they were in the southern part not the northern, another where trees were cut down and more tainted demesning in the forest ... again in the northern part. Northern seems to be the most vulnerable, as people tend to congregate around the nexus or shops, both of which are in the southern part. I'm sure there've been other instances I haven't been around for, but just because they aren't daily occurrences doesn't lessen the vulnerability.

Edit: Yay, Narsrim provided other examples too!

erm flow doesn't really count if your talking about trees, as we can neither hear them nor flow directly from south seren. I should point out that i get novices to try out scent when i train to show them about wolf and skunk (blah blah blah) and every time i have there have been less than 4 people in north seren. So that could be the novice with me, someone gathering essence, Someone in the northern hills and maybe someone about to go into the arena, lets say that the essence and arena people all head off and someone starts taking our trees, someone who in a sprayed room with a tree and scenting till it goes quiet could probably take the tree and bolt before we could respond.

oh and sprinting wouldn't make much difference most people stick around mother or the commune getting out of there with sprint would be little different than walking due to the twists and turns.


EDIT: Borrowing Narsrims equation from the "Not fair!" thread, if possible, guarding every entance Tsuki listed would work out as
15 guards X 25 each X 43 locations = 16125 power a month.

Having Serenwilde be two areas is ludicrous, and from what I can tell, is done simply because the road passes through it. Either make the road through Seren part of the forest (this happens with both cities, where you have to go around), move it around the forest like with Glomdoring, or just hack the code so it counts as the same area, which would be easiest.

This thread has already been created before

As there is a road that cuts the Serenwilde in half, and as cows live on the road, no sprint path from the southern Serenwilde to the northern Serenwilde is garunteed to work every time. Also, the problem is more a detection and summoning issue than it is a travel issue.

One could argue that having so many entrances is one tradeoff for having totems that passively generate power, and that's okay, but having two seperate local areas is very excessive, and now that Glomdoring exists, and exists as a single local area, I do not see it as fair or balanced that the Serenwilde is cut in half.

Agreed. We need Serenwilde to be a single area, or at least be able to flow/wisp from one area to the other.

I'm actually going to disagree here. Serenwilde is fine as two areas. It's only a few steps to walk between them and flow/wisp.

It's also a nice balance for having a much easier time protecting our avatars.

The only real problem I see is in maintaining totems - the ratio between the potential number of totem locations and the number of high-level stag/crow characters that will be active at one time, but at least I really like that it is easier for our non-totemed trees to be chopped down, if we aren't attentive or our enemies are.

And what about Glomdoring? Why do they get all the same advantages and one local area? Be objective.

Yeah, I'm envious of Glomdoring for a couple of reasons, but I think our disadvantage makes more sense than their advantage, objectively.

I'd prefer Glomdoring was broken into two areas (Heart of Glomdoring/Outer Glomdoring, maybe), rather than Serenwilde combined.

Edit: Besides which, they sorta needed all the help they could get. I'm not sure if that trouble has passed.

Well i was going to say, because they dont have a river dividing them, but they do, they have the Glomdoring river, which sort of starts somewhere in the east of Glomdoring. I'm not sure, but I always imagined Serenwilde being a much larger forest, hence the reason it's split into two areas, while Glomdoring is much smaller, about the same size as a city, hence why the commune is underground, and the only real building is the Black Tower.

I'm sure you wouldn't mind advocating guards at Supernals but not Demon Lords then because "CElest needs all the help it could get."

No, I wouldn't want to do that, and there's no need to be nasty.

I just meant that the advantage so far hasn't been something that was too unfair - Glomdoring really had issues with surviving for a long time.

As I said, I'd prefer Glomdoring be broken up into two halves for balance if it is necessary, but I'm not really that worried about it.

Well, he actually didn't put it in, because when he asked me, and I asked Daevos, he said, "Hell no, not wasting 1000 power when they strike back."

But anyway, Celest, Magnagora, and Glomdoring are all one area. Now, you could argue that Serenwilde needs to be so, just to be fair, or you could argue that because of the way the land is, it makes sense having it split in two. So we're either going for realism, or fairness, either of which sounds fine to me. *shrug*

Incorrect. I flew into Magnagora on my broom and got it out of the zoo. So yes, he did.

Oh... Well Daevos told him not to.

Objectively,Serenwilde is roughly double Glomdoring's size. Think of all the passive power. However, most of it is wasted due to the guard cost for defending.