Historical Info on H&H Villages

[grunties]

Hello everyone.

I've been seeing a lot of new startup villages advertising themselves lately and not being part of one has got me thinking about them. I have read all about the mechanics of the village idol, expansions and the upkeep necessary to keep them going, and I know there are both big and small villages out there like any other 'guild' association. Because of the upkeep requirement and numbers advantage I would think larger villages are more common and have a longer lifespan, if you don't count them being bigger targets or more prone to infiltration. But having an interest in (game) world history I have been wondering how villages have played out over the past few maps. So a few questions for the more experienced and well travelled players out there:

1) What has been the largest village to date (population wise) and how many members did they have?
2) What has been the smallest village to date (that could feasibly maintain the upkeep) and how many members did they have?
3) Anyone have a rough idea of how many (claimed) villages tend to exist in the world at one time? I understand not everyone wants others to know of their existence.
4) This is a long shot but Is there a record anywhere that tells of various village historical moments, like when they were created, attacked, destroyed, how they changed over time etc.? I imagine following the political threads is the only place to get a clue of this?
5) A specific interest of mine related to #4, anyone know the 'story' behind Prontera or Port St. Ria (may be incorrect spelling)?

Thank you for your time and responses.

[Grog]

@3) they are more than you are able to count. use this map as examlple. especially the areas with little villages to the nw
http://havenmap.tk/

[burgingham]

1) In world 2 the largest village was Wayneville till the Russians showed up. They built far bigger towns, but without any aestethics or any planning for that matter. Just huge amounts of houses, some palisades, fields in between. On this map the largest towns should be Bottleneck (though I actually never been there) and Sodom. Maybe there are still some active big russian towns, but I haven't heard of any, though they have networks of towns that exceed the aforementioned villages in numbers and size.

2) I am pretty sure there are some one man villages out there, though I don't know any. If you count idols built to protect ressource spots those might be the smallest towns when it comes to size. Just an idol, a crossroad and nothing else.

3) Many...

4) Here is a documentation of the rise of Sodom, but I stopped updating it quite some time ago. So it is not what the town really looks like today. The general layout of the city has stayed the same though. Note that such big towns tend to have satellites. All kinds of mines, idols at ressource spots, we additionally built the trading center of Constantinople. Here you can see Wayneville in World 2, basically a smaller version of Sodom. The square layout has proven to be the most efficient type of town so far I think.

5) Let a former villager of Prontera fill you in.

[KoE]

I think what kills most villages is waning interest and the massive hemorrhaging of players that follows. A few people who are reasonably active can keep just an idol's upkeep easy, and the drain from banners and statues isn't huge. It all depends on how many people and how much playtime they can afford, but I can guarantee you I've run two skeleton villages of one man that didn't cap authority, but they didn't drop any either. Larger villages have a numbers buffer and seem to tend towards being made up of long-time players, so that's likely why they persevere.

[Dataslycer]

Q: What has been the largest village to date (population wise) and how many members did they have?

A: The largest known city is probably Bottleneck and Sodom. Xanadu may have been a contender but got raided twice and had a bit of a schism after the first (correct me if I'm wrong).


Q: What has been the smallest village to date (that could feasibly maintain the upkeep) and how many members did they have?

A: It is feasible to have one man villages assuming they are fairly active and high decent int x chr stats.

Q: Anyone have a rough idea of how many (claimed) villages tend to exist in the world at one time? I understand not everyone wants others to know of their existence.

A: Because of the size of the world, it is almost impossible to gauge the amount of villages in the world. The only thing I can say is roughly 7 villages for supergrid.

Q) This is a long shot but Is there a record anywhere that tells of various village historical moments, like when they were created, attacked, destroyed, how they changed over time etc.? I imagine following the political threads is the only place to get a clue of this?

A specific interest of mine related to #4, anyone know the 'story' behind Prontera or Port St. Ria (may be incorrect spelling)?


The Lawspeaker was Notstop and the Chieftain was Morgant. The city of Prontera was a city with a grid style city layout with square plots surrounded by a palisade.

Skipping to the more important events. Brandmaner, Notstop's cousin, was invited to the village which will have serious consequences for Prontera. Almost everyone seem to see him as a liability as he ask for much from the village in terms of material and skill advice but is able to give back very little because his home is too far from the village. A meeting decided against kicking him out and instead try to guide him to be more productive. A short moment later he was found to have tried to poach one of our core members into leaving our village. Later in, it was discovered that he have left the village and was village-shopping for another one. Notstop decided to have Brandmaner killed. The location was at one of the Killville city. We had spoken to Killface about the reason and thing seems to be well for a brief moment. Until Killface resume hostility claiming that we killed a newbie had played for almost a month and had only joined Killville for a week or so. It make matters worse, a lot of our members were becoming inactive, parcularly NotStop who almost seems to never show up afterwards and I was pretty much the only member trying to maintain it.

On another front, our sentry observe the rampaging of two raider that had raided Ravenholm, Lake Eyrie, Tinsel Tin, Ironwell, and Copperfield. Scent indication that there may be a possibility that Prontera was next. After confirmation that the raiders had logged off. Two of us set off towards their camp that I found. It was blocked by a brick wall by the hearthfire was still outside which allowed us to summon them from a distant and kill them with ranged weapon, mostly from the ranger bow we made at the last moment for that purpose.

Soon after, we had a good amount of new members arrived in Prontera and activities were starting to revive Prontera (along with the raider alert) once more. Diplomacy was used for some matters as well as meeting new members. I was taking a bit of charge of what to do to make for Notstop's absences. All of that ended in a few hours

A week later afterwards, Killface and 2 others attacked Prontera on the same ground premises of killing a newbie. Astrocity and I were killed in the attack and most of the city was razed. The prompting of this action was on the same premises of killing a newbie. It was later discovered that Brandmaner had prompted the attack for revenge. Prontera was never rebuilt.

[Shoop]

I was a part of that for a while, pretty much up until they actually built the village. I quit for too long to really contribute much more after I came back...

I'm living abroad, and loving it. Maybe I'll get back into village-making after my exploring.

[grunties]

Thank you all for your responses, especially burgingham and Dataslycer for taking the time to provide so much information. This is really interesting stuff for me and I enjoyed reading it. Villages can go through so much work, effort and contribution, to grow them, protect them, and keep them running... but unless you are a direct part of their history, events come and go without people like me ever knowing about them. And thats a shame because some pretty amazing stuff takes place and it often just fades away into obscurity.

Much obliged for entertaining my curiosity.

[Bl1tzX]

You can view the downfall of Old Brodgar(World 2) here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1798
Or, you could view New Brodgar(World 3, this world) which has just one dedicated member left: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5353