Introduction

Explanation of the Kingdom Merger 2021, my opinion, and our attempt to find a new home.

Basic Idea of the Kingdom Merger

Two or more existing kingdoms (k1-k750) will be merged together in new kingdom covenants. There is no choice for individual kingdoms or individual players whether they want to participate in the merge or not, but there is a possibility to influence, by the kingdom envoy, which kingdoms your kingdom will merge with. There are two important phases, Envoy Selection, and Covenant Negotiation.

Note: for those familiar with the kingdom migration from several years ago, this is very different in all aspects. There is no choice to merge or not, all accounts from the kingdom will merge into the same covenant, there are no costs for the merger.

Envoy Selection

During this stage individual players and kingdoms get a star rating. This process is supposed to be similar to Golem event, but it is even more boring. You basically just get this star rating based on your combat stats. I guess the only reason this stage takes long is that certain players might be tempted to spend extra money to increase to the next star level or become the highest damage dealer.

The player who does most damage becomes the kingdom envoy and gets to decide which covenant to merge with.

A player can have 0, 1 or 2 stars based on the damage ranking. The top 850 players get 1 or 2 star(s). I do not know where the limit between 1 and 2 stars is.

The kingdom star level is the sum of all player stars in the kingdom and maximum 4 stars.

Note that individual star level can also go down. For example if you are now no 850 on the damage rank, and a not yet ranked player signs up and has a damage above your, you will go down one position and go from 1 to 0 stars.

Covenant Negotation

The kingdoms with 2, 3 and 4 stars will start a Kingdom Covenant. Envoys of the 0 and 1 star kingdoms can apply to a covenant, the envoys of the Kingdom Covenants can decide whether these applications will be accepted.

At the end of this process any kingdoms not yet applied to a covenant and accepted will be assigned to a Kingdom Covenant by the game.

The combined star level of all kingdoms in a kingdom covenant can only be 4 stars, and there is also a maximum on the number of active players. There is also a maximum number of kingdoms in a covenant, 4, including the covenant leader.

So as a covenant leader you cannot prevent a merger by not accepting any applications, because you might still get one or more kingdoms assigned at the end, and similarly a kingdom cannot simply prevent a merger by not applying to any covenant, because they will be randomnly assigned to one.

My Opinion on the Merger

Any resulting Kingdom Covenant will have at least a couple of 1 or 2 star players, and a lot more players than they have now. Nice, more activity, but if you think about the consequences it is not all good. Especially for those 99% that will not be at the top in the new Kingdom Covenants.

Looking at events like KvK and Kingdom Raid, a lot of players that have been relevant over the past year in what are now 0 Star Kingdoms, will become mostly irrelevant in the new bigger Kingdom Covenants, and getting point rewards can become a lot harder. Let alone getting the packs for conquering a kingdom during kvk.

Similar to Kingdom Raid, competition will be a lot tougher, you likely are going to be up against a 2 Star player and get unacceptable damage from a single solo hit while previously it was relatvely safe to go out plundering. Not to mention the leaderboard rewards will be a lot harder to get.

That is just for events, the stuation might be much worse if the Kingdom Covenant, even if the individual kingdoms that joined were peaceful, cannot come to an understanding, there might not be any collaboration during events, or even worse, a period of all out war.

All of these can result in players you have been playing with for over 4 years quitting the game, which could also seriously affect the enjoyment of the game.

In my opinion this merger is too much focussed on the few top spenders, and the direct benefit for the game developers (less servers to maintain, less rewards to give out), and not on the long term enjoyment of the game of those average players that have already played for several years.

k41 Situation and What We Are Looking For

I have been playing in k41 since it opened up, for over 4 years now. During the kingdom migration a lot of our players left for k80, but a small group stuck together in k41. If I would guess we have somewhere between 50 and 100 active players.

We are a zero star kingdom. We have a few players that are getting their stats close to 10k, they are very active and play an important role during kvk. Besides those players I would say that compared to other kingdoms we encounter in kvk one of our strengths is that we have a relatively large group of sh40/t12 players (around 30) that are active and a significant number of them joins during kvk. This makes it relatively easy to fill rallies and garrisons with a critical march of higher tier troops.

Most of our players are in the top 3 alliances in the kingdom. These 3 alliance alternate in hosting kvk. There are another 4 active alliances, and all players in the kingdom collaborate together, and adhere to kingdom peace 24/7/365.

Most of our active players are in Europe and North and South America.

The most important thing that we are looking for in a merger is a peaceful kingdom that collaborates during kvk.

Based on our history I would expect we are a better fit for a covenant with kingdoms similar as we are, so with relatively "weak" star players, and not for example a covenant with several top 100 damage dealers, so that the gap between our stats and the stats of top players does not become too large, although we also don't want to exclude anything at this stage.

Our goal would not be to necessarily become part of the strongest kingdom in King of Avalon, but rather be at a strength level where our players can still play a significant role during events like kvk.

If you think your kingdom covenant might be a good match for us, let me know in the comments, I can introduce you to our envoy and we can get to know each other better on for example discord or line.