This new V.10 of Eco by Strange Loop Games[play.eco] is full of new opportunities. As always, the uninvited guests to this party are fear of change and concerns that our comfortable way of playing no longer works.


Again, the Eco team delivered a well thought and beautiful version of the game. Notably the best "human side and collaborative" version since I began playing in early 2018. This guide presents critical highlights of changes you can expect for this new version and how you can adjust from a V.9 game play. Note that for skills and crafted items, a lot of changes have been made to the early tier 1 period (before bricks and smelting) and considerably less for the later T3 and T4 eras.

Upgrade modules in V.9 profoundly changed the game and gave a great occasion to work together from the start. The way they were made and distributed was the most useful indicator of server success or failure. V.10 is likely to continue this way, but with a twist...

What changed

Modules are now crafted on the research table and the laboratory. A more advanced version still requires a module from a lower version. But modules are now made of a diverse set of research papers and sometimes crafted items too. Also, players with experience in Eco will notice many of these updated research papers require skilled work, which means contributions from many players. The culinary, gathering, and farming research paper in the recipes now brings the food players in the game of modules while the powerful grasp of logging/carpentry on basic modules is gone.

Adjustments

I am pretty sure this system will experience a few changes, but it is interesting to note that due to the static nature of the ingredients in the recipes, getting better modules won't lower their cost of production as much as before (except for modules 4). For this reason, each module will retain a higher value when exchanging it for a better version. So leaders might favor early and immediate distribution of modules to every citizens instead of putting all their efforts on a strategic push for higher modules followed by mass production at a cheap cost.

The impact of these changes is a more diversified contribution of skills to the module business. Expect earlier communication and collaboration for module projects. To that end, sharing a research table is more than ever a valid choice for groups of strangers. Regions with players who don't share modules or seek to abuse the rarity of their profession are likely to suffer longer periods of wasteful production than before.

Mining, logging, hunting and gathering are the core skills of this game. I cannot stress enough the importance of picking at least one. Those who ignore these skills usually end up spending a lot of calories to get material or worse pretend that crafting is a hard job and attempt to put high profit margins at their store.

The crafting syndrome:
When you ask a perfectly healthy kid to pick up a toy on the floor. Suddenly...you know...their elbow or leg really hurts and they just can't do it (with a bit of drama in their voice). Crafting is haaaaard! I cannnnn't lower my priiiiice! I need profits because I can't get resources myseeeeelf!

What changed

V.10 goes one step further than V.9 (remember when crushing ore became a thing) by giving extra responsibilities to core skills. Gathering finally gets crafting jobs (they now treat fibers and palm trees) and even a new crafting table. The logging skill took a bit from the carpenter by making boards and a few early crafting tables. Mining is now mandatory to use coal as fuel (crushed coal) and many rocks (granite, limestone, coal, ores) require an additional hit to break. Hunting gets a functional fishery table and even a fish rack to make dried meat (with upgrades and all).

Also, all these core skills are mandatory to make early basic research papers used in modules and research.

Adjustments

The most productive and desirable players will definitively be those who pick the core gathering skills. Perhaps this will make a stop on the carpenter-first-who empty-forests problems and other "cherry picking strategies" aimed at getting further ahead technologically, especially on the first day of servers.

As the developers increase the amount of crafting recipes and material requirements, food takes a larger place. It seems food has reached a beautiful mature state in this version.

What changed

The very first change I saw for T1 is the jungle salad : it's costly and uses a traditionally non-renewable item: the heart of palm. Hopefully, gatherers can now craft(!) them with their new fiber station. Also, the stews now requires flour, which is a major change since we are talking about a T1 meal requiring a stable source of wheat and a T2 milling table that requires advanced modules.

Wait, the milling station now requires basic modules instead of advanced!

Milling really downsized in terms of cost of operation and became essential in new recipes including paint for work of arts. So milling will have to be considered early along with sturdy farming infrastructure.

Also, the hunting stations can now produce dried meat, dried fish and sweet jerky. Look for these nice additions to your T1 and T2 menus.

T2, T3 and T4 food had minor changes (ex.: more mortar recipe for bakers and one more pizza type).

Adjustments
Rushing players here might consider the flour obstacle as a minor inconvenience. After all, why bother making more complex T1 stew when you simply have to rush for delicious salads and simmered meat made with an ironcast oven? Well, your traditional farmer might be busy elsewhere this time and T2 blocks will not be so easily available (see the next section). On top of that, wild food is less abundant: I feel a return to levels similar to Eco V.8. Above all, material requirements are higher in T2 and communities will require more calories than before. In short, it will be considerably more important to establish a solid T1 base and considerably more dangerous to rush T2 food.

I really see here a powerful food team with 3 players: gathering, hunting and campfire cooking. Together, they can produce efficiently from the start. The chef then picks farming skills to become the second farmer in the team and helps establish the two mandatory farming infrastructures of V.10 (you'll see why in the next section).

I actually love the way the game changed here by raising the bar for the precious T1 era and food infrastructure. We just can't rush our way through wild crops anymore, at least not without killing a lot of citizens around. I really hope this will allow communities to stay a bit longer in the T1 era and work on infrastructure and team building projects instead of rushing ahead technologically. On the other hand, land claim restrictions are likely to require coordination across towns to get all the crops.

There is much to cover here, so I'll stick to the biggest and obvious modifications.

A most welcome addition to V.10 is the birth of the industrial farmer. I mean, there was a small space for industrial-oriented crops before. But now flax oil (from seeds and milling) is required for lumber production. This puts a well needed break to the independent carpenters/smelter teams and firmly links the food producers to industrious players. The growing need for farmed fibers (no more cloth from wild grass) and paint further establishes the new farmer archetype with industry-oriented crops (cotton, flax, flowers, seeds for oil). Bravo!

Smelters now enjoy double amount of iron bars from concentrate and pipes cost half iron too. Another major game change here. Also, look for these neat wide frame recipes on the anvil and don't be surprised to see people asking for candle stands. It is interesting to note that charcoal recipes have been changed too: less wood is needed. In fact, with good modules and productive forests, charcoal may well be an alternative to crushed coal when making steel. As always, smelters should be wary of launching the iron production too soon. I will definitely start with mining and make sure the community has what it takes to grow and make modules easily before burrowing in my cave to make metal bars.

The carpenters lost a lot in this version. Whenever I wanted a less stressful game or simply explored a particularly agressive world, I would pick carpentry. Along with logging, it gave a powerful T1 building ability, a major role for furniture during the whole game, a confortable role in making crafting tables and a powerful position with regards to basic upgrades. Now a few key crafting tables and boards are in the hands of logging players and modules production is shared with a lot of players. Overall, the role of carpentry has slipped a bit more in the T2 period. Also, carpentry has been linked to farmers/millers with flax oil to make lumber. So lumber making really becomes a 3 profession job.

Because bricks now require wooden molds made with a specialized logging skill and nails, masons can no longer make tons of bricks alone in their corner. Making bricks too becomes a 3 profession job. With additional sand required in the recipes, bricks may even be more costly than glass at times. While masons do not enjoy more new things to craft, the demand for mason stuff is likely to increase a lot because of the new infrastructure requirements and demand for wood.

Tailoring's usefulness increases in V.10 with additional requirements for fabric overall. New footwear is on the list. Overall, the skill keeps important ties to logging, butchery and gathering skills with a shy smelting link for royal beds. Sadly, the requirement for wool is still very high for rugs. Curtains remain a block instead of a decoration item that yields bonuses.

Butchery remains mostly the same if you look at the list of crafted items. With the higher pressure on farmers early on, it is a good idea to keep the hunter/butcher active so they can pick more cooking skills.

I found less profound changes for engineers, except if you consider shipwright as an engineer profession. Making ships, however, is mostly about canoes which are akin to the small and large carts. Larger boats are similar to the land-based powered carts and trucks and require mechanics for ingredients. Given the high requirements for T1 and T2, reaching bigger boats will take time. While boat builders seem to play more towards the late game, I would pick mining or logging first and begin my career on various community projects. It is a valid strategy because for boats to really thrive, you need healthy land dwellers first. Boat builders can also take the early job of transport crew for exotic crops and high demand items.

Later engineering skills will be hurt by the cost of T2 blocks and then steel (because of the coal tag). The requirement for power also changed and I suggest you take time to carefully plan your electricity grid. On the other hand, all metal ingredients now cost about half.

If you followed the official communications from Eco, you already know about settlements. My first reaction is how clever Eco designers are in finding ways to create interdependence. Basically, in order for me to get access to more lands (win), you need to get access to more land too (win). So far, land claims were about research and despite the skill requirements, it was very easy to get more than 50 claims on your own shortly after start. Basically getting your hands on a high amount of land claims was an individual endeavor. New players, especially if used to the game Minecraft, were easily lost in a quest for more lands by investing in research independently. Also, the value of land was mixed with the idea of access to learned skill, which could lead to weird perceptions about the value of scrolls, especially in the late game. So learning skills is now split from access to land. Good. Well, good for lands because now I am concerned about motivation for community research.

What changed

As of now, you get a maximum of 16 claims for your personal use and you cannot increase this number alone (well you can but the empty town trick seems like a rule abuse). This 16 is interesting. I dabbled a lot on serious servers to create several settlement designs and finally found the sweet spot on Pancake, a vanilla server where players are strongly encouraged to discuss the game before launch and work on the government infrastructure within the first two hours after opening. Since people work on this structure and really enjoy the various community contraptions created early (ex.: fablab[nodeldon.blogspot.com], research center, barter center, community hotel) they want to stay downtown. So the citizens in Pancake wrote laws that limit the amount of claims in the downtown district to 16 or 20. These numbers allow for a 4x4 or 4x5 property and reflect balance between community and individual needs. On one side of this balance is the need for small property in order to bring people close, save on roads, save on transport, etc. The other side is allowing claim space big enough for storage and buildings. When played right in V.9, the smelter profession is easily done on a 4x5 land. Engineers are also fine on a 4x4 if you add a second floor. Another quality server, Le Village, featured private downtown lands of 4x4 (16 claims) and 5x5 (25 claims). These 16 to 25 numbers for high density lands keep showing up in several other servers where people put some thought into it.

Adjustments

You want more lands? Guess what, this is a collaborative game : you'll need to think about the people around you. Actually, not just think, but talk/write/engage in order to make a town. Making a town requires a medium building of about 70 cubes and three citizens. Installing the town foundation item creates a free 9 lands area and each active citizen brings 1.5 land posts and a few land papers. Be careful if you think you can recruit players and exploit them after: abandoned players reduce the total amount of posts later.

Leaders here should remember each player has a single land space, but your farmers and miners are likely to need extra posts for crops and mines. Miners may move after a space is depleted. Everyone needs a home and a store too. Basically, these precious posts will be as much a boon as a source of dispute and tension if your team lacks empathy.

Small note as well: you can still boost the amount of personal land claims by dropping a town table alone and prevents other players from joining. The town won't really be functional, but this practically gives you an extra property separated from your first homestead with several land claims attached to it.

Lastly, as I wrote in an earlier V.9 post about land, individual quest for land is a basic and individual view of the game. Sharing the land is the high-profile collaborative approach. With settlements and land posts, players now need to engage (finally) in these things. With the new restrictions on lands, communication and empathy just received a bonus in the list of useful skills to play this game. Which video games can say the same ?

Previous to V.10, there was a frequent struggle about usage of land claims for community structures. In cheated worlds, admins just spawned new claims on day 1. However, the real deal was when a few players met in vanilla and decided to make from scratch a courthouse, a research center, a fablab[nodeldon.blogspot.com], or any other community infrastructure that really boost chances of success. This had to happen early for this to be most valuable and this was also the time players had the fewest land claim papers. Who would sacrifice their papers ? Note from the previous section : it was easy to get a lot of land papers between 3 players. But you had to convince people to let go early, which was hard with strangers at a time you also had to agree on the actual building design, how everyone can contribute to the construction, the balance of resources value, the layout of roads, who controls the early government, etc.

With the town system, the extra land claims spawned by the town first have a community origin and players now have to convince the mayor to get some for their individual needs. Basically, the town system completely flipped the discussion about community land claims.

What changed

Your initial homestead must be made of continuous land claims. So players who want many types of resources cannot claim at multiple spots. Will you join a town or will you settle at a remote location rich in a particular resource ? Will you sacrifice everything to sit on the only oil rich spot on the map ? I am particularly concerned about miners and farmers here. Finding a rich mining spot outside the reach of your town means you will leave traces of exploitation. There is nothing preventing another player from claiming the spot. Farmers are particularly vulnerable and are likely to settle further from towns if they have hope to get access to fertile lands. This means they are less likely to get access to town politics and community land claims advantages until later. They are, however, the players that most need these land claims. In short, we might have a situation here where the community needs (ex. access to specific resources for everyone) goes against the community needs (setup close and benefit from towns).

Adjustments

The previous ideas are V.9 thinking. In V.10, you could instead consider towns as minor neighborhoods or local associations of 3 players who happen to live in the same region. The zone of influence created by a town is a circle with a radius of about 50 meters on the world map. You may consider using a post to make a shared house or a small shared building for research and crafting (fablab) in order to further save on space. But in any case, especially if you load a map bigger than 2km, your town will only be able to protect a few resources. This means you should not seek to get all the resources yourself. Instead, you will have to specialize in what you can do and then trade. Just remember "trading" is first about exchanging goods. Also, trading doesn't happen if you ignore your neighbors and fail to help them if they struggle.

What we knew as a town center in V.9 is actually the country in V.10. This circle is a lot bigger and can easily cover 4 towns. On maps of less than 1km, you will be able to reach a sizable surface of the world and make a lot of different items. But this country has T2 building requirements in a version of the game that requires a lot more resources and collaboration. The T2 period was already a classic failure point for servers. So reaching a country will be a serious milestone for a community.

Where there is difficulty, there is also cheating. For example, if a miner wants access to both iron and copper/gold, they may be tempted to load an alternate account to claim two zones. This is the first observation I made in V.10 (after the nice graphics) : my neighbor mysteriously had access to the shore on a property owned by a boat builder who was never online at the same time and clearly not aiming to get a store and a dwelling. I know this has always been a problem, but this version of Eco require more collaboration and alternate avatars are likely to pollute the servers even more. I just feel admins need better solutions to fight this phenomenon and keep their server more collaborative-friendly.

My first reaction to cultural influence, like many veterans, was concerns. Why destroy a rare cooperative game with such an obvious competitive mechanism where towns fight with culture to get more land space? I mean, we should aim for cooperation, but people in V.9 managed to create trade war scenarios and end up in unhealthy competitions about who makes the first steam truck. Annexation is a nightmare in this context!

However, if we think more about this, a small group of people in V.9 could make a town hall and completely take over the world. About two hours were needed for 3 people. Now the same group is restricted to a smaller zone of influence. The designers did not introduce a new problem, they actually reduced the impact of an existing one.

What changed

Forming a town requires 3 players and creates a circle of about 100 meters in diameter (about 7850 square meters). This is the zone of influence. By comparison, the same players in V.9 could focus on research early and easily get about 150 land papers (3750 square meters). While the V.9 land is smaller, remember the papers could be used to cover various strategic locations while the V10 circle also encompasses ocean, cliffs and zones that are less useful.

To increase the diameter of their zone of influence, the group now requires milling, farming, gathering and tailoring (to make painting), four particularly unpopular skills for teams of rushers. This is because no matter how many decorations you put in a town center, the score will always be limited by the culture points from painting and photos. Let's say the group acquired a few paintings, they soon discover these bring a lot less points (-90%) unless people from other towns vote for them using reputation points. So if a small group of rushers threaten others by playing independently or unfairly, they will soon find out neighbors unwilling to help. As for annexation, many recipes now require paper, which is made later in the game and requires a specialization star. Basically, more efforts are needed from the traditional careless teams to bring down a server.

Adjustments

If you see a potentially agressive team, try to keep at least 200 meters from the center of their town, which seems to be a likely town circle size if there are 4 players and they got help to boost their culture (or one player resides outside to add culture). Best if you create a town yourself, obviously.

Points of reputation now have more value as they boost culture. Use them to help other towns by giving reputation to their players or their work of arts (yes you can give reputation to paintings and photos now). As an alternative, make a work of art home and give a ton of reputation to it. Exchange it later for precious resources and other work of arts.

Playing the early V.10 lowered my initial fears. Independent and rushing behaviors now have negative impacts that are more obvious for the players who choose this path. There are more options for compromise and more obstacles to competition. It is likely that good players who don't know anyone on a server will be threatened by small groups of bad players. In any case, this is a good reason to carefully choose servers that leave more space for healthy discussions and planning. Critical thinking and planning: another good set of skills to play Eco.

Basically, as time passes, I am thinking more about the idea that making a powerful nation will be a long and difficult process. A process by which players will have to unlock collaboration skills. I do hope this brings some of them to a point where they no longer fear to discuss with fellow humans and don't feel the urge to control everything and crush everything at first sight. By the way, I strongly encourage you to play this nice game about trust[ncase.me] by Nicky Case. It takes about 20 minutes to complete and there is a lot to learn about the outcome we can expect from Eco with the risks of culture aggression.

In short, culture and influence will be a problem, but is it really a new one ? And is it a problem or a clever tool to help us play better with the other kids in this great sandbox ?

It's my boat. I don't share it !

Humans can swim across kilometers, which is fine for huge 4 km maps in Eco. But the maps kinda suggest larger bodies of water are planet oceans.

What changed

Now, we use boats to travel across oceans. As I write this, the small canoe can now be made by any player on the workbench. I feel opening to all players is the right choice as it allows everyone a basic access to water transportation without fear of being exploited by a single player (like communities often are with steam trucks). At least with a small canoe, you can harvest on close lands and maybe even reach good ship builders elsewhere.

Adjustments

While many players seem to huddle next to water right now, remember your map may not require much goods from far away. I suggest you take a close look at what is needed for your profession and town first. If you are lucky and fair, it will be possible to play in-land and then boost your town's diameter to 200 meters and more to reach the shores. Even better: form an alliance with a coastal town. The idea is to consider the advantages of in-land locations for your town instead of getting close to the coast and then struggle to increase your influence to get more resources.

Players' owned servers of Eco, especially in the last year, were very often modded. Apart from the cosmetic changes, mods were usually about work speed (big shovel and both perks for miners), extra stars, stockpile distance and amount you could carry. Cheated town halls and banks saved a lot of energy for communities as well. These modifications or scenarios were often labeled "quality of life" suggesting a real vanilla game would be detrimental to a normal life. On a personal note, I always preferred the vanilla settings because it was a pressure to be better together. Still, long nights...

What changed

Now that we have boats and plan to trade across oceans, transport will require more energy. We also need to make additional structures on both sides of the water. But an ideal boat transport scenario means we require at least two functional locations on the map. A common problem with Eco V.9 was the amount of worlds that fail to obtain even a single stable location. Culture, while a great addition to the realism of the game (yay), also introduces additional cost for a community. Individual town and country structures represent extra cost as well. Modules, research and building blocks require more resources. This means the game time available in a community will be spent into these endeavors rather than highly motivating personal projects. Also, towns and additional infrastructures require management, which is already a high demand role in Eco. Managers that require a fair compensation increase the load on the other players. I could go on for a while, but you get the idea: V.10 seems more demanding on every front.

Adjustments

I respect the challenge and really hope these changes will end up bringing players around the table and finally discuss and plan together in order to save time and energy. I really hope this will allow servers to gather more people, for even richer communities. But seeing all the failed V.9 servers and the practical limit of a handful of active people after a few days, I fear too many won't have the kind of interest and skills for this kind of challenge. As a result, it is likely many more worlds will fail. Others will again attempt to cheat spawn government structures, federations and take similar shortcuts, only to fail too because these things are not what is needed to win in Eco (although they may be interesting for some scenarios).

Or perhaps this is the dawn of a new generation of players, either new people or old ones with a renewed interest and open mind for collaboration. Within the collaborative structure of V.10 and its numerous requirements for early collaboration, they will truly listen, compromise and plan something bigger than the sum of their individual parts. Nevertheless, all we can do is engage now. For when you truly win with many strangers from all parts of humanity, after struggling for fairness, empathy and reasonable solutions, you get one of the best feelings a game can bring.