Speed and Distances
The world map of WOC is divided into 500 by 500 cells. Consequently, the time spent traveling between different cells can significantly vary and affect the user's gameplay experience. On the one hand, this could be detrimental if early-game journeys take too long, but on the other hand, overly rapid movement between cells could be problematic during wartime. Additionally, as heroes get upgrades, their travel speed will increase, so a base travel speed that’s too high might make interactions in the later stages of the game less interesting.
The maximum distance on the map, from corner to corner, is just over 700 cells. From the center to any of the borders (north, south, west, and east) is 250 cells. However, considering the coordinate generation algorithm during land minting in the early stages, the distance between the most distant cells will be no more than 60 cells, and over time, new lands will receive increasingly distant coordinates. Thus, we will not account for extreme land distances. Instead, we'll assume the average distance to be around 10-35 cells, with significantly distant lands being located 100-150 cells away.
How it was in the real world
Now let's look at the organization of a city's placement on land. In the Middle Ages, the area of an average-sized city was 1-2 km². For simplicity, let’s take 1 km². The fields, mines, and lands around the city that were cultivated would cover an area of 200-400 km². The distance between cities in densely populated areas of the world was up to 40 km, or roughly a one-day journey at that time.
Back to the game
It's obvious that applying these real-world principles to the game world would make the game completely uninteresting. If reaching neighboring cells took an entire day, then traveling 20-30 cells would take about a month. On the other hand, it wouldn’t make sense to have neighboring cells reachable in just a few minutes, even with proportionally increased speed.
Departure and Arrival
For combat raids, to prevent sudden attacks from neighbors, we will introduce a mechanic that artificially slows down speed on the last cell. This means that when an enemy army moves through the cell containing the targeted land, the movement speed will be significantly reduced, thereby increasing travel time. This mechanic is intended to give players time to react to an attack. In other words, we assume that when moving through the territory of the attacked, the enemy encounters resistance, which affects the speed of their movement.
The initial phase of movement will always feel slow, as the mission begins with the squad moving through the city and suburban areas, preventing high speeds at the start. This early-game limitation ensures that even with substantial speed upgrades later, the time spent on a mission to a neighboring cell will still be noticeable.
Therefore, the mission starts in the departure city, and the first phase of the journey involves exiting the city, which will take some time. The second phase is the march between the departure and destination cells, carried out at a more constant speed. The final phase depends on whether the destination is a city (in which case the slowdown will be similar to the departure phase) or just a point on the map (in which case no slowdown will occur).
By the way, this concept of slowdowns at the start and end of the journey could introduce city upgrades that both increase travel speed and facilitate departures, while also allowing for barricades that slow down enemy forces when they enter. But that's for future consideration.
The Land organization and speed
Let’s assume that in our game world, the city occupies an area of 1 km², with resource fields surrounding it for 1 km, making a total area of approximately 3x3 km, or 9 km². The entire cell occupies 5x5 km or 25 km². This means the distance between cities in neighboring lands is around 5 km.
For now, let's assume that exiting or entering a city will take 15 minutes each. No upgrades are assumed yet.
Thus, marching to an adjacent cell without any speed boosts will take 1 hour. This is quite reasonable, as a speed of 5 km per hour is realistic.
Remember, the return journey will take the same amount of time.
Hypothetically, crossing the entire map diagonally from corner to corner would take 707 hours one way, which is about a month at base speed.