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Dear players,
We are glad to present the new historical server inspired from the era of the Crusades — Outremer (Fr. outre-mer, literally – overseas). Likewise Britannia, the server has only one single huge valley – a region from the Apennines Peninsula to the lands of the Middle East. Unlike Britannia, the map of the region is not square, but rectangular – elongated horizontally, which allows to fit in most of the Mediterranean Sea.




Setting:
It is year 1172, in the Middle East Christian public formations – the so-called Crusaders States exist for almost a hundred years now. New troops of the army of Christ are constantly arriving from Europe to the Holy Land wishing to protect the Jerusalem from the Arab onslaught.
Most of the European soldiers in Outremer are of Frankish origin and so are the current rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Principality of Antioch. Two Christian military orders – Knights Templars and Knights Hospitaller are already founded in the Holy Land, gradually becoming the main power of the Latin states in the Middle East.
Due to the good communication by sea with Europe and the Christian Byzantine Empire in the north, Europeans can constantly maintain the inflow of human resource, both the noble knights and regular conscripts to the east.

Despite the relatively favorable conditions for the Latin countries, the situation in the region is not that simple, there are two Islamic states rapidly growing in power in the Middle East – an expanding Empire of Seljuk Turks, led by Nur al-Din and the new Egyptian kingdom under the leadership of a talented general Yusuf ibn Ayub, better known as the King Saladin. Islamic states are extremely dissatisfied with the European presence in their homeland, especially by the fact that their holy city of Jerusalem is ruled by the so hated Franks.

The great maritime power of the Mediterranean – Kingdom of Sicily has recently begun to stabilize after the decades of stagnation, which had almost led the ruling dynasty in decline. The new king has already managed to handle the situation and may soon wish to join the Christian States in their Crusades against the unfaithful. A similar situation can be observed in the vast Byzantine Empire – the successor of great ancient Roman Empire, is experiencing a serious decline. Because of the several major defeats to Seljuk Turks, bloody civil wars and local revolts, Byzantium is now but a mere shadow of its former self.

The situation in the region is extremely unstable, each of the six empires can become a dominant force in Outremer, but only shall prevail.




Features of the server:
Outremer strongly differs from the other servers by unique features of its gameplay.

1. Kingdoms
There are no neutral players at Outremer, at the start of the game everyone chooses one of the six possible kingdoms to play with. This choice determines the ethnicity of the player and the territory where he spawns. States are currently in a status of constant war with each other, thus choosing one side – you automatically receive others as enemies. The situation may change dramatically in the nearest future.




2. Cities and contours
With the introduction of the state system, the two new types of cities appeared on the server – a historical city and a capital. Currently, historical city is a special type of town that cannot be taken into the contour, cannot be moved to another place, cannot be renamed and gives the player some certain advantages. Each city can give two of the four possible bonuses, affecting the power of the player. The capital is an enhanced version of the historical city and gives three of the above-mentioned four bonuses. The capital will soon receive additional important attributes that would strongly impact the gameplay of Outremer. There are 90 historical cities at Outremer, six of which are capitals.
Contours on Outremer are no longer made of water, but are a now created via the chain of fortified walls. Ordinary water (light color) can now only be buried, but not dug out. In other words, players can no longer dig lakes. It is forbidden to build walls and terraform those valley tiles that connect to the sea (dark water).




3. Sea trade and travel
Huge sea space of Outremer is not accidental – sea voyage system is introduced on this server. The use of ships can significantly accelerate the movement in the valley. Each transport vessel (cog) may take a certain number of soldiers. If player has enough ships to ensure the transportation of the selected army, all units will move at the speed of the cog. It is possible to navigate by sea only from and to the port locations (when hovering a port location in the valley map, the text indicating it to be a port will appear). It is impossible to move on to another island without ships on Outremer.
Apart from the introduced sea travels, player can also maintain a sea trade. Capacity of merchant ships far exceeds the capacity of carts and any other unit. Same can be told about the Shipyard’s maximum amount of stored resources, it also significantly exceeds the similar values of the market.




4. New modified tactics
On the new server, all shooters (troops that fire projectiles) have a new feature added – a melee attack. Melee attack has almost always lower damage values than the ranged one. This means that in a situation where the two armies meet each other in hand to hand combat, shooter units will swap their ranged weapons to melee ones and fight the enemy in close combat.
On Outremer, it is possible to exit a neutral/hostile port location with only some of your armies, not the whole set of them. In the tactic screen, you will need to select the armies you want to exit the location in order to do so.


5. Mark towers
In order to transform the Mark Tower on Outremer into something else, you need to move troops there (at least one unit). Construction of the Mark Tower is possible only on the island, where you have at least one city, or on the shore of any other island, if you have at least one port city with shipyard.


6. Ports and coastal locations
Cities built next to the sea automatically receive the status of the port city, which strongly affects the city properties and appearance. It is possible to build shipyards in such cities, which allows building ships and also trading and traveling by sea. There is no grass in the port cities, pine trees are replaced by palm trees and water tiles are allowed to be built. Water notably slows down the movement of all troops except the ships.



The shipyard can only be built on adjacent water tiles that connect into a square figure of size not less than 2 by 2 (tiles).



Port is considered to be any location, adjacent to the sea (water tile of dark color), whether it is the druid temple, Teuton castle, tower, or the state capital.


7. Changes in diplomacy
The diplomacy has been notably enriched with the introduction of the Kingdoms system. Players from different realms initially have war with all the players from other realms by default. When a player becomes a vassal or knight of the Order - his allegiance to the certain Kingdom (and allegiance of all his vassals) changes to the allegiance of his Lord/Master. If a player has become a knight of the Order of another state, then he will receive war with all the people playing for his former state.




8. Roads
A new type of building – road has been introduced on the Outremer server. This building is passable and increases the movement speed of all units located on it up to 50%.


9. Mercenary point payments
The maximum number of mercenary points, which the player can grant to his Lord/Master is limited to 2000, same as Britannia server.

10. Multi-accounting
There is an automatic multiple account ban system installed on Outremer server. This means that all found multiple accounts will be banned by the system immediately. You can try to appeal your case only through the 1100AD Technical Support.

This server is going to be developed very rapidly and some major changes to its functionality may occur.

We welcome you to the shores of Outremer and wishing you all a great game!



Updates:
The new system that shows kingdom capitals and their current owners was added. This information is now being shown in the right sidebar of the valley screen.




On Outremer server, 12.15.2011, 21:00 Riga time (GMT +2) new subscription bonus system is going to be introduced. All players that have their existing silver or gold subscription on one of the following servers - Aragon, Beta, Bohemia, Britannia, Crusade, Grail, Livonian will get same subscription on Outremer for free. The duration of this free subscription is two weeks. If player already owns a subscription on Outremer and on one of the other seven abovementioned servers, then these free two weeks will be added to his existing subscription on Outremer.