So, you have built the greatest city to stand in the Great Ursee, dominated and vassalized (or wiped out) all who dared to oppose your might. Naturally, you look to the horizon for your next expansion.

Likely, there is nothing out there because Tomas Sala probably hasn't got the time to raise the lands out of the ocean there......

But if you are reading the lore, and paying attention to the gibbering of the captains, you might wondered as I have: How about the Imperial lands in Northern Ursee? It was where the Imperil Throne was suppose to be, at least before the War. Surely, there are outpost to rescue, lands to reclaim, and ancient tech to be found? Maybe the developer secretly left something out there for the intrepid soul?

What about beyond the Ursee? The Silence of the Cycles talked about waiting for signals outside beyond The Edge, but how long is The Edge? Does it ends?

With these in mind, I assembled my finest airships crew and falconers, not knowing what dangers awaits in the unknown, set out in my greatest on longest expedition to 1) find new factions outpost to build more fabulous cities (it's a building game after all, and I'm running out of outpost), 2) to figure out where The Edge ends, and 3) to explore the regions known as Northern Ursee where old Imperial land use to be.

Well, that's obvious, use the compass on the bottom of your airship.

Navigating with Compass

But honestly, I didn't realize that's a thing until I was completely lost in the never-ending waves Once you are far enough off the known map, the map became useless because your fleet will not longer show up.

I started out following The Edge, until I got bored. I figured cutting across the Ursee in a straightline is faster than going along The Edge, right? Well except, once you leave the edge, there is nothing. Just waves, and it is easily to become disoriented, especially when you haven't figure out to use the compass. (I probably got turned around a few times). Surprisingly, I did find a Freehouse outpost in the shallows off the map in the East, near the Edge, but this could just be a random encounter.

Turns out the Sun (or whatever it is called in the lore) does not move from East to West, but North to South. This contributed significantly to my meandering in the Eastern Ursee, at least until I start using the compass to navigate.

Well, kind of.

As mentioned earlier, in Ursee, Sun rise from the North (but actually slightly northwest) and set in the South (therefore slightly southeast).

Sunrise in Ursee
Sunset in Ursee

So knowing this, it is actually possible to use the Sun to navigate. unfortunately, camera angle does limit the viewing of the Sun constantly, and things gets kind of weird when you are at the center (literally the center) of the Ursee, the lighting became rather strange....(probably a game engine lighting effect...). But anyway, the sun is only useful when near the horizon.

There are two moons, but the always appear together (so maybe its a moon orbit by a smaller moon?) No idea how to call that. They generally follow the pathway of the sun. But I mostly used the Sun for navigation and not really the Moons.

The stars, thankfully, are fixed, and so they can actually be used for navigation as well. The northern sky are filled with stars. There is a particularly dense region of stars (I called the constellation The Ten Thousand) that is basically near true north (though its actually slightly Northeast (I know this because I actually made it to the northern edge, that is, directly opposite of the known map, and stared into the void)). The southern sky is much more sparse but dominated by a few bright stars that can be made into fancy constellations, I'll let you name that one). Eastern and western sky have their features too but, since my objectives are Northern Ursee and home is Southern Ursee, east and west are not relevant for my navigation as much.

One thing, I am not sure, and this will take time to verify, is that whether or not the rising and setting of the Sun and the Moons changes (like they do on planet with seasons).

Is an absolute empty wasteland (i mean oceanland)....

...at least at the time of making of this guide, which was a big let down. After hundreds of clicking (can't auto-navigate because its off the map), this is what I got? No imperial ruins, no crumbling throne. Not even a single piece of land. Just waters with the usual auto-generated whales, fish, and apparently fishing vessels.

Fishing vessels in Northern Ursee

At least I now know that Northern Ursee do exist and can be reached (with determination). There are no outposts to claim, no lands to settle, but at least there is an Edge.

After returning to the known Ursee, which is literally the Southernmost Ursee, I began to wonder, how big really is the Ursee? It probably took me half an hour of clicking to go from the Southern Edge, to the Eastern Edge, to the Northern Edge, and back (by the way, waterfall flow on the Edge is always North-South, so on the Easter Edge, it looks weird).

Turns out, this can all be figured out without setting out on the expedition (not that the expedition gave me any concrete idea of how big Ursee is exactly except I now know for sure the Ursee is a GIANT CIRCLE)

To calculate how big the GIANT CIRCLE that is the Ursee, we need to bring out high school trigonometry.

I decided the use the Maw as my unit of measure (since it is the longest feature in the known map, and is actually a straight line).

The known map of the Ursee is about 3x3 Maw across.

The known Ursee is 3x3 maw across, or 3^2 maw-square

Looking just half of the known/mapped Ursee, we have a 3/2 maw-length. The curve of the Edge forms a triangle to the border of the known Ursee map at 1/3 maw-length












Finding the radius of Ursee

The hypotenuse of the green triangle can be found with the famous Protagoras equation

h = sqrt((3/2)^2+(1/3)^2) = sqrt(9/4+1/9) = sqrt(81/36 + 4/36) = sqrt(85/36) = sqrt(85)/sqrt(36)
= sqrt(85)/6 maw

The angle a will require some trigonometry. Since we know the hypotenuse, any sine, cosine, tangent will work. I went with tangent because it doesn't have to deal with square roots.

tan (a) = (3/2)/(1/3) = 9/2 or a = arctan(9/2)

The nice thing about finding angle a is that it is identical to angle a of the triangle with radius of the Ursee, because of the right angle rule between angle b and a. We don't really need to find angle b because its a complementary angle, since a triangle must have sum of its angle = 180 degrees, and we have a right triangle, angle a+b must be 90 degree.

Anyway, in the new triangle with the radius of the Ursee, we know that the radius is also the hypotenuse. We konw the other side of the triangle is just half of the hypotenuse of the other triangle, and we know angle a. So this is another trigonometry problem, requiring cosine.

cos(a) = (h/2)/r = ((sqrt(85)/6)/2)/r = (sqrt(85)/12)/r = sqrt(85)/(12r)

since we are looking for r

r = sqrt(85)/(12cos(a))

since we know a = arctan(9/2)

r = sqrt(85)/(12cos(arctan(9/2)))

Looks messy, but turns out cos(arctan(x)) is a trigonometry identity (had to google that)

cos(arctan(x))= 1/sqrt(1+x^2), our x in this case is 9/2, so...

r = sqrt(85)/(12(1/sqrt(1+(9/2)^2))) = sqrt(85)/(12(1/sqrt(1+81/4)))= sqrt(85)/(12(1/sqrt(85/4)))
= sqrt(85)/(12(1/sqrt(85/4))) = sqrt(85)/(12(1/(sqrt(85)/sqrt(4)))) = sqrt(85)/(12(1/(sqrt(85)/2)))
= sqrt(85)/(12(2/sqrt(85))) = sqrt(85)/(24/sqrt(85)) = 85/24 maw or 3 and 13/24 maw

Well, that looks awfully nice. no more square roots. and no calculator needed at all. Apparently, the center of the Ursee is near the top of the known map, just about 3.5 maws away from the Southern Edge.

To go from the Southern Edge to the Northern Edge, it'll be 2*r, (the diameter) which is about 7 maw length across.

To follow the Edge and go around a full circle it will be the circumference 2*pi*r, which is 22 maw length (no thanks, I'll pass). I track that it took about 2.5 min to cross the Maw, so going around the Egde of the Ursee will take almost an hour.

In terms of the Area of the Ursee, it is the famous pi*r^2, which is 39.4 maw-square. Since the known map is about 3x3 maw-square or 9 maw-square, the whole of the Ursee is about 4 times the size of the known Ursee, sounds about right.

Modeled Ursee size

i didn't track my expedition on a map exactly, since I have not idea what Ursee looks like beyond the map, but if I did, it probably looks something like this.

A speculative rendition of the journey across Ursee

If I had knew it will take me around 44 min to go to an empty region of the map and back, I would not have done the journey. So I'm making this guide (expedition report) so you don't (or if you do, at least you know what you are getting yourself into).

1 maw length = 2.5 minutes to travel

Southern Ursee: 3 maw x 3 maw = 9 maw-squared (7.5 min to cross)

Ursee radius = 85/24 maw = 3 and 13/24 maw (8.85 min to cross)

Ursee diameter = 85/12 maw = 7 and 1/24 maw (17.7 min to cross)

Ursee parameter = 85*pi/12 maw = 22.25 maw (55.6 min to return)

Ursee area = 39.4 maw-squared

Even though Bulwark is supposed to be a relax simple building game with some 4x elements, by unknowing going on this journey, there seems to be a great treasure hunting potential as well. Part of the game involves looking for wonders and lore locations, but there could be expanded much more in depth in the future. Navigating around the Ursee reminds my younger days of wondering the Caribbean Sea in Sid Meier's Pirates looking for locations on some broken pieces of maps, hoping to guess it just right so I don't have to collect the remaining 15 pieces (especially if you played at swashbuckler level). Anyway, hopefully this guide is entertaining and educational (it's my first) and will become useful in the future when Tomas Salas release the expansion pack the Novum Seekers where we can hunt for ancient weaponry for the Mancer or for our own conquest! If nothing else, the fact that Ursee is only 1/4 done means there's much more potential content in the future. Hopefully the day will come when we can see the whole of Ursee complete with islands and history.