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Your Elvenar Team
I keep seeing some of you say this game is only a year old - i remember seeing a friend playing this game about 7 years ago if you do a search you will see that the Developers first started making the games in 2003 - so it isn't fairly new game
In my opinion the reason a lot of us push the envelope is partly due to lack of people around us or lack of. In 176 provinces I have only 12 real players the rest are gold mines that we only get 1/2 the value of (if there was a player there}
I for one think that they should move all the active players into the center of the world.
This was suppose to happen, I thought.
In my opinion the reason a lot of us push the envelope is partly due to lack of people around us or lack of. In 176 provinces I have only 12 real players the rest are gold mines that we only get 1/2 the value of (if there was a player there}
I for one think that they should move all the active players into the center of the world.
This was suppose to happen, I thought.
Tell me about it- when I started there weren't fellowships yet, neighbors were scattered to the wind and all there was to do was fight and rotate through quests to build goods. I can barely rotate through once anymore it makes me get the heebie-jeebies. The only active trading partner I had at the time was in the 12th ring and when fellowships started we founded one
They are moving the players closer to center- it is still in beta but from what I hear it went well and should be here soon- possibly the next update but I am guessing.
I keep seeing some of you say this game is only a year old - i remember seeing a friend playing this game about 7 years ago if you do a search you will see that the Developers first started making the games in 2003 - so it isn't fairly new game
Inno was founded in 2007,
2009 they released Grepolis,
2012 Forge of Empires was released,
Jan 2015 Beta Elvenar and
April 2015 Elvenar on the live servers
That's an incomplete history just hitting some of the big games
The brothers that founded Inno made Tribal Wars in 2003 (as a text based game) and it went live international in 2006 just before forming Inno.
So maybe your friend was playing another game with Inno? I know there is a fair amount of crossover between the games. I came from Forge which is like Elvenars mean big brother. It was so relaxing to not have to worry about my stuff being swiped by a neighbor that I just kinda drifted over to this game.
Again all of this talking about going too far into the provinces, regardless how easy it was negotiate, the developers pushed us to open those provinces to gain relics for the Wonders......we did as we were told and now we pay a price for it.
I have a very hard time understanding non-fighting players who ignored their tech tree, got caught with their pants down and now have problems negotiating. Did you really think inno would allow your exploitation to continue?
As for this statement dude you don't have a clue, I have done everything in my tech tree.
And for you asserting that we don't shows how naive you really are.
There are 8 Ancient Wonders, and each of those AWs can currently absorb around 3*18=54 Runes.
You can contribute TWICE as many Knowledge Points to your OWN AWs as are required to complete your tech tree. It's a long process, even though it the only way to run up your score once you've maxed out your city.
To pretend that "the developers pushed us" to acquire Runes is like trying to sip water from a fire hose.
I have a very hard time understanding non-fighting players who ignored their tech tree, got caught with their pants down and now have problems negotiating. Did you really think inno would allow your exploitation to continue?
As for this statement dude you don't have a clue, I have done everything in my tech tree.
And for you asserting that we don't shows how naive you really are.
I was gonna ignore responses, cuz I expected posts like this or Sabella's. What is your image supposed to prove? If you were able to push the world map to ring eleven, you should easily be in orcs. I was halfway through orcs before I hit ring eleven.
Players who refused to learn how to fight got caught with their pants down.
One more time. Play the full game. This is my point. There is no orc requirement if you fight. Stress your tech tree, not upgrading wonders nor donating to other players wonders. Don't get yourself bottlenecked on tech tree. Plan ahead and do your home work.
This has always been my message to my two fellowships. #1 Stress your tech tree!
Sorry, if some of you think my posts are Tough Love, but they are! I get new members to my fellowships asking about kp donating parties. Some get upset that I discourage such things. I tell them that they are screwing themselves by stressing wonders and not tech tree.
I am trying to help! I don't come to this forum to complain. I come here to help those who do complain. This will not be the last time Inno throws curves at you. Be ready for them!
In my opinion the reason a lot of us push the envelope is partly due to lack of people around us or lack of. In 176 provinces I have only 12 real players the rest are gold mines that we only get 1/2 the value of (if there was a player there}
I for one think that they should move all the active players into the center of the world.
This was suppose to happen, I thought.
Again, you were not playing the game correctly. You should never need locals for trade, your fellowship should fill all your needs. The game is designed, due to boosts, to force us all into fellowships. It is also designed to force us to all go boost-only due to limited room and the fact non-boosts produce little and are too expensive to operate anyway.
The problem I have seen in my elvenar travels is that players create fellowships on a whim and just do not know nor care to put in the hard work recruiting to fill fellowships and keep it boost-balanced. Each member trades his/her boosts for other member's boosts and everyone wins!
Find a good fellowship. If your archmage is not doing his/her job, then LEAVE!
<snip>...If you were able to push the world map to ring eleven, you should easily be in orcs. I was halfway through orcs before I hit ring eleven...
<snip>...There is no orc requirement if you fight. Stress your tech tree, not upgrading wonders nor donating to other players wonders. Don't get yourself bottlenecked on tech tree. Plan ahead and do your home work...
<snip>...Again, you were not playing the game correctly. You should never need locals for trade, your fellowship should fill all your needs. The game is designed, due to boosts, to force us all into fellowships. It is also designed to force us to all go boost-only due to limited room and the fact non-boosts produce little and are too expensive to operate anyway...<snip>
Just to add a perspective I think you are either missing or, perhaps, intentionally ignoring. When the game went live on the US servers in April of 2015:
1. Goblins/Orcs Chapter VIII: did not exist (released July 2016 - Before this release, obviously orcs didn't exist. The Elvenar game was always a choice between fighting or peaceful expansion - as demonstrated in the original InnoTV June 2015 episode where the building choices are emphasized by the Inno devs for the two playing style preferences. Hence, players were, if fact, NOT playing the game wrong because they chose not to fight and hence had no need of *any* armories) 2. Fairies Chapter VII: did not exist (released March 2016 - many, many players quit the game while waiting for this Chapter to be released. They had already finished the Tech tree through Chapter 6 and had nothing else to do in the game while waiting for the next major release was dump kps into AWs and scout and complete provinces for expansions to continue to grow their cities while the game was not progressing due to lack of content.) 3. Dwarves Chapter VI: did not exist (released Sept 2015. By this time many players had already completed the Tech tree through Chapter 5, to the glory of their respectively chosen race. Again, nothing to do but complete provinces to grow their city while waiting for new content to be released to progress their cities.) 4. Ancient Wonders: did not exist (While it is true that the AWs do offer allegedly valuable bonuses and now offer points included in a player's rank/score determination, I am largely inclined to believe that they serve two additional, if unspoken, purposes of 1) giving the players somewhere to usefully deposit excess kps when either a) the player's progress through the tech tree is temporarily stymied while waiting for resources, goods, etc. or b) the player has completely finished the tech tree in its current incarnation, and thus have nothing else to spend them on; and 2) to provide the player with many distractions to funnel kps into rather than directly into the tech tree, thereby impeding the player's research progress, and thus prolonging the time duration before the player reaches the previous state of a completely finished tech tree. Neither of these two options really serve a sinister purpose other than to offer alternative uses of the player's kps. However, AWs in general can cause unprepared players additional grief due to the amount of city square grid real estate they consume, which may or may not be better used by other building types, such as residences for more population, workshops for more supplies, armories for bigger training capacity in the barracks, existing building upgrades, etc. This becomes even more relevant
Goblin/Orc Ancient Wonders (Heroes' Forge, Shrine of Shrewdy Shrooms) released end of Aug 2016, more than a month after the Chapter 8 release.
Chapter 5 Ancient Wonders (Thrones of the High Men, Watchtower Ruins) released July 2016
Chapter 3 Ancient Wonders (Endless Excavation, Needles of the Tempest) released end of June 2016
Chapter 2 Ancient Wonders (Tome of Secrets, Golden Abyss) released early June 2016
Fairies Ancient Wonders (Prosperity Towers, Blooming Trader Guild) released April 2016. again about a month after the Chapter 7 release.
Elf/Human and Dwarven Ancient Wonders (Crystal Lighthouse/Great Bell Spire, Martial Monastery/Sanctuary, Dwarven Bulwark, Mountain Halls) released Nov 2015.
5. Fellowships: did not exist (released in July 2015 was a work-around to the failed and naive idea that once a player starts a game they will keep playing, and since goods production was designed around having active neighborhoods. Local player trading and didn't work because of the plethora of players beginning then abandoning the game, leaving no active players in your local neighborhood - which continues to be a plague to this game. On a related note, it is also obvious that Inno failed to learn this lesson, and so they repeated this erroneous notion of active local neighborhoods with the release of the Tournaments, where rewards are based on local player interactions.
Inno may *finally* be fixing soon with the active player city relocation toward the center of the map. However, with paid player or sufficiently developed cities never being removed, I suspect this idea will still not yield the desired results, and Inno will likely need to resort to the same type of work-around fix they used previously and find a way make Tournaments dependent on Fellowship assistance instead of neighbor assistance.
So what is the point of all this information?
FWIW, I am happy for you that you have found so much success in the game, and that your strategies have worked out so well. I feel bad for those others, that having followed an advertised and previously successful gameplay strategy, are now feeling betrayed and penalized for playing the game in such a fashion. For myself, I do not suffer from either of these. I always played a mix, trying to balance production and military. I, too, joined later in the game's release cycles so I have never had dead ends in the tech tree to test my loyalty to the game when there are few alternatives to progress. At the same time, I have a healthy respect for many of these experienced players, that had to struggle their way through problems that never existed for me, helped me learn how to fight battles, offered advice on how to lay out and grow my city. I was never too far advanced to feel much in the way of negative impacts when new features were released that changed the gameplay, and so have always been able to adjust my strategy to absorb these changes. What I *am* jealous of, is that these earlier players were able to acquire more expansions at earlier stages of the game than I will ever be able to do with the introduction of the orc goods requirement in negotiating provinces and the upcoming battle system changes. It will take me much longer to grow my city to sufficient size to have a competitive "score" with these players without the significant purchase and use of diamonds to "level the field" so to speak. I'm ok with this.
However, I do think that it is very easy (and extremely presumptive) for some player who has joined the game in a much different state of gameplay features and with much more game content completed and available than those who started playing the game much earlier (where many of the features you are referencing as by design did not, in fact, exist) to offer opinions about how those earlier players should have played the game better, done their homework better, formed better fellowships, found a better use of their idle time between Chapter releases than attacking those enticing provinces for something to do rather than the other choice of just stop playing altogether (like many, many did), and that they should have, in fact, played more like you.
I tip my hat to you, sir. Surely I find myself in the presence of your greatness, and am humbled.
@WickedShads Agreed on your points about the game except for one- fellowships weren't introduced to correct the hoods or any other game conditions that existed. They were on the docket from day 1 of planning- I would bet on it.
The trading should be taking place both with neighbors and with a fellowship.
If you look at other innogames releases the have the same structure with both fellowships and neighbors.
Once they start moving actives toward the center of the map we'll see a great deal more neighborhood trading ( and some tempers flaring when outsiders "steal" our trades"
It's also going to free up the players who prefer to fly solo since they will have enough trade to keep going,
They have their solution to neighborhoods in beta and doing well. The fighting we will see what happens but hopefully its squared away soon- it's going to cause some loss of members I think.
They have a lot of the big elements in place with one glaring exception- some sort of inter or intra (or both) fellowship activity which I imagine the tackle after stabilizing the battle stuff.
If I'm right and they do add the fellowship activities (as they have done with other releases) AND they implement a hood solution (and assuming battle is not broken or an ongoing issue) then we will see the "Early adulthood" of this game that I keep saying is young.
WickedShads, the only constant in any good game, one that will succeed is CHANGE. If a game does not change, players get bored, they quit and the game fails. I am talking about diamond players the game needs to exist and have additional coding put into it.
When I joined Elvenar, it was only a boring simple mad dash for score. Build tons of useless buildings to get our score up. The #1 ranker on almost every world had no armories and un-upgraded barracks. As soon as I found out about Dwarves, I put the score breaks on. Those non-diamond players who have hit the Orc requirement will need to give up score for space to build correctly (current correctly). As I have posted before, they do not have free will. Diamond players DO cuz we can buy expansions!
Same with wonders. In a very real sense, wonders are eye-candy for diamond players. Why? They take up space, the space that non-expansion buyers do not have. Also, diamond players can buy the missing shards to fill the rune ring easily. Worse, they are diversions from the very important tech tree progression.
I do understand their pain. I do understand non-diamond players who refused to fight. I call them Pretty Peaceful Builders and that is not an insult. We city-builders are split into two groups, them and us fighters. It has always been this way. The early city-builder CD games had two progression paths ~ economic and military for exactly this reason. Our two groups of players.
Let me tell you a story about us in Inno's The West. on a new server map we have to take and build forts. Then we battle for ownership of them. Forts we introduced later in the game's evolution. The West began as just a dueling game. The introduction of forts is similar to what is happening in Elvenar. Building forts was hard. taking forts was harder. A couple of years ago, Inno introduced a new map. All of our forts went poof. All our hard work went up in smoke. We had to take and build all forts on the new map. Yes, lots of yelling and screaming. Inno was correct. The new map WAS better!
Most of us play for challenge. I do not care if Inno destroys half my city. I will rebuild. Stronger and better. I play for challenge!
My most recent challenge has been Orcs. I have been on a diamond boycott lab for over two months. I went all the way through Orcs, completed my tech tree yesterday, totally w/o a single diamond spent. The lab was to see if it was possible to play non-diamond. It is!
But it already did taper off....greatly...with the huge amount of scouting times. I don't think too many of us would have stuck around with this orc limitation. The devs thought it would come about the time you hit the orc chapter. That's what they said on beta. They were surprised it hit people so early. They said they were going to adjust it if it came too early. That is what they should do.
No one needs to be chastised for wanting and expecting this limitation not to hit two chapters early. It is a lazy design. It is stupid too because so many players quit the minute they face it. Anything that has so many players quitting cold is stupid. You cannot sell diamonds to players who are not here. You cannot sell anything from contests to players who are not here. You don't have much of a game if players quit after they have finally become solid recurring players. It is HARD to get people to stick around. So the last thing they should do is slam the door in the face of the people they finally got to stay.
I mean seriously, who would want to stick around and play the game this way? For two CHAPTERS you can't get an expansion? So how are you supposed to build the dwarves or the fairies? You have no room. And they keep introducing new wonders and telling you that you have to have them in order for everything to work? It is illogical.
(We have so many threads discussing this same topic. Maybe we can keep them all in one place so the impact looks as large as it is instead of appearing so diffuse?)
Obviously, this is a very important topic and it affects a whole lot of people. We have this many threads with people complaining about it. Something is wrong.
Definitely agree, the developers should take notice, but they seem to not care what we say.
I made it through dwarves, but I am worried that I will not have enough room for 4 day & night farms to make it through faries.
So in my opinion there putting a quick end to the game.
If this is the case and things don't change I will quit.
I think I got off on the wrong foot in this thread from the start- I was conflating two issues and wound up
using one as a surrogate for the other.
I really haven't looked into the #s on expansions and frankly I don't know if they have it in the "right" ring or if it should be pushed back. I am totally open to the idea of pushing it out a ring(s) or adding some expansions into the equation some other way if the current #'s are insufficient to have a fully functioning city.
I probably should have chosen a different entry point into the conversation bcs my main beef was really with the disparity that has existed between fighters and producers. What bothered me was not how far out a player could reach but rather that the only way to get out that far was through negotiation which left the fighting option in the dust.
You point is taken , but I found that at ring 10 your vastly out numbered, took me 4 days of producing troops just to win 6 of 8 battles, the other 2 were impossible. So i was forced into using diamonds to complete it.
There are any number of puzzles and challenges that only "work" if resources are constrained.
If you can blow away most of the requirements, because you've discovered a means by which you can acquire more cash/supplies/goods/knowledge points/relics/runes/mana then you can trivialize any puzzle/challenge that the developers provide. The ultimate consequence is that "too much stuff" trivializes the game.
Far worse, folks with too much stuff tend to push it off on others, thereby spoiling the game for their acolytes under the guise of being "helpful."
The developers have finally resorted to pacing gates, with the Orcs now required for negotiation, with scouting that also reduces the difficultly of the encounter, and now with mana so that folks won't be able to ignore the development of their culture.
It's like climbing a tree. The further you go out on a limb the less support you will have, and the more likely it is that your weight will break the limb. The developers are properly concerned about health of the game itself, even when that requires them to saw off some of the branches.
Now I'll readily agree that there is "some" challenge, and some considerable skill is required if you're pushing the envelope, but it's not good for the game if you allow "the users" to trivialize the core of the game.
@Katwijk agreed on most points. I would put the set point a bit further out on the branch I think but agreed in concept
The "puzzle" like aspect of the game push us to make decisions-
How am I going to have enough goods?
Will I fight for territory primarily or negotiate mostly?
How am I going to structure my city to accomplish my goals?
All of these factors and more consider into what type of city we wind up building.
Since we are limited by space available, costs in goods/supply,population etc... we can't "have it all" so to speak. We have to make choices.
The choices are only meaningful if
A. different paths are viable
B. resources remain limited so that we can't build a mega city that can do everything
The way the game has been structured the only viable choice to remain competetive has been to produce boosted massively, join a like minded fellowship to trade, negotiate the hell out of some provinces. The devs didn't anticipate just how fast and far that option would take a player.
Having all those resources dedicated to that avenue puts a player out on the limb that is now been sawed off with the Orc requirement.
That Orc requirement was the option they chose to rein the pace back in and make the choices more equitable.
The choices in this game should include-
1.joining a fellowship or going solo
outcome: broken neighborhoods dictate fellowship as the only choice (it would still be a better choice even with hood trade but currently it's barely a viable choice to go solo)--->this is being addressed in beta and we should see more densely active hoods in the future
2. fight primarily, negotiate primarily or mix
outcome- fighting was paced as the devs anticipated with brakes applied throughout the process so that you could get further with skill but not outstrip the intended pace overall
negotiating was nearly unrestrained and expansion with it so that players were getting:
much further much faster than the devs anticipated
much more mileage out of producing over fighting so that of the two paths only the one made sense for growth
much more powerful/bigger cities as the success of that option feeds into more growth, which means more production, which means more growth...and lots and lots of stuff so that resource management become less and less of an issue, which diminishes the need to make choices which is at the heart of a city builder
Notice how many of the cities essentially look the same? 4-6 Tier one, 3-4 tier two, 3-4 tier three cookie cutters bcs the options are imbalanced and heavily weighted in one direction. Boring, boring, boring. I tried a city geared toward fighting very early on and it was like racing a Ford Pinto in a Nascar event.
So if you want a game where choices are different and meaningful then we either needed more powerful military options for the fighter or reigning in of the producer/negotiation tactic. The first option doesn't work bcs it's applied evenly and leaves the same disparity and doesn't address rate of expansion overall. Reigning in through restructuring costs to account for massive production would be a complicated mess for everyone and require too much rebalancing system wide. So the devs decided to just saw the branch off.
That's why we have this entire uproar.
The specifics of just how much expansion is appropriate at what pace etc..are open to interpretation and solid, constructive arguments can be made as to where the limits should be set within a system that has bounds and that would be a lively and interesting discussion where even the Dev's might be swayed.
The current discussion which amounts to simply- leave it alone- no bounds, is dead in the water and useless for swaying devs or anyone else looking to the overall gameplay. No matter how many players decide to quit, the dev's have an obligation to restore some balance for the long term viability of the game.
This discussion is now mute and getting pointless - the Dev's aren't listening and no changes have occured - as you said - leave it alone - play the game As Designed: or Quit - that is the only Choice now
You point is taken , but I found that at ring 10 your vastly out numbered, took me 4 days of producing troops just to win 6 of 8 battles, the other 2 were impossible. So i was forced into using diamonds to complete it.
Elf ~ 5 enemy squads or less = 3 golems 2 sorceress. More than 5 enemy squads = all golems
Human ~ 5 enemy squads or less = 3 Paladins 2 priests. More than 5 enemy squads = all paladins
I have read some claims you sit back and try to hit them first. No, you must charge and charge fast. You take the first hit, but you are now in their faces. You fight in their territory, not yours. Your objective is to eliminate enemy squads, the easiest first until it is totally dead, not just lowered numbers but the squad still exists. You gang up on and take out their ranged first, especially archers, crossbows and cannons. Then Light melee. Mages next. Last heavies. Two priests can take out cannons all by themselves with one hit each. You should be hitting someone every turn with every one of your squads.
If this doesn't work, then your tactics need some work.
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Your Elvenar Team
There is always somebody that needs to make themselves feel important by making others feel inadequate.
