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    Your Elvenar Team

How much of your world map has to be dead before you (or they) get moved?

MagicPagan

Well-Known Member
Good point. I do put up my own trades, 2 or 3 stars, with some success. Too often some or all will sit a day or so. This may be because the active traders seem to have the same boosted goods as me so we're all offering the same trades. That's why I thought if there was a larger pool of active cities, there might be more variety. (Except for one player, my fellowship members are not in my area so I don't get to see their trades. If I send a chat that I've put up trades, I usually get a response from that one player. Am I missing a way to post trades to the fellowship beyond the regular Trader?)
You can see FS only trades by checking the first box on the filter.

trader.png
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Good point. I do put up my own trades, 2 or 3 stars, with some success. Too often some or all will sit a day or so. This may be because the active traders seem to have the same boosted goods as me so we're all offering the same trades. That's why I thought if there was a larger pool of active cities, there might be more variety. (Except for one player, my fellowship members are not in my area so I don't get to see their trades. If I send a chat that I've put up trades, I usually get a response from that one player. Am I missing a way to post trades to the fellowship beyond the regular Trader?)
I have had 2 cities survive the desert and it’s bc of in-house FS trades. Unfortunately, I did have to leave a FS and wound up forming my own because that previous FS was not supportive enough. It was full of late chapter cities so they had the inventory, but it seemed nobody was actively checking their trader. Setting up a tin cup on the street every morning wasn’t my idea of fun so I decided I am either dropping that city or changing FS. Trade is one of the most critical functions of a FS. If they ain’t supporting you, then it’s time to put yourself in a better position by joining a better functioning FS or creating your own. If there are people in your FS you want to play with, take them with you! No reason for everyone to stay in malfunction. A lot of people stay in bad FS out of some misguided loyalty but I always feel like the FS has an obligation to meet my expectations of a FS experience too if they want to keep me. If I contribute to it, it needs to support me back. It’s a two-way street. I don’t regret packing up and having to move to a new FS at all. City is now thriving and I am in position to take other people’s trades now, including neighbors’.
 

Cardinal Girl

New Member
@helya:
Please correct any incorrect information in my post below. Ignoring my sarcastic strike-throughs will also be appreciated ;)
Here's my understanding of where City Movement is right now:
Brief History:
The Great Migration
in late fall 2021 was a concerted development effort to correct issues finally identified with the auto movement function and to move active players toward the center of the map. Some tweaking of definitions of active/inactive cities as well as addressing issues identified after the first major move (mainly: player having option to avoid movement created vast wastelands surrounding those players when everyone around them was swept up in the move) occurred. They monitored the auto move results for several weeks after polishing everything up and determined that it was generally working as intended.
Where we are now:
The Auto Movement generally occurs on Mondays. The only process in use is the Automatic Movement. They talked about getting support the ability to make manual moves, but that has not materialized.
Players have identified a lingering issue:
City is and has been on the edge of the map with tumbleweeds and goldmines for neighbors along at least one entire side of their city. That city was never picked up by the auto function. Helya can look at the map and see if that's the case. If so, she can add that city to a list she's monitoring of cities similarly impacted. That will allow her to prioritize cities for manual movement if/when that is ever provided to support.
What I'm unsure about:
@Alram's question 'is the move feature working as intended?
I've seen more and more posts from players with cities on a variety of worlds having issues with a huge number of their neighbors becoming and then staying goldmines. These cities do not seem to be on the edge of a map. I looked around the map for both my cities. One of them has this issue and amongst the sea of goldmines are a couple active cities. I've never noticed it due to it being a parked, primarily fighting city with multi-millions of goods. My primary trading activity is checking for/taking trades; I rarely post trades. When looking beyond my discovered area (553 completed provinces) there are what I think will be gold mines interspersed with player cities and past that there's a patch of player cities. I didn't keep going past that, but it's definitely not the 'edge of the map'.
^^I think this is what is referred to when players are saying the Auto Move is broken now. I don't know what to recommend as a mechanism to get them to look at this and figure out what's causing it. Then they'll have to look at what can be done to address it without breaking the rest of the auto move/dropping new cities onto the map system. It took years for them to identify the issue that was corrected with the Great Migration.
Obviously individual support tickets aren't the answer; support can't help.
Perhaps a thread soliciting documentation (pics/world info) on the issue? Where should it go to get the most input? I'll have enough trouble trying to get a pic to post for mine (ask @crackie; I'm hopeless, lol!).

@Astram: Is this something you can help us with? I certainly don't intend to be looking for a problem where none exists but it would be helpful to get some documentation so we can figure out if it's a completely separate problem to the 'edge of the map' one. While it's not a problem for me, I feel for those cities beyond my neighborhood. They're smaller cities (though some determined souls have reached guest races!) so cannot have a healthy trading environment with so few provinces completed.
I have well over 100 gold mines in my world and when I reached out to support over six months ago, they said they would pass the info on, but so far nothing. My city is in the middle of the map and nothing around me but crickets. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
 

MagicPagan

Well-Known Member
Some of my active neighbors have been moved, and the number of dead cities around me have increased. The 14 cities closest to mine have all gone inactive since Inno started ignoring the problem in Winyandor and I started complaining in April 2022. (Yes, I checked all their last dates of play as shown in elvenstats.)

Support is hamstrung - they can't move cities. However, the same developers who wrote the code for auto-move can write or resurrect code for manually moving cities. They just don't want to because it would take real work to be able to match boosts like they used to.

This is convenience for developers and insult to players. I've already told my FS that if I can't get some relief by the time the next FA for live worlds is over, I'll leave the FS, abandon a Chapter 12 city and title it "The City Inno Killed."

I am sure as heck not spending more money on a city that Inno developers are squeezing out.
 

TomatoeHu

Sheets of Color
@Astram ..... Can you Please comment in here and let us know SomeOne is going to fix this issue, soon, Please ♥♥ I have a dozen Fellowship members also needing Moves Due To Coin cities.
 

DeletedUser29356

Guest
107 Goldmines (Khel) to my left and above and below. Never moved at being punished as a result. Why even bother since I have 412 provinces that means over 25% are wasted Goldmines
 
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StarLoad

Well-Known Member
I only have 21 but I have scouted to the edge of the map and as such any scouting results in 50% of the provinces being Goldmines now, Kinda defeats the point of more scouting on that side of the map, doesn't it?
 

StarLoad

Well-Known Member
Wrapping sounds great but I would still have and others too, the goldmines around us.

Ed
 
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Katwick

Cartographer
107 Goldmines (Khel) to my left and above and below. Never moved at being punished as a result. Why even bother since I have 412 provinces that means over 25% are wasted Goldmines
Lazy Cities, Inactive Cities, and Goldmines DO NOT provide Neighborhood Visits to your city, with a consequent opportunity to get Supplies as well as Coins. So the IMPORTANT consideration is how many visits you're getting, rather than just Goldmines.

Cihies that have never completed a chapter in the research tree AND have never purchased anything (on the sponsoring account) are cleared out after 30 days; but most of those slots (that are anywhere close to the center of the map) are grabbed by new cities, which ensures a blended range of cities, for most of the map.

Once per week the more advanced cities that have been inactive for a few?? months are archived. THOSE empty slots are available as movement targets.

There's an undisclosed Metric that's based on how many of your neighbors have logged on recently. If the number is DISMAL then your city might be moved closer to the center of the map.

Every ninth slot has identical boosts, so that's not much of a restraint.

BUT!! is there some sort of VALIDATION that the NEW slot has 50% MORE active neighbors than your current slot, or some such?? We simply don't know.

You CAN'T simply assume that an area with very few Goldmines has plenty of Visiting Neighbors.The essential notion is that there MAY NOT BE a better location for your city, so be careful what you ask for.
 
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DeletedUser29356

Guest
So the IMPORTANT consideration is how many visits you're getting, rather than just Goldmines.
Sure, it's a consideration, but at 25%, it becomes a really low consideration to me both today and going forward.
Once per week the more advanced cities that have been inactive for a few?? months are archived.
An assumption or guess.
There's an undisclosed Metric that's based on how many of your neighbors have logged on recently. If the number is DISMAL then your city might be moved closer to the center of the map.
Again an assumption or guess.
BUT!! is there some sort of VALIDATION that the NEW slot has 50% MORE active neighbors than your current slot, or some such?? We simply don't know.
The question is about Goldmines or neighbors and not how active before or after. If moved, I would lose the majority of the Goldmines and gain 25% more neighbors. Is that better or worse? In my view, that can only be better.
You CAN'T simply assume that an area with very few Goldmines has plenty of Visiting Neighbors.The essential notion is that there MAY NOT BE a better location for your city, so be careful what you ask for.
No, I am not assuming anything. I accept that 25% Goldmines is far worse than 25% more neighbors. You are the one making the assumptions above.
 

MagicPagan

Well-Known Member
The validation of greater or fewer numbers of active neighbors for me is the number of pages of notifications after I have given neighborly help to everyone on my map. In my city in Winyandor, this has decreased from 16 pages in April, to 12 pages, and now to 8.

IMO, Inno developers are setting a great number of cities in Winyandor up for failure. I'm not playing that particular game with them.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Maybe a stop gap measure instead of empty space just giving coins, they also automatically get NH equivalent to a return help (with supplies) and a random hit on MH, builder, or building polish. Doesn’t help with trades, but at least that would simulate a neighbor better and is prob easier to code than the automatics migration algo that needs tweaking.
 

Katwick

Cartographer
Chunk Density

Let's assume "the problem" is that you're doing MORE than 40 visits per day, but getting FEWER than 40 visits per day:
* 20 daily Fellowship visits
PLUS
* 20 daily Neighborhood visits

Pure Speculation, but let's look at a few of the Computer Science realities that limit the feasible corrective measures.

Most importantly, you need to avoid exponential explosions that are unlikely to yield useful information, so approaches such as checking the number of recent visitors for each city, each week, are inherently infeasible.

So what sort of approach would be efficient? Let's consider a density function. If you zoom out in the browser version, and scroll around the world map, it's apparent that the map loads in rectangular chunks of several dozen cities. So one feasible approach would be to:
  • Examine the cities in each chunk, and archive the inactive cities
  • As you go, create a table that enumerates the number of remaining active cities in each chunk
  • Once you've completed your archive pass, examine the LOWEST density chunks to see if any of the isolated active cities can be moved into (one of the) the HIGHEST density chunk(s)
  • Vacating chunks with lower than 1/3rd active cities, in order to populate chunks with more than 2/3rds active cities, would seem to be reasonable. There's no point in moving from medium density to medium density
Speculation? Sure, but it's a feasible approach with some reasonable boundaries.
 
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StarLoad

Well-Known Member
Let me ask a very simple question? If I start a new city with a boost of Steel, Scrolls and Dust on Friday play a bit and complete 1 ring of scouting and 2 provinces, what are the odds that I would be moved on Monday after 3 days of playing? (Answer) 100%. So does that mean that there were no other cities on the entire Server with the same boosts that could have been moved instead of me?

I find that idea utterly illogical, therefore New cities get a higher priority for movement than older established cities.

Ed
 

MagicPagan

Well-Known Member
Chunk Density

Let's assume "the problem" is that you're doing MORE than 40 visits per day, but getting FEWER than 40 visits per day:
* 20 daily Fellowship visits
PLUS
* 20 daily Neighborhood visits

Pure Speculation, but let's look at a few of the Computer Science realities that limit the feasible corrective measures.

Most importantly, you need to avoid exponential explosions that are unlikely to yield useful information, so approaches such as checking the number of visitors for each city are inherently infeasible.

So what sort of approach would be efficient? Let's consider a density function. If you zoom out in the browser version, and scroll around the world map, it's apparent that the map loads in rectangular chunks of several dozen cities. So one feasible approach would be to:
  • Examine the cities in each chunk, and archive the inactive cities
  • As you go, create a table that enumerates the number of remaining active cities in each chunk
  • Once you've completed your archive pass, examine the LOWEST density chunks to see if any of the isolated active cities can be moved into (one of the) the HIGHEST density chunk(s)
  • Vacating chunks with lower than 1/3rd active cities, in order to populate chunks with more than 2/3rds active cities, would seem to be reasonable. There's no point in moving from medium density to medium density
Speculation? Sure, but it's a feasible approach with some reasonable boundaries.
Or...the developers could start resolving the issue. Dead cities are...dead. Why are they even still there?
 
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