I hate fighting

[DeletedUser3312]

43 to 59 of what? You can't possibly have that low a number of swords or archers.
Plus if you are human, you have dogs.

Tim, I do not fight on my Winyandor city that I am in a FS with you in. I simply cater that. It takes 2 days to scout a province and I have plenty of goods built up and bam it's done. In my Aryendll (I can never remember how to spell the dang thing) city, I only have archers and swords. they are 48 and fight golems, priests, sorceresses, lizards, at 118 at times. And I am on my second ring around my city. As it is a baby city I only produce about 100 steel a day and now about 30 scrolls. so it is impossible to cater very often. but fighting is impossible as well. So, it is very boring simply filling and emptying machines for days on end to do something. I am out of room and need population and culture but it will be a couple of weeks at least before I have cleared enough provinces to get an expansion.

 

[DeletedUser3696]

That does seem to be the new direction they are going. But being a year or two behind isn't anywhere close to letting someone have "all the expansions". There is now a very big gap between the expansions you can get from the game and forcing people to buy them. For the first year, before the dwarf era, we all DID have the same amount of expansions....only the paying customers got them a lot earlier. They didn't have to wait. The non payers could get the same amount of expansions but they had to play continuously, send their scouts out every second, and be on all the time...and still....it took months before you could catch up.

That seemed to be a pretty fair balance. It kept non payers here, kept them interested and kept fellowships going. Now they have changed it. So only the diamond buyers will be able to have advanced cities. That changes the structure of the game and in my opinion, hurts it overall. I think that active thriving games make the most money. I think that even if a person doesn't buy a diamond ever, the traffic is good financially for the company. I think it makes for a more full game if your non payers think they have a chance and I think that gains you more diamond buyers as the non payers tell their friends about the game and the game is better and more active.

But, if only people who spend money can have a big city, that discourages the non payers and they just walk away forever. You lose that traffic. You lose those people on the forums. You lose their friends. The game gets slower and chat is less active. Then the payers aren't as excited about the game either. I mean, if a non payer works hard and advances that spurs the spenders on and they compete and spend more money. Therefore, doing anything that gets rid of the non payers hurts the company financially even though that seems counter intuitive.

I do agree the game should give an advantage to paying customers, but not to the degree it seems to be going. As a free player I still add to the game (despite what some would say)! Without the free players there would be no game.
So if you piss enough spenders off they leave and the game without spenders will die, but if you piss enough free players off and the game equally is dead.

Tim, I do not fight on my Winyandor city that I am in a FS with you in. I simply cater that. It takes 2 days to scout a province and I have plenty of goods built up and bam it's done. In my Aryendll (I can never remember how to spell the dang thing) city, I only have archers and swords. they are 48 and fight golems, priests, sorceresses, lizards, at 118 at times. And I am on my second ring around my city. As it is a baby city I only produce about 100 steel a day and now about 30 scrolls. so it is impossible to cater very often. but fighting is impossible as well. So, it is very boring simply filling and emptying machines for days on end to do something. I am out of room and need population and culture but it will be a couple of weeks at least before I have cleared enough provinces to get an expansion.

I'll defer to you, since I completely forget what it was like way back then. I just know I fight behind the speed of the caterers. Mainly because I'm a semi-hoarder and hate catering, but I also hate losing anything more than 2 stacks of troops. I've always just waited for the next troop type and/or upgrade in either troop size or troop strength. Then I usually get to blast thru 10-20 provinces quite easily. When you only have 2 builders it's pretty easy to resist getting expansions too fast.
Now I do find that I need to just keep my scouts going non-stop since I'm approaching 2 days per scout in ring 12.

 

[Thistleknot]

Apparently I am better at fighting the most people, because I have conquered 288 provinces and I rarely negotiate. Now for the details. I am playing the elves and I am half way through the orc age. I am just shy of getting Treant 2 Promotion. My troop size is currently 324 units. My Martial Monastery is at level 6. The majority of the provinces that I am fighting are in the 11th or 12th ring. I have made some direct routes to a few people and have ranged as far out as the 15th or 16th ring. I mainly use a combination of Granite Golems and Bud Sorceresses (level 3 upgrades). I occasionally use Sword Acrobats and Treants II. In the 11th/12th arena, I am winning all my fights and usually do not lose more that 20% of my troops. I occasionally will negotiate a sector. In the 15th/16th arena, I am winning about 90% of my fights. I will lose anywhere from 20% to 60% of my troops during a win, usually closer to the 60% mark. I am fighting about 5 or 6 sectors and negotiating the rest.

At the 11th/12th ring, a fight may consist of the following: 113 Cannoneers, 679 Bandits, 170 Knights, 170 Knights, and 170 Knights or 244 Cannoneers and 1461 Bandits

At the 15th/16th ring, a fight may consist of the following: 1243 Bandits, 311 Knights, 1243 Bandits and 1243 Cerberus II or 2243 Bandits and 561 Knights.

Since I am not intending to spend any money on diamonds, all my expansions come from either the tech tree or from conquering. Currently I need about 200 more provinces to cover the requirements necessary to get the last 19 provinces that need to fill in the board. I'm going to be busy for a while. I will say that fighting takes a lot of time to do. As far as resources, it is cheaper for me to fight than it is for me to negotiate. But as we always say, play the game the way you want. As long as it is fun for you, who cares.

 

[DeletedUser43]

Thistleknot, you might be interested in following along in the beta forums. The devs/mods have said that they don't intend to allow any of us who have conquered so many provinces to be able to win any battles any more. They are installing a "cap" on us just like they added a cap with the orc limitation. For us, it will just be impossible to win. They are still tweaking the system based on customer feedback, but once the system comes here I am afraid no amount of feedback in the world will change it.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

They are still tweaking the system based on customer feedback, but once the system comes here I am afraid no amount of feedback in the world will change it.

We have been told that they will not make changes once a change comes to the live servers. Not sure why they ask for feedback here when they have told us they wont' change things. I am past trying to figure out what they are thinking. smiles.

 

[Thistleknot]

They are installing a "cap" on us just like they added a cap with the orc limitation. For us, it will just be impossible to win.

That doesn't make sense to me. According to the wiki, you could potentially get 64 expansions by conquering 500 provinces. This is some major long-term planning. The designers put it in the game so that you have an alternative to spending money to get expansions. If they are now going to decide that this free-2-play game will be designed for only paying customers, then they will lose a lot of players. I like the combat system. It is challenging enough for me to be interesting without being too much. Obviously others think the current system is too difficult. That's fine because everyone has their own style of play. But if they are going to make the combat system so difficult that you cannot win, that doesn't sound fun. And penalizing players for playing by the rules of the game seems like a sure way to drive everyone away.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

That doesn't make sense to me.

It does not make sense to 99.99% of the players. It is what it is however. Sadly the game is becoming a pay to play game and not just a low cost game to play that most could afford. diamonds are terribly expensive when you consider how many you need to complete things. you would easily spend $100 a day or maybe more. I have personally spent over $1,000 in the game. my choice. however, I will not accept being forced to pay just to play the game. smiles. There are way too many other games out there that are truly free to play or low cost games. And that is where I will be going if this trend continues. I have always found the fighting slow and tedious from the beginning even back when I could win battles. It is just not my thing smiles. I know there are many that do enjoy them and that is wonderful as the developers have made a great effort to add the feature as a major segment of game play. but.. for those that do not enjoy it... there needs to be another avenue for them. after all... when the game began, battles was an option for those that enjoyed it. Now it is becoming a requirement for everyone.

 

[DeletedUser4195]

Here's the way it is for me. I'm a month into the game and I'm at a point where I can't win a fight unless it's a tournament close to my city. I won't negotiate because on this last province I scouted (at a cost of over 500 K) I need 3700 magic dust (I currently have 900) among other goods to accomplish that. It just ain't gonna happen. So, unless I buy expansions I can't grow my city. What I'm doing now is just upgrading as much as I can with my limited space and putting KP into technologies. I can see an end coming for me as far as this game is concerned. I've spent over $300.00 in my first month and they won't get another penny from me. If the game were more sociable, where people talked more than one or two words once every day or two, I'd consider hanging around. It's been interesting to this point, but now it's just plain boring. I find it to be a lonely, solitary game. Everything takes far too long to accomplish. Anyway, as a paying player, with the resources to keep paying if I wanted to, I'm going to throw in the towel and walk away, mainly because there's nobody to interact with and I'm bored to hell with it. I might be around for another week or two, but the clock is ticking for me.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

I totally understand and agree and i am thrilled that you understand the frustration of us long term players. We, none of us, understand what the crap is in the developers brains..... if they even use theirs to think. The game has gone to hell in a hand basket. Why? Who knows

 

[SoggyShorts]

I've spent over $300.00 in my first month

I'm curious, what did you spend $300 on? I don't know how the price goes up, but I would have thought that $300 gets you a lot of expansions in which case you should be pumping out goods like crazy and be able to negotiate whatever you'd like

 

[Maz Mellor]

If the game were more sociable, where people talked more than one or two words once every day or two, I'd consider hanging around. It's been interesting to this point, but now it's just plain boring. I find it to be a lonely, solitary game. Everything takes far too long to accomplish. Anyway, as a paying player, with the resources to keep paying if I wanted to, I'm going to throw in the towel and walk away, mainly because there's nobody to interact with and I'm bored to hell with it. I might be around for another week or two, but the clock is ticking for me.

I'm sorry for that, Breann. Maybe you should change fellowships...?! We have nice chats in mine (Mystique in Arendyll), and the group I'm in in Winyandor (Insane Asylum Wanderers) is even chattier (like, I frequently log on to find 100+ messages have gone by since I was on last).

Bobbykitty, thanks as ever for your continued updates. I think I now dread the new system even more, since it seems they're actually TRYING to make it impossible for some folks to fight successfully. I'd better enjoy a few more provinces while I still can.