there are so many different playing styles. There is NO one right way to play. Wouldn't be fun if there was.
For our first seven years, neighborhoods were often slums with a lot of Goldmines, and there wasn't much we could do about it. See
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/map-related-issues.31475/
The recent implementation of city moves on the World Map is a very good reason for rethinking our interaction with our neighbors. The skillful use of this GREATLY IMPROVED capability is IMPORTANT for everybody, but especially so for experienced players who have fallen into the habit of sweeping through Neighborhood Visits without paying much attention.
I'm paying attention to two map related endeavors:
- Developing Ideal Trading Partners
- Fellowship Recruiting
As you can readily discern at
Elvenstats.com, Fellowships have a lot of trouble balancing overall resources.
This example is from a well-managed Fellowship, and simply illustrates that that resource balancing isn't a slam dunk. You may want to review your own Fellowship on
Elvenstats.com
The Elvenstats methodology, which is pretty solid, examines the actual buildings in the 25 Fellowship Member Cities and:
- Assumes that the manufacturing buildings are maxed out for the city chapters and that they use a 9,3,9 cycle
- Includes the effect of Ancient Wonders and the various event buildings
- Factors in the effect of Culture and Boosts, to the extent that they are publicly available
- Does NOT consider the various Instants and Enchantments
So we struggled along for 6 years with gimpy neighborhoods, but we don't need to do that anymore. Each weekend:
- Inactive cities are moved to the fringe of the map, or archived
- Isolated cities, that are active, are shifted into the newly available slots in active Neighborhoods
Spotting your new neighbors is actually quite easy:
- A couple of hours before your visit timer resets, each Monday, sweep your Neighborhood and visit your new (no timer) neighbors
- If they look interesting, check them out
Simply HAVING healthy neighbors has already improved our trading environment a lot, even if you're not particularly interested in trading, but there's now a wonderful new minigame for the optimizers.
If you're responsible for Fellowship Recruiting, or if your current Fellowship isn't a very good fit, look up your new neighbor on
Elvenstats.com and scroll down to their Guild History at the bottom of the page:
- If they've been jumping Fellowships every few months, don't waste your time
- Otherwise, spend some time looking at their Boosts and Playing Style to see how you can most the most of your new opportunity