New Guest Race

[DeletedUser3268]

With yet another guest race, The Elementals, coming soon and the city grid maxed out, it's about high time satellite cities are made available. If nothing else, it allows what will be new buildings required to be placed and upgrades to current ones to happen. With the additions, running out of room is a real thing. Now, to be fair, the only way I would want to be able to access a satellite city would be only after EVERY grid expansion is opened in the current city...then of course some portal building could be built and placed in the current city that leads to the satellite. An Expansion Hall could be a thing that has to be connected to the portal on the other side.

This will allow for a much broader expansion of the game, especially for those who are at or near the end. I'm in chapter 9 and bumping up on the end with nowhere to put anything new with this next race could very easily create boredom and loss of players.

 

[Ashrem]

We've had word via the beta forums that cities near the top end of the existing expansions are already causing some trouble for any hardware that is not top-of-the-line. I expect they will be seeking creative ways to avoid expanding the city further

 

[DeletedUser5543]

Just brainstorming, but one thing that might be a possibility to see that not expanding the grid would not be an issue, would be to go 'micro' for a level. For some reason, probably since there are a few parallels between the two, the "Doozers" on the late Jim Henson show "Fraggle Rock" come to mind on occasion when playing this game. lol On that show the "Doozers" who were these tiny little creatures, much smaller than the "Fraggles" whose world they inhabited, would just build and build and build never stopping for anything, and would even getting sick if they stopped building. I remember one episode, in fact, where the "Fraggles," which loved to eat the "Doozer" constructions as a delicacy, stopped eating them and the "Doozers" all left because there was nowhere else to build. (ahem) Then once the "Fraggles" started eating them again the "Doozers" all returned to build again.

I wonder if it might be a good idea to infuse "Doozer" technology on the people of Elvenar (or something that won't be a copyright infringement) and have some of the smallest buildings you have designed yet but still keeping the per square production ratio going in the same direction. It would be quite a challenge, one meant for an advanced player, to have a level where the houses, workshops and factories are literally as small as they were in the beginning of the game, if not even smaller, down to a square or two. This would once again force alot of building of the 3 main production buildings to match the outputs of their predecessors and would create the need for more road to connect everything. It would make for a much longer chapter and wouldn't need to expand the grid or create a second page that people would constantly need to go back and forth between with reloads. Then when that chapter is done, you can go back to the size of the buildings that you had before which, in turn, will again take some redesigning for your city to accommodate again. I retold that story also because you could potentially design a situation where players would have to "build" or "create a portal" to something that would then "consume the many 'Doozer' constructions" so that you could build again but that wouldn't be necessary. Just an idea to throw out there since it is inevitable that you'll have to stop expanding the grid at some point but don't want to stop what Elvenar is all about. Hope that helps! Keep up the great work! More importantly, Happy Holidays to you all!

 

[Ashrem]

The problem with hardware issues typically isn't "size," It's complexity. Making more, smaller, buildings doesn't actually improve that, but rather makes it worse. Every building that can be drawn has to be downloaded via the network and then rendered by our local graphics card. I think they will actually need to go in almost the opposite direction, by convincing us to have fewer buildings that cover the function, thereby reducing the total number of buildings that need to be downloaded and drawn. Maybe something like a 5x5 square of "parkland" that basically looks like grass but is a high-culture/mana object. A residential complex that uses the space of two residences but offers more population than 2 of the lower level. it wouldn't surprise me at all if that were one impetus for the Ancient wonder upgrades last spring that made them much more desirable. They keep the same footprint at every level, but just keep getting better.

They're also not doing themselves any favors with the Event buildings. Every event adds more art that has to be downloaded if even one abandoned city is still using it when you visit.

 

[DeletedUser3507]

This should have been planned for long ago, in my opinion. Elvenar should have seen this coming and developed a fix. Be it satellite cites or portals that actually lead somewhere.

 

[Mykan]

They have hinted at maybe some downsizing in future races. There is currently ample space to progress at a reasonable clip, less space depending on what priorities one has. They have being slowing down expansions for a while and many times previously suggested there would be additional max space added each new race.

 

[DeletedUser3507]

Currently Mykan my city is maxed to the max available space.

 

[Arkadia]

.... It would be quite a challenge, one meant for an advanced player, to have a level where the houses, workshops and factories are literally as small as they were in the beginning of the game, if not even smaller, down to a square or two. This would once again force alot of building of the 3 main production buildings to match the outputs of their predecessors and would create the need for more road to connect everything. It would make for a much longer chapter and wouldn't need to expand the grid ..... Then when that chapter is done, you can go back to the size of the buildings that you had before which, in turn, will again take some redesigning for your city to accommodate again.

I LOVE that idea @Von Hinderlen !I think people would go nuts at first, but it definitely would be challenging and fun, and take quite awhile to build a gazillion tiny buildings

...Every building that can be drawn has to be downloaded via the network and then rendered by our local graphics card.

Nope. Thats nice about Flash...u only download the same vector graphics 1x

 

[DeletedUser3507]

There recoding everything to get away from flash, what then?

 

[Ashrem]

Nope. Thats nice about Flash...u only download the same vector graphics 1x[/USER]

I didn't say each iteration, I said "each building." Every building you need to display has to be downloaded once (at least, depending on how much storage space Flash has available). Every iteration of that building has to be drawn by your graphics engine each time you change the page and for each city you visit.[/user]

 

[dikke ikke]

i guess inno want us to build more AW's and upgrade them far enough so we can remove some other buildings (armories, residences, factories, workshops ...) but it will cost a load of KP. When i will have my next expansion, i am planning to build 3 extra AW's and start upgrading them. Then i will have 12 AW's out of 20

 

[DeletedUser3507]

I have just 9 but a total of 52 AW lvls, that's plenty for me.

 

[dikke ikke]

for the moment i have 71 AW levls, concentrating most on dark maze and mountain hall

 

[DeletedUser3507]

I don't use dark matter. I have alot of premium culture that offsets it. I manage to keep 1.7m in stock on mana

Just added Temple of Toads too so my aw lvls will go up.
I use to hate AW's so that's why the low number, until they rebalanced them I hated them. Now I like them

 

[DeletedUser2959]

I manage to keep 1.7m in stock on mana

Soggy (I think) said the same (sort of) thing. How do you do it? Especially with the 10% loss every day! I'm 1/4 into Halflings and I have 20 Arcane Libraries but I can barely make enough mana to advance the tree.

 

[DeletedUser5800]

Soggy (I think) said the same (sort of) thing. How do you do it? Especially with the 10% loss every day! I'm 1/4 into Halflings and I have 20 Arcane Libraries but I can barely make enough mana to advance the tree.

The best way is to get stuck for 2 months waiting on the Dev's.
But may I add if you wanted to cut some space out of your libraries, what I do is this.

Spoiler

 

[SoggyShorts]

Soggy (I think) said the same (sort of) thing. How do you do it? Especially with the 10% loss every day! I'm 1/4 into Halflings and I have 20 Arcane Libraries but I can barely make enough mana to advance the tree.

Wasn't me, I don't need mana buildings other than Dragon Abbey, and a couple cool looking ones from events.
My live cities are at the end though, so I have a few old buildings lying around, and whenever I notice my mana getting close to ~300K I dump it all on roads. They can't decay mana that you don't have!

 

[DeletedUser3507]

Try 6 months, that's how long my AW project has been running.

 

[DeletedUser1036]

There recoding everything to get away from flash, what then?

Everything will change yet remain the same as far as visual looks from what I understand. Since Flash itself is going away they are switching to HTML5 I believe which also loads faster