City Truly Cater Only

[Silver Lady]

Suggestion: Make it possible to sell the Barracks.
Reasoning: The game is advertised as a city building game and that you can choose how to play, cater or fight. However, very early in the game is a quest to build the Barracks without any warning that once done you can NOT ever get rid of it. Now building it wouldn’t be bad if you could sell it like you can all the other military buildings.
Pros: Selling the building would free resources that could then be applied to support a catering game play strategy. I’d like to sell the barracks because after playing for a number of years I really want to be cater only in at least one of my cities, but there is this great big building taking up precious space, people and culture that I could better use for other buildings that would support a catering strategy.
Con: Some story quests could not be completed (must wait for next chapter to decline) and for some event quests you would have to do the alternate. So there would be some struggles and more strategy required to progress. However, those who chose to sell the Barracks should be aware of the ramifications and if the struggle becomes too much or they want to change how they play the Barracks could always be rebuilt.

 

[Mighty Peach]

Building a fun little catering only city right now. It's more difficult right off the bat because of that Barracks quest, because ignoring it you lose out on helpful early game rewards which is annoying.

 

[Silver Lady]

@Mighty Peach
If the Barracks was made sellable then you could build it early game and try out being a fighter or hybrid and then sell it later if you decided to go cater only. The suggestion is to make it sellable like all the other sellable builds; e.g., build -> sell repeat as desired.

 

[Yavimaya]

I feel they need to add in a warning when that quest pops up that once built it is permanent. Now, that is only IF they won't just make it sellable. I LOVE this idea.

 

[Count Rupert]

Ideally what you want is a banquet hall building (catering) as a choice. So the current quest can be reworded to offer the banquet hall or the barracks; you would need to complete one of them. Just as barracks assists with your ability to fight by producing troops, the banquet hall would assist with your ability to cater.

 

[Darielle]

Ideally what you want is a banquet hall building (catering) as a choice. So the current quest can be reworded to offer the banquet hall or the barracks; you would need to complete one of them. Just as barracks assists with your ability to fight by producing troops, the banquet hall would assist with your ability to cater.

I like both Silver's and this idea. It sounds perfect to me.

 

[Genefer]

I did not even realize the barracks, training grounds, and mercenary camp were unsellable. There definitely should be a warning at a minimum, but really the only buildings that should be required are the Main Hall & Builders Hut. A player could decide at any time they are not interested in using troops and should not be stuck with the buildings.

 

[Iyapo]

@Genefer
The training grounds and mercenary camp are sellable.

The Barracks is not sellable.

 

[Mykan]

I did not even realize the barracks, training grounds, and mercenary camp were unsellable. There definitely should be a warning at a minimum, but really the only buildings that should be required are the Main Hall & Builders Hut. A player could decide at any time they are not interested in using troops and should not be stuck with the buildings.

The devs have clearly stated that barracks, MA and trader are core buildings. Hence they can't be deleted and they have made many game mechanics that work and interact with those buildings. To make them removable would be for them to change a core "vision" of how they see the game. That would take some serious convincing.

 

[Genefer]

@Genefer
The training grounds and mercenary camp are sellable.

The Barracks is not sellable.

Thanks for the clarification

The devs have clearly stated that barracks, MA and trader are core buildings. Hence they can't be deleted and they have made many game mechanics that work and interact with those buildings. To make them removable would be for them to change a core "vision" of how they see the game. That would take some serious convincing.

I did not say it was hidden I just never realized the barracks once placed is permanent, because I never considered selling any of the 3 Training Facilities. Given the Mercenary Camp & Training Grounds are not Core Buildings and are salable it would be nice if we could build more than one.

If the Barracks and Magic Academy are "Core Buildings" does that mean players are required to build them to progress in the game? I'm not sure how selling the barracks would cause issues any more than deleting an Ancient Wonder, though I'm not a programmer, but it seems deleting Wonders would be at least equally complicated, if not more complicated when deleting a Hybrid Wonder.


It is odd they classify the Barracks as a core building when using Troops is not required.

It would be foolish to forgo the MA, but are Enchantments & Crafts essential to progress in the Game, and again why is it a Core building if you don't have to have it to progress through the game?

The Main Hall & Builders Hut are essential, because you cannot build without both.


Anyway, I was simply surprised, but I do think a pop-up notice of its permanency would be considerate.

 

[Dhurrin]

I am in favor of the idea to make the barracks sellable.

@Mykan The building may have been a core-building once, but it would be really hard to argue it is still the case after all the new game mechanics and other changes.
And since the game is advertised as one where you can choose, it would make sense to be able save/reclaim that space for a city that will be completely focused on catering.

I do agree it would probably force a lot of quests to be rewritten and considering the layoffs earlier is not something that will be done right away, but it definitely is a suggestion that is worth keeping

 

[Mykan]

I am in favor of the idea to make the barracks sellable.

@Mykan The building may have been a core-building once, but it would be really hard to argue it is still the case after all the new game mechanics and other changes.
And since the game is advertised as one where you can choose, it would make sense to be able save/reclaim that space for a city that will be completely focused on catering.

My kids play some games with lots of ads, funny how the ads reflect very poorly on the actual gameplay. I also can't combat only in this game, so it was never designed to be exclusively one or the other. While you can favour one more than the other it was not the intent. Just like they didn't intend for people to park towns, but people have found ways to do the parts they enjoy regardless of the game design. It doesn't change the design of the game. Benefit of knowledge though is you can start another town and just never place a barracks.

 

[Dhurrin]

It doesn't change the design of the game. Benefit of knowledge though is you can start another town and just never place a barracks.

You could. But that would require starting over again. I did that just a few weeks ago. And then there would be several handicaps;
- The new techtree for the first few chapters is horrible
- multiple quests revolve around placing and upgrading the barracks, so by skipping those (when possible) you lose a lot of valuable resources early in the game
- in the first few chapters just catering can be hard

And for someone who may have spent a year, or several years, building a city, very likely having spent some money on it, but at the very least a lot of time and effort on it before deciding to make a switch to a different style it is not always exactly tempting to restart a new city.

 

[Silver Lady]

Benefit of knowledge though is you can start another town and just never place a barracks.

And to add to @Dhurrin list:

- Loosing your FS if you start a new city in another world it might be too many cities to continue actively playing in all of them.
- If you start a new account then it’s a lot of logging in and out unless you have multiple PCs/tablets/phones.

I do agree it would probably force a lot of quests to be rewritten

And for someone who may have spent a year, or several years, building a city, very likely having spent some money on it, but at the very least a lot of time and effort on it before deciding to make a switch to a different style it is not always exactly tempting to restart a new city.

I did start a new city with the new tech tree and while it was a bit annoying working around the barrack quests I found it was perfectly possible to do so. It’s slowed my play a little bit but I think having the extra room, not running low on supplies and not wasting people on the barracks have more than compensated me. Even in my little city I’ve made decent progress in the Season, I can’t say about the event as being pressed for time in RL I didn’t really try, but in one of my bigger cities that I run as cater only I was able to get 9 artifacts (no diamonds or money spent but did feed my Ashen Phoenix). So reworking the quests while it might be nice doesn’t seem IMHO to be a “must”.

While I’m enjoying my little catering city my bigger cities have lots of goodies accumulated over the years so if it comes down to it I’ll drop the little city.

 

[Dhurrin]

And to add to @Dhurrin list:

- Loosing your FS if you start a new city in another world it might be too many cities to continue actively playing in all of them.
- If you start a new account then it’s a lot of logging in and out unless you have multiple PCs/tablets/phones.

I did start a new city with the new tech tree and while it was a bit annoying working around the barrack quests I found it was perfectly possible to do so. It’s slowed my play a little bit but I think having the extra room, not running low on supplies and not wasting people on the barracks have more than compensated me. Even in my little city I’ve made decent progress in the Season, I can’t say about the event as being pressed for time in RL I didn’t really try, but in one of my bigger cities that I run as cater only I was able to get 9 artifacts (no diamonds or money spent but did feed my Ashen Phoenix). So reworking the quests while it might be nice doesn’t seem IMHO to be a “must”.

While I’m enjoying my little catering city my bigger cities have lots of goodies accumulated over the years so if it comes down to it I’ll drop the little city.

With the events I have never had issues to get 9 artifacts without paying, as long as I had time to log in regularly. Same cannot be said for smaller cities as there just are too many quests that are all but impossible to do for those.

But same here; I have started some smaller cities, but they cannot compare to the main account(s). So the newer, smaller cities will be dropped if it comes to that. (Actually, they will be dropped period, as the whole point was to test some things and since I won't join Discord there no longer is a point to keeping them).
But it proves the point; when you are unable to sell the barracks, it makes it rather hard to switch later during the game. Switching the other way IS possible; anyone who never built (or upgraded) the barracks can do so, all that requires is time and in-game resources. If anyone is willing to sell the barracks and perhaps later build it again, that would be a fair choice.