I don't understand players who write this. Who forces you to play by the clock? Answer - it's you. The time reward is an additional reward for those who feel like they can do more in the game (you can call them as you want it doesn't change the result). The main prize which is Shinto Temple (for Japanese settlement) doesn't have time limits, you can play and still have "a real life" and get your prize afterward.
P.S. I have only one lvl5 Runestone from Vikings, never felt bothered to get the gold reward every time. Am I sad because I don't have 100500 runestones in my city? Definitely not, LOL
Yup it's me. I want the lvl 9 tree in 6 months, not 12. If I care about the game, of course that's the case - it's the most efficient non-GB in the game, why wouldn't I want it sooner? Which is really my biggest problem - the rewards are *too good*. I don't *want* to do settlements at all (they're boring and tedious) but if I want to keep playing the game, they feel rather mandatory. Even ignoring the time limit to get bonus fragments, I want them done sooner than later so I can get that main prize that's what I'm really after sooner. The only way I won't wind up doing the same thing with the japanese that I did with the vikings is to quit the game as a whole - so I'm trying to be on my way out (will check back late this year when battlegrounds are out to see if they made something that makes the game worth playing again).
Settlements stink of typical mobile games. Lots of activity, more chores than gameplay though. Everybody who puts in the activity succeeds (ok, maybe not quite - there does seem to be a segment of this game's population that finds it "hard"). This is really not the reason I started playing FoE (which had a lot to do with interesting manual battles (almost non-existent now; too much boost available compared to defenses) combined with competitive elements (GvG and neighborhood PvP - both of which have taken a serious beating in terms of relevance to the modern game), and it's quite distressing that it's the way the game has been moving for years.