Feedback Guild Expedition Update

[xivarmy]

You’re missing my point. My point is, the greater flames are better than they first seemed to be. Due to their efficiency. Comparing them to comparable GB’s. Which are the best to compare to. On the long term eventually greater flames will stack. For those reasons imo their pretty good. Offering a greater flexibility with their 2x1 size and no roads requirement and high efficiency. Only surpassed by very high levels of specifically defence GB’s. Further reinforcing my view on them.
My point wasn’t that the GB’s and greater ritual flames are mutually exclusive. In other words not being able to have both. Choosing the one over the other. To me the appeal of them is greater than the GB’s.

Did someone say they were bad? They're not as good as something like a phantom tower which you'd build for other stats and get the defense for "no extra space". But if you want defense *now* and managed to have them (which we can't yet - at least 2 more weeks to go before some people have *1*), sure they're just fine - and better than an equivalent pile of watchfires and tactician towers.

But the primary problem with them (and the chain elements, and the divine sky watch) is by the time you actually get any significant number of them you may *no longer* want them. These buildings, unlike the forgotten temple and serpent head, seem balanced to be "just good enough now". But still come in at a rate of 1 a month. 12 months from now will you want greater ritual flames? Hard to say. And yet you'll only have a handful of them by then *if* you've already been doing GE5 anyways.

That said, yes I took your post out of context - I thought you were trying to say the GBs were bad (which there is a case to be made for that), not that greater ritual flames were good

 

[softly explorer]

I speak for myself when I write this :
I don't really care about "efficiency" in a game...I try to play as best I can, but it need to stay fun and relaxing enough ... (constantly) calculating can sometimes be an interesting case ... But I prefer to play and have some fun. Trying to be as much efficient as possible feels for me as analyzing all parts of a game till it's analized to death ! ...then a game become no longer a source of pleasure !
I play a game in first place to have some distraction from real life. And taking a game too seriously can give me stress, which is sure not supposed to be!
If I wish to build St Basil, Deal Castle, whatever...I do so. I've now just 10 fragments of a Greater Ritual Flame (10/100) ... I'm afraid it will give me stress if I think too much about efficiency because it will take a very long time before I even have a few of those Greater Ritual Flames ! In the meantime I've already 34% att + def from my St Basil, happy with that, althought it's still way too low boost for GE L5!!

Suggestion for Inno :
please lower % to a more realistic value or improve St Basil and DC... OR ...create a 3rd GB that give att+def ... Bringing on Galata Tower was possible, so why not a 3rd GB for defending army?
[ Zeus + CoA + CdM < TA > St Basil + Deal C + .... ! a missing GB ! ]

 

[drakenridder]

Did someone say they were bad? They're not as good as something like a phantom tower which you'd build for other stats and get the defense for "no extra space". But if you want defense *now* and managed to have them (which we can't yet - at least 2 more weeks to go before some people have *1*), sure they're just fine - and better than an equivalent pile of watchfires and tactician towers.

But the primary problem with them (and the chain elements, and the divine sky watch) is by the time you actually get any significant number of them you may *no longer* want them. These buildings, unlike the forgotten temple and serpent head, seem balanced to be "just good enough now". But still come in at a rate of 1 a month. 12 months from now will you want greater ritual flames? Hard to say. And yet you'll only have a handful of them by then *if* you've already been doing GE5 anyways.

That said, yes I took your post out of context - I thought you were trying to say the GBs were bad (which there is a case to be made for that), not that greater ritual flames were good

It has been said a while ago compared to regular ritual flames. Phantom towers are another comparison, which I've not taken into account. As I've compared pure defence buildings vs GB. The conclusion is up to interpretation. For the GB's giving defence buffs to hit or even exceeding the efficiency of greater ritual flames, their level must be well past lvl100. This is without taking roads into account. So, depending on who you ask, GB's must hit even higher levels to compare. Just saying in that perspective greater flames are pretty decent for what they are. Anyone can take their own conclusions from that.
If you feel resources and time invested in a lvl100+ st. Bas. is superior to greater flames, that's completely fine and up to you. No need to convince me. As I've said the observation is up to interpretation.

@softly explorer no stress, I've figured out how greater flames are compared to GB's for fun. Thought sharing the observations from that could aid some others. Everything is relative and as I've said, what I've observed is up to interpretation. Personally I feel they ain't that bad as they're relatively as good in what they're doing as a lvl100+ defence GB.

 

[einzauberengel]

Depending what you mean by challenge, but here the challenge comes from gathering enough goods for negotiating. I would say the neg game is also a challenge, but for reasons I can't really say that (why you can say "blindly negging", without thinking).



It wouldn't make it relevant, many will just forget it exists (I would do for sure). It simply doesn't make sense to make your city overall much weaker just to be better at 1 thing while being worse at many other things.

It sucks I can't sing, but I'm not giving my vision and hearing for that skill. Not. Worth. It.

why should the guild and the single player invest 12 - 13 k goods for fragments????? I mean thats the essence, paying a bunch of goods for worthless prices

 

[einzauberengel]

It still neglects that you just won't *have* the flames to replace them. Not that I plan to build a Basil on live at current balancing.

I did build one on beta among many other inefficient options to get up and running (such as build an extra 4 standing stones next to my celtic set, and buying a globe fountain off the antique dealer) Would I have built greater ritual flames instead if I had em? Yes (actually probably "as well", not instead). I don't really build high level GBs on beta - I don't even have an Arc on beta! I just self-level whatever I have prints for to get the FP out of my bar So adding a St Basil as a sink for a new sink for those FP wasn't a big deal.

But *if* I were planning to fight GE5 on live (i'm not - I'll negotiate at current balancing). And *if* st basil was enough to make a difference (it's not by itself). Then I might build one on live because it's even more impractical to wait for buildings to replace it.

It'll be waiting for enough phantom towers and panda shrines and whatever else they have upcoming that might one day years down the road make some of GE5 accidentally fightable for my live cities in higher eras (if current balance remains the same). And I'll evaluate then whether it's worth space for greater ritual flames and St Basil.

It's plausible low-era cities may do well with St Basil as part of a start though (their first fights are much lower in boost required).

I wonder why people having multiple and complex attacking buildings and concentrate with the defending only on 2 buildings. I believe the defending needs to be as complex as for defending. But we are suffering the attacking strategy of 11 years and neglecting defence. I still like the thought of bringing brains into the defending armee concept but I still really dislike the redesign of lvl 1 to 4 prices

 

[shad2389]

why should the guild and the single player invest 12 - 13 k goods for fragments?????

absolutly agree , it's absurd as is this lvl 5
the % to get through it are to high and why in hell nurf rest of GE ?
so we 'll want more prizes and go try lvl 5 who is way to hard ?
we spent years working on att % cause def was useless now that we'r strong enough to go through lvl 4 and have no space left you want us to find space out of nowhere to build up def ?????
what the hell are you thinking of INNO ??????

 

[Yekk]

Having fought my way through GE5 I can say finishing second phase of GE5 with same age troops will need 250/250 city defense plus pots plus building GE towers. Manual fighting is a must. Knowing how the IA reacts a must. Third phase gets tougher fast. I can do it with same age troops with a base city defense of 353/401 using GE buildings, pots, and tavern buff. For most ages players will get stuck at this point with negotiation's their only recourse in phase 4. My last fights, 13-16, are (I am in PE) using hover/rogues. Ritual flames and Tactician towers now have value. For live the Phantom Tower is awesome as is a decently leveled TA

 

[Mech]

Much has bee said already so no need to rehash everything, let me propose a few changes to improve things.

First of all, the GE1-4 selection kit fragments need to be heavily rebalanced. Either lower the number required, or increase the number you get. Currently on live, if you combine all the buildings within each kit, you get 1.03 GE1 kits, 0.53 GE2 kits, 0.98 GE3 kits, and 1.21 GE4 kits worth of buildings each week. I think giving enough fragments for one each of the GE1-4 kits every week makes sense, you'd get more or less the same number of buildings. It is a buff compared to live due to more flexibility, but I don't think that's unwarranted or too extreme. The current GE balancing has been around for years, a lot has happened in that time, inflation etc etc.

Secondly, the diamonds nerf. Diamonds have been cut in half, from around 160 to 80 on average per week. Both for new and established players this sucks, especially considering this is one of the final remaining ways to get diamonds for free. I know that's the idea and Inno wants people to buy more diamonds or just spend money directly, but as a player it sucks. Another reason it sucks is that now GE5 practically requires diamonds to play unless you want to waste a lot of goods.

I think the diamonds from GE1-4 should be reverted to around 150, but I also think diamonds should be added to GE5. I think a great incentive to play GE5 would be for the final encounter to give a decent chunk of diamonds, say 150-250. It's a big reward, but requires a lot of effort. It makes it rewarding to play GE5, and I truly think it will make a lot more players try to complete it, rework their cities for it, etc. To accommodate this change, simply redistribute the Forgotten Temple fragments from the encounter to the other big GE5 encounters

Chiming in years late to this detailed debate, but "here's my 2 cents." After playing FoE since 2014 or so, I laughed at WW farms because I knew my time was worth more to me than a daily pattern of grinding clicks on my mouse instead of just paying the devs that are making an entertaining game for me to enjoy. Even today, my friends and I STILL laugh at WW farms, because my time is STILL worth more to me than the daily grind of logging in and clicking... to save money?!? Hell no.

I work for my money & I get paid well. I'll pay for what I enjoy & gladly. I've played Civilization games, "4X" games & X-Com since I built my first PC. I can have more fun offline than logging into FoE for inane clicking. Every year I spend money on diamonds for expansions -it's my way of supporting the devs. That's all. To me FoE is CivLite... very very very light. It's trivial to create strategies, a spreadsheet & tactics to outwit my neighbors of hundreds of FP per day.

Beating the game's AI has become a bore -auto battling is a bane on this game because it removes a lot thoughtful gameplay. Those huge attack/defense bonuses we are discussing innately affect the margin we can auto-battle through challenges to get rewards -which remove a lot of thoughtful gameplay. If we didn't grind the auto-battle button to beat other guild members & the AI, this game would retain a LOT more enjoyment. imo, THAT is the line that FoE should go back to and rebuild the game (or fork it for those addicted to the simplicity of auto-battling.) Current GE is just an ugly symptom of that bigger flaw.

So, the fragments & 50% diamond reduction in GE are to help Inno earn a steady income -they deserve it. If they want more $$$ from me, it's going to be by making my time in FoE more fun than doing things offline, and it's already losing that battle via an innately flawed battle system. Oh, negotiations are a horrible way for non-fighters to find an alternate path to completing challenges because their solutions are inanely predictable. So GE negotiations are just as boring as auto-battling, and just as unprofitable as everyone else has pointed out.

 

[nice2haveu]

If they want more $$$ from me, it's going to be by making my time in FoE more fun

Well said and having the same thought. When they first introduced fragments in the game(possibly be GBG), felt okay since regularly collect them within those 10days of battles in GbG. Slowly pushing fragments into GE also and there is no top three guild collection of fragments reward in GE like GBG at the end. No one raises fragments issue on GBG till today because it has little balance way of collecting it. But keeping the same in GE, the reason for people shouting on fragments is one time effort in the week to collect and collected very little. All these changes doesn't come near to any of the fun factor to play the game.

If the live server updated as GBG without 0% attrition concept and GE doesn't give good rewards and maintained with fragments, 10 years of playing this game may come to an end for me. Seriously, Foe team lacking on impressing the customers or players in the game. Is this a way of making the game getting improved by not satisfying most of the players (who are already there and who are entering newly to game).

 

[einzauberengel]

absolutly agree , it's absurd as is this lvl 5
the % to get through it are to high and why in hell nurf rest of GE ?
so we 'll want more prizes and go try lvl 5 who is way to hard ?
we spent years working on att % cause def was useless now that we'r strong enough to go through lvl 4 and have no space left you want us to find space out of nowhere to build up def ?????
what the hell are you thinking of INNO ??????

I dont want more prizes but sencefull prizes. It must be worthfull working and investing in lvl 5 both for player and guild

 

[einzauberengel]

Chiming in years late to this detailed debate, but "here's my 2 cents." After playing FoE since 2014 or so, I laughed at WW farms because I knew my time was worth more to me than a daily pattern of grinding clicks on my mouse instead of just paying the devs that are making an entertaining game for me to enjoy. Even today, my friends and I STILL laugh at WW farms, because my time is STILL worth more to me than the daily grind of logging in and clicking... to save money?!? Hell no.

I work for my money & I get paid well. I'll pay for what I enjoy & gladly. I've played Civilization games, "4X" games & X-Com since I built my first PC. I can have more fun offline than logging into FoE for inane clicking. Every year I spend money on diamonds for expansions -it's my way of supporting the devs. That's all. To me FoE is CivLite... very very very light. It's trivial to create strategies, a spreadsheet & tactics to outwit my neighbors of hundreds of FP per day.

Beating the game's AI has become a bore -auto battling is a bane on this game because it removes a lot thoughtful gameplay. Those huge attack/defense bonuses we are discussing innately affect the margin we can auto-battle through challenges to get rewards -which remove a lot of thoughtful gameplay. If we didn't grind the auto-battle button to beat other guild members & the AI, this game would retain a LOT more enjoyment. imo, THAT is the line that FoE should go back to and rebuild the game (or fork it for those addicted to the simplicity of auto-battling.) Current GE is just an ugly symptom of that bigger flaw.

So, the fragments & 50% diamond reduction in GE are to help Inno earn a steady income -they deserve it. If they want more $$$ from me, it's going to be by making my time in FoE more fun than doing things offline, and it's already losing that battle via an innately flawed battle system. Oh, negotiations are a horrible way for non-fighters to find an alternate path to completing challenges because their solutions are inanely predictable. So GE negotiations are just as boring as auto-battling, and just as unprofitable as everyone else has pointed out.

I almost agree MooningCat and you. But still I caught myself being truely frustrated, that 1. the outcome of the expected higher prizes are 100% known and useless. I loved waiting for the surprise of the win. Now I know I will get fragments of stuff I dont want to have as a special prize. From a psychological design of price giving not a good idea. I wondered a longer time why level 4 was kind of boring during a few battles, but after being aware that the bigger challenges are now not even a wooden spoon I completely lost fun. For me fun is the reason to play and no other reason

 

[Ready Player 1]

Making this level count toward GE competition, is, in the words of the Madalorian, "not the way" All you're going to accomplish is make it more difficult for those that can't finish this level to get into stronger guilds that will only want players that can finish this level for the competition.

 

[zookeepers]

I don't think reducing diamond gain in GE is a solution for raising income through diamond sales. It is not really fair that established diamond farms do not get any effect, GE with lowered diamond gain, more difficult to build up new diamond farms, and no change to GBG...

As a player happily using free diamonds, I don't really want to say this, but solution for gaining more revenue would be more like this.

1.Sell diamonds cheeper
2.Do some events
3.Eventually, make items cost more diamonds

Unless you make inflation happen, many players have stocked pile of diamonds, and wouldn't try hard to use them = they would never purchase

 

[einzauberengel]

Well said and having the same thought. When they first introduced fragments in the game(possibly be GBG), felt okay since regularly collect them within those 10days of battles in GbG. Slowly pushing fragments into GE also and there is no top three guild collection of fragments reward in GE like GBG at the end. No one raises fragments issue on GBG till today because it has little balance way of collecting it. But keeping the same in GE, the reason for people shouting on fragments is one time effort in the week to collect and collected very little. All these changes doesn't come near to any of the fun factor to play the game.

If the live server updated as GBG without 0% attrition concept and GE doesn't give good rewards and maintained with fragments, 10 years of playing this game may come to an end for me. Seriously, Foe team lacking on impressing the customers or players in the game. Is this a way of making the game getting improved by not satisfying most of the players (who are already there and who are entering newly to game).

The first time I thought about fragments was during introduction of the vikings... years ago before GG exists... still have dead fragments in the inventory

 

[Pericles the Lion]

Having fought my way through GE5 I can say finishing second phase of GE5 with same age troops will need 250/250 city defense plus pots plus building GE towers. Manual fighting is a must. Knowing how the IA reacts a must. Third phase gets tougher fast. I can do it with same age troops with a base city defense of 353/401 using GE buildings, pots, and tavern buff. For most ages players will get stuck at this point with negotiation's their only recourse in phase 4. My last fights, 13-16, are (I am in PE) using hover/rogues. Ritual flames and Tactician towers now have value. For live the Phantom Tower is awesome as is a decently leveled TA

So, in summary, 353/401 with pots (you didn't say how many but more than one is not sustainable) will get a PE player thru the first 12 encounters by fighting. After that, negotiate or use advanced era units (which, in your case, probably means not aging up). This is a very niche strategy that only a very small number of players will be able to utilize.

 

[blueskydwg]

Am I the only one producing more than 2,000 goods per day between my buildings and my recurring?to
I have between 10,000 and 50,000 of each item on all ages. What do I use them for?
Nothing, it was at the beginning for "just in case" but since then I involuntarily produce much more than my needs.
So I give them to my treasury, but it is more than a million of each goods despite a big activity in GbG. I also give them to all my members but they have too much too.
So spending 10,000 every week for GE 5s won't make any difference to me, the goods will finally be useful, without putting my city management at risk.
But the question I ask myself is am I the only one in this case? Do I manage better than you?
Winning after 4 weeks a building that will offer me daily between 100 and 200 FP instead of 10,000 goods/week, that seems profitable to me.

Thanks for this post Deadpool. I was ready to pass this week on GE5 - not having fully checked into the building rewards. Four weeks of spending 10K or so (I spent 8900 this week) and getting a limited use (also 4 weeks) building that gives me nice boosts and a 20% bump in fps seems to be a good tradeoff. And since my Beta city produces over 11K goods per week, not including recurring, SC bonus, HC bonus and all the other ways we get goods, using some of those seems a good use of things that would otherwise just accumulate.

 

[Kommodor]

first of all, the expedition needs:
1. reduce in 2!!! times of need for negotiations and for battles.
2. after receiving avatars, replace them with 50-100 diamonds.
3. return normal bonuses for every fourth battle in the expedition
4. reduce the impact on the destruction of the free part of the game... not only in expedition changes...

 

[Kronan]

Beta report: From the view of an IRON AGE BETA player: Feedback for INNO after 2 weeks of the "NEW" GE.

Background: This is the first week for the NEW GE, Difficulty level 1-4. Last week of course, we were introduced to DIFF 5 (aka GE 5), so this is the 2nd week for review on that (which I am not able to do).

Here's an assessment on GE 1 - 4, with the context of a very young era player (that is a long time player in live)

1) Positive: The reward focus is RIGHT in the non-BIG encounters (aka Pyramids) and better than the old GE version 1-4: Goods, FP and warriors.
2) Positive: The amounts increase nicely as the Difficulty levels increase. By the time I got to DIFF 4, I was winning game-helpful amounts with reasonable sizes.
3) Positive: I am not sure of any AI changes, it may be slightly harder, but not worrisome (at my A/D stats). The difficulty of battle is about right. My OFFENSIVE warrior stats are higher than probably most in the IA (262/319) so maybe that's why I am not having a serious problem, but I am manually battling in Diff 4 - and enjoying it - and yes I am finding a few encounters challenging.

Would like to hear about this from other IA players as to their experiences with their warrior stats...

4) Negative: Chronically disappointed at the relentless and almost corporate pathological drive to fragment everything in FOE. The Big GE encounters (Pyramids) deliver puny quantities of fragments, some to a gut-wrenching goal of 720 to create an item, which will take weeks. Explain how that's interesting to ANYONE here, or better yet, why that's a "honey" magnet (vs vinegar) to potential players thinking of starting their journey in FoE. The viral nature of information about these deep fundamental changes to FoE won't be contained for long. If you want to slow the player community down, don't stand on the brakes with both feet while the car is going 100 mph (or 161 KPH). Just plain wrong, or dare I say: foolish plan Find a better balance than blowing our interests off as you've done, and are going to do if this hits live as is.
5) Negative: Diamonds have fewer GE 1 - 4 offering encounters, and seemingly fewer accruals at them, in the new GE. Very weak offering for classic players, and new players. Yeah - I get it - Inno listened to someone in their company much earlier in the age of the game about "Hey let's allow them to make cities in every world, and the diamonds flow to 1 big bucket, that they can use anywhere, in all worlds they play or start!!" . Didn't you guys think our opportunism wouldn't be contained to not drive to that as a solution to our game costs? Seriously - we're smart shoppers! We're smart people, too and collectively - the players here are a HUGE organism of brainpower and "think outside of the box" solutions.

In my opinion, you guys have more work to do on GE before this can move to live.

Suggestions include:

1) Attenuate your position on fragmenting everything in GE. This can come as a reduced fragment goal, return to whole buildings that can be won, or a combination of both.
2) Increase the opportunity to get diamonds in GE 1-4 by having them offered at a few more encounters at least 1 on every level - IMHO. We may not get to what we were able to earn in the live version (OLD GE), but do allow a chance to try for them as a viable part of GE.

 

[CDmark]

You should consider giving the Gaea Statue an extreme makeover. It is 24 tiles like the attacking CoA. Remove medals, put in defending A/D
Or, Space Needle, a little bigger than CoA. Remove coin production, insert defending A/D.

Either of those changes wouldn't upset the 34 players that have those GBs. You could even toss them 10 diamonds per level they have obtained as "hush" money.

Right now, we have the SBC which correlates to the CdM.
Deal Castle, well this football field sized GB is 2x CoA or 8X Zeus. Give equivalent A/D


Another thought, GE5 and guild competition. Why not keep the current race to 64, 133.3%. Then you have a second race for GE5 and I saw earlier giving prestige as a reward, similar to GBG, don't know? This keeps the current process in tact (133,3%) and gives the guild something new and fun.

 

[blueskydwg]

A suggestion. Add a city attack or defense option to the Altar Garden selections. I have always used the Altar of Artemis to get the 7% attack boost, but if you added one with city attack boost I'd add that one now. Just a thought.