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Remove City Timer Reset for Cities 11-15


Cherise
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The ability to instantly buy a bunch of cities at once cheapens their value and makes their purchase feel like much less of an accomplishment.

I think some kind of dynamic limit based on what city number is bought would make more sense.  Something like the number of turns for the timer = city bought *6, half a day per city.  City 10 would have a 5 day timer, City 10 a 10 day timer, City 30 a 15 day timer, etc.  Also would give new players something to do a number of times throughout the day over their first few days.

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3 hours ago, Azaghul said:

The ability to instantly buy a bunch of cities at once cheapens their value and makes their purchase feel like much less of an accomplishment.

I think some kind of dynamic limit based on what city number is bought would make more sense.  Something like the number of turns for the timer = city bought *6, half a day per city.  City 10 would have a 5 day timer, City 10 a 10 day timer, City 30 a 15 day timer, etc.  Also would give new players something to do a number of times throughout the day over their first few days.

 

On the other hand, you're proposing to delay growth by getting rid of the existing 1-10 zero timer function. In reality, for most players, growth is not a function of the city timer but rather a function of their resource availability. This allows players to get recruited into alliances, and also poses interesting challenges for alliances; i.e, do we bulk the player up to C10 now, or do we do a testing period to see whether if they'll stay? If we do a testing period, how long should it be and how should the tests be constructed?

 

In reality, if you remove the timer for C10-15 city buys, most players won't actually be able to fully exploit this, barring some exceptional raiders. Instead, it's more an option for existing alliances with stockpiles to expand members and rapidly fund newbies to C15, where they're all of a sudden economically and militarily relevant (albeit to a much lesser degree).

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On 6/14/2021 at 9:59 PM, Cherise said:

 

On the other hand, you're proposing to delay growth by getting rid of the existing 1-10 zero timer function. In reality, for most players, growth is not a function of the city timer but rather a function of their resource availability. This allows players to get recruited into alliances, and also poses interesting challenges for alliances; i.e, do we bulk the player up to C10 now, or do we do a testing period to see whether if they'll stay? If we do a testing period, how long should it be and how should the tests be constructed?

 

In reality, if you remove the timer for C10-15 city buys, most players won't actually be able to fully exploit this, barring some exceptional raiders. Instead, it's more an option for existing alliances with stockpiles to expand members and rapidly fund newbies to C15, where they're all of a sudden economically and militarily relevant (albeit to a much lesser degree).

As you say, the delay isn't the main limiting factor for most people, so what I'm proposing wouldn't delay growth that much. The delays would be very short at the low level, 1-5 days between cities.  22 days total to get to city 10.  72.5 days to get from City 10 to City 20.  94.5 days to get to city 20, effectively the same as with the current timer.

My main point is that I think the game is better, rewards more activity, and makes buying a city feel like more of an accomplishment when there is SOME delay between cities. It doesn't need to be a long delay, and I agree with the sentiment that 10 days is too long at lower levels.

I could also go for something like a 1 day timer for cities 1-10, 5 days for cities 11-20, 10 days for 20+ cities. I just don't like the all or nothing approach of having no delay and then jumping straight to a 10 day delay.

Edited by Azaghul
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15 hours ago, Azaghul said:

As you say, the delay isn't the main limiting factor for most people, so what I'm proposing wouldn't delay growth that much. The delays would be very short at the low level, 1-5 days between cities.  22 days total to get to city 10.  72.5 days to get from City 10 to City 20.  94.5 days to get to city 20, effectively the same as with the current timer.

My main point is that I think the game is better, rewards more activity, and makes buying a city feel like more of an accomplishment when there is SOME delay between cities. It doesn't need to be a long delay, and I agree with the sentiment that 10 days is too long at lower levels.

I could also go for something like a 1 day timer for cities 1-10, 5 days for cities 11-20, 10 days for 20+ cities. I just don't like the all or nothing approach of having no delay and then jumping straight to a 10 day delay.

Three issues:

 

First, you're asking to remove the feeling of progress that should come with the game. Players that come in, see that Wampus has City 57, are more likely to quit if they feel that it's impossible to get to City 57. In some older games, the default admonition is "this is a game of patience", which promptly gets players to leave. Even though it's illusory, the prospect of being able to go from City 1 to City 10 on day one (this is viable if we ignore infrastructure and improvement costs with a 10 credit purchase) helps new players feel that competing with Wampus is viable, even if, once you consider the full value of Wampus, this is in fact impossible.

 

Second, it's a time-honored tradition in Freemium games to allow players to skip an early-game "grind" by paying for it. Those with the nous and the resources can skip through C3 to C10 by paying Alex money for the credits. You'd actually be surprised at how many "new" players end up buying credits, so it'd be an infringement on Yellowstone Digital Media's profits.

 

Third, while TKR, like many alliances, prefers to put its members through raider training (and I've traditionally been an advocate of such) before boosting them (if it ever buys them cities), this is not the only way to do so. Alliances should retain the option of buying their members 7-8 cities on the first day as a recruitment aid. If it doesn't work, well, it's the alliance's loss.

 

Moreover, if you're familiar with the raider ecosystem, the raider ecosystem is a predator - prey system that relies on a balanced distribution of raiders and inactive prey (many raiders do not prefer to hit defended targets, and even raiders that do do prefer inactives and undefended targets to raid when they're slot-filled). The raider ecosystem is currently overloaded with raiders. Before I left the game, raiding from the 9 city tier gave plenty of inactives. When I came back, only the C4-5 tier had enough inactives to raid at full capacity with Pirate Economy.

Edited by Cherise
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There have been several mechanics to encourage and increase new player "catching up". There's also a fine line between incentivizing new players and disenfranchising senior players. At this time I don't see a purpose to removing the time requirement from cities up to city 15. However, I wouldn't be opposed to a middle ground of city timers becoming 5 days from cities 11-15.

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id actually much rather prefer that a 10 day timer appears when your reach c5 but doesn't come up again until c10, maybe not again until c15, after that then its every city.

 

Also I dont think this does that much for raiding, as the reason why raiding is so efficient down there is the number of inactives that only reach a few cities before quitting and newer players that join bad alliances that don't counter or offshore/bank effectively, moreso than the pressure from other c10s. there is actually about the same number of actives in c9&c10 as in c3&c4.

Also considering the new meta for nations trying to grow cities indefinitely is to build a UP at 11, while many alliances have the funds to buy someone to c11, buy a UP, and then up to c15, you're talking about an expensive for an unproven new player that might quit, so all but the most rich &/or reckless alliances would still likely just tier people at 10 or below for a while.

On 6/22/2021 at 11:03 AM, Prefontaine said:

I wouldn't be opposed to a middle ground of city timers becoming 5 days from cities 11-15.

Actually, I like this better than the "maybe not again until c15"  part of my suggestion 

 

Edited by Deborah Kobayashi
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