21JUL11 - Mobiles, other

Sister Nikki wrote: The main problem is that a mechanism of the game suddenly changes. The food balance it is just an excuse, You don't have to produce food in your city as you have Stores full of it. The game system right now which allows you to do anything unless you get out of food is correct. How can anyone think that a town must produce the food that it needs ? Just take an example from real world. Also if we have to speak about food then we can criticize all the research page for sovereignty which although it is a great tool for people making different strategies with the main bottleneck of the research points and food production are almost useless except some fields for speeding up unit training. The game provides a great number of  alternatives but in practice the most of them are frozen because of the research points and the food needed.  It is not wise to open a Pandora's box by making backwards steps. Sorry to say but the game is already limiting the freedom of strategies which by the game have been introduced and afterwards frozen. You are making a great game in compare with "Travian as example" and many more others but there must be a way all the possibilities to be also workable.

First off, no-one is saying that a town must produce its own food, you will still be able to ship in food to meet your requirements.

You say look at the real world... OK lets do that.  Can a city whose population require 2 Tonnes of grain a day, survive on 0 Tonnes of grain a day?  This is the RL equivalent of what is happening with the current mechanics.  Perhaps you would rather the fix be that when you hit 0 food your population starts dwindling rather than your tax rate?

All that is happening is that the Devs are making it a requirement that a city must have food supplies at all times, I personnaly will loose out from this, but see nothing wrong with it as I beleive it will in the long run improve the Illyriad gaming experience for the majority.

I disagree with you on your veiws of sovereignty and its usefullness, although in the past I had similar views, I have learnt that non food and non recruitment sov can be very usefull.

Also would you care to provide an example of how this update will limit our strategies.  Personnaly I can see it doing nothing but increase the variety of strategies used by inventive players.  It is essentially just getting rid af a tactic that dominates the game for veteran players, and will therefore force us to come up with new ones of our own, rather than all heading down a very similar path.

1. In Real world the most towns produce 0 food but their storehouses, supermarkets are always full. The food comes across the whole countries.
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2. It may effect you but not me as I am not using this strategy and have food production in all my towns perhaps I am newer player than you :) .

3. Everything that makes more borders reduces the strategy limits. I believe and that is my opinion that the game needs more freedom than more control whenever you agree or disagree with this.
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4. So food isn't the real problem but the sudden change of a basic rule in which most of people have invested their effort to play the game in certain strategy view.
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5. "It is essentially just getting rid af a tactic that dominates the game for veteran players" Is it a Veteran hunting season do we need to get rid of them ? Are they dominate the game ? Sorry I don't think so I have seen them 8 months now almost all of them helping and securing new players and I respect them because of their love for the game without them Illy could not be exist or could be a new game in which everyone with power would attack all the time new players a phenomenon that overwhelms the most browser games.
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and sorry to ask by the way are you an Illyriad player ? if so why you are hiding your Illy id? I don't want to offend you just I didn't knew that you could registered with a different name than your Illyriad one.

I have been considering destroying 1 or 2 of the 5 food tile cities I have for some time now to rebuild them on more bountifull lands.

As always - I really like how both sides of this argument (and the shades inbetween) are all giving well thought out and balanced opinions on this issue. It is VERY important that we discuss this imo it will have an effect on every single Illy player's strategy at some point, and a very profound negative effect on many veteran players' accounts, causing a very large amount of rebuilding/rebalancing that many of us were extremely glad to have considered "finished" to a great extent - so we could just concentrate on the stuff we enjoy (fighting/tournaments/mysteries/politics/trading etc.) without all those tedious months of micromanagement.

Dark: I absolutely agree about creating new strategies - every change to Illy adds an new dimension for us to explore - and I enjoy that very much.

If the ability to change resource plots (to different standard allocations) is not allowed with this change I'm not going to quit or make a scene or cry about it, I don't enjoy watching watching other people attention seeking - but I certainly will not be participating or enjoying this game to the same level that I used to - I just don't have time or money to rebuild 7 out of 9 of my cities and I don't like playing a game at an inherant disadvantage to other people outside of my own control.

Anyways I guess I'll likely make this my last longish post on this issue - you've all seen my opinion enough by now. At the end of the day I think Iduna has it spot on - the easiest way to enact this change fairly is to allow reallocation of city resource plots at the soonest convenience - even if it is just a "one off spell" rather than a change in the game mechanics for now.

And/or if soverenty was chaged so that each level 5 sov square produced as much food as a level 20 farm then this would solve many complaints and have the added bonus of making turf wars over soverenty very realistic