is the game becoming too complex?

+1 DD!

I believe that complexity in games gives them longer term playability. Complexity makes things interesting and provides far more options for players who enjoy different aspects of the game to have fulfilling experiences each in their respective games. That is super cool. Having said that, I too think that managing 20 cities per account (times 2 because I have an alt) will be quite a burden. As such, I'd love to hear people's ideas on tools that could make city management easier across multiple cities, because that is what I think I am going to enjoy the least.

I'll start with a few of my own (which may or may not have been suggested by others before in the Forums, I simply don't have time to thoroughly research, so if I am restating yours, sorry!:
1) Ability to queue more than two techs (but you'd be risking a sabotage, so there is a downside)-- would enable folks to not worry about switching techs all the time
2) Some way to make managing basic production (cows, saddles, LA, etc) less tedious. Adding to the queues is a constant time sink. (production AI advisor?)
3) A military production AI advisor or way to simplify military builds (ie. being able to set rules such as "if the resources are available, once a day queue up as many Trueshots as you can automatically. If not, queue up Marshals." Something like that...
4) Notifications if someone settles within x squares of your city, or occupies with an army within x squares (maybe up to your diplo visibility limit?)
5) A tax AI advisor (I know this is a little far fetched, but being able to set rules that will change your taxes upon reaching certain threshholds).
6) A building queue of more than two buildings (and also a destruction queue of more than two)
7) A "Max Skillpoint" button to the commander screen so I can allocate all 10 sps (or in some cases fifteen) at once as opposed to hitting the button slowly 10 times for each many, many times for every single commander I want to retask.

I sincerely hope that other folks at #s 8-100 to this list!

In short, this is just a start, but I strongly hope that the GMs make this game MORE complex, not less! I want Factions, Naval, and all the other cool stuff they have said they are working on! Having said that, a few pieces of functionality would make the less fun administrative functions of city maintenance much, much easier. And I think the player base, as a whole would thank them profusely!

Thank you though, GMs, for making a game that I have and continue to enjoy so immensely!


Edited by Kumomoto - 19 Mar 2013 at 18:46

gameplayer wrote: please stop trolling me

What?! Gameplayer is calling another player a troll!? lol

Kumomoto wrote: +1 DD! 2) Some way to make managing basic production (cows, saddles, LA, etc) less tedious. Adding to the queues is a constant time sink. (production AI advisor?)

All good suggestions but if I had to choose one to be implemented it would be this one. Doing queues for my 19 cities is incredibly tedious and I would love to be able to instruct my cities to automatically queue advanced res.

In addition it would be nice if cities could automatically send all the advanced res in a city to a designated hub once a week. Right now I have to do that manually and it takes a lot of time.

Go easy on Gameplayer . I don't agree with most of her suggestions but I think she sincerely is trying to improve the game.

* better control of which igms one receives (such as the ability to suppress quest or trade notifications, selectively).
* the ability to set repetitive, scheduled shipments of goods between one's own cities.


Edited by Angrim - 19 Mar 2013 at 23:02

Angrim wrote: * better control of which igms one receives (such as the ability to suppress quest or trade notifications, selectively).

+1

I don't need to get mails for caravans or quests. Once I hit 5 towns, the notification screen also became almost useless. There should be a disable for every category of notification (separate for outgoing, harvesting start, returning and delivery) plus a filter to view events for a specific town.

I don't know that the game is becoming too complex. It just needs a usability overhaul, particularly for harvesting and trade hubs. I've worked on plenty of big software projects that evolved over time. The requests that people are making in this thread are typical of users trying to manage several layers of bolt-on upgrades.

Illy just needs some refactoring.

P.S. The requests for tools like auto-queue are only superficially reasonable. Such systems are complex to engineer because they require a lot of exceptions for infrequent cases. What if a thief robs your resources, and your next auto-queue can't start? If someone sends you 200k of each resource, should your inventory bank that in the trade hub or queue another resource build? I worked with manufacturing machines, and every one of our customers had their own quirky setup for achieving their preferences.