Building multiple levels at once

It would be nice, if you had the resources, to build TO a certain level of building rather than build each building one level at a time. Especially since you can't queue up production on the same building.

For example, say I have a bunch of resources and a level 0 mine. I can choose to spend however many resources it takes, and have the mine build right to level 5.

That's generally true for ad-supported games, but I'm not sure it applies here.  Illyriad needs to keep its users engaged and coming back out of interest, and there are balance issues with letting stuff happen automatically (taking the human element out of gameplay reduces the value of player skill).  But where Illyriad makes its money from prestige and not ad views or clicks, the game doesn't have to run like a click or impression-harvesting engine.

Making users jump through hoops like an automaton at 5 minute intervals does not engage or interest players, so I don't see why eliminating that wouldn't fall within the realm of possibility.  There is the matter of potential for reckless spending of prestige on insta-build, but a reasonable approach would be limiting construction queues by combination of build-time and item count (allow queuing of at least two items and at least a couple hours).  Then people would spend more prestige at the low levels where doing so is currently a retarded waste of money, and just as much at high levels where nothing is changed.


Edited by HonoredMule - 17 Jun 2010 at 00:27