I have some questions/comments for discussion.

[MrBeer]

I am trying to see if there are any comments on a few points .
Too few expansions.
No inventory summary. Keeping track of fragments and other buildings hard to do.
Rival . Unless you sleep on the game , or buy your way through , way too long WITHIN the time frame.
These are some things that I view . JMHO.
I am no rookie , as I have been playing this game for 10 years now.

 

[Pericles the Lion]

Land is perhaps the only resource that is truly limited. Players need to make choices regarding its efficient, and effective, use when it comes to advancing. The number of expansions needs to be tightly controlled like it is.

Daily management of fragments at collection time makes inventory control pretty easy.

On my main city I raced the 32 Rival quests using supply rushes and medals for GE encounters. Finished in under 2 hours. On my other city I used no supply rushes but did spend some medals for GE. Finished in just over 26 hours. No diamonds spent on either city. Rival needs to be a challenge, it is.

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

Big part of the game is maximizing the use of the limited space. Some players are good at it. some bad. But is part of the fundamental basis of the game. I found I gradually got better at organizing my cities.
I could see Inno reducing the size of some Great Buildings for us though. Make Alcatraz and Atom in particular smaller and many other that are 6x6 to 5x5.
The fragments have many discussions. I personally have zero problems with fragments.
As for the new Quest thing, I agree with Pericles it is easy.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

Daily management of fragments at collection time makes inventory control pretty easy.

This depends on your definition of "inventory control". You oversimplify your view of things to make Inno look better. The majority of players that I've seen comment about fragments disagree with your Inno-friendly outlook. No surprise, as you are the most fervent defender of Inno's decisions that I've seen in my 8+ years on the Forum.

 

[The Lady Redneck]

I used to think there were to few expansions, But in my main world I am in SAJM and still have 31 diamond expansions unused. I will get round to using some more as and when I need to. Plus given the silly amount of Events we now have that give buildings that outstrip a lot of the older GBs. We no longer need as some of them and can easily delete them so do not need as much space as the event buildings are normally smaller. This in turn will let us spend real cash to get more of the best Event buildings which will please INNO.

Keeping track of Frags was a nightmare. But I decided it is what it is and as long as they keep turning into finished building that help me then so be it. It would be nice if they were only visible under their own tab though having them scattered through everything else is a pain. .

I tried the Rival thing on Beta. But my city there is new and was only in EMA so I did not produce enough goods and troops to complete it . However im my main city I completed it in the first day at no cost.

 

[PJS299]

Too few expansions.

I think that's the point. You have to manage your city wisely, and make those decisions. Another reason is to keep the game moving. People need more expansions, so they will have to move up in age.

Rival . Unless you sleep on the game , or buy your way through , way too long WITHIN the time frame.

I spent no money, and was on my regular sleep schedule (8 hours), finished it with plenty of time to spare.

No inventory summary. Keeping track of fragments and other buildings hard to do.

Yes, I feel like the inventory should be organized better. Why put in a fragments tab, but keep the fragments in the main tab too? It's very cluttered.

 

[Pericles the Lion]

This depends on your definition of "inventory control". You oversimplify your view of things to make Inno look better. The majority of players that I've seen comment about fragments disagree with your Inno-friendly outlook. No surprise, as you are the most fervent defender of Inno's decisions that I've seen in my 8+ years on the Forum.

I don't oversimplify. I do not find managing the inventory to be burdensome. The fact that you seem to struggle with managing fragments is not my problem, it's yours. Adapt, or don't. But, fragments aren't going away.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

I don't oversimplify. I do not find managing the inventory to be burdensome. The fact that you seem to struggle with managing fragments is not my problem, it's yours. Adapt, or don't. But, fragments aren't going away.

I don't struggle with "managing" fragments. I don't bother. Once I get enough, I assemble whatever it is and then either sell it or keep it in inventory or build it. That doesn't take away from the fact that it would be a full time job to do "inventory control", which is a different animal. Which is why I said you oversimplify things to make Inno look good. Sure, merely doing what I do is easy. But I don't try to "manage" fragments, and I suspect you don't either. Also, just because I have adapted to the fragments does not mean that they are a good thing in and for the game. That's what you never seem to understand, that just because Inno puts something in the game doesn't mean we have to like it, or "adapt" to it, or even bother with it. Like GE5. It's crap and I won't bother with it. You like crap. Good for you. Knock yourself out.

 

[WillyTwoShoes]

Too few expansions.

I would like to address this specific item. When I first started playing I was totally blown away that you can't rotate any of the structures you place. It still amazes me that players think its part of the games charm having to figure out how to grow their city using one dimensional graphics. I mean come on people! I stopped playing with my wooden blocks 60 years ago and you could rotate them.

 

[Pericles the Lion]

I would like to address this specific item. When I first started playing I was totally blown away that you can't rotate any of the structures you place. It still amazes me that players think its part of the games charm having to figure out how to grow their city using one dimensional graphics. I mean come on people! I stopped playing with my wooden blocks 60 years ago and you could rotate them.

Actually, the graphics are 2-dimensional. I wouldn't say that not being able to rotate buildings is part of the "charm" but I would say that it is part of the challenge. Enabling rotation would make city layout too easy.

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

It is very interesting to look at many other players Cities.You can see who has the ability to map out well, and who's city is a huge mess. Both sorts of players have the same jumble of sizes to fit in.
One suggestion for players with a hot mess for a city is to practice. Go in the Reconstruction format and mess around. Play at rearranging your city. and then just delete that. Wait a few days ...Do it again.. and again. Gradually things start to make sense how to do it best. Learning how is important. and it took me awhile, but I now have a good idea of what to do with arranging a city.

 

[WillyTwoShoes]

Re: Expansions - City Layout

Agreed it is scientifically a 2 dimensional layout. (one dimensional in its creative value )

While I agree that not being able to rotate the buildings is a challenge it inevitably ends up with cities having very little artistic value. I happen to think its an all to often overlooked aspect of foe. Some players enjoy building cities for the sheer enjoyment of having something unique or pretty to look at. At any rate it would make a difference in the limited amount of expansions one is able to acquire in foe.

While it doesn't address expansions per se please let me offer another suggestion that might have merit. How about offering buildings that aren't always squares or rectangles? I'm not taking about the Cherry Gardens, Harvest Barn collections, etcetera. I think as something exciting and new without a great deal of programming challenge that would spark a lot of creative energy is L / U / T shaped buildings.

 

[Disgruntled Veteran]

Inno has addressed the issue about being able to rotate buildings. This is in fact to prevent making it too easy. Also, they claim the buildings are only designed from the view we currently have. They claim it would be a complete overhaul, they'd rather spend the resources on new content. However, mirroring images has been possible for a long time now, no overhaul needed just an additional cmd in the code...

 

[JJ597]

Since you cannot rotate buildings, what makes you think that Inno has spent the time to complete sides 3 and 4. Since they "will" never be shown, they can be BLANK. How much code does that require?

 

[PJS299]

Awesome guide about city planning by @KingJMobile

[Guide] - City Planning and Management Guide v2.1 (Revised)

City Planning and Management Guide This guide will outline three strategies involved in city planning: buildings, expansions, and roads. Buildings and expansions are easy to deal with, but roads are perhaps the biggest problem that I see many people fall short of, which is what I will be...

forum.us.forgeofempires.com

 

[WillyTwoShoes]

Since you cannot rotate buildings, what makes you think that Inno has spent the time to complete sides 3 and 4. Since they "will" never be shown, they can be BLANK. How much code does that require?

Exactly the point. I don't think Inno has spent anytime actually growing their player platform. It seems to me they are milking a seriously outdated game design for everything its worth before they fold the whole enterprise for something new and better which HAS all the stuff players really want.

 

[Emberguard]

Land is perhaps the only resource that is truly limited. Players need to make choices regarding its efficient, and effective, use when it comes to advancing. The number of expansions needs to be tightly controlled like it is.

While this is true, the problem has also been greatly amplified with the past year giving out so many individual buildings within each Event

At one point it used to be you got one building to improve your city with. Now you can early on fill the entire city after 1 Event, for free, and you have 10 Events each year. So yeah, I can understand people complaining of lack of space when there's so many Event buildings from Daily Specials you can feasibly get.

However, mirroring images has been possible for a long time now,

I think InnoGames would want to rotate them properly so they know it looks good in the game, not just use the flip horizontally button and hope none of the buildings look off when mirrored

 

[WillyTwoShoes]

I will put this another way. What player can tell me that they are opposed to buildings you can rotate because the game is better without that sort of feature? Really?

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

Alien spaceships are all hiding behind the Foe City buildings. as the reason why they should not be able to be rotated..

 

[Emberguard]

What player can tell me that they are opposed to buildings you can rotate because the game is better without that sort of feature? Really?

I don't particularly care one way or the other. If it doesn't get included I'm not going to miss its absence. If they do include it great, I'm sure that'll make some people happy

InnoGames other game, Rise of Cultures, has a rotate feature. I find it doesn't make that much of a difference having it included and can sometimes be more of a hindrance than it is a help. Sure there are some niche situations where it comes in handy. But you're not really going to know whether rotating that building was helping or hindering until later in the build, and by then you might have to restart the reconstruction anyway due to having the wrong remaining pieces for rotation to fix the design.

If the buildings were weird tetris shapes it'd make a lot of sense to need rotation. But everything is a square or rectangle which greatly reduces the need to rotate anything to make it fit. Especially when you can spam a bunch of the same shape buildings