I have just completed reading the Beta forum feedback threads for this new Fall Event and I saw no mention of the question I pose below. So can we get some official clarification on things here please?
Q: The chance that an apple tree appears in the wilderness around our city seems to be directly proportional to the number of M/P clicks or Aid clicks that our city receives. However, what happens if our city has no buildings to AID when another player clicks on the AID button for our city? Is that simply a missed opportunity at a randomly placed apple tree, or will the event still randomly place a tree, even if the player had nothing to AID?
Commentary
If a player completely misses out on a random apple tree placement, due to no buildings available to AID, then this new Fall Event has exactly the same issue that players complained about during the 2015 Easter Event. The 2015 Easter Event had Easter Eggs hidden in decorations within our cities; however, an egg could only be hidden in a decoration that was NOT polished. This meant that in order to have any chance of receiving any special event currency, that a player would have to design his city to include a field of decorations in the hopes that they would never be polished, but that eggs would be hidden there instead.
The player base resoundingly gave feedback that we did not want to have to redesign our cities to include a bunch of unneeded and unwanted decorations just so we had a decent chance of receiving the special event currency, through egg hiding actions. The end result was that the 2016 Easter Event did not have egg hiding actions and trees were randomly placed in our wilderness.
However, if this Fall Event requires that a player must have a building in his city that requires motivation or polish in order to have a random chance at receiving an Apple Tree placed somewhere in the wilderness, then the FoE game designers have learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from their previous mistakes, nor the resoundingly loud feedback the player community gave them.
If a player needs unpolished and/or unmotivated buildings, in order to be able to have a random chance at an Apple Tree placement in his wilderness, this will have exactly the same game impact that a player must redesign his or her city with a field of useless decorations, so that there is always something available to polish or motivate.
Edit...
My city has:
- 12 CE Condominiums, 24-hour coins production = 12 Aid clicks
- 13 SoKs, all 24-hour coins/FP production = 13 Aid clicks
- 1 King, 24-hour coins production = 1 Aid click
- 1 Ziggurat, 1-hour coins production. which I might collect 4-6 times per day = 6 Aid clicks
- 5 supply production buildings, which I usually set to 8 hour productions = 15 Aid clicks
- 2 special cultural buildings, 1 premium cultural building, and 11 premium decorations = 28 Aid clicks
- The rest of my city is goods production buildings, unit production buildings, Wishing wells, and other special buildings that cannot be M/Ped.
This means I can only get a grand total of 75 successful Aid button clicks every 24 hours. If the chance to add an apple tree is tied to M/P or AID, then I am forced to redesign my city to be less efficient, in order to have a chance at scoring anything worthwhile in the special event. In essence, I am getting punished for my good game play by not receiving as many chances to score in this special event, because the number of apple trees I can receive is limited by the number of Aid clicks.