Changing the timers would be a huge change from a balancing point of view, especially if you make them 50% longer. Though, that doesn't mean it is a bad idea per se. Please post this suggestion in our Ideas and Suggestions forum, so that we can see what other players think of such a change as well.
This was requested and posted in the Suggestion Forum several times. But there was never a real answer.
As i stated many times the 8 hours don't even cover a normal working cycle of 9-10 hours.
This is less of a Problem here in the beta where all time zones Play but will be a Major issue on "One TimeZone Servers" epecially europe and so on. The US has several timezones so there it will be less of an issue.
You haven't yet answered "Why reduce the maximum bonus from 200% to 170% ??? " I mean what was the main purpose of doing it ...
For the Moment you aren't quite advanced in the game. So ist maybe a bit difficult to understand.
At high Levels it is near to impossible to even reach 170% even with neighbourly help. I'm not THAT far in the game too but at the Moment i Need for even one main hall upgrade an additional culture building. Same goes for manufactories and other stuff.
The time you advance your buildings to Tier 2 and later on to Tier 3 you will automatically drop down in means of culture Surplus.
Your needed space will grow by about 30% only to upgrade existing buildings which gives you only the possibility to build 1-2 big culture buildings with new expensions.
Example: I will advance my residences to Tier 3 next week. This will Need double space 3x2 to 4x3 size. This is a total of 144 squares (6 City expansions) i Need only for upgrading them.
This will decrease my available culture by 1368 Points and raise the needed culture to maintain even 170% Bonus by another 800-1000 Points.
In the end this means i will drop to 140% without being able to build cultural buildings at all the next 1-2 months because i Need the next 6 epansions to upgrade the residences.
To the end of all i will Need another 5-7 expansions to upgrade all other buildings and build Tier 3 manufactories while not being able to build only one additional culture buildings. This will automatically drop you to 120% in current System for a very Long time without being able to reach 170% even if 10 neighbours would polish your culture at the same time.
Their are some of us, both premium and non premium, who built cities to take advantage of the 200% bonus... and now we are basically going to get penalized for doing so. It does help the majority of players since they chose to build based on max volume of goods/coins/supplies/armies that they could instead of going for the 200% threshold, but I don't understand the 'penalty' that others are going to have to take.
That said, I do know this is closed Beta and recalculations are to be expected. It doesn't mean I have to be happy about them.
Did you even reach the 200% Bonus? And did you the math what would happen when you only had 150% in the future but build more residences and Workshops with the freed space?
At the Moment i did the math for my next Upgrades. And regarding Khebelns post i will go better with dropping to 140% (150% in future) and build more Workshops residences.
In Future the Bonus 3 and 4 will give you a total of 20% which is much less if you would build only 4 additional residences and 2 additional Workshops.
For now i could build 4 additional Workshops and 10 additional residences and would have the same effect with much less wasted space then trying to reach 200% Bonus which is impossible even with my 5 helping neighbours and in 1 week it would be impossible even with 12 helping neighbours.
For my personal opinion i think this will improve the game a lot. Because in late game you will get a bit more Bonus then with the current System.