Discussion Chapter 15: The Elvenar

[Jaxom]

I am sure that this has been mentioned before but it just occurred for me.
I won the daily prize on my 3rd pick of presents. nice one today, 8 hour boost. But I can't easily try for another one. I can't just shuffle things and start again.
The "best" I can do is pick presents hoping to get the shuffle so I can try for the daily again. But I don't want any of the filler stuff that I'd likely get.
So I guess I just wait until tomorrow and hope that a good daily prize is possible after the daily shuffle.

This is way worse than the chests system because with that I can save up and go for good stuff and have a chance to win the daily multiple times.

 

[maxiqbert]

if at least we could store "preview" and shuffle bonuses, there would be a little strategy involved

 

[Maillie]

There are people that like games of chance, others play Elvenar because they like the sense of achievement. Right now there is NO sense of achievement in Chapter 15. It takes days and days of using time boosts to create MM spells, and using up bags of feed, to get through one single tech. The loss of achievement comes when the next tech, and the one after that, and after that, and ... is an identical brick wall to climb over with no relief in sight. The main feeling of defeat comes from the fact that the new and "improved" event isn't going to replenish those time boosts. When they're gone there will be no sense in continuing further into Chapter 15.

We have no event buildings that make Sentient Goods, they can only be made with multiples of expansions full of massive buildings. I fear many will give up before ever reaching the expansions in the tech tree. I am about ready to tear down the entire settlement and just "play" Elvenar with a load of Wishing Wells and whatever other culture buildings we got when Elvenar was fun. Perhaps in the 100 days of the Wishing Wells this chapter will get rebalanced and events to get time boosts will return to make it playable again.

 

[Jedicris]

My thoughts on Chapter 15:
Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring.
Repetitive, Repetitive, Repetitive, Repetitive, Repetitive.

 

[DeletedUser3036]

making each research need hundreds of thousands of T6 is just plain annoying. That the era is long because there's a lot of research, why not, but to make it long because each research need 2 weeks... damn it, at least the portal profits aren't working as well this time, they managed to make one requirement right I guess

 

[DeletedUser2630]

It's stupid. I miss 6 research but the market is paralleled. When I didn't need T6 I gave it to people for T5 1: 1, doing the three tasks and saying, people are intelligent - everyone will do it and we'll all be well.

Unfortunately, only a few players understood this. The rest is rocked and star-driven, and some are trying to capitalize on it. They put it 1: 1 and then it changes back with three stars but just disadvantageously in terms of time. For me, production is 3h in 3h. I'm not interested in any stupid stars.

But I have it "in a few", a week or two, I delete that stupid portal and I'm calm. But if the other players didn't show me that they didn't want me to stop playing, this race was totally disgusting with the game.

Anyway, if innno thinks of his head, he will make a robot that will take in the market offers (fair, same categories) waiting for a long time, when the goods are falling apart we can not be punished, even by making the race so uneven.

I've been angry with the game for over a month now. And I look forward to the end of the race, and I hope they won't give any of them for a long time.

 

[TomatoeHu]

Some kind of filler building is needed... I am about ready to build all three types of sentient buildings because the beta Trader is not ready for the burden of the sentient requirements in chapter 15. There is not enough diversity in the available goods. Live servers do not produce enough sentient either, I can pick up all sentient goods for weeks trading up to unlock one tech. Elemental or Amuni chapter players, they also won't progress normal until chapter 15 players have picked off everything they need.

Main quest line is in previous chapters are not getting players were they need to be to start chapter 15. Adjustments should include better quests to promote leveling buildings up and increasing amount of sentient goods for the drastic increase chapter 15 requires. Some sort of sentient good building so we don't have to build un-boosted to progress would be lovely. By all means discontinue it when its not necessary or make it a craftable building. even an Expiring building ( like the UU, MMM ) would be helpful if it threw Non Boosted Sentient our way.

 

[DeletedUser3036]

need sentient for research, to build the invited guest race's quarter, to upgrade army buildings and many others... and all this with a loss during the night. That's only if we stop at sentient but even orcs are asked in crazy amount for the upgrade of armies buildings... feels like the cost of everything rocketted 10 times in this chapter, making it longer to finish and wait for the next, true, but not appealing at all...

like always, the graphic team saved the day a great deal

 

[Jaxom]

I got my Council Hall at level 4 and have 2 vaults at level 2 plus 2 each of factory, atelier, agriculture. My 3 academies stand idle as I over produced stuff from them while working my way up to the vaults. Didn't know how many I would need. Oh, well.
I have researched barracks, and harp player so I now only need the 4 vault-based end goods. I am starting to use Portal Profits to get those.
Made my way through collecting sentient goods to research residence and workshops (with help from PP).

It takes so long to gather the sentient goods for research that I can gradually eat up my over-stock of Ideas and Workforce. Once that is done I may very well sell everything but the Council Hall and rely on PPs. I have them so why waste goods, seeds and mana to produce things in the other buildings.
Will I use up all my PPs? Not by a long shot. I won't even touch the bigger ones.

You might ask why am I reporting this. Maybe because I too find the chapter to be exceptionally boring and I want to reinforce what others are saying. It is just a matter of collect sentient goods and spend them along with PPs. If I didn't have those I would likely never get the chapter done. I would almost certainly quit trying.

The three unit upgrades will be nice. But I likely won't upgrade barracks, mercenary camp or workshops because they change size and don't really give me any benefit. I don't need extra supplies and I can produce enough troops as things stand. I will upgrade residences because the size does not change.

There is just nothing exciting in this chapter. There is nothing challenging - other than the initial clearing of space. I am in Chapter 15 on two live worlds too and dread working on it.

But there are always events to look forward to. Always more events!

 

[Deleted User - 86059]

There you go @Jaxom, that is the reason for the produce x of in building of y level. Because you are not willing to go with the flow... City building game means you move forward, you are advocating staying put... but then we give reasons to move forward and you balk at the idea because it means changing your city with tweaks.
To quote a phrase 'Onwards and upwards until we succeed, on both sides.
Both sides need to be thinking either/or solutions and nothing written in stone. Because Marindor needs to be able to look at ideas as a whole and think 'wow I agree this really is a possibility and I am definitely passing this to the team'
Think outside the box' how are others going to see this' and do I really think everyone would really feel the same

 

[Deleted User - 81190]

There is just nothing exciting in this chapter. There is nothing challenging - other than the initial clearing of space.

Challenge is in the eye of the beholder. It might be fairly easy to complete this chapter in 6 months. How about 3? 2? With zero tech-lock etc? Possibilities are endless, but pretty much all challenges in this game would have to be self-imposed. It's not a game you can lose by itself, chapter 15 or not.

I, for one, enjoyed Elvenar chapter. Careful planning made all the difference.

 

[maxiqbert]

I can't say I'm enjoying it, but it's not worse than previous ones

 

[CrazyWizard]

The chapter seems to be designed for much more than 2x T6. I am running 5x, and if my projections are correct that would be barely enough to avoid tech lock in this chapter. That's with some MM spells as well (not 100%).

You barely get tech locked with 4 T6 productions and doing 10K+ points a week in the tournament. (assuming you have enough PP to keep the race goods flowing)

So I have no clue how you think that 5 not overkill for the average user.
because how many players in elvenar are able to rake in like up to 500KP a week from the tournaments?

For me the biggest stopgap in this race was the initial race productions you could not PP away in the beginning of the chapter, once you got past that stage is was easy pie. I expect to be done with this chapter on line within days from now, maybe even as soon as tomorrow.

 

[DeletedUser2630]

I have a chapter on live for a week already, waiting only to complete the tasks and delete the portal when I have a task to get supplies.

It's total poisoning. I had 3x T6 but the ideal would be to have 4XT6, tournaments are enough for + -6000 points. You can also help by changing T5 to T6 in a 1: 1 ratio for players who do not need a T6.

A few players have helped me like this and I'm ready to help them in the opposite way. Screw the players what they give 1: 4 etc, 3h for 3h only in both directions.

I did three tasks on T5 quite quickly using T6-to-T5 shifts in a 1: 1 ratio, and vice versa it went slower because the players are fooled by the stars.

At the beginning I was very slowed by the orcs, I forgot them and spent a week before that. If that hadn't happened, I had finished about two weeks.

Oh, and it cost about 2600% of portal profits.

As far as seed production is concerned, the operation of 1xT4, 2xT5, 3xT6 = about 300 levelses AW was fully sufficient only from the marketplace.

 

[Deleted User - 81190]

You barely get tech locked with 4 T6 productions and doing 10K+ points a week in the tournament. (assuming you have enough PP to keep the race goods flowing)

So I have no clue how you think that 5 not overkill for the average user.
because how many players in elvenar are able to rake in like up to 500KP a week from the tournaments?

I assume you're referring to your primary city on NL1? Certainly you don't put your city as a comparison to an average player? You have 650+ AW levels, including L30 Timewarp and Simia. That's pretty impressive, and would have some impact I don't do 10K in tournaments weekly (only about 3.6K), so my all-in KP intake is 59 KP/day over the whole chapter, and I entered the chapter with slightly more than 100 AW levels and the exact minimum scouted provinces (so 400). That's probably about as much as any F2P player would get doing all chapters since #1 back to back with no in-between periods (that's what I did). So I'd argue that my city is a lot more average than yours

With that, 5xL24 T6 (so not maxed up because of pop requirements) + some 5 MMs/day were slightly overproducing T6 for the second half of the chapter. Could it be done with 4x? Probably, but then I'd had to watch production much more closely. More importantly, it really depends on which server you are on, and what your T6 boost is. My boost was the most abundant one (bismuth in this case), so in order to get timely fills for shrooms I had to trade at 1.1:1, and for soap at 1.2-1.25:1. So here is your extra manu right there. For me, zero techlock was the goal so I had to move goods quickly.

Bottom line is, average users generally don't do speedruns

Oh, and it cost about 2600% of portal profits.

Are you sure about that? This sounds way higher than I calculated. I believe even if you produce zero guest race goods and just dump PPs, it would cost slightly less than 1700% for all the research (depends on the order of research due to portal cap). With some auxiliary production (mostly to rebalance guest race goods to minimize portal overflow and wasting PPs) I am on target to complete with about 1200% PP total.

 

[DeletedUser2630]

Calculated minimum per race corresponds to 1900% including leveling the portal (to portal 200% and other 1700%) but just the procedure that probably was not ideal from the perspective of PP but the best from the city cost me more, I do not know exactly, I can only say for sure that it is between 2200% and 3000% I was counting back how much I could produce in the meantime, and I spent about 2600.

I did not solve it too much and as soon as I had 6x 10,000 raw materials I demolished the settler buildings. I am disgusted with the game a long time ago so I want to keep these annoying things to a minimum and for the next 8 months, before the next race comes technically, I collect the same back.

 

[Deleted User - 81190]

...including leveling the portal (to portal 200%...

I don't think Council Hall needs any guest race goods for upgrades... But yeah, it can take more than optimal if all you have are big PP items (like 50% from the Spire).

 

[DeletedUser2630]

200% is needed to unlock the 3 and 4 levels of the portal and the 200% you have to spend just because it generates quite a bit at 2 levels. most calculations just don't include this step and that's why people often lower it.

And I've never used one to lose more than a dozen pieces, but sometimes it was more. The problem was rather that I missed 1 out of 4, so I filled the style of 0,0,70%,0 for example, and this just bends the figure quite a bit, while in gems it is a simple sum in real is folded quite inefficiently.

 

[Jixel]

... does anyone have handy numbers on how many Ideas/Workforce are needed after unlocking the Factory/Atelier/Agriculture ? I don't have much space, so I need to sell off some Academies to make room for the next round of buildings, but only once I have enough ...

 

[Deleted User - 81190]

... does anyone have handy numbers on how many Ideas/Workforce are needed after unlocking the Factory/Atelier/Agriculture ? I don't have much space, so I need to sell off some Academies to make room for the next round of buildings, but only once I have enough ...

Depends. There are 3 techs that need mids output directly (Vault, Harp Player and Barracks), and to produce these you'd need about 100K of each workforce and ideas, assuming L4 Council Hall. So in reality it will be somewhat more as at least for Vaults you won't have L4 portal. After that point it depends on how much portal profits do you have / willing to dump. If you're planning any guest race production, you may need a lot more than that. IIRC total chapter requirements (i.e. no PPs at all) would require about 1.6mm of each.