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Elvenar Classic

DeletedUser1231

Guest
@benroq

Yes fighting is optional, with the only other choice to be negotiating, So what happens when the game mechanic allow you to do neither??? in 2 worlds I can not fight or negotiate provinces for expansions since the developers decided to change the game mechanics... I'm to far ahead to win a fight and I'm not far enough ahead to have orcs to negotiate with... This is a prime example of how changing the game mechanic can screw people over and feel like a punishment to some
Actually the introduction of orcs in the negotiation in too close provinces is one of bigger errors which was made on this game. Can being they will realize it one day?:p
 

Dhurrin

Well-Known Member
@gath of baal
That is one prime example indeed.
But one other reason is the lower chapters. My 2 experimental cities in chapter 1&2 both face the same problem, even though they are in the GZ.
Not being able to fight and win the battles, not because I don't have units, but because my units and squads simply are no match for the opposing units. It may SEEM nice to have 5 squads against their 2, but when it means that a single one of their hits always kills a squad of mine while mine hardly even scratch theirs, there's not much use in fighting.
And negotiating isnt an option at the moment either. With only a handful of factories (like 5 marble factories at lvl 3-5) you just don't generate enough goods to negotiate AND upgrade some buildings AND unlock tech.

And yes people, I know: find a FS, and get some larger players to sponsor you by giving you good deals on your goods.
But that is a lousy fix, because it means that you are dependant on others sponsoring you. Not giving you a fair deal, but sponsoring you with lobsided deals. How in the name of Hades is that balanced, if one can't play the game without that?

@benroq
I agree. The math is all wrong. Ring 10 can still be done without and doing so frees enough provinces to open the chest for the woodelfchapter.
Personally I think the average should be 2 rings/chapter. So the rings up to 14 should be free and the orcs should be needed for ring 15 en out.
Of course, the devs feel otherwise, so I would still be ok with something like a number of provinces in the order of 5 rings/2 chapters so people don;t go too far out...which I feel is a crappy idea, to tell players NOT to play so enthousiastically
 
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DeletedUser1562

Guest
I'll vote for a Classic Version of Elvenar for city building only, but on a separate server.
 

DeletedUser1817

Guest
It's not so much optional anymore, ..., they're making the tournaments more and more combat centric.
This whole update with Fellowship tournaments suddenly motivates every single person in a fellowship to aggressively push to complete tournament provinces every week. That's so much more in the way of goods than the game is balanced around, ...
The punitive costs on negotiating, combined with the fact that now everyone sort of has to participate, forces people to choose between fight or not be able to participate.
Sorry, but technically it is still entirely optional, even though it is true that, if you aim at getting the most of possible options in the game, which many players, including me, naturally tend to do, or if you aim at top rating, top technological advance, and so on ..., which many other players (not always the same ones, I am not really in that group) tend to do, then you have to seriously consider fighting, but you are never forced to ;).

I do not deny they made many mistakes with their incompletely thought through revisions of some systems :(, especially big balancing blunders that I have been one of those criticizing, first on the French forum, then here.

As I said before, I still do not understand why they increased the difficulty/cost of tournaments when revising the combat system :(. It was not necessary, not really clearly announced and even counter-productive regarding their goal to slow down players on territorial conquest.

You are perfectly right about the fact that when implementing the new fellowship oriented tournaments they apparently did not take into account, at all, the strain on resources that would result from more people trying to participate more frequently to this much more attractive system... The best proof of their lack of thinking on this point is what they have done right after: unnecessarily butchering the Wholesaler, thinking this would lead people to rely more on the market, as if they were not already trying to do that, considering the old Wholesaler rates...

There's also the fact that they're massively increasing the size of required buildings, while not massively increasing the amount of new space we're able to obtain. They say that they do this for the sake of puzzles, but... I confess, I don't really care about puzzles ...
Upgrading the buildings in my city is a sign of progress to me. Deleting them sucks, because it feels like all that time I invested on them, proud of the fact that I got all my buildings to x tier at last, is wasted, because there isn't space to upgrade them all, and to me, that isn't what a city builder is about...
Maybe Inno should just.... design a new tetris, and use all their ideas about puzzles for that, and go back to making Elvenar a city builder.
I quite agree on that point :), not for the same exact reasons, but with similar conclusions.

I might like puzzles a bit more than you, but I feel there is a point where puzzles, when they are becoming too complex for most people taste and are starting seriously damaging other aspects of the game, should not be the only thing the developers take into account!

For instance, some of us like their collector event buildings :), which tend to become obsolete, a waste of space in pure puzzle terms :(... Why not allow us to preserve them, even inactive, in a storage space or "museum park" (as recently suggested by the French community)?

Another example of how too much puzzle could kill the game is the size of the new Sorcerers university buildings. Many people cannot see how to naturally fit them in the space they have without making serious mistakes (due to the evolving size of building with their level) that could require destruction and rebuilding, as they would not have enough reserved unused space to move these... Where is the fun of that? True, you can always use ElvenArchitecht to plan safely (thanks to its authors). But is it really normal that your only viable option to play safely this fantasy-themed construction game is to use a third party tool? For me, it is a big hint that they likely went a bit too far on the challenge level :(...

This problem though was there from the start, even though less intense (but this is just a consequence of a richer game, with more chapters, bigger cities, ...). I fail to see how an "Elvenar Classic" version would change that o_O.

Over the last 6 months there has been almost nothing added in the way of building a city, its been about battles only.
One might argue that the guest races are about building a city, but I think its a very roundabout way of doing so...
And then the influence of the guest races is so huge there is hardly a difference between the cities anymore.
Sorry, but not only ;).

As @Dony pointed, first, you almost had two entire chapters to play (Orcs were still rather new six months ago) and a new one is coming :). Guest races are obviously a way to introduce new building concepts/constraints (one good example being the "volatile resource" called mana) while allowing player to avoid being bored by introducing new fantasy themed designs for the newest versions of our buildings (not always to everyone taste, but is it possible?), periodically changing their sizes and orientation, ... You might not like that way, but it is a way of progressing in your city building ;).
You seem to regret differences between the cities, but there are still some small differences (orc roads, MH designs, ...), more than you might have seen. Again you, and other people in favor of a mythic "Elvenar Classic" version, seem to underestimate the complexity of the game as it is: each building variation requires more specific graphic data to be loaded. From a technical point of view, you might argue that they were already much too lax in the way of indulging players with such small differences ;), considering the loading time of some of the more advanced cities and various incomplete display bugs, all related to the size of the current graphic data.
If you are talking about building performance differences, that existed in the first chapters, then tend to disappear with the guest races, that is likely simply because someone realized that what appeared more realistic in the first chapters might rapidly turn into a balancing complexity nightmare as new chapters were added. The last, quite catastrophic, instance of such differences I encountered, was in the detailed characteristics of magical buildings ;).

Second, there were several events, with their own issues for sure, but they rather tend to improve with time in my opinion. Yes, they are designed to keep the more active player busy while waiting for a new chapter, but that is a rather good way to do so, rewarding them in the end with buildings that mostly have very good characteristics that approach those of premium buildings, so you could see them as semi-free premium buildings :).

Obviously, the combat system revision took much more time than expected and had more bad consequences than they wanted :(. But it is mostly because they underestimated its complexity. That does not mean some changes were not needed: the old system was badly balanced for advanced players, who could conquer some provinces without much losses, using the good unit combos, its empirical construction made it difficult to change, blocking the developers to deliver promised new units, ...
Though, they never stopped working on other parts of the game ;).

As for being too far out: I've already stated that was the most crappy argument they ever made. And that is because there IS NO TOO FAR OUT technically speaking. The only real limits are the edges of the world map.
You are completely missing the point! The technical problem is not really (at least, not mainly) with territorial expansion on the world map (even though you might see that there is likely some technical limit, if you try exploring the neighborhood of one of your fellowship member, or a random player, who is located far from your own neighborhood: loading information of his/her neighbors to populate the map can be very far from instantaneous), it is with the maximum size of the detailed view of our cities ;), the symptoms being:
- (sometimes very) long loading times for advanced and big cities,
- incorrect/partial display bugs of some buildings in the city view.

They do not want to slow down world map conquest for itself, they want to slow it down as a way of limiting access to "province" city expansions ;).
Research expansions are already limited through defining the research tree and premium expansions were limited in two ways: total possible number reduced, price steeply increased.

The reason I say this is because it still is possible to go out as far as you want, because every requirement can be solved with diamonds. So if one really is set on spreading out further, the game has left that possibility open, showing that
A - there is no technological block
B - it really is all about the money.
Everything is actually possible, until you hit the hard technological limits (which actually exist, you can be sure), but only if you are assuming you have an infinite amount of money to spend on the game ;).
But which percentage of the players do you think can afford that? The answer is actually quite simple: 0% (the counterpart of infinity ;)), because not even the richest people on earth have that and, assuming they like and play the game, they would likely not choose to spend all their money on it, or would not be so rich in the first place ;).
I have no idea what their actual figures are, but anyway there is likely not that many players that will be ready to invest more than, say, about 50$ a month in the game and with that amount you are far from being able to "do as you want".

If there exist a few people who are ready to invest more, what would be the benefit for Innogames to stop them? Avoid eventual complaints on game performance from such a little number of players, that might realize by themselves that they are just getting the consequences of their own excess? Anyway the number of players actually flirting with the technological limits because of that should be so small that it would not really matter.

So propositions A, and thus B, are not at all demonstrated :(.

Furthermore, many examples in the past months, show that, if they likely try to increase their revenue (I do not doubt that and why would they not?), they are not that good at it ;):
- magical buildings pricing is a complete mess, actually inciting people to wait the latest moment possible before buying them,
- they first increased the number of premium expansion (up to 33) keeping them at a reasonable price, so that many more players were tempted, but then suddenly decided to reduce the maximum number (to 23) while unreasonably increasing the prices.
 
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Hugs

Active Member
some might even have too generous bonuses (Blooming Trader Guild, which use might have encouraged overuse of the Wholesaler, then its butchering).

So, this is why they changed the Wholesaler... - so that it would be more terrible for all of us who don't have the Blooming Trader Guild, and maybe closer to reasonable to those who got that wonder... - Wouldn't it have been much better then to reduce the bonus of the AW, leaving all us low-level players who used the Wholesaler even though he was expensive when we were in high need of something. Now, with the increasing prices - and low volumes allowed to play per time, it is just hardly useful at all. It makes me still wonder, who are this game designed for?

Those who want to build a fantasy city? Maybe for the first few chapters, if you think having a game that you can play for some minutes a day is your kind of stuff.

Those who want to fight for it? Maybe for the first half of the first chapter? ... or when you get to the top levels - if you ever are persistent and patient enough to get there... - as, even when I have tried to do the fighting and tried to learn how it works, I don't have time to learn how to do the fighting before I meet enemies with a size 4+ times mine, where even those units I am told to be strong towards kills me in one or two shots, and.. there is always a combination, so that the other one, that I am not strong towards or only equal with kills me even faster. It's simply impossible, and I am even put in a situation where it is impossible to learn anything. A very efficient way of the game to teach me that fighting? - just forget it.

I have realized now, that this game is not for me, and I will grow indifferent, becoming cold and sad. I may continue to play a bit in a slow mode, but, not anymore to progress, as I understand... - I will reach a point where I have to root up everything I have taken my pride into building, just because that is how the game is designed, we are all meant to be the same in the end. :( ... in a format where I no longer can have my own fantasy or my own idea of city, or even do what I want to do. All that you do in the beginning, and learn to enjoy when you start playing the game, and you might think this game is all about, and you think you love it... - all of that is going to be more and more discouraged as you progress in the game. Scouting provinces, negotiating or fighting to do the different challenges in the provinces, gaining more room, build and upgrade your buildings, produce goods, get a feeling of the limitations, change a bit focus and layout so you get room for more, counter the limitations and feel things are getting good again... - all that is going to be more and more difficult. Even if you would be willing to pay real money to play the game, that is not really of good help anyway, as ... everything you can buy for diamonds are costly, and prices are increasing the more you buy, or what you have bought becomes useless after a while, or... you just get very poor value for your hard earned real life cash.

Sorry for being negative and critical, it's only me being sad, and mourning the loss of a big hope I once had. A hope that Elvenar could be a very nice game for me to play. I will be moving back to a game where you pay to play, but, get real value for the money you spend. I saw Marindor say this is a huge game, therefore they get in tons of suggestions from all over the world, so it's only natural that the developers don't have the ability to give feedback or even listen to single players. It's nice to hear this is a huge game, then me leaving will not change much for them, even though I am a bit surprised, as on the game I will move back to, there are also several servers, where the lowest populated ones have maybe only 20k players... - it seems to still be twice the size I have seen on even highly populated servers... - and about 10 times the size on the server where I have spent most time.
 

DeletedUser1767

Guest
When I started playing Elvenar, sometime in late summer 2015, I did so because I wanted to build a pretty fantasy city and I didn't want to fight. A year and a half later, that's still more or less my motivation, but I've realised that the game isn't what I initially thought it was, because it's true: this is not really a city-building game, per se; it's a city-building strategy game. The crucial difference between this game and Inno's other games, as I understand them (having not played them because of the fighting) is that those are strategy games in which the military angles are central to the strategy, whereas here, the military angle is optional (and yes, it is still optional), and the strategy concentrates on resource management.

For me, coming to this epiphany was mostly a shift in expectations. It's not what I thought I was signing up for, but I actually find the game more interesting this way, and I'm okay with it now that I've adjusted my expectations accordingly. Obviously, if you don't actually want to play a strategy game, you're going to feel differently about this, and that's completely legit, of course! The thing is, though, that this was always a strategy game; it's just less obvious in the earlier, easier chapters, and it was even less obvious when the game had fewer moving parts. It probably would have helped if they'd waited to send the game to live servers until after all those moving parts were present (which... is something I Have Opinions On, let's say), but they were clearly always part of the plan. So I don't think you're going to get anywhere asking them to put out a version of a game that never really existed.
 

DeletedUser1817

Guest
So, this is why they changed the Wholesaler...

It is likely one of the reasons, but not the only one...

Officially, they insist on the fact that they feel that the wholesaler was used too much, by too many people, and that restraining its use should benefit to the market.

This is simply ludicrous, as considering the old wholesaler rates, I do not think there was ever one single player who really relied on it as his main supply source ;), we all first tried to get all we could trading with neighbors or fellowship members...

Even though you would agree that something had to be made to prevent real abuse of the wholesaler (if you think, as I tend to do, it should remain an auxiliary source of goods) and that increasing the prices after a certain daily amount has been obtained is a good way to achieve that, why would you start doing so as soon as about 1% of the city daily (that is roughly the fixed exchange quantum they set in their revision) production has been obtained? This is just crazy :(! A much more reasonable limit to trigger the price increase would have been 10 to 20% of the daily production.

The only effect of their revision as it is should be to seriously annoy players who used the wholesaler, either as a way to avoid complete penury, when having difficulties with their market for various reasons, or to be able to help others using their excess gold. So, new reasons for players to leave :(.

Those who want to fight for it? Maybe for the first half of the first chapter? ... or when you get to the top levels...
I have realized now, that this game is not for me, and I will grow indifferent, becoming cold and sad...
Sorry for being negative and critical, it's only me being sad, and mourning the loss of a big hope I once had...
It is true that their very badly balanced revision of the combat system made it almost impossible to really fight with reasonable odds :(, until you reached chapter V/VI (and then you are still limited to level 3, 4 or 5 of the tournaments, depending on your exact level and the enemy configuration, you have to cater for the last levels). From what I have heard from more advanced fellowship members, it becomes even better in the next chapters :).
Though, as you might have seen, they are finally trying to compensate in 1.23, re-balancing the first levels of our units. I have made a few tests in my city at he beginning of chapter IV, with rather positive results until now :).

So, I would say do not completely give up on them yet, despite all their past and recent blunders ;).

I have no problem with that or with anyone liking these things. On the other hand your post suggests you have problem with players who dislike them.
I never said everyone should like these or that I had a problem with people not liking them.
I just tried to highlight:
- that they are still technically optional, even though the game might then become much slower and boring ;), as @Hugs pointed out,
- that not all developments were about these,
- what were the likely reasons why the developers introduced these features,
- that most people in favor of your proposal tend to minimize its cost/complexity, as if it was a non-issue.

I want more development in the city building part. More dynamics, more choices. As I detailed in my original post, I'd like a choice with every new guest race: Use the new technologies to improve my present architecture or switch to the new guest race. Then we'll have variety. Different cities with different buildings.
I am rather in favor of such ideas :), but I still do not see how maintaining two different versions of the game would help implementing them. If anything, I would predict that the extra cost, in terms of developer time, would slow them down in both versions ;).

I will agree to that statement as soon as building barracks has become optional, ...
The main reason why the barracks, as well as the Magic Academy (which has no real link to combat so far), are mandatory: allow some types of quests (train troops, produce spells, ...). This has absolutely nothing to do with mandatory combat ;)! At most, a small incentive to discover the combat system...
 
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DeletedUser1657

Guest
I meet enemies with a size 4+ times mine. A very efficient way of the game to teach me that fighting? - just forget it.

Knowing when to fight and when to scout is what many people skip and race straight into combat and then wonder why it is hard. This is something a number of people have being pushing for Inno to teach people in game so it is more obvious and they aren't disillusioned.

I have realized now, that this game is not for me, and I will grow indifferent, becoming cold and sad. I may continue to play a bit in a slow mode, but, not anymore to progress, as I understand... - I will reach a point where I have to root up everything I have taken my pride into building, just because that is how the game is designed, we are all meant to be the same in the end. :( ... - all of that is going to be more and more discouraged as you progress in the game. Scouting provinces, negotiating or fighting to do the different challenges in the provinces, gaining more room, build and upgrade your buildings, produce goods, get a feeling of the limitations, change a bit focus and layout so you get room for more, counter the limitations and feel things are getting good again... - all that is going to be more and more difficult.

From my experience all of those things get much easier as the game progresses. Space and design are so critical in the first 2 eras and a mistake can hurt you for a while. As your technology and space increases you get much more room to grow and vary your city around to suit you. Making mistakes are less painful and sometimes unnoticeable due to the subtlety and wide range of approaches that can be taken to the game. There is no right (or single) way of playing, the mistakes I refer to would relate to each persons own strategy and stepping away from their primary approach. Lots of things you can do that make the game easier but that doesn't mean you have to do those things if you don't want to.

One of the concerns with an elvenar classic is things like the wholesaler change would likely be put into that version to as it was aimed at fixing some balancing issues, creating a different version with the same perceived mistakes is not likely to happen. Not to say they may not do a classic version but if they did it may not be exactly with or without certain things you want.
 

DeletedUser1721

Guest
I accidentally clicked the wrong expansion tile in the city in your fellowship on Arendyll when I was in Act 2, and as a result of buying that one and not the one below it I'm not going to have room to place my copper foundries until I can clear seven provinces and get a province expansion. Or I could sell off the pretty event buildings that make my city unique.... but that kinda interferes with having a city that suits me....

These puzzles are not entertaining.
 

DeletedUser1767

Guest
I accidentally clicked the wrong expansion tile in the city in your fellowship on Arendyll when I was in Act 2, and as a result of buying that one and not the one below it I'm not going to have room to place my copper foundries until I can clear seven provinces and get a province expansion.
:eek: crikey. They really ought to have an "Are you sure this is where you want to put this expansion?" confirmation message when you go to place the tiles. Most of the time it would be slightly annoying, but it would be more than worth it to prevent something like this, and there's no good reason not to.
 

Heymrdiedier

Well-Known Member
Actually the introduction of orcs in the negotiation in too close provinces is one of bigger errors which was made on this game. Can being they will realize it one day?:p

Actually you only need orcs in ring 11 or afterwards. knowing that inno only wants you to scout the minimum ammount of provinces you need to start the next tree, this means, you only need orcs to negotiate starting from Dragons onwards. This isnt so bad in my opinion.
You need 220 provinces to start dragons and sorceress and there are 222 provinces to do within ring 10.

This doesnt mean tho i agree with the 'you have scouted too far' policy of inno. Im just stating that if this is their policy, orcs negotiation were very generous, they used to start in ring 10 but altered it to ring 11 after feedback of beta. And since ring 9 only containt 180 provinces, that would have ment you couldnt start woodelves without some orc negotation. So that change gave you 2 extra races stretch.
 

DeletedUser1721

Guest
:eek: crikey. They really ought to have an "Are you sure this is where you want to put this expansion?" confirmation message when you go to place the tiles. Most of the time it would be slightly annoying, but it would be more than worth it to prevent something like this, and there's no good reason not to.
That wouldn't even have helped because at the time I was still thinking in terms of my Elven city, which has a much wider layout than I'm able to fit human buildings into. Once I got a bit farther into the game, and realized that it's much easier to fit human cities into a "longer" layout than the "wider" layout of my Elven buildings, I started placing the expansions appropriately, but I'm now hindered by that one expansion that was placed when I was thinking "Elf city layout" instead of "Human city layout".
 

Elderflower

Well-Known Member
I am not finding that I need to fight at all. I get a bit irritated when suddenly the knowledge tree is blocked because I have not yet researched some military unit that has just been introduced three chapters ago. But I still research it and then continue as before. I only ever train units for quests. I have never used even one and have no idea what types I have or what their strengths and weaknesses are. I have two armories to train orcs for trades and I upgrade my barracks as I go along because it is one of the more interesting buildings. Beyond that I have no use at all for the military option and can't really say that I feel held back by it.
For me it has been perfectly possible to play Elvenar, including the tournaments, without any fights at all. However I started a couple of years ago. Perhaps someone who started more recently will have had a different experience of the game.
 

DeletedUser1817

Guest
... They really ought to have an "Are you sure this is where you want to put this expansion?" confirmation message ...

The ideal solution would likely be an optional confirmation, like this for spending diamonds, so that all can choose their own way to handle that risk ;).
 

DeletedUser1767

Guest
I am not finding that I need to fight at all. I get a bit irritated when suddenly the knowledge tree is blocked because I have not yet researched some military unit that has just been introduced three chapters ago. But I still research it and then continue as before. I only ever train units for quests. I have never used even one and have no idea what types I have or what their strengths and weaknesses are. I have two armories to train orcs for trades and I upgrade my barracks as I go along because it is one of the more interesting buildings. Beyond that I have no use at all for the military option and can't really say that I feel held back by it.
For me it has been perfectly possible to play Elvenar, including the tournaments, without any fights at all. However I started a couple of years ago. Perhaps someone who started more recently will have had a different experience of the game.
This has been exactly my experience too. My main city is about a year and a half old, but my two others are only in Chapter Five, and I have not found not fighting to be an issue in those cities any more than it has been in my main city. It is totally possible to play Elvenar without fighting and not struggle because of it.
 

DeletedUser1590

Guest
The new guest race is a prime example.

We are forced to build ugly cities like this:

1d87d01a39.png



While we would rather have our cities look like this:

4171834bc3.png
 

DeletedUser1877

Guest
No one is "forced" to do anything...It's a choice... like life, if you want this, you need to do that. But the choice is yours.

If you want everything, you'll be packed in, if you want pretty, build pretty :)
 

DeletedUser1590

Guest
No one is "forced" to do anything...It's a choice... like life, if you want this, you need to do that. But the choice is yours.

If you want everything, you'll be packed in, if you want pretty, build pretty :)

We have a choice, correct. The choice is stop growing or build ugly cities. However stop growing .. is that really a choice?
I guess it is, it is equivalent to stop playing. Playing Elvenar or stopping is also a choice. So again, you are correct: we have lots of choices.

A choice for me would be: stick with Woodelves Architecture but use dragon technology to upgrade the buildings or adopt the new dragon architecture.
 

Elderflower

Well-Known Member
I must admit I really like the Woodelves architecture the best so far. With the orcs I tried to avoid using their cultural buildings even though I had to upgrade houses and workshops and manufactories. So I hope I can do the same with the next era.
 

DeletedUser1767

Guest
I must admit I really like the Woodelves architecture the best so far. With the orcs I tried to avoid using their cultural buildings even though I had to upgrade houses and workshops and manufactories. So I hope I can do the same with the next era.
Same. I guess it was to be expected, though, since they have a pretty clear pattern going: environmentally-conscious pretty chapter followed by not-so-environmentally-conscious-or-pretty chapter. At least this means that Eleven is likely to be gorgeous again?
 
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