Hello, first post here, but I've been a pretty active player for quite awhile now, and I keep my eyes on the forums. I've noticed a downtrend in activity here, and it certainly seems like there are fewer active players in the game, as well as in my alliance. I think there are a whole bunch of reasons for that, which I want to discuss, but first I will point out why I am still playing (some) and why I want to see this game continue.
First, this game has an awesome setting, and the details within that setting are really well done. I've always enjoyed Civilizations style games, and this one certainly doesn't disappoint as a historical progression based game. Each age you get new units and structures, and it helps you feel like you're actually moving through the game.
Second, the potential for complex combat is there. We have access to a whole bunch of different types of units that all possess a unique ability or tactic that can help us fill out an army.
Third, nations and wonders provide for some individuality and uniqueness to gameplay.
Finally, I'm eager to see what this game does with the Global Age, Space Age, and Alliance wars. These three things are pretty exciting, and I've stuck around to see them happen.
tldr: Profit per raid ratio is too low.
However, I'm not convinced the game will last that long, and in particular, the economics behind this game needs balancing. Now, Farms and Caravans (F/C from here on out) are not intended to be the primary source of income, but they still need to produce a significant amount of gold/food, and they currently don't. At level 10, F/C produce 1370 per hour, time 8 structures, which is roughly 11k food and gold. From level 10 on, leveling F/C increases production by 200/hr, while costing an additional 160-300k food/gold per level (300k starting after level 11). If you were to take one, and upgrade it straight from level 10 to 14, it would take 3.5 million, while only producing 800 more per hour. This results in most players not upgrading their F/C past somewhere between 7 and 10, because the returns are inconsequential. This leaves raiding as the only serious option for earning money, but what happens when fewer people are playing? The ability to raid diminishes because inactive players generate inconsequential amounts of resources. Let's say all players level their F/C to 10 though before quitting the game (unlikely, as most players will probably stop at about 7-8). The remainder of us will then have to primarily raid abandoned bases, with level 10 F/C. A total of 8 level 10 F/C produce close to 130k of each resource in 8 hours, a peace treaty for destroying the TC and less than 50% of buildings. After a few iterations of raids every 8 hours, this would level off around 130k profit every raid (You steal 65k, 8 hours later, You can steal 100k, 8 hours later, 120k, until this levels off around 130k available every 8 hours), which isn't terrible, until you consider the cost of upgrades versus the time commitment here. Most of the time, assuming your raiders stay on target, you probably need about 20 raiders and 12 footmen to take F/C + TC that are outside of walls. This takes about 12 minutes to produce with 3 Barracks. Since you can overlap upgrades with this, we'll say it takes you about 5 minutes to: search for a suitable base, destroy it, and start the next round of training. This leaves you with a 7 minute wait between attacks. EA and IA upgrades tend to be in the realm of 4 million to 6 million resources per upgrade, so we'll just say you're spending about 5 million resources per upgrade. At 130k per 7 minutes, you are looking at 4 and a half hours of farming for two upgrades (one food based, one gold based).
Until recently, I was able to consistently pull in 300k or more of each per Raider spam because a lot of people still had storages with a lot of resources, but I've seen a downward trend in that, hence my statement above that fewer people are active. Those of us that are active do our farming all at once, and then spend all of that so that we don't lose our resources fairly quickly to raider spam (when you are pulling in 130k per 7 minutes, 350k is a pretty big hit).
By comparison, a Clash of Clans TH8 (which I think is fairly comparable to Enlightenment Age) can produce 168,000 of each per 8 hours, at a significantly lower cost. Further, a standard treaty is 12 hours, so you're actually looking at 250k profit per attack, and upgrades between 2 and 3 million each. This is a far more sustainable profit to raiding ratio.
Second major issue with longevity: raiding comps. While the game provides an impressive variety of troops for attacking, it has quickly become apparent that the most efficient strategy for pulling in resources is raider spam, unless you have max troops (at which point you can bulldoze max EA bases). If you have max EA troops, and have just moved into IA, you can only hit EA and IA bases, but you don't have troops that can survive half-decent EA bases. So, you can either spend a half hour producing expensive troops to attack, or 10-15 minutes producing raiders and footmen. This results in boring, repetitive raiding. With an actual raiding comp, there's strategy involved, and it's fun, but if those troops can't survive a battle, there's no point to building the expensive comp when you get just as much resources from spamming with raiders. With the above problem of need to raid for several hours per upgrade, and boring raiding, active players quickly dwindle, leading to the above problem of reduced resources to raid. Even at 350k per raid, if the raiding gets boring, players will quit.
My last point has to do with player expectations and such. I started out as Chinese, which I consider to have mediocre bonuses. As I reached medieval, it became clear that HC were the way to raid, so I looked at the two nations with HC bonuses, French and Greek. After weighing the bonuses, I went with Greek (French hadn't received their nation bonuses, and the DPS on Greek HC seemed to outweigh the extra HP on French HC). Soon after I reached Gunpowder age, the HC nerf hit, and I was stuck having spent 600 crowns on a nation that went from the best to the worst. I submitted a ticket, requesting a refund or a nation swap (At this point, I would be happy having the cost to swap nations reduced from 1000 for my second swap to 600). I was told this wouldn't be fair because they weren't providing this service to other nations/players, which at best is circular logic, and at worst, just really, really bad customer service. Without spending money, I've been stuck as Greek since, and it's been pretty miserable. So, moving forward, I think it would only be fair for the Developers to promise that if they substantially change any nation or wonder, to allow any player with that nation or wonder to make a free swap. Since choosing nations and wonders is such an important part of this game, and a reason I listed above to play this game, it's unfair to never know which nation/unit/wonder will be nerfed next, especially when some of us spent money to get that nation/wonder. This leads into my next point: I purchased the extra worker with the early boost, and I'm not here to complain about how that's no longer an extra worker or whatever; I think that overall, I got a fair deal with my $10. However, Dominations did not make it clear what I was purchasing. If I knew then that I was purchasing a worker that I could buy in the Industrial Age for however many millions of gold, I would probably still make that purchase, but it was frustrating to not know this in advance. This was followed by spending 600 of those crowns switching to Greek, and another 600 to switch a wonder. You can bet I'd be upset if that wonder got nerfed and I had no recourse, and there is no promise from BHG that this won't happen. This goes back to player expectations. If BHG makes changes to their game, they need to allow us some form of recourse for crowns/money spent.
Let me know if you agree, and maybe we can get BHG to improve this game. I've written all of this because I care about this game, I want to see this game grow, and I want to keep playing this game. However, without substantial changes, I don't intend to stick around much longer.
First, this game has an awesome setting, and the details within that setting are really well done. I've always enjoyed Civilizations style games, and this one certainly doesn't disappoint as a historical progression based game. Each age you get new units and structures, and it helps you feel like you're actually moving through the game.
Second, the potential for complex combat is there. We have access to a whole bunch of different types of units that all possess a unique ability or tactic that can help us fill out an army.
Third, nations and wonders provide for some individuality and uniqueness to gameplay.
Finally, I'm eager to see what this game does with the Global Age, Space Age, and Alliance wars. These three things are pretty exciting, and I've stuck around to see them happen.
tldr: Profit per raid ratio is too low.
However, I'm not convinced the game will last that long, and in particular, the economics behind this game needs balancing. Now, Farms and Caravans (F/C from here on out) are not intended to be the primary source of income, but they still need to produce a significant amount of gold/food, and they currently don't. At level 10, F/C produce 1370 per hour, time 8 structures, which is roughly 11k food and gold. From level 10 on, leveling F/C increases production by 200/hr, while costing an additional 160-300k food/gold per level (300k starting after level 11). If you were to take one, and upgrade it straight from level 10 to 14, it would take 3.5 million, while only producing 800 more per hour. This results in most players not upgrading their F/C past somewhere between 7 and 10, because the returns are inconsequential. This leaves raiding as the only serious option for earning money, but what happens when fewer people are playing? The ability to raid diminishes because inactive players generate inconsequential amounts of resources. Let's say all players level their F/C to 10 though before quitting the game (unlikely, as most players will probably stop at about 7-8). The remainder of us will then have to primarily raid abandoned bases, with level 10 F/C. A total of 8 level 10 F/C produce close to 130k of each resource in 8 hours, a peace treaty for destroying the TC and less than 50% of buildings. After a few iterations of raids every 8 hours, this would level off around 130k profit every raid (You steal 65k, 8 hours later, You can steal 100k, 8 hours later, 120k, until this levels off around 130k available every 8 hours), which isn't terrible, until you consider the cost of upgrades versus the time commitment here. Most of the time, assuming your raiders stay on target, you probably need about 20 raiders and 12 footmen to take F/C + TC that are outside of walls. This takes about 12 minutes to produce with 3 Barracks. Since you can overlap upgrades with this, we'll say it takes you about 5 minutes to: search for a suitable base, destroy it, and start the next round of training. This leaves you with a 7 minute wait between attacks. EA and IA upgrades tend to be in the realm of 4 million to 6 million resources per upgrade, so we'll just say you're spending about 5 million resources per upgrade. At 130k per 7 minutes, you are looking at 4 and a half hours of farming for two upgrades (one food based, one gold based).
Until recently, I was able to consistently pull in 300k or more of each per Raider spam because a lot of people still had storages with a lot of resources, but I've seen a downward trend in that, hence my statement above that fewer people are active. Those of us that are active do our farming all at once, and then spend all of that so that we don't lose our resources fairly quickly to raider spam (when you are pulling in 130k per 7 minutes, 350k is a pretty big hit).
By comparison, a Clash of Clans TH8 (which I think is fairly comparable to Enlightenment Age) can produce 168,000 of each per 8 hours, at a significantly lower cost. Further, a standard treaty is 12 hours, so you're actually looking at 250k profit per attack, and upgrades between 2 and 3 million each. This is a far more sustainable profit to raiding ratio.
Second major issue with longevity: raiding comps. While the game provides an impressive variety of troops for attacking, it has quickly become apparent that the most efficient strategy for pulling in resources is raider spam, unless you have max troops (at which point you can bulldoze max EA bases). If you have max EA troops, and have just moved into IA, you can only hit EA and IA bases, but you don't have troops that can survive half-decent EA bases. So, you can either spend a half hour producing expensive troops to attack, or 10-15 minutes producing raiders and footmen. This results in boring, repetitive raiding. With an actual raiding comp, there's strategy involved, and it's fun, but if those troops can't survive a battle, there's no point to building the expensive comp when you get just as much resources from spamming with raiders. With the above problem of need to raid for several hours per upgrade, and boring raiding, active players quickly dwindle, leading to the above problem of reduced resources to raid. Even at 350k per raid, if the raiding gets boring, players will quit.
My last point has to do with player expectations and such. I started out as Chinese, which I consider to have mediocre bonuses. As I reached medieval, it became clear that HC were the way to raid, so I looked at the two nations with HC bonuses, French and Greek. After weighing the bonuses, I went with Greek (French hadn't received their nation bonuses, and the DPS on Greek HC seemed to outweigh the extra HP on French HC). Soon after I reached Gunpowder age, the HC nerf hit, and I was stuck having spent 600 crowns on a nation that went from the best to the worst. I submitted a ticket, requesting a refund or a nation swap (At this point, I would be happy having the cost to swap nations reduced from 1000 for my second swap to 600). I was told this wouldn't be fair because they weren't providing this service to other nations/players, which at best is circular logic, and at worst, just really, really bad customer service. Without spending money, I've been stuck as Greek since, and it's been pretty miserable. So, moving forward, I think it would only be fair for the Developers to promise that if they substantially change any nation or wonder, to allow any player with that nation or wonder to make a free swap. Since choosing nations and wonders is such an important part of this game, and a reason I listed above to play this game, it's unfair to never know which nation/unit/wonder will be nerfed next, especially when some of us spent money to get that nation/wonder. This leads into my next point: I purchased the extra worker with the early boost, and I'm not here to complain about how that's no longer an extra worker or whatever; I think that overall, I got a fair deal with my $10. However, Dominations did not make it clear what I was purchasing. If I knew then that I was purchasing a worker that I could buy in the Industrial Age for however many millions of gold, I would probably still make that purchase, but it was frustrating to not know this in advance. This was followed by spending 600 of those crowns switching to Greek, and another 600 to switch a wonder. You can bet I'd be upset if that wonder got nerfed and I had no recourse, and there is no promise from BHG that this won't happen. This goes back to player expectations. If BHG makes changes to their game, they need to allow us some form of recourse for crowns/money spent.
Let me know if you agree, and maybe we can get BHG to improve this game. I've written all of this because I care about this game, I want to see this game grow, and I want to keep playing this game. However, without substantial changes, I don't intend to stick around much longer.