New Leader Idea: Structual Engineer

[Navalis]

So I was thinking about this last night and it is a pure coincidence that it reaches for similar results as ReekyBullet 's blessing idea.
Nexon should establish a new 'Great Leader' in the University for Structural Engineering. Someone like Gustave Eiffel, Fritz Leonhart or Peter Rice just to name a few.
I know a lot of players are fed up with the long build times and this would serve as a permanent way to lessen them. While I don't have the full skill tree or vision in my head I wanted to get it out here for feed back and for folks to build on (no pun intended). Maybe the first tier would have one slot to shorten money producing building and another t shorten food producing buildings. Second tier would shorten research buildings. Third tier would shorten defensive/offensive buildings. (Maybe fit the dock and TC in somewhere.) The capstone could improve/shorten build times for wonders?
What do you folks think?

 

[ReekyBullet]

Zombies think alike lol

 

[Navalis]

We can follow up with a Sanitation Engineer. No offense Nexon but someone needs to clean up the mess around here to put it politely…

 

[RottPhiler]

I think Nexon messed up by making the jump from Enlightenment to Industrial too large (4 days). The game becomes tedious right around level 100, max Gunpowder to early Enlightenment, and there are a lot of quits around this point (Once you get past this phase, you've invested too much and built enough equity to quit outright). Grinding through Enlightenment was also somewhat fun for me, but as a young Industrial (level 143, I moved up at level 140), the 8 days per build seems beyond the tedium I'm willing to put up with for a game.

I believe Nexon started out with the idea that Industrial could possibly be one of the final ages in the game, and that was the reason for essentially doubling the build time of Enlightenment, but now that they have developed such a huge player base they are simply going to keep adding ages to the game (or adding gimmicks like the University which could take years to complete researching. Ultimately it doesn't matter if offense such as cannons, musketers, etc. get buffed, as long as defense such as mortars, walls etc., also get buffed equivalently, resulting in a balanced game equilibrium). This means that new content is simply cosmetic (albeit super exciting), and we have an equivalent offense battling an equivalent defense (with some variance depending on player choices), all through the game from dawn age to space age. I also believe Nexon realized this, and instead of making every global upgrade 16 days long (doubling industrial, which would have killed the game), only 10 days long, and atomic upgrades only around 12 days long. However, that is still too tedious. So any way to reduce this tedium is welcome.

Also Oil is a resource that seems designed to operate at a 1:100 ratio with gold/food, roughly. So getting 1000 oil is equivalent to getting 100,000, again roughly. It simply seems like a scarcer resource because players protect it better, making it harder to steal. I believe Oil was simply introduced to keep costs from ballooning too much into numbers that don't make sense in the everyday world, a form of game balance.

tl;dr: Anything that speeds up upgrade times is welcome.

 

[Veldan]

Yes, I believe that at some point, upgrade time reduction is an absolute necessity if we want new players to have any chance of ever reaching the high ages. As said before, the upgrade times in IA (and also GA / AA) make sense when an age is the current maximum, so that people don't hit the cap too fast. But they do not make any sense later, when that age is somewhere in the middle and people are just progressing through. So, I think it is indeed a great idea to have a university option for reducing the times (and costs!) of upgrades globally. Not by a crazy amount, 10% would already go a long way. Perhaps they could introduce it with the Cold War Age patch.

Alternatively, the devs could solve this problem by doing a full pass on upgrade costs and times, and making it faster to move through IA and GA (and maybe AA) when the next age is introduced.

For reference: I just spent 5 months in IA with 16 citizens and I'm not nearly done upgrading everything.

 

[RottPhiler]

Yeah my spreadsheets tell me I have 7 months in IA (I only have 14 workers, and 2 are sitting around hunting, and harvesting). That is not counting the university, walls, and generals.

 

[SebQuattro]

I think Nexon messed up by making the jump from Enlightenment to Industrial too large (4 days).

No, they messed up by increasing the number of citizens required for each upgrade.

The game becomes tedious right around level 100, max Gunpowder to early Enlightenment

I didn't find the game tedious at Enlightenment Age. My second account is EA and progress is still swift at that point.

(Once you get past this phase, you've invested too much and built enough equity to quit outright).

Nope, there's tons of inactive Global/ Atomic Age players. Many even have recent additions like the Stronghold. You even see quite a few inactive accounts with Luxury Estates. I'm also seeing many inactive maxed out IA players that presumably quit before Global Age was added.

I believe Nexon started out with the idea that Industrial could possibly be one of the final ages in the game

Nope. Even before the game was launched, it was being advertised as "from the Stone Age to the Space Age!"
http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...Nations-Mobile

I also believe Nexon realized this, and instead of making every global upgrade 16 days long (doubling industrial, which would have killed the game), only 10 days long, and atomic upgrades only around 12 days long.

Nope. The number of citizens for building upgrades increase. Farms, Caravans and roads require 4 citizens to upgrade in Global Age, The Fort requires 8 citizens to upgrade, Towers require 4 citizens to upgrade, Atomic TC requires 12 citizens. So even if build times only increase by a few more days, it works out way more than double once you factor in how many citizens are required.

Also Oil is a resource that seems designed to operate at a 1:100 ratio with gold/food, roughly. So getting 1000 oil is equivalent to getting 100,000, again roughly. It simply seems like a scarcer resource because players protect it better, making it harder to steal. I believe Oil was simply introduced to keep costs from ballooning too much into numbers that don't make sense in the everyday world, a form of game balance.

Nope. It's easier to steal oil because you have just one storage building to target vs 4 for gold/ food. At Global Age and Atomic Age, it's food that's scare, not oil. Gold is produced by roads and Caravans, food only comes from Farms. The vast majority of Global players aren't upgrading their farms or the caravans, it's pretty common to come across Global Age players with Medieval farms. As farms are upgraded, the amount of food the produce increases by only a small amount, but the amount of food required to retrain your army increases by a substantial amount.

 

[SiuYin]

When Industrial is the latest age, it is absolutely fine that 4 building day for enlightenment and 7-8 for industrial.
But after Global and atomic, it become a stopper for new player.
the building time need some adjustment,
ie 3 day for EA, 4 day for IA and 8 day for GA

we should keep a relative constant time for a new player to advance into last age

 

[Librox]

well... time is how they attempt to make us visist the market... I really doubt researches to reduce boulding time will be added... but I do agree with SebQuattro where he says that its food that is scarce, not oil...

 

[Manifesto]

Lol .......

 

[Navalis]

I don't think we'll have any luck flushing these elephant archers down the toilet...