why does eras last that long? it's boring :(

[yxcv]

According to several threats here, one era lasts 8 month. My era started in march, 3 month ago, and at least 2 alliances have the possibilities to finish it at once, i have maxed a couple of researches and buildings and attack the same 5 players within my x2 range since weeks... in other words: it's terrible boring. When i think about that, most probably i'll quit before continuing this 5 more month...
I'm playing x2 speed, which is fine for me, i just can't see any reason why we should wait until anybody activates the contest to finish that era, and definitly not 5 more month, except maybe demotivating players like me, i know i'm not the only one.
And no, i didn't buy too many diamonds, i didn't buy a single one. Maybe i've played wrong, i have built a big economy instead of staying small with big army, but i don't want to play with half power only to be able to attack after 5 months, i won't be able to beat the 2 players which are bigger than me because i don't buy diamonds, there are just no more realistic goals to achieve. Any suggestions what i can do?

[Tasilakosil]

yup...you could use the spare time and learn the difference between thread and threat.

other than that you could play first couple of weeks, than simply stop playing until next era, play different speed server and/or play several eras at once...or you can always just play a different game.

or, you can get a bit more creative than that and propose a solution that would inspire developers to introduce new features or brand new version.

or, you could have used half the time you needed to write that rant and give it a thought or two first...

[yxcv]

That wasn't meant as rant, i want to know what's the intention to let the eras last longer than neccesary, and what other good players do when it becomes boring before i leave the game and play something else. maybe somebody has  a solution i might try, a technical solution for me would be: just don't "start" the lords of the realm, let the players finish the era when they are able to do so.
I guess there is some reason, maybe it's just to make a maximum of profit, that's an answer which wouldn't satisfy me, but i'd like to hear it anyways.

Playing a couple of weeks just to give up after a while is not what i want, i don't want to play several eras, i want to concentrate on one and do my best, and i want to get a kind of "reward" for that, not especially a material one, but then i know that was the best i could do. I'm playing games because of satisfaction, i've met some nice guys here so i don't want to leave at instant, but they have the same problem, so where do you get your satisfaction and motivation between "i've reached everything i can" and a new era?

PS: i know the difference between thread and threat, but for any reason i'm typing words wrong when i become tired, not usually typing mistakes but i confuse words with similar pronounciation, a couple of days ago i confused "whole" and "hole 6 times in a row although i know the difference, brains are strange things 

[Tasilakosil]

its not keeping eras last longer than necessary, it only depends on how much time do you invest in it. some people are online only an hour or 2 daily and are off the rest of the day. they picked slower server in order to be able to reach certain point before era ends. if you get bored fast, you need server with smalle life span...for example on blitz(x4) server the era lasts only 4 months max and lords of the realms is activated after 10 weeks...

[yxcv]

yes, blitz is faster, but that's not what i actually want. 20 minutes to attack is fast enough, and i'm not bored because the era lasts that long, but because there isn't much i can do anymore against other players, half of top20 is out of my x2 range, 1/2 of those within my range is in my own union, so there are very few players i can attack. The game still needs a lot of time for daily routine like hunting barbs, spend resources etc, but it's just routine...
I think at faster servers the difference between players isn't much less, so i'd have a similar problem even faster, not that long, but still boring.

I don't have a proper suggestion how to change the game to solve this, every change in this case would be big like instead of linear growth of points a logarithmic one, or x3 range instead of x2, but i don't think that would be wished by many others.
For me personally in my situation less points for economy would help, that also would help those who only want to build, but i don't play long enough to estimate all consequences, so i'm careful about my wishes.
I still want to win that era with my union, so i still have to do my best, but i can't see that my motivation will last 5 more month, and that's why i ask you, the forum, what you do against getting bored and the admins what's the goal of waiting until starting Lords of the realm, like in reallife it's much easier to get handled with boring situations when i know the reason.

[Tasilakosil]

actually logarithmic growth is slower than linear ... just sayin ... anyway, i dont see why do you think you need to get as much points as possible in shortest time possible. you could easily cap your worth points around 1-2M. you might make it a challenge to get best set-up for that ammount of woth points and your style of playing you can set yourself goals for military points, you can try to get as much medals as you want. its rather pointless trying to reach millions of points if you have nobody to play with...

as far as suggestions go, i dont see why you should be afraid of proposing big ideas...worst case scenario is that nothing will happen which is exactly the same as if you do nothing ergo i dont see any problems there....

for example, i would like if the game was more about fighting than about evading, i would like if the game was more about playing because you want to rather than playing because you have to...maybe i would go even as far as saying removing espionage and simulator would make things a little bit more interesting...i would like if people were not allowed to play with army constantly away - simply because it doesnt make any sense. right now, there are way too many ways to play whole era with 0 resources in capital and army always on the move which basically creates enviroment where people screw other players only because they dont have time to sit around 24/7 - or to be fair, as much as they do - it only takes few resources to build MP and you only need it to leave army somewhere for a while ergo you can easily move your MP every other day making it almost impossible to find - or more precisely, highly time ineficient. in Great People version for example, you cant even move capital from the original spot and you cant set field battle evasion in provinces/colonies...in older versions you could set field army to evade from field battles while letting them fight fortress sieges. which would make a lot more sense for example. A nice feature would be to have something like defense settings where you can set how your army will be deployed for defense if it finds itself in province. Meaning that instead of having to set it up manualy the army would be deployed in their preset position - like any army would if composed of anything more advanced than dummies. economy would be another good topic for a brainstorming. Automating routines?

These are but ideas or objectives i would try to achieve if i was about to suggest either more concrete way to improve game as it is or perhaps inventing a new game model. if you want, you might give them a though as well, even if not for other reason than to keep you a bit more busy while being so bored

the way i see it is that as a battle simulator this game is awesome, as economy simulator, this game is also awesome. it weakest point is how people engage one another...and why. in its current state, is not that much about strategy and how one can play as it is about being ON and when one can play

[yxcv]

I agree in some points, and disagree in others
Yes, logarithmic growth is slower than linear, and even more slower if you are big, so it would be good for me. I don't want max million points, i want to be able to support my union as good as possible, so i try to fight our biggest opponents, and for that i need a big army and, if not economy, so at least good infrastructure (many provinces with high lvls of barracks etc.). But those are very view, and far away, so...
what i'd like to have is less difference between ALL players, more can attack me, i can attack more.

I've seen games becoming worse and worse because people who didn't play long and couldn't see the consequences made bad suggestions which were implemented, i don't want to be one of those, but that's my worst case scenario.
With bigger armies it becomes harder to build MP one day here, one day there and move your army between them, it took me more than one week to upgrade the military camp for most of mine, but early in game that is a strategie, yes.

OK, you seem to know the game well enough, so that's a suggestion which would make the game more intresting for me, more strategic (and especially more a team game) if we can find a proper way to implement it into this game: I'd like to be able to defend my team members. That would be a reason to keep espionage, or some kind of, to see if there is a defending army on it's way.. probably another kind of espionage would be better for that, elsewise ce would be too strong i think.
I shouldn't be able to send all my army to somebody with 1/20 of my points, maybe only 1/20 or even 1/30 of my army, the number of players who can defend might be limited too, that would be nice for me.

Of course it's about beeing online again, but there is a point i don't get: you don't like it to be forced beeing online at the one hand, but you don't like the possibility to evade at the other hand? i can't see how that fits together, i did i get something wrong?


PS: That thing about older versions, setting field army on evade and garrison to fight sounds great, already thought about suggest that... which wouldn't really solve my problem, but sounds like a nice feature to me, and moving capital too:)

[Tasilakosil]

supports? i dont think so. the game was designed so that attacker´s army is limited by defender´s worth points in a way that allows defender to be able to defend himself up to a point leaving some space for attacker to wage successful attack, not to mention that dealing with army vs economics trade-off is actually the only source of strategy in this game. supports would undermine both these concepts, especially because there is nothing to fight for in the first place. resources can be moved, army as well and to my knowledge, negative effects of sieging empty fortress are infinitesimal.

as far es evasion goes, the only reason to attack someone is to steal his resources or smash his army. that is impossible if someone is able to evade all the time, especially if all negative effects can be alleviated with barbarian caskets. which creates situation where no.1 has to be online at specific times, no matter what because if he is late or something happes he´s gonna get punished big time and no.2 has to be online even more hoping to exploit that someone is 15 minutes late which may or may not occur in a time span of up to 12 hours and it goes like this for months. this is made even more obvious during wars since it requires a lots of time to do proper espionage to find targets, it doesnt even pay off to go in war with strong alliance cause its boring as hell...

there should be something worth fighting for at all times as well as there should be an option to leave army in province and let it fight as if one was online as well as there shouldnt be a cost free way to avoid fights whatsoever. that´s all.

[yxcv]

So, our opinions aren't that different
Support as the only change would make it more intresting for me at this certain time, i didn't mean that's the best idea. maybe if union members could not only defend each other, but also attack together, but that is one of the big changes where i can't estimate the consequences, not to talk about that i have no proper suggestion how exactly that should work.

Another reason for support might be if the ranges are changed, no penalties within x3 or even x5 range, or with a logarithmic growth, both would be an advantage for usually bigger attackers. And of course there is a reason to defend: hurt the enemy, get gold from supply train, help members... or just fun and fights.

But all that are the thoughts of the newb i am, i'm not sure if that would really make the game better for anyone, including me.

[Tasilakosil]

well, people already can attack all together. simply by targeting all the same guy...there is no need to reinvent a wheel just for the sake of justifying supports, especially when there is no practical use of them. like i said before, introducing supports so people could win defensive battles they normaly wouldnt be able to is not a good idea. i understand it looks tempting for someone who has very little choices when it comes to foes but trying to get involved in battles in this way is just plain wrong, at least unless the game mode changes.

also, logarithmic growth or extending range from 2x to 3x would only hurt weaker players. even at this point if you consider that you can be easily attacked by someone with everything what you have + its equivalent in army on top of that...that part is kinda okay...ish. a solution could be if players were able to develop easier and/or faster. everybody can make it up to 100K most people reach 500K consistently and there is enough of those who can reach 1-3M. If people were allowed to reach high score at least easier if not necesarily faster, it would result in more people within range of experienced players who dont want to cap themselves around 1M

[yxcv]

Hm, yes, faster growing for smaller players would help too, but how should that be possible with linear growth? Some kind of bonus for ppl with less points? I could imagine about a change of the temple gifts for example... they seem to depend on your own economy/army/points, if those would depend on the top player(s) instead, that would change things a bit, and i think it's not that hard to implement. maybe it's necessary to block temple during attacks then, when i get 50k light sowrds it doesn't matter if i win or lose, for somebody with 100k army it's different, on the other hand it's quite a risk to open temple chests while you are attacked, so maybe it's fair

By attacking together i didn't mean just to attack the same guy at the same time, but with "one" army, like a small union army. Not unlimited, let's say 2-5 players who have together 2x the net worth points of their target can combine their army, that would improve teamplay, and make it possible for smaller players to beat a bigger one. And then defense for each other would make sense, which also would improve teamplay.
That way it wouldn't be just to improve my gameplay, these 5 guys which suffers because of me could work together and try to punish me, but it would make imperia a quite different game, i have no idea if such changes are wished by the community.

[Tasilakosil]

well, that sounds a bit better...for example if people were able to combine their forces and attack people in 2x range relative to sum of their worth points...eventually considering number of players in the group.


as far as what community wants - in my experience what community wants and what is good for game can be two very very different things...

[yxcv]

Now we understand each other it seems about what i want, or at least, what i could imagine to be positive
By community i didn't mean the big mass of players, but every game has a core of players who are playing a long time, and know the game by heart, and if most of those agree or disagree with an idea, it's usually right to listen to them, but i'm not part of this core and don't know who is. Maybe this core doesn't really exist here with so many languages and seperate servers.

But if so, you seem to be one of them and it's nice to discuss my thoughts with you
I also have some thoughts about that combined armies: it should be able to combine armies and fetch the troops back to each player, or an equal part in % after some units were lost, and players should keep their points for that units. upkeep is still paid from players, it should not be possible to attack or defend castles or rallypoints from unions. no idea if medals should be possible with that kind of fight, i'd rather say no. or maybe in a seperate catagory.

I could imagine several ways to implement that, something like rallypoints for players, or maybe an invitation like for babysitting, and whoever agrees choose the troops he want send in that attack, and somedoy starts the attack, not sure if all participating players have to be online when the attack starts or other restrictions.