Not much to do at certain point in the game

Just a few things I'd like to mention.

Love the start game - plenty to do, eyes here and there. Give it 3 days and you have nothing to do.

Currently building a Level 9 Chieftan Hut - takes nearly 5 hours. Can't build anything else while that is going. Done visiting, missions, etc. Latest one is exploring NK - thing is, I'm Level 3 with 5 Hunters, 5 Braves, 4 Nomads, 3 Cavemen. Unfortunately, 8 Skeletons wipe me out!

There are at least 4 or 5 areas that have 7+ Skeletons. Therefore, I am getting nowhere with NK.

People say - "Well buold up your army and your town". Yeh, would love to, but at 12 midnight when I have just come in from work, I click onChieftan Hut Level 8 to upgrade it to Level 9 - guess what? It will take me 5 hours!!!

So, click on that, send my 5 scouts out to exploe some land 12 minutes away and log off! Wake up in the morning, send my scouts out on another useless mission, because I can really see the other side of the world by now and click on something else to build that will take 5 hours!!

So, I have to wait another 5 hours until I can log on, unless I want to wait 20 minutes for the scouts and send them out YET AGAIN?! I can also search the town for resources, which mean nothing because by the time I've waited 5 hours for the new build I have probably topped up my resources anyway.

Seriously there is a big, big gap between playability and boredom! This is not a criticsim, hopefully it's a warning that apart from up to (biggest guess) 100 players, the casual gamer will give up quickly without spending anything.

Build as many huts as you can, and upgrade them as high as you can.  The more huts/houses you have, the shorter all of your build times will be.

I used to feel like that when I just started playing, but I'm now at the stage where I can only manage one hero because there is too much to do!

You probably hit that funny slow patch between the activity at the start to get things going, and the vast increase in things to do and stuff to find when you found your second town. I've noticed there's always a bit of a lull around that time. But once you have your second town, you regularly get chests to open, items to find, monsters to fight (if you want to, you don't have to). On top of that, your research goes much faster with two towns providing science/resource income. As soon as I have two towns, I can only manage one hero.

I usually focus on production and storage first - the more resources you produce, the faster your research goes, so it's a double whammy. And the faster your research, the more you get to build, and the faster you get to your second town.

I hope you'll give it a little more time and patience. I think a lot of us were sceptics at first, and most of us have changed our minds completely! 

Well friend, the logical thing is to upgrade those buildings that take very long time when u are sleeping, or when u are going to work, were u doing the opposite?

So you come home from work 12 at midnight, do u work from morning to midnight? u shouldnt be expecting to have fun in any kind of online game with your schedule.

There is a slow patch in the game, about 3 or 4 days in, but it can be minimised as others suggest if you concentrate on resources and huts first. Some peoples build times get very high because they concentrate on high culture buildings without developing resources and huts.

I have also found, however, that there is a point later when you have a Chieftain Hut at level 10, and 10 huts at level 5 when build times inevitably go up before you are able to get into the Classical Age and do the research necessary to make your huts into houses. Maybe this could be improved to allow you to get to Classical Age a little quicker. Even being careful my build times got up to 130-140%.

Slow patch in build/tech comes as soon as the tutorial ends. Tech jumps to a very high amount after the tutorial, from a low amount of mins to hours/days. this is a very big jump and a lot of players get turned off by it.

Slow patch in adventure, well, depends on how fast a player is in game. This is all still test phase so can't expect a full game. Does not take long at all to finish the quests we have available. And uncovering fog to find caves is hit or miss with some, especially if they do not know they are there, maybe some hints in game about searching for them? Just a few thoughts on it.

I have played the start of the game 6 or 7 times. I regonize that in the beginning it seems that there is not much to do while you are waiting, but there have been a lot of improvements at this point. Besides the quests, more puzzles have been introduced in this alpha. Earlier there has also been the introduction of the caves, the excavation-spots and you can always let your hero catch more fish. Especially now we have penguins! However, excavation and fishing-spots need the right perks. I can imagine that players who are just beginning find it hard to choose what all those perks exactly mean for you, and how they influence your game. There is one point at the game where I do feel like it is slowing down a lot, and that is when you move over to a next age, for example from stone age to classical age. You have to upgrade your buildings, but you cannot do so before you have researched the necessary techs. You cannot speed up research because your production is not high enough and you do not have prerequisite buildings. And speeding up production is not possible without the research. This feels like a loop. You need some extra patience and stamina to get through this phase.

I have noticed the slow-down, but have been patient with it because I am aware that the story-line/adventure portion of the game is incomplete. It is the area that has been "put aside" in favor of completing the development of the Ages.

When I see a player complaining about the slowness of the game I tend to want to remind them that the game is still in Alpha and many features are not available yet. I see other veteran players doing this as well. Even though the "Alpha stage" disclaimer is mentioned prior to players beginning to play, it is easy to forget once we are caught up in the game.

I noticed once the caves and quest locations have been investigated, monsters are discovered, and various levels of excavation spots have been found, it can definitely become a "waiting game", because I consistently must wait to find items or develop abilities to overcome all the obstacles placed in my path. I am literally "stuck" without the ways or means to proceed in any one of these directions. I am left with nothing to do but upgrade buildings and slowly try to level my hero. This I think is where the frustration tends to settle in.

Again, as a veteran player, I know that these circumstances will soon pass. However, newer players who are not familiar with the progresses of the game would find it difficult to visualize. They just simply become frustrated.  

Thanks for all the responses guys. I'll try and provide a bit more feedback. I have just got to day 7 in game and in order to improve the speed of things, I need to get to a Level 10 Chieftan hut by the looks of it so that I can build the 2nd town. I believe the slow down came around day 4 in game and has gradually got slower over the next 3 days.

Research seems to take an age, but by the sounds of it the 2nd town should improve this.

I've got my maximum number of huts, which are all Level 4 or Level 5 at the moment, so build time can't really be speeded up at present. I think I'm on 151% as we speak, this is with 9 huts. I have Lumber and Crop resource at Levl 10 and most of my fields (lumber, food, stone) at Level 7 plus. So I feel for the amount of game time played so far that they are at good levels for what I need.

I have built every building that I can build at this time apart from the Primitive workshop. Palisade is up with watch towers attached. I've managed to find a small cave and a hollow cave, however cannot progress in these as they have the ice blocks in them and I have no torch or anything else to get past the blocks.

I've completed the the quests that I can so far within KV and NK, however those pesky Skeletons are wiping me out. Am building a bigger army as we speak. Hopefully, by tomorrow I should have my Level 10 Chieftan hut and can start looking at my 2nd town, so will comment more once that stage is on the go.

I'll persevere for now and fingers crossed will stay with it. This is looking like a very good game, but the transition period between day 4 and day 7 was a little bit painful. Love the puzzle aspects and the Garden puzzle does give me something to do each day.

from what I hear on common chat, it seems the slow down is once new players have finished the quests and the time they can go beat the Dendrogs at opposition and the time to beat the skeletons at New Kyiv.

It seems that maybe it has been forgotten that your base of players voted to have ages to play through in sandbox mode, while new players are not addicted to the game like us yet. They really need more quests and small things to do. Once they have the 4 hunters and 4 warriors they feel they are ready to go beat the quest locations. They also always all wonder about the proper tools. If you want to satisfy new players more and have less silly questions then you should say things like "This object needs a medium strength tool, hero needs to be level 10 to find it". It is time you gave balut more things to say, like maybe Ah opposition hideout? I have heard of this place, it is dangerous you need more units before you go there! Build level 10 warrior and level 10 hunter to train archers. and make it so they cannot go to opposition before they are ready. The same with New Kyiv when you come back from opposition you should need to talk to Balut who says ah New Kyiv has more dangers you need to train legionnaires or something. The scientist needs to help with leveling of hero more now for new players. It's time he tells them how and helps them with expansion so they can get a second town and the chance to kill more monsters to help them with leveling. It is not enough for new players to have the few quests from Balut and the scientist, you need to give them something more to get them interested and they need better instructions. Just my two cents on the comments I see from new players.

I agree that the wait time is to long for new players. And I really like Tuey's idea of having Bulat and the Z man give us more to do in our town.

I also think sending players to the OH, so soon in the game is a little much for them to absorb. I had a hard time remembering the mechanics of traveling from location to location and had to ask for help just to figure out how to get back to my dwelling. Maybe the tutorial could direct us back to the dwelling from the OH.

I usually go and fight the dendrogs early, I want to die, so that I can level up my hero quicker, therefore I go and fight both them and the skeletons fairly soon.

The mini-game in the dwelling has kept me busy and driven me insane! Which is part of what I love about it. I think more mini-games in the dwelling would be helpful in keeping us busy during this slow time. 

Even now, I have slow periods, but one thing to do is to make friends and chat with the other players. Now that we need horns, it may be helpful to have a tutorial on how to contact other players in PM.  Some players are shy or uncomfortable with the multiplayer function of the game and this may help them to network with other players. Making friends is an important aspect of the game! Helpful and enriching!

Hope this is helpful! Thanks!

My hero is at level 6 but I have managed to get out and fight on the quest locations and finally cleared the dogs and the skeletons.  I have managed to do as much of the quests as I know how to, not sure when they come to a halt because we don't yet have 3rd quest location.  Have only been through the 2 caves that I have found so far but feeling that I haven't got much to do now.  Still working on garden game (which I'm enjoying) and have played 3 other puzzle games at their basic level.  Enjoying things but think it's a bit slow now even though I have 2 towns.

My hero is at level 6 but I have managed to get out and fight on the quest locations and finally cleared the dogs and the skeletons.  I have managed to do as much of the quests as I know how to, not sure when they come to a halt because we don't yet have 3rd quest location.  Have only been through the 2 caves that I have found so far but feeling that I haven't got much to do now.  Still working on garden game (which I'm enjoying) and have played 3 other puzzle games at their basic level.  Enjoying things but think it's a bit slow now even though I have 2 towns.

This is similar to the stage I was describing above.

One area that seems to have slowed down right now is War.  Since most people join alliances early, not much attacking can take place because alliances must first research War.  It is towards the bottom of the tech tree in Classical.  Most haven't researched it yet, so we are left to attacking only the few that are left not in alliances until we research War.

For me, the first slow down happened for a few days straight after the tutorial ended. Then, once I'd got somewhere with Opposition Hideout and received the two new locations I felt like I had plenty to do for a day, but it's back to being very slow now as I don't have appropriate tools or strength to do much with any of the new locations or the caves. I'm waiting on research still for my second town. I've built and upgraded all huts where possible. I am never short of resources, just waiting for builds and researches.
It's always a mixture of pleasure and sadness to complete the florist puzzle first time each day - pleasure that I've done it, but sadness that the entertainment of trying to solve it is over so quickly! It would be nice to be able to play it throughout the day even if there's only a reward once a day.
Coming to shyness on the in-game chat, sometimes it feels like points made by new players about the pace of the game, questions about something they don't understand or suggestions for potential improvements are treated dismissively by more experienced players who've got already got used to the game and its quirks. It's made me pretty hesitant about what I feel comfortable saying.