Major game balance changes

Its hard to compare. But don't forget you not just lose 5 days buildingtime, you also lose 5 days of ressources.

I don't say i have less time, i also spend many hours for playing per day and im also a hardcoreplayer. If I have fun in a games like this you will see my name in top 20 ranking. Sadly I was addicted in browsergames, in past i used my alarmclock and wake up just for such games. I risk my work. And i lose my first wife because i spend more time for playing as with her. Now i have a different look to such games. I still play because its my primary hobby but i try to have enough freetime too. I never will play at work again and i wont have feelings to lose something just because im away. If i see the game i play turns in such i direction i will stop to play completely because no game is worth to ruin a reallife. Thats also the reason why i never would start games like world of warcraft.

But back to topic. At moment buildingtime isn't so bad but there are still some problems i think. I still think huts becomes useless now. You need them just for huge buildingtime and most bildingtime had the huts himself. I still think i will ignore them in next stage (or berserker change something). I also think productionbuildings are to cheap.

Some ideas of me:
Huts should have small buildingtime but high prices. If you upgrade them it always help for your whole development. I primary built huts to become buildingtime less than 5 min but now i must wait 4 hours to finish a hut and then maybe i could built another house of 5:03min without waiting. There is no relationship. All other timeframes uninteressting for me. Dosn't matter if i need wait 3-4 min more or less. Maybe it would be interessting for a timeframe of 16hours but we don't have such buildingtime anymore.
Productionbuildings same as huts. I think they should have higher prices and medium buildingtime because they are most important now. As casher you just need a full store with some ressources and you can built many many upgrades of gardens and forestries or stonefields at once. Just buy some buildingtime reducing und use them in the beginning. With 400/400/400 ressources i believe you can upgrade more than 20 productionbuildings at once. Also level 9 to 10 needs less than 100 res but 5 hours to wait. A noncasher need many hours/days till he would have the same income.

Btw it dosn't matter if you are online 10hours at once because you just can built 1 house and then you need wait (buildingtime or your store is empty). Somebody who is online 10hours he just can start 5-8 upgrades of primary cheap buildings. If somebody come online every 2 hours.just for 5 min so he just would play 1 hour per day but he is able to start 12 upgrades and his store will never overloaded. If you have an income of 400-500 per hour you need to be online every 5-6 hours and spend all ressources and thats nearly impossible and beside this i don't like this idea because of the reason above.

pay to win game perhaps ? :)

In my mind cash should primary support a leck of time.

There are 4 groupe of players.

1. Player without cash and without time. (They will be primary decoration of a game ;) )
2. Player without cash and many time (For example kids, they will be the biggest part of active gamecommunity and the gameexperience himself)
3. Player with cash and less time (For example working adults. They will pay to stay in competition with groupe 2 the primary part of community who are important for the game and developers)
4. Player with time and cash (A smaller groupe and mosttime they are outbalance nothing can stop them)

At moment you just change the relationship between players of groupe 2 to 3. Maybe in past a player with cash had some advantages because of the option to finsih a building. But the other side was a player with time could built huts and raise his income without spending some money. Because of the huts he had a small advantage too. Later you need ressources AND time, a casher just could reduce the time but still need res, to raise your income wouldn't be so important because if you don't reduce the buildingtime of a building your shed will be overloaded soon. Other side a player without cash could ask his friends every hour for the same building and so he was able to reduce buildingtime too. Sure not so fast but he could.

Now you just need income and huge sheds. For 15  productionbuildings of level 10 you need 15 blueprints. You need 12 more blueprints to raise your sheds up to level 20. Because of the small price of productionbuildings a casher could built all his productionbuildings from level 1 to 10 at the first day. Then he had income of 400-600 of every kind and a good base to built everything he want (also without spending cash). A noncasher would need a week to get the same income. Also he woundn't be able to built the last levels of them because of the amount of blueprints.

Player with time and cash is still unstopable. I wrote some suggestions to balance the relationship of group 2,3 and 4 at another thread.

Btw i don't dicuss here because i feel sad about the new setting. Im sure i will be faster in progress with this setting in next stage. I just don't like the balance and the fact of the bad feeling you got when you are offline for more than 4 hours.

I agree with knuit and don't think that the pay vs non pay will change that much.  Why not reduce culture on buildings such as sheds?  Is it possible that it might make it a little more even between players?

Experience I had over weekend with my 2nd town was crazy. I discovered a chest that I had to bring 5 rams to in order to open. To do that I had to build up storage sheds pushing up my culture to the point that my neighbor thought I wanted her horses when in fact I only wanted to open a chest.  So I think, maybe, reducing culture might help(?) or amt. of rams needed to open chest:)

So now to the update itself: The updates seems not bad as all, but I think there was no real decision process behind (...)

Don't know what made you to believe otherwise and how did you expected to see the decisions behind them unless explicitly stated but you are incorrect. There are very specific formulas with logarithms and conditional relationships behind the balance changes, [...]. The game has enormously large number of variables [...]

Some examples of "strange" costs was mentioned until now. Before update I only need wood, now i need everything but wood. Some buildings like chiftain hut are the most important building, and as the sheds costs blueprints at level 17, it will be so, that my first town can reach gathering point, but from second town only if I get more blueprints or if I not build up all other buildings which needs blueprints. Before update: You only need 1 or 2 blueprints, now the sum changes - raising blueprints, with same blueprint-getting, means, non-paying-players will stay at some point. There are more points. Much more points, where I have a reason to believe, that the balancing would take months only for first stage to be nice. And thats the thing that make me believe, that there was no greater plan behind the balancing update. If I'm wrong, my bad. I wait with commenting on balancing things until I see what you really want to have. But in fact I thing that the actual balancing update is better than before. So you are on the right way (in my opinion).

 Now paying vs. non paying player is more balanced. That this will never be equal... that's sure. But that's a nice decision from your side. I can remember that you deny the pay2win concept... and now such an update, nice one.

Nice to hear but i really don't know how.

I only say its "more balanced". It will never be balanced, like player would like to. Thats impossible - sadly. But in fact anything depends on timing at the moment. Ressources are equal for both player types. (Not really equal, as there are options to get ressources with money (indirect and direct).. if u pay enough, but don't lets talk about player who pays daily 20$, they sure will upgrade at least double so fast as everyone else.) But the hardest thing is, if you wait for a building with 20h, you need the 20h. Paying player will reduce it to 1 sec and are 20h faster than you. Now the highest timing i've seen is 4-6h, so the paying player is only 4-6h faster. If you are more online (as a non-paying player) you CAN make more, if the paying player is not so often online. That you don't like to come online every 2-3h... neither do I, but players who want to make something, can now make more as before the update. Before the update it was enough if i come online 2 times a day, now i can play every hour (with more than one town).

Dosn't matter what i would built wood is always remain and other ressources empty.

That was one example - only to say thank you knutitgut, to take out some numbers.

how much power should cash provide to paying players? :)

As there are paying and non-paying player, you can regulate with "power" how much player will come to each group. If you make the costs really high and less powerfull, there will be only a few who really pays. If you make it costs really low and much powerful... that's in fact not easy to descibe, that's the worst case of the game. There must be something between that. At the moment I don't like to pay something, because much items aren't powerful yet. Some $ only for 1h or 2,5h or 25% more lumber income.. and so on. You may make a list with number of buying for every item. Then calculate arithmetic mean and standard devitation and see which items doesn't fit into that. The same with the overall enkord cash everyone has (as we get them back after wipe, they must be saved anywhere). Now you can calculate an estimator and ... *more math lesson* - but in fact it depends only one you. It will be more fun, if you make the prices higher and less player will buy something. Then only a few will notice when there is a "pay2win" player, and most people can have fun.

I discovered a chest that I had to bring 5 rams to in order to open.

I don't like such chests really... i've found so much chests now, but if I need to build rams or archers (both in the last days) - i think about player who don't want to fight, and have other target, but now are forced to do so - to open the chest.. and do you know what I get? It's nice to have a random system... i've got two times wood. Both times my sheds are full of wood, so I've build over some hours units, lowered my culture to get "nothing". The good thing: Now I have any unit - or does there be chests for caveman, even I don't have researched it? - five times. So every chest can come! I don't have much spectation to them, its more like to clean my garden, if there is a chest. Thats the same reason why I stopped to use the wheel of fortune.. i've got 3 or 4 times in a row some food / wood / stone, i doesn't need to. Even if i get something other.. I get soo bad items, i never really want to use that. I don't like random ;-) but thats personal taste, I think most players use wheel of fortune every day.

Well I started new hero but due to the fact that it is so crowded now and that it takes so much wood to upgrade chieftain hut I really don't feel like playing with it :( I think price for chieftian hut level 10 is way to high still. I already deleted new hero :( As well as another one that was crowded into a spot that had no room to build up.

I don't see the logic behind this as now you can't build all 10 huts until your population is so big that you loose the benefit of it. To me having to build the wood shed so high that you need a blueprint to do it before you can upgrade the chieftian hut is discouraging. Lots of fun things depend on level 10 chieftain hut and to reach that seems unobtainable.  I realize that things are still being tweaked and that quests will be added but I am really tired of having to upgrade sheds and resources to be able to do anything else.

I know I am not seeing the big picture but I am just voicing my opinion. I also was shocked to see a new hero placed where vivia was as that person will have no room at all since Tuey and AnneeR are taking what space there is there. :(  I am so unhappy now with some of the short building times and large number of resources needed that I am ALMOST ready to quit playing. 

Well that is why I said not seeing the big picture :) Also i realize that currently all there is to do is expand. If we had more quest locations to explore we migh not be in such a hurry :)

I see people starting their 4th towns and that's just Stone Age!

Because its easier now to raise your culure because of the short buildingtime. If you built a new town and transfer ressources this town grow like hell. And thats what i said about the advantages of a casher, a casher is able to use this at his first town too. So he had more advantages as in past. In pst he just could speedup a building with 20hours. Sure thats fine but it only bring him some more culture, now you can pay for a good income and so you have everything you need.

My new heros are not far enough along but in the two new towns I started what I don't like the most is that while I concentrated on getting enough wood to get a chieftian hut of level 10 my other warehouses are much smaller and so I still need to bring them up to level 18 :(

It's been quite some time since that update and I would like to hear from people who started the new heroes since then.

I find a significant difference in the availability of resources. I need to constantly keep up with upgrading wood and stone production and sheds, because higher building levels cannot be obtained without great amounts of resources. This also causes me to pay a lot more attention to stash level. Upgrading gardens does not seem to be as much of a priority, however there is an advantage to being able to do "instant exchange" with that resource.

That's because you don't have army. Having army you would max out gardens pretty quick :)

You are right. I think more in terms of defense than offense. I raise palisade and tower levels instead of hunter and brave houses. That is soon to change too, however, because once my buildings are high levels I will begin to think of building up my warriors. I love the nomads :)

my other warehouses are much smaller and so I still need to bring them up to level 18 :(

Why?

Because a small full warehouse is nice but I big full warehouse is wonderful :)