In spite of what you are about to read, I am really happy about the new content. More quests, more adventures, more space on the home island, new buffs, new troops, new decorations, new production chains, saltpeter and granite mines!!!, a new population building {that I need to somehow gain 11 levels to see what it even is}, more uses for magic beans and the ever dormant fairytale castle, and I am sure plenty of things that I have not noticed yet. This is all great, and I thank Blue Byte for the plethora of new content, however I cannot get past the need to maintain a third, independent army.
The new units sure are nice, but not being able to use them on the old adventures is a slap in the face. You reach level 75 only to be no stronger than you were at level 50? No thank you. I did not get an exact count, but that is about 50 adventures you cannot use them on and 10 you can. I am expected to set aside a portion of my population capacity for troops that I use to clear the new island sectors and then very rarely while completing Ali Baba adventures? This seems counterproductive as all that new land space will be devoted to new production chains and residences to support the new troops. Especially since by the time you get all these new production chains up and running you probably would have cleared the new camps on the home island. Yes, they are too overpowered for those older adventures, but they are that way because the new enemies are also overpowered.
This guy, is insane. He has over three times the hit points of the strongest leader that I can think of.
http://i60.tinypic.com/2irk7cm.png
This guy, much more reasonable, perhaps underpowered.
http://i60.tinypic.com/vct76f.png
While we are on the subject of excessive. 100, 500 hitpoint units?
http://i60.tinypic.com/25i5cth.png
Perhaps in smaller quantities there is a use for a 500 hit point enemy, but at this point you might as well just have thrown a leader unit in the camp instead. It is not unprecedented.
Instead of creating crazily powerful units, you can achieve the same affect just by the troops that you put in the camps. A good example is this camp in Victor the Vicious.
http://i57.tinypic.com/140w089.png
Our troops attack Metal Tooth before the Roughnecks, so you cannot just go throwing massive amounts of recruits at the camp the wear it down unless you want to spend all day with your Master of Martial Arts.
If you balance the new enemies to be just out of range of our current troops, there would be no need for our new units to be so powerful and we can condense the three armies into one. Working out a good balance is going to take time, and I understand the desire to put out new content, especially with all the nagging and complaining you hear from all of us, but I can wait for better content over new content. In my opinion, most of these new units are redundant.
If you would change our current canoneers to splash damage the besieger is pointless, goodbye. That also eliminates the need for the foundry and wagon maker. Though sad to put the effort into designing them, but they were not really necessary for such a small change to an existing unit.
The swordsman and the mounted swordsman, are pretty much the same unit. One has more hit points and the other more damage. They more or less balance out. While they each have a specific use, it is a bit redundant. One of them can go away and not have much impact.
I like the knight but in the case of being able to use him on the old adventures, he is way too powerful. Perhaps simply cutting his numbers to make him slightly more powerful than the cavalry would do fine. Here is a little thought out idea on that.
http://i61.tinypic.com/2dvkjde.png
The three marksmen, like the swordsmen are again redundant. The marksmen that is first strike, goodbye. You would be even more overpowered than the knight on the older adventures. Between the armored and the mounted, I would keep the mounted if only for the splash damage.
I know Blue Byte put a lot of work into designing these new units, and killing four of them is asking an awful lot. Less units means less server space and less lines of code to find mistakes in, right? Saves you all money and time. Honestly you do not have to remove any of them, a better balance between old adventures and the Ali Baba adventures would easily solve this and we will be down to two distinct armies. But I will of course, ask for more. Please put the new units in our current barracks, rather than make us build and upgrade another one. The elite barracks is yet another large building you want us to place on the already awkward set up that is our available building spaces. I think it does look the nicest of the three barracks.
To get it down to one army, the game knows whether you are on an adventure or an expedition. It will not let you send a tavern general to an expedition. I am not a programmer, but I assume you could code some of our adventure units to have different properties when sent to a colony? Keeping in line with Blue Bytes desire to be a resource sink for iron and horses how about something like this.
http://i62.tinypic.com/16bnj14.png
Militia = Attack Infantry
Soldiers = Heavy Infantry
Bowmen = Attack Archers
Longbowmen = Heavy Archers
Cavalry = Attack Cavalry
Knights = Heavy Cavalry
Elite Soldiers = Guardsmen
Perhaps you could code the game so the properties of these units is different depending on if you send them to an adventure island or expedition island. The tavern generals could act like marshals as well when sent. With this we get our armies down to one set of generals and one set of troops. Yes, some troops would be excluded from expeditions, but that is necessary for the current balance. I understand unit that function is two different ways will cause some confusion, but that is what the Archive and help chat tab is for. You could modify the pop ups on the units to two sections to help.
http://i59.tinypic.com/33x9008.png
All existing marshals would be either deleted from the game or converted to tavern generals. The Expedition Supplier should be removed and the Swift Marshal as well, though I suppose if people paid gems for that you should refund them. Also the combat academy and combat armory will have no use and can be removed too. I personally do not care if those resources are refunded for the upgrades to them, but I am sure a more casual player the impact of 5000 granite and 5000 coins has a much larger affect.
As for the other part of the title, I would like to make a suggestion for a change of the way generals are used. Another complaint I keep seeing, and agree with is the amount of space generals use up on your home island and the tediousness of loading them up and sending them to adventures. I would like to offer a two part fix for this. An upgradeable dockyard and improving the tavern so that is has a use after you buy everything from it.
Instead of loading up each general with troops I suggest a dockyard that we can build at level 26. Pardon the crude images. Level 1 could look like this…
http://i59.tinypic.com/2zohze9.png
Upgrades can look fancier.
http://i60.tinypic.com/14uyw5e.png
And we can give it more of a purpose than just looking pretty. Hovering over the dockyard instead of the person up top would show your army.
http://i62.tinypic.com/rlkzgx.png
Instead of the general itself determining the travel time to and from adventures, the level of the dockyard would. 30 minutes at level 1 and each upgrade cuts off 5 minutes.
After you clear your island there is no real need to have general sitting around on your island and when returning from adventures all generals would go to your tavern with the option just like the star menu to place them on your island. I would prefer to see the interface for the tavern be more like this. http://i60.tinypic.com/2juo8p.png
Instead of housing them in the star menu you could access your generals from the tavern, giving you a reason to keep this building after you buy all the specialists, and those evil other players opportunity to drop those negative buffs on your island. If you place a general on your island you could return him to the tavern with the transfer button like such.
http://i61.tinypic.com/9hs3us.png
As for sending generals to and from adventures I would suggest an interface like such. When you click the “Send Army” icon on adventures you would get two pop ups. First the one like we have now asking you which generals you want to send. Then after that a second one would pop up that would function like loading our generals with troops.
http://i58.tinypic.com/2yo5sv9.png
Or perhaps put both on the same pop up.
This way we could always send troops to and from adventures without the frustration of having to worry about whether or not we have a general in the right place. Also this could eliminate the long boat ride home when you forget to load your troops up at the end of an adventure or someone clicks the complete adventure before the others participating are ready. This would make the Quartermasters useless, I would suggest removing them and definitely refunding the 40,000 beans. Perhaps make the level 6 upgrade of the dockyard cost that same 40,000 beans?
With all that that, this is just one man’s opinion and I am sure there will be plenty to follow that disagree. I am sure there are far better ideas out there than mine, but ask that serious consideration is given to these concerns. Having to maintain three armies is annoying, nothing more. Again, like I said in the beginning I am very happy with the new content, so do not let this concern be disheartening. You all are doing a great job and I thoroughly enjoy this game, but it seems there is too much of a rush to get new content out.
