Infinite Horizons 2

    Quote from Cheech

    Ugh, its late. Someone said before, there are 3 types of people, builders, fighters and pirates. If you've even set up a building accounts - it's almost opposite to a fighting account. Almost nothing is similar, hense growth gets severely staggered while fighting. Don't say 'i pillage alot', You need to pillage miliions of miilions per day to even pay off these large army upkeeps. It's not profitable. I would give you an example. 2 people started on the same server, im about 5million score, the other person is about 60m. I have never been out of combat for over 2months say, whereas the other person has only built and not seen combat. Not atall. Good so far, this is my issue. This man who chose the building path would be able to out-fight me now. He's not good at combat, doesn't know the game but he will beat me by workshop upgrades. So now Builders (or farms, whatever you want to call them) are beating combat based people. Im at a loose, loose. GG gameforge. The last type of people are pirate people. They are bots and feeders, no one cares about them. They play a minigame for some reason, idk

    I started my alliance when this game started and built up to 160 members and we were at war non stop and as leader and general I fought while others built. Then we merged to beta and same thing, fought for every day except for 2 years when we finally made peace, then merged to perseus and same thing....huge server war. So because some of the guys i started with are still with us I can point out im barely at 30 million while some have over 80 million points so you are correct. If your a builder then you best have huge warehouses and walls. I watch guys go (i) every day here on perseus because it is a bully server and people just want to pillage till no ones left. If your not in an alliance then you may as well just paint a huge bullseye on your town because you will get farmed right out of the game. These updates are just so gameforge can make more money.

    They can't become mathematically immune to knifeman (I'm going to assume you mean swordsman because a swordsman has a base attack of 200) attacks because you can also upgrade the attack of the swordsman, too. So yes, if you do 40 upgrades to your swordsman's armor and attack someone who has never upgraded their swordsman, you would receive 0 damage.


    Realistically, given how crucial swordsmen are, both sides should be upgrading their swordsmen to the best of their ability.


    If someone has 40/40 upgraded swordsmen and attacks someone who has 0/0 upgraded swordsman, I'm perfectly fine with that being a complete rout. I don't know why anyone would even be concerned about this scenario.

    Quote from Cheech

    Ugh, its late. Someone said before, there are 3 types of people, builders, fighters and pirates. If you've even set up a building accounts - it's almost opposite to a fighting account. Almost nothing is similar, hense growth gets severely staggered while fighting. Don't say 'i pillage alot', You need to pillage miliions of miilions per day to even pay off these large army upkeeps. It's not profitable. I would give you an example. 2 people started on the same server, im about 5million score, the other person is about 60m. I have never been out of combat for over 2months say, whereas the other person has only built and not seen combat. Not atall. Good so far, this is my issue. This man who chose the building path would be able to out-fight me now. He's not good at combat, doesn't know the game but he will beat me by workshop upgrades. So now Builders (or farms, whatever you want to call them) are beating combat based people. Im at a loose, loose. GG gameforge. The last type of people are pirate people. They are bots and feeders, no one cares about them. They play a minigame for some reason, idk

    Why is it an issue that a builder can build faster than a fighter? If you want to be a fighter, then it's just right for you to build slower than a builder.


    The builder would soon be able to outfight you? Yes, because the builder invests their resources. You, on the other hand are gambling. You want to pay gold for the upkeep instead of mining. This is very similar to real life. Gamble and you'll enjoy the thrill. You could win quickly, but the builders/investors will win given time. Why are you blaming the person investing when it's your choice gambling your gold?


    "He's not good at combat... but will beat me by workshop upgrades" - if the builder can beat your fighting skills by workshop upgrades, then you have a huuuuugeee gap in resources that you're not even comparable to that player anymore. Even in real life, a rich person can beat a "strategic" but poor person in many aspects.


    Lastly, the builders wouldn't even want to pick a fight. The only way they'd fight a combat based people is if the combat based people trespassed. Can you imagine, you're stealing the builders' resources and you're still the one mad that they still build something? Imagine the thief mad at the victims because the victims still have resources left, and the thieves can't keep up with the builders because they're more focused on the builders' mines than their own mines. Your rants don't make sense.


    If there's an issue, it's about the gen banks and multis that have bottomless source of gold, not the builders.

    Edited once, last by -Blank- ().

    Quote from User12996

    I honestly don't see what the big deal is with the new system, though, but that's probably because I played Ogame before Ikariam. In Ogame, you always had w/s/a (equivalent to Ikariam's upgrades, but for all ships and defense).


    If you want to go around attacking other players, this is a good system for you, because you're incentivized to upgrade your troops and the more you upgrade, the greater your battlefield advantage should be.


    Every post complaining about it is always around the lines of "what if someone has more upgrades than me?!" which, well, increase your upgrades, th

    The Balance of the game was around the fact that an account with 2million score can fight 1:1 against a player with 200million score and win.

    Now, developed accounts used to have the following advantages:
    1:Way More action points
    2:More attack and defense positions
    3:More Occupation and Block availability
    4:Way More gold income
    5:Less CDs of miracles
    6:Way Faster creation of troops and navy
    7:48lv walls


    But at least armies were matched. All you had to do was make gold, buy army and fight with an actual chance!

    And now, Ikariam BROKE the game. No more balance whatsoever.
    I have +6/6 Gyrocopters and when I fight against +12/12 (or more), by second round I lose 30 out of 40 per round, while the enemy loses 6.

    So I have to invest 5x more resources compared to the whale huh?

    Conclusion: Ikariam lost it's balance. Gameforge gave you the solution - buy ambrosia, buy crystal and gold, upgrade. That is their business model. Force players into a Pay to Play scenario.

    I am not paying. I am leaving.

    I think this is bad game design, if the viable counter-strategies to an annoying military tactic are to either not play at all, or to focus all your investments into one or two single units.


    I have played around with snipes for some time, I have had my fun with the tactic, but I decided to stop, because this is clearly not healthy for the game. There is no way that a game which is played over decades should allow you to burn an entire fleet within minutes, by avoiding regular round durations.


    Imo, Gameforge should look to balance this aspect of the new upgrades.


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    My thoughts on whatever everyone else is complaining about:


    No, the playerbase isnt "builders, fighters, pirates". The game is called Ikariam - Build, Conquer, Reign. You have to do all of those things to be successful. The main goal of the game is to play the highscore game. You make use of military to achieve goals.


    Just because some of you have been for years under the impression that you "won" a battle against a bigger account than yours, just by killing 10k more military than you lost, in the CR overview, doesnt mean you won anything. That small difference between losses doesnt mean anything at all in the grand scheme of the game. This game revolves all around resources and resource production.


    No, the battle system isnt as hard as some of you make it out to be. Keep in mind: especially builders have been playing this game for 15+ years. I bet most of them understand whats going on. And if not, they can learn very fast. There is barely any skill expression in ikariam's combat. All of it is a numbers game and a time game. Whoever has more time and more military (resources btw) wins. The mechanics are very simple. This game isnt an esport, stop treating it like it is.


    Yes, bigger accounts should have more power over new accounts. The whole point of the game is to make better investments into future than your competition does.

    The most annoying thing about combat in Ikariam is whenever you fight a proxy war against someone's alt. Now, with improved upgrades, people with 30M, 40M, 50M, etc accounts dont have to worry as much about someone's bought (or developed on his own) small account.


    If your server is full of "bullies", find a better alliance, coordinate better, defend better, go into gold mode for a few months,

    or switch to a different community. - Kreon US is pretty friendly, with players from all around the world.



    Aquila

    0PrLvVg.jpg

    Oooooh buddy gyrocopters aren't the issue. I acually manage to pull ahead of an upgrade account for gyros, even withour a forge. Hoplite aren't so bad. Swords are absolutely disgusting. Im never breaking a wall in my life again. My town halls might even have to go down to smallest battlefield to take out flanks. Fluck gameforge. And i really don't have time to type aaaaaah

    Quote from User12996

    They can't become mathematically immune to knifeman (I'm going to assume you mean swordsman because a swordsman has a base attack of 200) attacks because you can also upgrade the attack of the swordsman, too. So yes, if you do 40 upgrades to your swordsman's armor and attack someone who has never upgraded their swordsman, you would receive 0 damage.


    Quote from User12996

    If someone has 40/40 upgraded swordsmen and attacks someone who has 0/0 upgraded swordsman, I'm perfectly fine with that being a complete rout. I don't know why anyone would even be concerned about this scenario.

    Knifeman is the name of the barbarian unit.

    For what i know barbarians does not have ups, so if you up swordsman to +200 armour ( or +180 +20 of forge) you mathematically can farm barbarian without lose any swoardsman

    A 2m account wouldn't have been able to stand against a 200m before the changes unless the 200m account was playing sloppy. Yes, a 2m account could win a battle, but the 200m account should be able to grind the 2m account down in a war of attrition, assuming equally skilled players.

    Quote from AT Barbarossa
    Quote from User12996

    They can't become mathematically immune to knifeman (I'm going to assume you mean swordsman because a swordsman has a base attack of 200) attacks because you can also upgrade the attack of the swordsman, too. So yes, if you do 40 upgrades to your swordsman's armor and attack someone who has never upgraded their swordsman, you would receive 0 damage.


    Quote from User12996

    If someone has 40/40 upgraded swordsmen and attacks someone who has 0/0 upgraded swordsman, I'm perfectly fine with that being a complete rout. I don't know why anyone would even be concerned about this scenario.

    Knifeman is the name of the barbarian unit.

    For what i know barbarians does not have ups, so if you up swordsman to +200 armour ( or +180 +20 of forge) you mathematically can farm barbarian without lose any swoardsman

    Oh, barbarians. Yes, the barbarians don't get any upgrades, but you'd still need 36 to 40 armor upgrades to make that possible.


    I don't see why this is a problem.

    Edited once, last by User12996 ().

    Also, why aren't you upgrading your gyros more? 6/6 is very low.

    Quote from Quartz
    Quote from Lili

    I am not paying. I am leaving.


    Off you go then. Or you could stay and help Gameforge get it right.

    They actually don't care about our opinions. I agree with the turkey guy..... they know how to be very rude with those who want to play the game. Players have already complained about it on discord and nothing happened. A lot of players are complaining here and nothing happened.


    We used to suggest good ideas to fix the game and they were like: "no, we're not gonna do this. period.". Then, after the update, the game got even worse. Some people say the game is dying, I think it is already dead.

    It's two separate visions. Your vision of the game is X, while Gameforge's vision is to maximize revenue. It's two separate, but sometimes concurrent, optimization paths.

    If they are really concerned about revenue, they are only looking at the short term, because in the long term the game is dead, there will be no revenue left

    Quote from User12996

    Oh, barbarians. Yes, the barbarians don't get any upgrades, but you'd still need 36 to 40 armor upgrades to make that possible.


    I don't see why this is a problem.

    I try to explain that these percentages below are not the whole picture.

    Quote from User12996

    Plus, upgrades have diminishing returns. Going from 95 armor to 100 armor is ~5.3% improvement. From 100 to 105 is a 5% improvement. And from 105 to 110 a 4.76% improvement.

    So maybe invest in one more up or 2 even very expensive but can have sense.


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    Quote from -Aquila-

    There is no way that a game which is played over decades should allow you to burn an entire fleet within minutes, by avoiding regular round durations.

    Well, not in minutes, since there is action point limitation, even with general banks if you are alone you need some hours to continually send fake missions, but usually people have a sleep time of some hours so the destruction is feasible.


    But with fakes you can think of avoid them by moving while being offline.


    Very disgusting tatic is the multiimpact so that even you have a big fleet and you are online if you engage in defense you can only stay watching your opponent continually impacts your fleet and makes 3 round every 15 min + 2-3 sec.


    This is why i hope there will be new units in the future.

    Maybe there was a misunderstanding in one of my previous posts. I mean free units reachable by all players.

    But the aim should be that if you can afford 200k gen, with new stronger but more expensive unit you can produce and maintain a number of troops

    equivalent to that of 10 or 20k now.

    So you can both resolve big generals fight in hours instead days, and avoid or mitigate massive fake and multimpact strategies because even for big account

    should become proibitive maintain tons of new more expensive units.

    Yeah, but per someone else, the barbarians got buffed anyways so don't worry, your swords with 40/40 upgrades won't be invincible to knifemen. I forgot the barbarians also got buffed.


    Regardless, barbarians are a PvE feature. If someone mega buffs up their units to smash the barbarians (which have built in diminishing returns anyways) it's fine. They can only get so much res from it before it tanks to 5%.

    Quote from User12996
    Quote from Quartz
    Quote from Gothic Eye

    They actually don't care about our opinions.


    They care about the revenue generated or lost. Paying players leaving means a loss in revenue.

    As badidol has said before Ikariam has been successfully dying for 17 years.

    I would love to see the numbers on this game, revenue, accounts (active/new (yearly) and total), UNIQUE players (they may not even have this number)

    I think GF is privately held, and they're in Germany so they likely aren't required to produce this.


    They're not going to release it but I've played enough online games to know the pattern, something can be in decline for a long time and a game like this beyond what ever the dev team is doing takes very little in the way of hardware.. I seriously doubt it's even got it's own server it's likely a virtual slice on a rack.

    the dev team almost surely is juggling several games.. I bet it had a dedicated team at one point.. not any more (assumption on my part).. I know the pattern I've seen it.. these games have a life cycle, it's perfectly natural.


    but you'll never hear any GF employee suggest the game is in decline or "dying"


    but I challenge badidol to produce the figures (multiple years otherwise it's pointless) but they won't and likely he can't even if he wanted to.


    bottom line games like this will run as long as the output is higher than the input, and the heavy lifting was done a long time ago.
    Don't be fooled that the game simply existing is proof it's a healthy.

    Diplomat for Raging Kings [RK] - Eurydike (US)

    Even if they were, most game companies don't break out revenue via game and instead report it in aggregate. There is some numbers from public tax filings and I looked into it, but all I could see is that it spiked during the pandemic and was up from that for 2022 and 2023. No data from 2024 or higher.


    Also, player count can go down and revenue can go up. I've certainly seen that before, too.