Posts by Lili

    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.

    they do give you advantage.

    Does the hideout above lvl 60 allows you to hire more spies and have better anti-spy defense? I checked the changelog, but it only mentions minimum training time.

    Also does shipyard beyond lvl 38 further reduces ship constructing times?

    Depends on the Town Hall

    If you have say lv 35 Town Hall, a lv 43 Hideout with 43 spies working for your defense cap even the easiest infiltration missions to 95% risk

    So even if you go for lv 60 hideout, you are already capped.

    But when you upgrade Town Hall a few levels, you gotta compensate with more Hideout levels and spies working as counter agents


    I am pretty much sure that the Enemy Hideout level was also in the formula, so now things are changed - you are not capped with 43 Hideout and 43 spies if the enemy is above 60

    Their actions suggest they will shut down the forums soon to save costs from hosting it.

    No. We simply exchanged the link ingame from the less used platform forum to the already more used platform Discord.

    The forum is in no current danger of being shut down and there are no mid to long term plans to do so.

    Well that's good to know, considering many games closed their forums so far in favor to discord

    What is about God's Shrine? Is it have maximus % for res?

    The soft cap is what amount of resources you can obtain to invest in it

    The hard cap is the programing they used for the game: is it using 32 bit signed integer values? If they didn't change it since 2008, then most likely level 2,147,483,647

    The gain from it is not capped for now so enjoy

    I was in your shoes. It took me two years to beat that player by becoming worse than him.


    At first, I bought a laptop just to have a machine to play at work without using company tech / net so i don't get in trouble for playing games.
    Then started making alarms. A LOT of alarms.
    Also slept less and less every day.
    I was playing constantly, showing that person I am always online and deflecting him, keeping 0 resources for pillage.
    In the end I started bombing them.

    They retreated to the edge of the map, so I made two colonies there and took him all the resources he had collected for a residency. I didn't loot them, I've destroyed that res with low capacity. The point was clear, I am the annihilator, not him.
    It was well calculated attack on a vacation day that most people use to travel / visit family or friends. I took advantage of the date, started attacking at 3 am, pillaged constantly for the next 30 hours until he came back. By that time the damage was irreversible. He V modded for months to come, just to find me waiting them them and go to the Bahamas again. His alliance begged me to stop. Eventually I've decided he learned his lesson and left him alone.




    It's good to have limited slots when you want players to actually build cities differently for unique gameplay:

    But the way Ikariam is right now: We have 6 unique slots for specific buildings (in red) and 19 slots where you can experiment.


    Out of those 19 slots, The first is purple - Palace and residences. If you want to skip this building, I won't stop you.

    The next 9 slots are a must building if you want to play end game Ikariam and are colored in Orange. You must build them, you have no choice!

    In Green you have taken 2 slots for the farming Meta, which can be changed to more warehouses, but considering the new mine levels, I'd say they are a must build too even for warmongers now.

    In Blue you have 5 extremely versatile and useful buildings that help your gameplay immensely. It's up to you if you want to have them or not, but an end game player has them all.

    In Pink you have one slot that is different for each city: Trading post, Black market, Workshop, Dump, Another Warehouse, God's Shrine,

    And that leaves only one slot for future new building. (Surprise me)


    Those who play Pirates made a lot of warehouses and this update will force them to demolish them

    Dump is not good building anymore, I use it in that last 19th slot to boost capacity and build, but I know, eventually I will tear it down if they don't change it.

    Right now Warehouse protects no resources, 99% of your resource can be plundered at any time! But a good level warehouse provides enough capacity for us to build.


    I had thought about things like "What about new Future researches or new technology trees?", also "What if Dump building and Academy building get reworked so they are actually more useful?" But it takes so many years just to reach lv 25 once, uncapping the futures seems useless right now since most players had not maxed all 4 yet. Me including! I personally will research the next lv 25 future after 3 years if I don't do experiments or make new academies! That being said, they must make Academies a unique slotted building so new players don't skip it. Like Dockyard / wall, research is essential for this game!


    I had concluded: The playerbase of ikariam is mostly 30 year olds ~ 60 year olds. It is not 2010 when players had 20 years ahead to reach maximum for all 4 futures and max out buildings in 12 towns in a reasonable time frame. Back then, the game was full of many players, now most servers have around 100 active players.


    If you want to milk out the few addicted whales, go for it - uncap the game and expect them to reach lv 150 mines and lv 50 Chronus's forge with ambrosia.

    Then it's going to be a game made for few as target audience.


    But if you want to reform the game for new players, game should be layered.




    Current problems:

    1:Merges. Players can not change their gamestyle and gameplay to adapt so often to the sudden and unexpected changes in the game. Some players started on a new server just to have good miracles or town locations and a merge will take that away forcing them to either adapt once again or quit.


    Solution: Use Virtualization instead of merging servers to save energy of running servers. Stop opening new servers, let new players play on the old for population. let them inherit islands, developed and left as are from players who quit or died.


    2:Slow progression of mines: 17 years had passed, yet most players still have lv 40 mines, some had developed 50s and a very few 60s. Almost nobody uses GY and Inventory to upgrade islands with redonation, because nobody told them they can do such thing and still don't know about it.


    Solution: Help people who PLAY with activity not fall behind others when developing islands and towns without having to relay on donation alts. If the donation scores acts are a donation multiplier or auto donates every 30 days itself or a new game system that auto donates every hour based on donation score, it will be way more balanced. OR make a proper guide that GY+ Inventory is integrated part of the gameplay for everybody and let players choose if they want to create such alt or not.


    3:Slow progression of Towns: This is a slow game. But, if it took 17 years for players to reach where they are today - small expands here and there every few years, always show a carrot on a stick for players to chase. Do most players have lv 14 Palace? No What about God's shrine lv 41? Doubt......Town Halls lv 40? NO.....so why did you decide to uncap...ah yes for the few whales who managed. Fine. Uncapping means the creation of soft caps: resource production and time.


    It is a slow game, if you wanted possible resource obtained to be a soft cap, you'd not uncap mines. On a paper all those Levels would be there, but in reality nobody would reach them without cheating or tons of ambrosia, easy way to find out cheaters that way actually - they will stick out more obviously now. Example: Tomorrow Ivan made 150 Forest. Others just hit lv 50. Too Suspicious. Did Ivan abuse some sort of bug or did Ivan spend ambrosia? Go investigate Ivan.


    Solution: Boost resource gain. Production buildings, future researches affecting gain, add effects to Dump to help out. Like some sort of bank returning interest rate daily for the resource you keep in this town based on dump level. You keep a lot of res? Dump gives you % res for keeping it in the town. Now you are a target for plunder too but that is part of the game!


    This doesn't feel right, but how else would players gather 1bil res for a building with current islands levels and gains?


    It is a slow game, second soft cap was time.

    Does it make sense to halt current building order and spend the next year to rise a Chronos' Forge in every city? At some levels it costs more than some palace levels (which most players do not have currently). So if so many years were not enough for those players to reach lv 14 Palace, do you think they will build lv 10 Cronos' Forge in the next 3-4-5 years?


    Solution: There is no current solution. If you want to make the game endless, you remove the carrot on the stick, players won't have any seizable goals for the next 365 days. Heck even the next 17 years won't be enough now to reach the currently set limits (140% production bonus, 20 lv Palace, 150lv mines (lv 70 would had been enough to avoid possible exploits, unless you aim to catch cheaters by letting them go wild and be more obvious)


    Builders will never reach those soft caps any time soon.

    Warmongers now need more ship capacity to plunder more to keep up with builders. Increasing the workshop upgrades and uncapping the ship limit is a good start, but making Gold is not that easily obtained and they can't be enough to meet ends currently.


    Gold income: After everything skyrocketed, Gold is left unchanged and just not enough for some things.


    Solution: Increase gold income.

    Chain Problems: Bigger armies. Problem 2: Gold farms will skyrocket.

    Solution to problem 1: Bigger battlefields or rework of the fight mechanics so that players lose armies way faster and even the hoarded generals could melt.

    Solution to problem 2: Don't increase gold income.

    Chain Problem: Top players with developed accounts and mines will dominate:

    Solution: Graveyard and move to another server or quit.


    That above is reflecting about the game itself as a game and nothing else, but a game.


    As for the business model: Addicted players enjoy being on top of others or building to max levels (reaching some hard set goal). By uncapping, you allow the possibility for a cheater to surpass them and I doubt they will race against such scenario. If you aim for players to buy resources and build time, fine.


    Important suggestion: Make demolishing buildings harder, because people will miss click while trying to navigate the game with their phone.

    "There's no change. That's the punchline. They should've adjusted to 80% at least."


    Are we talking about the same thing? Reduction on buildings are already at 86%, 50% from reduction buildings and 36% from research. What are you suggesting, 80% from buildings and 36% from research, 116% total reduction? That doesn't make sense. You would build and take res back haha.

    Uhm, it's actually 50 (from building) + 14 (from research) = 64 percent.

    Not sure where you get the 36% from. ;)

    Pulley 2%

    Geometry 4%

    Spirit Level 8%

    Economic Future (Level 22) 22%


    36% reduction


    I am joking, he saw the building mentions 36% and thought it is further reduced by 36% somehow, in fact 36% is what you pay off the original price after the 64% total reduction

    Dear Gamefoge

    This is my Will.
    In case of my death, please give access to my accounts to my children.

    Now...time to make children...
    Hopefully my grand grand children can build a lv 200 building.

    The problem is that it can be exceedingly difficult to prove, especially if the messages are primarily exchanged on a third party service.

    badidol can join their discord / telegram / whatzapp , suggest trade with them, they will dox themselves and he will have the proof

    it's real and these battles go hundreds of rounds non stop. Pretty hard to play against all these legal and illegal multis. The last update was the final nail in the coffin for the game IMO. perseus was full after they merged everyone and now you cant keep cults for anything as people are just dropping from the game.

    Isn't the defender afraid of the attacker who will chain 2400 paddle and 400 balloon waves from nearby port blocks to hit a second after a round ends and white flag the main battle? Successfully exterminating all of his rocket ships and mortar ships?

    then the problem will no be solved if the ambrosia price is same as germans' price.

    the price should be localized based on their purchasing power!


    as I said, if you think turkish people have advantages, welcome home buddy. you need to take off your glasses that see the world in a pink color =))

    You still don't get it.

    People outside of Turkey will keep on buying from the turkish shop, just like they do now.
    I think they know perfectly well why they localized Turkey' shop. That way people with the sacred knowledge could play ikariam paying 10% of the price by using that shop.