Posts by Rastan

You must be new here.. GF's business model is to create new servers to entice whales to spend big money getting ahead of every one.

As the player base shrinks there the servers get thin and they merge them down.. then they open more servers.. rinse and repeat.. and the only people who don't see this are the new and the obvious.

Other games that merge servers do so because of shrinking player base don't' then open new servers.

So let's say you're one of the fools that took GF up on the promotoinal mailing every time they open a new server.

over time you have several accounts.. then the servers merge and you're force to shove htem onto just a couple servers.. then you get email telling you abou tan exciting new world and fresh start server.. and you open another account.. then they merge those too in 1-3 years..

This is GF's fault.. and they'd love to be able to eliminate multi accounts with a full revolt..

Imagine the whale with 20 accounts and has spent 1k's of dollars is being told their aren't enough servers to hold all the account they've put time and money into.

lol

eh.. what ever.

Quote from User12996

Will anyone choose differently this time?

Yes.. im choosing server 0, Real Life

Im not going thru another "mega merger" they can claim the game is healthy all they want we all know the truth.. good luck to everyone in the merger though... gonna finish up a few building projects and then idle out

nah, I think it's fine the way it is temporary towns have been apart of this game from the very beginning.

far as I know the pushing rule has to do with sending resources from one player to another, it does not prohibit things like fair trade on teh market thru the trading post, that already has a min/max system in place to prevent (essentially) free goods from being traded thru it which would be pushing rule violation if sent directly.

they also do not bar exchanges between small and large players example

1m player sends 10m player 100k marble

10m player sends 1m player 100k crystal

that's an even exchange even though 1 player is larger than the other neither is taking advantage of the other.

it sounds like however you are talking about pillaging and attacking.

Unfortunately they can not stop situations where someone might setup an account to intentionally be pillaged by larger players

the reason why is it would mean the attacker would ALWAYS have to punch UP not Down (as it is almost never the case both are equal even within 100k of each other)

If perhaps you are suggesting it should be a rule to keep bigger players from attacking smaller players as "unfair"
well there is a problem with that also because there are intentionally small accounts in Total score that are ran by skilled fighters

It use to be once you had all the unit upgrades your account was on equal footing with larger accounts on a battle by battle basis
with the black market you could even offset the town/barrack/shipyard disparity.

It's a little less clear where we stand now with the changes to unlimited unit upgrades but I'd say for the most part it still stands that way.

So seeing that 10m player thinking they are easy prey? maybe maybe not, but we don't need a rule to enforce this perception.

Now perhaps again you're thinking we need to at least limit the number of attacks on a player.

well there use to be a "bashing" rule for just this but it was eliminated a very long time ago.



TL;DR

• Does this rule prevent players from attacking or pillaging those with lower total scores? NOPE
• If pillaging is allowed, is there a daily limit on the number of times it can be done? NOPE
• How does this rule apply if two alliances engage in conflict? NO EFFECT

like the other said, an army "from" doesn't mean it was that towns owner.

It is kinda BS honestly that you get punished in this situation because even if you attacked without pillaging it would have had the same effect.

Quote from User12996

A war of attrition is not a battle of attrition. Yes, a 1000 round sea battle is a battle of attrition but I don't know why anyone would do this.

If you're on the receiving end? You colossus or stop reinforcing. If you're on the attacking end, why? Snipes are more efficient.

A war of attrition is much more about a long term multi battle engagement that's designed to wear down the opponent's resources and time. There's no other way to "win" in Ikariam anyways.

Wearing someone out to the point where they stop playing is still a war of attrition play, too. You're basically burning them out until they don't want to play anymore.

I should've said resources or time, but even with a lot of upgrades, you can still grind them down.

Like I've said before, Ikariam is a combination of a test of will and patience, and the only way to "beat" your opponent is to find a way to outlast him, whether that's graveyarding, going into donation/gold mode, or sniping him.

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Ya wearing someone down is really hard if

1: the account in question was being used simply as troll, EX: wonder nuking
2: owner has multiple accounts and doesn't mind 1 or 2 of them being beat'in into gold mode

Only way a war of attrition works is if the player has 1 account or it's their main account and they're active and involved in the game enough to care.

Back in the day this was nearly everyone, these days most people have multiple accounts due to mergers and rule changes and it's much less effective.

The only way I know to get to those people is to go after something they care about besides them selves but that's not always apparent what it is, and it often is large and messy.

This is one of the reasons I advocated for having gold pillaging brought back to the regular servers with a safety net but that just ain't happening Badidol made that very clear to me.

Quote from User12996

Here's the detailed breakdown I found a while back: https://www.northdata.com/Game…20Mannheim%20HRB%20701268

Bah, it looks like they put all the juicy stuff behind a paywall

"This publication is only available to our premium service subscribers."

Thanks for the link though.

Quote from User12996

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.

You have a link to the report? I'd be curious to look at it even if they don't break down by game.

I can't say i've ever seen a game go down in players and go up in revenue im not saying it can't happen.
there are ways to squeeze more money out of fewer players (hiking prices, new items to buy, opening servers to illicit ambrosia use)
But that only gets you so far and that sort of thing is what has gotten us to the mass alt situation when the servers have to be merged down.

And while the whales pay for the game there aren't enough of them to keep the game running from an enjoyment angle if most of the other players have left.

They might pickup a few genuine new players here and there but most new accounts are going to be duplicates for existing players at this point.

There is no renascence or wave of new players coming, the base is mostly already set and will only trend down even if accounts trend up.

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.

my guess is who ever did the original building work is no longer around.. agree though at the very least they could have matched the building color, looks very out of place on color pallet alone.

Quote from vivaldi30

I got to say new upgrade suck big time. Before you had the satisfaction that you reached maximum level, and kinda planned the way your game is gonna get. Now, they pushed the final level so far away for all buildings, that I guess it is impossible to reach any maximum level, or at least it ll take years. Maybe they think the game became infinitive, but unfortunately our live isn't. Shame... They ruined what s left in this game. It s like they think we are natives, and they wiggling colored glasses infront of pur eyes "Oh, look what we have, if you get trillions and trillions of resources, and in 7 years, anything you order, will be built in ONE SECOND. Oh, what a future would that be!"

Ridiculous. I guess some stupid idiot thought that GF is gonna last 1000 years.

Despite what badidol might claim the game is dying, everyone can see it in game.

it's not unusual though as games like this generally peak and then decline over time.

The grindy work is to try and keep people interested in the game but they're going about it the wrong way.

I think they're targeting the whales which are the big spenders that keep the game going.. the type of people that will drop 100's or 1000s of dollars in the game a month and will do so for ego alone.

I don't really see where they're going with the game, I'd just quit but with so many years wrapped up into it and it doesn't take much time day to day is the only reason Im still around at all.

honestly I think anyone with cool downs less than activation time (unlimited activation) should just auto renew anyway reguardless.

it's really annoying to send a pilalge or trade mission out that is going ot be over 4 hours with dolphin because you know it's going to be a slow trip back if you arnn't on to reactivate, it use to be it was only calculated at the time of leaving in which case it wasn't a problem but then they changed it so it checks everytime a ship leaves port even if it's the same mission chain.

as for the cool down absolutely not.. imagine the abuse by the wallet warriors and you can just forget attacking something with Colossus.

as it is a player that goes for a straight colossus setup has incredible cool down, but those please earned that by sacrificing a lot of towns for it.

but then lump in the ability to eliminate it with "MONEY"

HELL to the NO!

like I said hire a mercenary, there are plenty of players out there that love nothing but fighting in this game, most players aren't this type of player but there are enough of them that they are often bored with nothing to do.

bribe them with goods as payment or direct cash (IRL)

you might even get lucky and find one that just needs a good excuse and does it for free..

it's just a matter of time, it's rare for even personal beefs to run that long.. it does mean it will take longer.

I personally don't recommend graveyarding or warping away, you can't do this every time you get into a spat with another player.

If after a reasonable amount of time the player doesn't get the hint and leave him alone you hire a mercenary to go after them.

EDIT: Also I don't recommend Vmode as it just drags it out.. the other guy is spending no resources to attack while they're in vmode so all they have to do is wait.

If you're using time as a weapon then you need that player engaged wasting time and gold getting nothing in return.

Instead of Vmode gold mode is better.

Lot of people have given good advice and im going to repeat a lot of it here.

Time is usually your friend, you need to keep your resources under safe level.
This means being active enough to either, move, spend, sell or stop production before it goes over that limit.

I would focus on building up walls and warehouses if you go this route you might find you need more resources for the next upgrade that will fit under safe level.

in those cases what you do is build up in several towns and then, when you have time you move them to the project town and immediately spend.

stopping all production and going into gold mode is a good way to about this as you'll be able to use the gold later.

you do need to make sure you keep wine in your towns enough to keep the population up though.

depending on the attacker and your defense, you can leave piece meal defensive forces,

At a minimum you should have 1 Speer and 1 slinger, and replace every time they hit the town this will at least drag the fight out for a 2nd round.

you can also add rams, gyros and bombers..but you'll have to decide if those are worth replacing all the time.

clear your ports of ships except for 1 speed boat, this will force them to occupy the port in order to keep it open, this will require them holding it with ships and costing them money in occupation, if you have a lot of cities they might not even be able to hold all your ports at one time.

if they occupy with just a few ships then what you do is build 6 bombers and 1 ram ship and then rebel, this works best if they have ships other than front line like mortars, subs and rockets.

if they occupy with just a few front line ships you can build a small number of ships (enough to destroy their fleet in 1 round) then rebel, they'll get a message their fleet was lost but not a CR so they won't even know what was in the battle, then they'll probably occupy the port with a larger fleet which will cost htem even more money.

Move the ships out of the port once you do this leaving only 1 speed boat behind, at this point you'll need to hide it some where in between use, alternatively you can just recycle them.

if they occupy with a large fleet and you have colossus this is the time where you build enough ships to start a fight (they only need to survive 1 round) then immediately hit colossus so they get booted on teh 2nd round, you can use this tactic to open your ports up if you need to move goods but make sure your timing is right, if they are active and closed by they might try to send ships into the fight.. so try to time your colossus to the last few seconds of the 1st round so that any new ships also get scattered.

you can also conduct harassment attacks on their towns but I won't go into that cause I think that's gonna be too much for you unless you want to hear about them.

Eventually they will get the hint and leave you alone at least for a while if they're not getting anything out of it their won't be any profit of any sort in it for them and tthat will take away the motivation, this works 99% of the time.. but the amount of time will vary.

But be warned this could be a temporary solution.. as even if they stop attacking you they might leave you be for say a month and then come to check on you again.

"new level caps for all buildings, some of them are just for highscore points (see points below)"

if this isn't a jump the shark moment I don't know what is, *SMH*

Where is this game even going development wise? you boost levels and costs, then you boost resource to offset the gigantic costs (well not really but it does back track a bit)

Does the team actually have a plan or is it it just tinker with stuff to keep idiots playing until the cow dies?

Seems like a worthless building it might be good early on but resources will be a problem later more so than time.

and.. in the beginning time isn't too bad, so im going ot waste time building a building to reduce building time, and it's going ot take up a spot.. oh ya .. press (X)

I might make sense if it was an "administration" building or something that you only had to have one of for the whole acount like the gods shrine, even if they made it Capital only building that would make some sense in the long run.

Quote from Tendo

Quote from Rastan

No such side effect with the freighters though.

Well with the freighters you don't pillage, but obv. if you use a Freighter with 52.000 capacity it also needs more time to load the ressources then if it was only 50.000 capacity.

uh.. ya.. but that's a feature not a bug, don't want to load 52k worth of goods then don't. sending 100k with 2 unupgraded freighters also takes longer than 1 @ 50k incredible but true.

Good point about the loading speed, Im not sure if the dev's considered that, I'd be in favor of them adjusting but I wonder how they settled on the load speed that it currently is in the first place.

Probably still worth upgrading even if it doesn't get adjusted though.

No such side effect with the freighters though.

Quote from Salah Ad-Din

I've had a few fights so far, and here are my initial thoughts:

First of all, I faced a level 44 before the update. In round one, I was able to break through one wall and almost a second section, so in round two, only one box was open. Now, after the update, I can break through two and a half boxes-sections of the wall

However, the steam rams are dying way too easily! I lost about 70 steam rams in a single battle against fire ships and rams positioned on the front line, and the enemy didn’t even have rockets in their first line! That feels a bit off.

What are your thoughts so far? Have you noticed similar issues?

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post the CR if you can, how many rounds? we need something to compare it to, sounds like it might excessive though.

Quote from Maeldun

One thing: Baloons are dying immediately without any damage whatsoever, to gyros. Both with Forge active.

One thing to rapidly invest, I believe, would be defense for baloons (ground)

that's gonna change things quite a bit then.. on both sides, use to be it was still profitable to deploy bombers if the enemy had morters but sounds like that might not be the case now.

It also means defense is going to be more difficult because you can't do anything to their mortars, by the time you've chewed thru their bombers or gyro's and won air supremacy they will have gotten thru your wall and either withdrew and replaced with rams or have ran out of ammo and aren't on the field.

Quote from User12996

I believe to change the email they send you an email. Likely just need to add code to the gifting process to send an email confirmation. If they've gotten into both your email and your GF account, all hope is lost because they can simply hijack your entire account.

ah, god help you if you get locked out of your old email account but still have your login to ikariam and ever need to change it lol

Ya they could have just had any gift code generated sent to email instead of displayed on the webpage and boom problem solved then.