Multi-City Management

[Imya]

I agree with Jason that it is so annoying to have to load 10 cities at a time. And I only have about 80 cities. I can't imagine what it's like for ones with 500+ cities. I wouldn't mind waiting a few seconds for valor to be able to have all my cities viewable when I use the sidebar

Its a pain with 500+ but the search field can help depending on how you named your cities. Given the way the search field interacts in that panel I've considered a new naming convention to make it easier to manage cities.

[Imya]

Resources
* Enter a location and a number of resources. If the location is controlled by the player sending resources default to the number of resources needed to max the city out (nice to have adjust for time). When clicking send the game will sort the players cities that can send resources (defined by a condition) and send from the closest cities first until the desired resources have been sent.

Buy Scholarships
* Enter a number of resources you'd like as a minimum value for the city then then tell all cities to buy scholarships until they meet this minimum.

Upgrade Cities
* Allow a player to specify a build order and then give them a way to tell all cities to fill their build queues using this build order. Conditionals in the build order would be cool too.

Something like:
{"building": "Farm", "level" : 10},
{"building": "City Hall", "level" : 15},
[ {"building": "Quarry", "level" : 20}, {"building": "Lumbermill", "level": 20}, {"building": "Ironmine", "level": 20} ]
...

[Matthew618]

In my opinion, some of the things I have read here seem like players are requesting automation of the game so that they could be inactive but still growing and that is not what valor is about.

What I would like to see is faster updating of incoming attacks. It is a major pain sorting through dozens of cities to find the attack. Several times I've been doing this in the front lines and by the time I find the attack I've already been hit.

Filters, as have been mentioned, are a must have. They would be immensely helpful in finding what cities you want but I would take it one step further and in addition to being able to sort by region, and tags, be able to sort by farm population and warehouse levels.

I saw someone mention a sort of mass rally point where you could see all of your troop movement from one place. This would be great since older worlds don't have the map-movement lines. What would be very helpful, would be able to use the city tags mentioned for filtering, to be able to set Region Capitals. That region capital then shows all the movement for that region, and a "Master City" or "Main City" tag will show troop movement world wide for your cities.

I'm still studying programming but using these capitals should provide a way to update troop movement to different areas without cycling through massive amounts of cities which means that we players may also be able to find where we have incoming to faster as well.

[LordFirefall]

In my opinion, some of the things I have read here seem like players are requesting automation of the game so that they could be inactive but still growing and that is not what valor is about.

I disagree. At 50+ cities, stuff starts to bog down. Little things like scholar purchasing and routine troop/infrastructure builds take up a lot of time. I use a set profile for all of my cities, based on whether its an attack or defense. Automating some of that, based on instructions I give, would allow me to tend to the logistics of moving resources around to feed those cities, plan attacks for my guild, scout and gain intel on enemy... This list goes on and on.

While it could allow inactives to grow, it also would allow working adults do more in the game (the ones with the money to buy gold). In fact, I'd pay 50-100 gold a week, depending on what a tool like that would do for me.

[Bolba]

I disagree. At 50+ cities, stuff starts to bog down. Little things like scholar purchasing and routine troop/infrastructure builds take up a lot of time. I use a set profile for all of my cities, based on whether its an attack or defense. Automating some of that, based on instructions I give, would allow me to tend to the logistics of moving resources around to feed those cities, plan attacks for my guild, scout and gain intel on enemy... This list goes on and on.

While it could allow inactives to grow, it also would allow working adults do more in the game (the ones with the money to buy gold). In fact, I'd pay 50-100 gold a week, depending on what a tool like that would do for me.

Exactly. I'd even say around 20-30 cities things slow down significantly. The game isn't even fun until you have that many cities anyway and that's when the problems really start to kick in. It's not about trying to be inactive and still grow. It's about trying to take out the mundane crap that takes up 98% of the playing time so we can actually be active. I'm only at 73 cities, and it's unbearable trying to manage my cities. In fact I haven't been managing my cities simply because I don't have the 2 hours it takes everyday to go through and manage them. I know IMO I want to trim the time I actually need to be on to no more than 10-15 minutes.

I do disagree about paying 50-100 gold a week. I'm a working adult, but I also have bills to pay and at $4.99/100g that's anywhere between $10-20 a month. I'd pay maybe 100g a month. But anymore than that is ridiculous.

[Jodamann]

I feel that the time component is what kills the game in large mcm. When it gets much above 100 cities, It is no longer a game of conquest but a game of endurance and who does not actually have to work for a living. I suggest awarding city managers for significant milestones achieved, call it FOA, friends of aurora.

The first city manager would be awarded at the 50 city level and would be available to help buy scholarships. Each city could toggle on off and use all its resources for scholarships. PM could schedule the frequency of scholarship purchases, say daily or twice a day, for example. This would also increase competitiveness to reach this significant milestone.

The second city manager would be a builder. The builder would be awarded on the 100th city and would periodically expend all the cities resources to construct city buildings in a predetermined sequence. PM could preset when the city building manager executes the command to build the queue. Presumably this would occur when people are least online because to accommodate the batch commands.

The third city manager to award is at city number 200 and it would be an elite warrior that conscripts units. The warrior periodically uses all cities toggled under his command to use resources to purchase units in a prescribed manner. That is, all zerks or guards. It would be great to insert complex rules such as conscript all guards except build rams to 500 first. But maybe the Complex rule be awarded at city number 500.

Those are the three biggest time wasters that deal with mind numbing mcm and AWS latency. And that is why I get disinterested past city number 50. And want to quit by city number 150.

The last thing that would be nice is a batch update command that updates all cities or a subset of cities. Frequently, I scroll through cities to build (waiting for my device and AWS to shake hands) only to have to watch the same mind numbing meet and greet when I scroll through later to conscript units. This data sync is the issue. I realize that is part of the game that each command sync with the server for an event. But, wholesale updating data and batch (non attack) commands would really be a huge advance in the right direction.

Hope this makes sense. Best regards, pwn, and great job since being at the helm.

[Jodamann]

Pwn, there is software technology that deals with volumes of data cramming through an event server and kicking out new data in an incredibly fast manned. While that technology exists among and is probably proprietary among stock exchanges and dark liquidity providers, there probably are developers or consultants that may be able to help make a break through for you.

[Moltke]

Believe me, at 700+ cities most do not get managed at all. Some automation is necessary. A big problem is the update rate, and particularly the impossibility of finding attacks. An autoload for all city data is critical, even if it takes a long time. Downloading city lists into excel (or any kind of delimited list) would be invaluable in managing friendly and enemy cities. Automating scholarships changes the dynamic a bit, but it's the only way to let "amateur" players stay in the game past 100 cities. Burnout is a real problem. Maintaining a large guild alliance is almost impossible once the city count gets large because people continually give up because there is too much overhead.

Showing my age, when the dungeon-master concentrates more on the cost of goods than battling with monsters, the game sucks.

[KMT]

i skipped invite to tournament. i will not play any new world/tournament or whatever until mcm issues are fixed. the #1 player did the same.

btw many old players, tired to see glitches popping up after new updates, never downloaded trial by sword. so you might have big players not joining tournament because they use old release.

[LordFirefall]

btw many old players, tired to see glitches popping up after new updates, never downloaded trial by sword. so you might have big players not joining tournament because they use old release.

I don't get that. I typically keep my SD version an old one and upgrade my HD. When I see the update works, I then upgrade the SD. It's like the Lotto - can't win if you don't play.