I did not suggest that clicking makes you a better player
You said it was a challenge. I don't see the challenge in mindless repetition. You can train your average monkey to do that for you, I don't call that challenging.
The most difficult part is not getting bored, especially if you're going to do it for multiple large lists on multiple worlds. And I don't think boring your players out of their minds is a good feature to keep them in your game
Just pointing it out, also, how would this work with the new TE great building?
I guess that feature should aid players according to their points, going from highest player to lowest. This makes sense for these reasons:
1. You are more likely to need goods from higher ages.
2. The aid feature already picks the highest-age building that can be aided, so it makes sense for this idea to account for it, aiding as many high era buildings as possible.
3. It's an intuitive order that's visible to the player, right in their face, so no possibility to be surprised by it.
4. It's easy to implement. If you're aiding a single list, this is trivial since the list is already sorted. It doesn't get much more complicated for 3 lists, since they are already sorted and even share a pivot element (you), you can run a very simple O(n) sorting algorithm over that and then go through that combined list.
I think that reasonable diamond prices are 5 for individual lists or 10 for all 3 lists at once. That would mean:
1 list: 5 diamonds
2 lists: 2x5 = 10 diamonds
3 lists: 10 diamonds at once
So basically, that would mean aiding all costs the same as aiding guild mates + friends and leaving neighbors open for plundering, I guess that's okay to pay more (relatively, per list) to leave you the option to plunder and gain PvP points. Or seeing it the other way, you're not being punished (via higher price) if you're a peaceful player.
That raises a new question though: Obviously lists that can't be aided shouldn't have that option (there's no collect all feature for empty towns either), but what if you aid 2 lists (=10 diamonds), would you be able to aid the third list for free when it comes back up? Then, how long can you do that afterwards? Or would you just say it's their fault for not looking ahead and cash in another few diamonds?