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Implemented: [Social Interactions] Make aid decorations last priority

  • Thread starter DeletedUser105579
  • Start date

DeletedUser105579

Proposal:
Decorations get last priority in aid.

Have you Checked the Ideas section for the same idea posted by someone else? Is this idea similar to one that has been previously suggested?
https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/please-improve-aid-priorities.28134/
The above suggestion (archived) suggested that players be able to choose aid priorities; this was rejected by the devs as they didn't want aid to be more appealing than manual.

Reason:
Generally, aiding decorations takes away from a potential useful action. While this may make aiding "more appealing", it's important to keep in mind who benefits - the player on the receiving end. The player using the aid action gains no benefit, and thus does not increase its appeal.

The specific concern is in the easter event, where players have fields of decorations which often get selected over other buildings.

TL;DR
The aid button's current priorities make decorations act negatively - which is clearly not the point of the decoration.

Restatement:
Decorations get last priority in aid.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser110195

I agree, there should be another layer to the aid algorithm that directs it to go highest age supplies-->highest age coins-->highest age cultural building-->highest age decoration. Current age be damned, if the player hitting aid cares about the age of what they polivate, they would do it manually.

+1
 

DeletedUser105579

I agree, there should be another layer to the aid algorithm that directs it to go highest age supplies-->highest age coins-->highest age cultural building-->highest age decoration. Current age be damned, if the player hitting aid cares about the age of what they polivate, they would do it manually.

+1

I didn't want to go that far because I feared that would be classified as "making aid as appealing as manual", so I chose the one critical problem from aid - decorations - and decided to post just about that.
 

DeletedUser110195

While this may make aiding "more appealing", it's important to keep in mind who benefits - the player on the receiving end. The player using the aid action gains no benefit, and thus does not increase its appeal.
I think you laid out exactly why it should be as I commented, because it wouldn't be as appealing as manual. Manual gives you control over what age you get, which is precisely the only reason to do manual polivating. In fact having it behave as I suggested might make the aid button less appealing. At present, to the one hitting aid, they are almost assured to get something near the players current age being aided. But this, could easily cause them to get far below their current age, even containing the pitfall of blacksmiths being a common thing to build for events, hit aid under what I suggested and you could easily wind up motivating a blacksmith, even while there was an Arctic Future house right next to it available for aiding.
 

rjs66

Lieutenant
neutral on this - as decorations are annoying,but..

the way it is setup (being a strategy game) it allows you to make bad decisions as well as good decisions regarding how you build your city and fight etc..

the best way to avoid this problem is to avoid building decorations altogether if possible

cultural buildings are much more space efficient (even going down an age or 2 to find one that fits)
roads give happiness, keep them up to date
certain GBs give happiness as one of their benefits, level these up and save loads of space to build something useful
if you win a premium cultural building in an event, use it

if your city has lots of small gaps where only decorations fit, re-design your city, get the useful space back

the game is not just about building your city, the city is built to support the other functions of the game
it actually gets easier to avoid decorations as you progress up through the ages
 
...the best way to avoid this problem is to avoid building decorations altogether if possible...
The very fact that this is a common 'best practice' guideline for building a successful city says there is a problem for & with decorations.

The problem is not that they give less happiness per square than cultural buildings; decorations from events, especially, tend to have a high happiness/square and the non-road requirement can make up some shortfall, if there is any.

The problem with decorations is that they take auto-aiding away from larger, more important buildings, while only being able to give relatively small returns for being polished. That is a great pity for some of the beauties available, like the sphinx. To maximise your town. you shouldn't have them :(

Perhaps the solution is for aiding to determine whether it is going to polish or motivate, and if polish, then pick the un-polished happiness building with the highest happiness value, regardless of age or type.
 
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LadyHecate

Major-General
-1
You shouldn't have decorations in your city! Those that do deserve to have them prioritised for Aid over more important buildings. Ideally, the aim should be to have no Cultural buildings in your city too, I'm down to one huge one in my main CE city; instead, any required Happiness should come from GBs and other production/special buildings that have integral Happiness.
 
You shouldn't have decorations in your city! Those that do deserve to have them prioritised for Aid over more important buildings.
Well, like I said:
The very fact that this is a common 'best practice' guideline for building a successful city says there is a problem for & with decorations.


Ideally, the aim should be to have no Cultural buildings in your city too, I'm down to one huge one in my main CE city; instead, any required Happiness should come from GBs and other production/special buildings that have integral Happiness.
That might be the 'ideal' (in a game where there is no defined 'win' it is hard to say various for sure) but it is equally valid to say that the aim should be to have no production buildings in your city turning out supplies and coins.
And if we take it to that extent, the entire concept of Aid, Motivating and Polishing doesn't matter because nobody should have any buildings that it applies to.

But people do have buildings that Aid applies to. FoE does have buildings that are decorations. Some people - whether approved by the "argh! a decoration! kill it!" brigade or not - like to have decorations. Since they exist, decoratons should not be something to be ignored and evaded just to get ahead, they should be a useful addition to a town, just like every other building is.

This can be helped by making decorations a last priority, behind all coin and supply producers, or would be helped by aiding happiness-producers purely based on the amount of happiness they provide regardless of age or type.
 

rjs66

Lieutenant
this is a strategy game

let people make mistakes and find out what works and what doesn't
if you remove the chance to get it wrong you remove part of the fun of the game
if you put down decorations and find this mucks up your happiness and motivation you should learn that putting decorations in your city is not a good thing

don't change the game just because you are having trouble getting to grips with it
lots of players have learned what is effective and what isn't, and adapted their gameplay accordingly
 

DeletedUser110195

Make an entire aspect of the game a pitfall....how wonderfully stupid. If something is implemented, it should be worth using, or why implement it at all except to punish noobs for being noobs? How is that supposed to help keep people engaged when you leave deliberate traps for new people to fall into?
 

rjs66

Lieutenant
it isn't stupid at all

how can you develop a good strategy if everything you do works first time and has no negative impact

stupidity is not learning from your mistakes and repeating the same thing that doesn't work over and over, whilst expecting it to work next time

why are you playing this game if you refuse to learn and expect everything to be handed to you on a plate ?
or have everything changed so you don't have to think about what you are doing ?
 

DeletedUser110195

So you want things that have no conceivable use except to hinder new players in the game? Finding what works is finding a good balance between coins, supplies, happiness. Finding what GBs and military buildings fit your playstyle, what houses, supply and cultural buildings work best for you, that's how you learn to make a good strategy. Having decorations never be worth building is idiocy at its finest. At least GBs like the colosseum used to be worth building. What good are decorations? None. They exist solely to drain your resources until you figure out they're not worth having and never have been.
 

rjs66

Lieutenant
just because you have a whole load of things to use doesn't mean you have to use them all

decorations may be all that is available at the beginning of the game until you discover that there are better methods
removing anything that may not be good is not helping the game, it merely turns it into a linear story

and figure it out is part of the game
if everything was perfect and whatever you did worked then the game would become very boring

there are many military units and assorted buildings of all types that are effectively useless / underpowered in various scenarios too
it is up to the player to figure it out and find out what works and what doesn't

for a person to develop a good strategy there has to be both positive and negative outcomes to decisions

changing the game to make it do exactly what you want in the way you want it to makes a total mockery of the strategy aspect
 
this is a strategy game

let people make mistakes and find out what works and what doesn't
if you remove the chance to get it wrong you remove part of the fun of the game
if you put down decorations and find this mucks up your happiness and motivation you should learn that putting decorations in your city is not a good thing

don't change the game just because you are having trouble getting to grips with it
lots of players have learned what is effective and what isn't, and adapted their gameplay accordingly
Just which version of the game do you think people should have to get to grips with? The Aid button was not always there and it is that button which directly led to the game making decorations worthless.

This is a strategy game, let people make mistakes in the way they have to visit a town to polivate .. we don't need an Aid button!
 

rjs66

Lieutenant
you are not forced to use the aid button - it is there if you want to use it , it is not mandatory
(the amount of mot /pol actually went up after the aid button was introduced)

decorations can still be used to perform the gain happiness in quests without having to re-design your city

if you have figured that under most circumstances decorations are useless - well done you learned something

let others learn that too
 

joesoap

Major-General
What good are decorations? None. They exist solely to drain your resources until you figure out they're not worth having and never have been.
this just means they are useless to you, i need decs just so that i have enough things for people to aid, i could remove them but then all those players would have no chance of getting a bp
 

DeletedUser110195

That makes them useful to other people, not you. I have also done this, because I want people to have something to polivate and not because I need happiness, but I've built my city in a way that eliminates houses. Before you do that, if you ever do, having decorations is a total waste and is better to have nothing on those 1 or 2 tile empty spaces so your coin and supply buildings get motivated.
 

joesoap

Major-General
That makes them useful to other people, not you. I have also done this, because I want people to have something to polivate and not because I need happiness, but I've built my city in a way that eliminates houses. Before you do that, if you ever do, having decorations is a total waste and is better to have nothing on those 1 or 2 tile empty spaces so your coin and supply buildings get motivated.
this makes them useful to me, if players constantly visit & have nothing to aid & no chance of a bp then they stop visiting & replace me on their friend list so i lose out on tavern visits/trades etc
decs have lasted in the game because they have uses
 
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