Yato and Hallie - a take on your posts if I may: Yato stated above that this 'isn't sim city' yet by both your own admission the vast majority of your time is spent sending out farming troops to barb camps, over, and over, and over, and over. I acknowledge that this at least requires user input, yet its hardly edge of your seat stuff is it. Cycling through 20 nearby barb camps, clicking your preset button over and over again is hardly what I would call fun and really is no better or worse than farm town on facebook. I don't know both your personal circumstances (and its none of my business) but I couldn't keep logging on this frequently I have other things to do.
The truth is that there isn't really much to do in the game, at least for the first several weeks. This 'round the clock' activity that the hardcore players speak of is nothing more than logging on and sending out farming raids, most of the time anyway.
HallieMarie - Waking up during the night every 1.5 hours - whilst I admire your dedication - shouldn't be what a game is about. And if you have to do that to be competitive then looking at it objectively it isn't really a well designed game. Its highly obsessive/addictive behaviour. There is something called work life balance and it doesn't just apply to work.
Don't get me wrong, I like empire building games, and I like there to be some excitement, action and things going on. The whole farming thing is duller than sitting waiting for a HQ to advance a level. 'Watching paint dry' is a very comparable example to some elements of this game.
I'm all for empire building but for god sake can't it be done in a way which injects some liveliness to it, a sense of urgency, a sense that you have something productive to log on for, and that when you do log on at the end of a working day you at least know that you'll be able to 'play' for a couple of hours instead of setting one 20 hour build going and logging off again.
I was just browsing the net searching for information on tribal wars and other games like this. I found this gem, way back from 2010 on the original TW forum:
Nudest said:
Why play TW? I used to have an answer for that, now I wonder why anyone plays this game.. stop playing and enjoy the freedom that comes with it. The problem with TW is that if you're not farming, you're not succeeding. Most players who are competitive like me, will end up wasting way too much RL time just trying to keep up with everyone.
In 4 years nothing has changed. Sorry to keep going on about it, but it's a fundamental issue.