Basic outline of Age of Cities!

Key Information

Promotion
  • The standard promotion ratio is 3:1. This means that for every village promoted into a City, two others will be absorbed. Some realms have a 2:1 ratio instead. This is clearly noted in the emails we send about the Age of Cities.
  • When promoting a village, the closest non-promoted villages will be marked for absorption.
  • Exception: Bonus villages are skipped until they are the only available absorptions.
  • If a player does not promote their own villages, the correct number will be randomly selected for them.
Consolidation
  • Cities will be pulled inwards towards the center of the map, in order to fill the empty spaces left by absorbed villages.
  • Realm density and village spacing will be about the same as before consolidation.
  • Rebels will be consolidated into Cities as well, with random distribution.
  • The overall geography of your empire will change. This is because realm terrain is fixed, and Cities will have to move around terrain features during consolidation.
Cities
  • If a Bonus village is promoted into a City, that bonus will be preserved. Multiple bonus villages will not stack, however.
  • City points will be multiplied by the absorption ratio, so that overall point totals will remain the same.
  • Governor costs are reduced in accordance with your smaller number of settlements.
Armies
  • After consolidation, promoted villages will become cities and the realm will be changed forever. Troops from absorbed villages will be converted into "Rewards" that you can access from the Rewards icon: You will not be able to exceed farm limitations with these Rewards, but can otherwise use them (or hold onto them) as you wish. Arm yourself and prepare for the great new age!

FAQ 

What is an attack freeze ?

An attack freeze is a lot like sleep mode, only stronger. While sleep mode only prevents attacks from being launched during sleep mode, an attack freeze also prevents attacks that would land while it is in effect.

Note that the freeze only effects player controlled villages. If there are rebels or abandoned villages you can still go after them, and if someone else takes your target first there will still be a crossfire as those attacks were already in motion against a (at the time of launch) legal target.

How to Promote villages ?

If you are on the new UI please see Visual Guide To Mobile Promotions. If you are using the old UI, there will be a link in the information area to the right of the village overview, near the chat.

If the cost of Governors will be reduced do we get to keep the chests in our collection?

Yes

 

What will happen to supporting troops? Will they walk home upon absorption? or Will they all be consolidated into the city into one big stack?
 
Before villages are absorbed, troops out supporting others will be automatically sent home. So you do not need to worry about losing troops in promoted Cities because they were off defending a village marked for absorption.

Troops from villages marked for absorption will also be sent home. All troops in transit will return to their villages.



What happens to fractions? If I have 67 villages, how many Cities do I end up with?

Fractions are rounded up. So if the ratio was 3:1, you would end up with 23 Cities.


Can we choose which villages gets marked for absorption? In areas where there are four or five villages, I would like to choose which get absorbed.

Not directly. You only choose which village will be promoted into a City. Because the closest non-bonus villages are taken, you can usually pick things out fairly precisely, though. One reason you cannot select the villages for absorption directly is that would allow players to abandon entire clusters, and concentrate all of their remaining Cities in one place. 


Are city Bonuses stacked ?
 
The City bonuses apply to the base value of a village, and stack with research and Bonus-Village traits.

Cities are not nearly as large as three combined villages; internal testing verified that such large numbers changed significant portions of game play, attack strategies, etc... They still pack quite a punch, though. 

 

Promoting Villages - Brief Guide

Visual Guide To Mobile Promotions

1. Tap Village, Tap Promote Icon



2. Tap Promote Confirmation



Visual Guide To UN-Promoting Villages

1. Tap Village, Tap UN-promote Icon


2. Tap UN-promote Confirmation

  


Alpha release of Target System

Hello Realm of Empires fans!

We are releasing a very early, developer preview / alpha release version of a new Target System that we are working on.

It is very rough and ugly, but we are releasing it so early in our effort to solicit more feedback from you. We want to hear your comments and suggestions so that we know where to put our efforts next.

This is a short HOW TO use this system.

SUPPORT CALLING

When you want to ask your clan mates for support, click the new icon on village HUD, then click Ask For Support:


Enter what ever details you want - we recommend you keep this short and include the date and time you need the support by



When created, you and all your clan mates will see this icon on the map notifying them that someone is asking for support :

Your clan members can click your village, enter the target system and read your message and also comment on it. Every clan member is allowed one response in form of a question, comment, or log of support sent

Indicators on the map tell you how many questions, comments or logs of support sent are made

When calling for support to multiple villages...

... a handy feature is the ability to paste ALL of your calls-for-support, to chat, with just one-click:


CALL FOR ATTACK

In a very similar way, you can mark villages on the map as targets for attack


Assigned To / Act By time / Map HUD display

Significant changes were introduced in version 4.0, please see here for details

QUESTIONS? 

Please ask in comments section of this blog post. 

KNOWN ISSUES

none

FAQ

I don't like the icons on my map, can I turn them off? Yes, here:

Why is this a bit rough looking?
It is a developer preview / alpha release meant to start a conversation between us so that we can complete it in a way that works for you. Tell us what you want us to do here.

Can I share this with allies? 
Not in this release. If you want such functionality, please vote this suggestion up

Release History

Version 0.1 - initial release
Version 0.2 - Dec 9 2016
- FIXED : Pasting a long list of support or attack calls cuts off the list and does not post it fully
- FIXED: new buttons in chat blocking
Version 0.3 - Feb 2 2017.
- Sharing with allies
- auto creation of calls for support from incoming summary popup
- auto populate landing time of first incoming when creating call for support
- see all targets popup
Version 0.4 - March 2 2017
- significant set of changes, please see here for details

Exciting new changes in Release 65.2!

New Today!

Village list on Mobile : gets a context popup menu allowing you to quickly launch build, recruit etc without ever leaving the village list

Claims: other clan's claims show as purple flag in map village hud

Caravan : no longer needs click on cards to reveal the choices (saves you a click), and catch up spawns 5 instead of 3 caravans. Caravan Catch Up does not give you more caravans, just saves you waiting time.

VIP Chat borders: You can show off your status via border in chat. Turn it on via throne room's VIP popup.

Warroom / single attack: proper trip durations for rebel rush

Reports: when a new report exists, opening popup auto gets latest info

Gov Chest Cost : losing a governor when attacking, refunds 1/2 of the chest for last governor.

.


Last time on Realm of Empires...

Hail Lords and Ladies of Realm of Empires!

It has been a busy few months at Realm of Empires Headquarters (we don't have any other quarters but the one but this sounds cool!). 

We have broken the 100 realm barier and there was boom!

We've made some significant changes and this post is here to document them for historians from a planet far far away that will one day study the human thirst for power as best seen in the simulation of real life known as Realm of Empires. By commenting on your post, you might get your name into alien text books one day...you never know!


- Tournament-like play : http://tinyurl.com/z2bogeu
- Balance via speed-up limitations : http://tinyurl.com/z2xtuv5
- Research specialization & new techs : http://tinyurl.com/hn56max
- Rare Legendary Bonus Villages : http://tinyurl.com/jqjwmbz
- Free building and research speed ups and more :http://tinyurl.com/gvqpzla
- New Governments: http://tinyurl.com/gshwojb
- Sleep Mode & Vacation Mode
- Troops move on the map details...
- Awesome new chat
- Village Claim System details...
- Balance via yay boost limitation : details...
- Servants rescue - raid rebels and get more than just silver! details...
- New desert look : details...
- Free speedups and other rewards : details...

New chat and our 72 hours in hell

Hello Fellow Strategists!

Last Wednesday, we released our brand new chat system. With its 1-on-1 and custom group chats abilities, it has the potential to significantly improve in-game communication. But it is new, with a new interface and new way of doing things, so it will take time getting used to. But once you experience the power of a custom battle group, or cross-clan admin chat, I hope you will love it!

The upgraded chat uses new technology, so it was being tested extensively for many months - on desktop since November via the Throne Room, then on mobile devices since mid-January with our mobile Throne Room release. It was not possible to release the new and old chat side by side, so we gathered as much data as we could, made many improvements and changes, all in order to ensure that the full release went smoothly. Alas, it was not to be so!

The day after the release, we've noticed a 100% or more increase in average run times across all our functions. Here is a screen shot of our health status tool:


That set of alarm bells and our 72 hour marathon started. The problems were intermittent - no issues for 55 minutes out of an hour, then 5 minutes of serious slow down (these are just for illustration, not actual numbers). Worse kind of a problem! You work really hard and fast for 5 minutes, then analyze your often incomplete data for next 55, hoping you will be ready to catch more data next slow down.

Over time, the slow downs occurred more frequently and lasted longer. The next day revealed even worse performance degradation:


By that point we were on track, though. We identified bugs in the chat login code. Small bugs, so insignificant they would not even be noticeable to you guys, but there was a tiny horde of them! We fixed them off by one by on Thursday and Friday. Performance improved and we were almost 100% back to normal by Friday afternoon, but we still did not know what was the real cause for the slow down.

That mystery was finally unveiled on Saturday morning as we investigated why some maintenance jobs were running for hours, rather than minutes. Oh, the horror that was revealed! In our over-zealous effort to ensure the chat code release was smooth, we had created a number of performance measurement hooks. But we made one little tiny mistake. Errors had a lot of info, and I mean a lot, 100MB worth of error info per error! That was the real cause of intermittent problems. Our error management and categorization system was not designed to deal with so many monsters and started to chug! Yup, we lost at tower defense...

You see, we were prepared for the worst! If an error occurred, we knew exactly when and how... and.... that killed us.... (Editor's Note: The lesson here is to simply live in ignorance, Greg.)

Ashamed as I write this, my only consolation is that I can report that we are back to normal now:




If anyone has issues with chat not loading, or anything else, please do message support and we will help you. The in-game contact form is ideal, but if you cannot get to it, email Support@RealmOfEmpires.com


Developer Roadmap - Winter 2015

All Roads Lead To Rome RoE

We have many exciting projects in the works for Realm of Empires - enough to spawn a blog post to tell you about them!

Update: New Village List!



New Chat System

You can finally stop relying on pigeons and smoke signals, because the new chat system will soon be here. You may have already tried the first part of it in the new Throne Room chats, but that's just the tip of the communication iceberg. We have so much more on the way!

Soon you will have fully controllable chat in and out of your realms. 
  • 1v1 - Need to work some diplomatic magic, get a report from your sleeper agent, or just shoot the breeze with a friend without cluttering clan chat? Done! Open a private window just for them.
  • Battle Chat - When it's time for war, real time communication is often the key to victory. Soon you will be able to create private chats for clan mates and allies. No more wandering through long email chains in the middle of battle! 
  • Clan & Diplomatic Chats - Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Or just have fun talking with your friends! Either way, it will be easy to set up persistent chats for your clan, for allied council - basically for anyone you want to keep in touch with. Group chats are also visible from the Throne Room, so you can keep the band together between realms.


Throne Room For Mobile

It's good to be the king! And soon, all that kingly goodness will be easy to pack up and take with you on your mobile devices. We've been working hard to polish all the cool TR goodies into a mobile-ready interface, and the results will be coming your way very soon.

Our development wizard DarkGeneral is working his magic to pack in all the great features. View your history, bask in past glories, look up other players, and chat across realms... all from the comfort of your favorite phone or tablet.








War Room Version 2.0

The Warlords Rising interface was a big step up for RoE across the board. It's impossible to list all the little ways it improves over the old UI both visually and technically. One thing we've wanted to update for a while now, though, is the War Room you use for battling and defending.

The War Room does a lot of things right, and it makes certain kinds of play a lot easier than the attack screen from the old interface. But we've heard your feedback loud and clear, and we're committed to adding in some awesome new features - and bringing back some favorite old ones! 
  • Landing Times - One of the greatest strengths of the old attack screen was being able to see the landing times for every possible attack at once. This made planning large scale operations a lot easier - and now it's coming to the new War Room too! Huzzah!
  • Unit Filters - As part of the Landing Time update, you will also be able to filter the villages in your War Room by unit type. This makes it easy to plot attacks by siege, to find governors, etc... super cool, and super convenient.
  • Single Click Attack - Whether you're farming, or you're trying to blitz an unwary foe with rapid-fire attacks, there are times when you just want to be able to hit send and be done with it. Soon you will be able to do just that! Imagine being able to instantly switch between the traditional attack mode and a single-click speed version, whenever you want to!
  • MORE - We have other goodies in the pipeline for the War Room that may come later. Things like Attack Memory (so you can instantly re-use common attack formations), or customizable information windows to keep you fully in control of the battle.



Empire Management & Mass Features

We've been wanting to redesign mass features for the new UI since roughly the late Cretaceous period. And now, finally, the dream is happening!

First off, we'll be making massive updates to the Village List. New features will include the option of viewing troops or building levels, and other important information.

You will also be able to rename villages and open village menus right from the list. More importantly, you will be able to group villages and filter your empire according to those groups. So if you only want to see your attack villages, or to bring up villages that are still under development... however YOU want to group your villages, you'll soon have the power to do it!

That leads right into our last, long-awaited update for both mobile and the Warlords Rising desktop UI. Mass features! We're bringing the ability to set empire (or group!) wide upgrades and recruitment queues to both the mobile app and the new interface. We think these changes are going to make the game more fun and easier to play, especially on mobile where navigating large empires could be difficult. No more! Soon, an organized machine of conquest will be right at your fingertips.



Final Thoughts

As you can see, we have a LOT coming up. These new features will be rolling out in waves of the next month or two, so you'll be seeing many, many updates. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoy making them for you! Please let us know what you think - and what you want to see next.

Happy gaming,