Forge of Empires: Build a City

Excellent game mechanics that allow for a variety of strategies to follow. It is very possible to play this game for free, just at a slower pace. The designers are constantly tweaking the game and adding new player friendly features. The best part of this game is the freedom from becoming a farm for the wallet warriors, aka the whales. I have tried dozens of games but this one keeps me the most engaged over time. When I read the 1 and 2 star reviews I get the sense that those players are looking for a very different game geared towards rapid development and little need for careful resource development and usage. Proceeding slowly and taking the advice of the advanced players in a guild can provide a very rewarding game experience. A number of bad reviews cite problems with plundering. There are a few strategies that you can use to avoid being plundered. The simplest techniques are to collect resources regularly and construct buildings that can’t be plundered. Once you gather a resource, you can’t lose it! I don’t keep a defensive army and don’t waste precious space on defensive buildings. I rarely get plundered and usually only lose an inconsequential amount of one resource. I’ve been in too many games where you can protect only a small fraction of what you collect and lose every other resource you farm, mine, or discover. As I mentioned above, by exploring membership in a variety of guilds you can find a number of players who generously support your efforts with trades and useful game info.

Was having fun, enjoying the game until about two weeks in. I kept having this little robber icon pop up every time I was trying to collect enough supplies to add more buildings. It’s been 4 days and I’ve not gotten enough to do what I want to do. Went to the forums and found out that the robber icon is other players PLUNDERING MY SUPPLIES. Tried to figure out how to just play on my own with no interaction with other players and all I could find was rude people basically saying “stop whining.” “How hard is it to collect on time?” When you have a life where you have to work and take care of others? Pretty dang hard actually. I’m not looking for something this complex and confusing. If someone chooses NOT to join a guild, that means their level of game play is going to be low and letting other people steal their resources is not going to make them want to play more. It’s going to make them angry and delete the game. Like I just did. I am so tired of these games that do crap like this to try to get you ‘motivated’ to play more or spend money to get to a higher level, where it won’t effect you as much, faster. I’m trying to relax and unwind. Not spend hours looking through forums and the help section just to find out there’s no help for it. I don’t want to interact with other players. Why isn’t their an option to just play by yourself at your own pace? I love the basic idea of the game. Wish there was a version for single player though.

I used to have forge of empires awhile ago, and it really was fun back then due to pvp including everyone. Nowadays you have to research for a whole week just to unlock that feature. Why is pvp important? It’s helpful In getting resources faster and to expand the map giving you more stuff to do to expand your empire. Since I’m still in the Iron Age starting over again, I cannot attack players since most of them have not unlocked pvp yet. It is frustrating because upon visiting their city, I saw clear signs that the player opened the game and then left permanently. Attacking lower levels is unfair to active players, but most of them aren’t ever going to be active anyways. It is robbing the challenge and activity of the players that are actually playing and active. This decision is not only a huge mistake, but it also makes new players wanting to leave immediately due to being able not to do anything. I know you updated the game to make sure more people are satisfied of staying in the game, but you are actually doing the exact opposite. Unless this is fixed soon, a lot of new players will quit altogether, including me.

FOE is a great builder style game. It has enough group activities and events to keep you interested for years. There are only two problems with the game that prevent it from being a 5 star app. 1st is the 24hr world timer on your daily resource collection. The timer makes you wait 24hrs from the time you collect to respawn those resources. For example if you are playing on your phone and want to collect your daily resources during your lunch break but someone tries to chat you up for 5 minutes you have then lost those 5 minutes because you must wait at least 24hrs to collect again. And well if this happens again and again you can see how eventually you will lose entire days worth of resource collection. Other games I have played used 20 or 23hr world timers to give players more freedom but as FOE is roughly 4yrs old at the time of writing this they clearly intend to stick with this format. 2nd as you can trade resources across the “Ages” it means you can obtain the best buildings (great buildings) at any point in the game provided you are able to farm enough expansion tiles to place them. This leaves players little incentive to move up to next age. Indeed it actually makes many features of the game harder. Which is really a shame because the art and the work in general that they put into these ages is kinda amazing.

I’ve been playing now for about 9 months; I started when my boyfriend recommended it, to get some free diamonds. I’m hooked. I have not found any need to buy diamonds, I collect quite a few from GE and Wishing wells as well as quests and my Crow’s Nest (best event building ever!). I never have issues completing event quests, without spending any money, and have maxed out all event buildings with ease. I would recommend for anyone. Tips for new players: don’t rush through your tech tree and climb eras too quickly, take your time to collect bps for great buildings and really level them up. Also look at the rewards of the great buildings, not all are necessary, and you don’t want to invest in a building that in a couple of eras is useless (oracle of Delphi I’m looking at you). Neighborhoods change frequently, occasionally I have people that attack my city daily, but with regular pick ups they can’t steal too much from me. Most weeks are quiet on that front. At first I stayed away from pvp and gvg however they are now some of my favorite aspects of the game. Rearranging my city is like a puzzle to put together and I enjoy the process of reworking my city to free up some space. A good guild is so important, and they all have different approaches. I started in a guild that didn’t do gvg, but as I became interested in that aspect I found a guild that would be supporting that approach. Don’t be afraid to look for a guild that backs your play style. In short, this is a game that is easy to start but can become as challenging as you want it to be.