Playing the Endgame, Everywhere

Tags

Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Vikings, World of Tanks

I was watching the Super Bowl, and not amused by the commercials.   And then something really dumb, but attention catching came on :

Which reminded me that I hadn’t played World of Tanks in – I dunno, years – so I loaded it up and found myself involved in no less than four games now, at the “Endgame”.

Ingress

I am currently dialing it back from Ingress a bit.    No big operations being planned – it’s all I can do to get out to slightly out-of-the-way portals for various reasons.    I am working towards platinum Mind Controller badge – only 1,400 more fields until I earn that one – especially since this badge is perfect for anyone microfielding the Downtown Burbank area.   I crossed the 50 million AP threshhold this weekend.

Vikings

With a level 21 town halfway completed, and working on late game knowledge, this game creeps along.    Creeps is the right word.   I recently started a knowledge upgrade that had 27 weeks on the clock at the beginning.    You can wait for that time to pass, or you can use the time boosters that you acquire in various methods.   I burned all of them up, and am currently waiting to tick down the 10 weeks remaining for this one.   And then start another one nearly exactly the same.

Marvel Heroes

Nerfs to Story XP are annoying, but not nearly as annoying as the impossible Cosmic Trial.    Still can’t pass it with Captain America.    Of course I have the Cosmic modes unlocked with him anyway, but I’m not playing Cosmic Patrols until I can pass the Trial.   I so miss the old Cosmic Trial, which you could pass after gaining enough power.    Probably the only thing more annoying than that, is most players insistence that the trial is “Easy”.

42 heroes unlocked and finishing the story, alphabetically.   Human Torch is my hero today.    And the story grinding continues to move me forward with Infinity points, although the creeping upwards of XP requirements is getting bad – about 290 million for the next point.

World of Tanks

The game has a new Intro movie which is pretty well done –

Standard with the game now is two rows of tanks, not just one, along with view range circles and a drawable minimap.   You can sketch out what you want your teammates to do.   Chat with the enemy is gone, leaving your teammates only able to rage at how stupidly you play, which they do – the socially inept will lash out at anything.   I miss enemy chat.

Random platoons during gameplay is constant, giving you the chance to actually pass these missions that require platooning.    I’m getting in the habit of always being in a platoon due to the personal reserves that I’m earning for the privilege, plus the chance to knock out some of those tank missions.

The XVM mod is still going strong and has tweaked the statistics in the garage very nicely –

Left side – a Tier indicator, along with the laurel leaves that tell you if the tank is elited or not.

Highest level of mastery earned.

Average damage.

Right side – Did you get your daily double/triple/quintuple ?

Count of battles played.

Win rate in %

Despite my earlier statements that I was done adding tanks to my account, I reneged, and bought a bunch of additional slots along with more tanks on sale.    There’s no reason not to spend that gold I bought years ago.    Now waiting for a crew training sale to add a 100% crew to my Tier VIII German arty that I bought.

And so I grind along in the game with the usual goals – padding my battle counts, earning silver, creeping crew training along, and earning mastery badges.    Ace tanker is elusive, often.   With over 100 battles I still can’t earn it for the Medium Mk II, a tier II pig tank that I had figured I could get it with **someday**.   I gave up, and am moving along a list of low tier tanks until I actually have some silver again.

Silver is elusive if you collect tanks and mods constantly.   I am beginning to wonder if the smart thing to do is simply take equipment off tanks I’m not currently running (costs 10 gold each time) and add it to the ones that I am.   Probably makes a bit more sense than grinding to add it at 500k per piece typically.   And currently I’m trying to get another 700k silver so I have enough to buy yet another new tank.

 

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Farewell 2016

Tags

Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Vikings

The year is drawing to a close.    And gaming takes such a hold on my time that I don’t write that much.    There are a variety of reasons for this.

Vikings : War of Clans is not a game you can write a lot about.    I am back in, they did successfully recover my game for me.   Each building upgrade takes about a week, knowledge upgrades are similar, and I continue to pile up the resources (aka rss) for the clan.    Now, there is a new feature that’s been introduced called the Clan Stronghold, but until we manage to build it I don’t really know how it will work.

Ingress continues to be that amazing game that I’m grinding away at.    I have hit 2.1 million MU captured and inch towards the 4 million goal.    I’m pushing to move a lot of gold badges up to platinum, for linking and fielding, and building and destroying.   But that’s not something that keeps you going day to day, given that such badges would be the work of years in a best case.    It’s the strange community that you have with random strangers you meet, who become gaming friends through the game, just because you all picked blue.

Ingress really is amazing, in that it rewards a literally one-action-a-day playstyle – this helps the team, guaranteed – or a marathon of insane 16-to-24 hour a day blitzing.

But none of this is new, thus the lack of blogging.  I don’t have a lot to write about the game anymore.   I have quite literally covered it all – at least until I charter a helicopter to capture Mount Whitney or somesuch insane stunt.   After I take back the same portal for probably the 250th time, nobody wants to hear about it, and even more important I don’t want to write about it.

Marvel Heroes continues to get playtime when I need a break from the mobile insanity.   I think I have 37 heroes unlocked now.    Gameplay is roughly 1) Grinding new characters to 60 2) Grinding out prestige levels when I don’t have splinters to unlock more characters, 3) Working the achievement system.    Between all of these things I tend not to get bored.    I remain irritated by the overly difficult Cosmic Trial.   And I look forward to the “Big Update” which is “Coming Soon”, including a lot of balancing changes and perhaps an end to the Omega system.

Here’s to 2017 being a fantastic year of gaming.   2016 certainly has been.

“Clans” In Ingress

Tags

Ingress, Vikings

Guild drama is something that happens in online gaming.    It’s traditionally been in the Warcraft / Everquest model but it also applies in Ingress.

(As a sidenote, one other casualty of wiping my phone was Vikings : War of Clans.   Looks like whatever authentication/backup method they use – Google, most likely – it was never activated on my phone.   I have a support request in to them.   We’ll see if anything comes of it, because if not, I’m done.)

But Vikings has traditional clan drama.   There are a lot of shards/servers/worlds.    There is limited movement from one to another.    All the players are free agents.    And the guilds – “Clans” – are voluntary.    Want to switch clans ?   Go ahead.    It depends on your relationships with the other players.  But Ingress is very nontraditional.

The players are NOT free agents – the two teams are strictly defined.    It is just barely possible to switch teams, it’s comparable to a server transfer in Everquest2.    There are no shards – the game world is the world.

If you transfer between teams, there is a heavy penalty – you lose your level and start over again at level 1.    This is (normally) meant to keep you from switching, but for people who get bored at level 16, this is actually a draw.    The other penalty is your relationship with the community – all else being equal, nobody likes a turncoat.

The closest thing to a guild in Ingress is a hangout, but that’s imperfect too.   People belong to as many or as few as they want.   Non hangout players fit well with soloists in traditional MMOs.    But the guys who are in EVERY HANGOUT are just committed players.

The natural clan in Ingress is the “Your Town” hangout for your team.    Or an area you frequent for whatever reason (Work.   Travel.    Parent’s House.   Girlfriend’s house.   Etc.)

And Hangouts contain drama.    One early hangout I joined fell apart because of the ridiculous behavior of three agents – all of whom, strangely enough, have since quit.   Now I’m seeing it again in a new hangout.    This is comparable to the drama with Vikings guilds I have been in GSO and Assassin’s Hellgate – different people just create drama and make everything less fun.

I wonder if this is a natural reaction to a team’s dominance in an area, plus the actual participants.    The jerks create drama and make things fall apart.   If you get enough of them they wreck everything and the dominance subsides.

With the small size of most hangouts (there’s usually 5 – 10 participants that say anything, several others that occasionally contribute, a few silent ones, and always people who have since left the game) that helps to limit drama.   This is supposed to be about supporting each other in the game, not hooking up or proving your dominance, but some people don’t get it.

And yet – because the real world is layered on here – I feel pretty close to some of the other players.   I’ve met several multiple times.    I consider them friends.   I talk to them often – usually in spurts depending on what plan me or someone is cooking up.   I have never felt close enough in Everquest2 etc to feel like a clanmate is a friend.

It’s an interesting and exciting experience.    Where will the “Hangout Clans” lead us in the future ?

(By the way – the fielding we had planned was successful over the Santa Clarita Valley.   Yay !)

The Zen Art of Playing while Not Playing

Tags

Vikings

The Vikings : War of Clans continues, but it’s a different ballgame now.    I think I’m past the Mega Drama, but who knows.

My clan, the United With Honor, went ahead and merged with another clan named Assassin’s Hellgate.    I like almost everyone in the clan, but the clan leader instantly gets on my nerves; I’m sure the feeling is mutual.   That’s OK – you never like EVERYONE in a clan/guild/group, you just have to find a way to play together.

The problem being, in my new clan, troop losses are frowned upon.    VERY frowned upon.    So frowned upon that I was reminded several times not to lose troops, and eventually told in no uncertain terms that if I lost a single additional soldier, I would have “action taken” against me, which is some kind of progressive discipline leading to getting kicked from the clan.

I wised up.    I got my troops out of harms way.

The problem being, I like having a fast army.    The Tier 1 troops are hands down your fastest troops; all levels of scouts are relatively fast too.   The Tier 5 troops include some exceptionally slow ones.    I am currently stuck with a bunch of Tier 5’s – they are basically worse than useless.   They are very slow, and I can’t build them, so all they do is drag the rest of the army down.

And I can’t get them killed to get rid of them, because “Don’t lose a single troop”.   You have no way to disband your soldiers either.

Neither can I farm resources – either dead towns, or tiles.    Each carries the risk of getting hit, and getting hit means losses.   The game is 100% offense, and with rare exceptions, if you can attack another player, you always win.    So since failure is not an option, I don’t farm anymore.    I feel useless to the clan that way, but nobody else seems to share that opinion.    Well, it is what it is.

So to get past all of that, I have abandoned actively playing the game.    The point, which I had to remind myself, is to level up your town and research.   I can do this by hiding all my troops under another players shield, and sending resources to the clan bank.    The more I send, the more I can request back.    I can’t farm resources, but so far, every request for stuff has been met.

And Level 21 town has been achieved; I am a few days away from being able to research my first Tier 4 troop, the scouts; so it’s fun to keep this thing moving, even if I’m playing much less.

The Unstated Rules

Tags

Vikings

Vikings 101 : You have five resources that are critical to advancement.

• Food
• Wood
• Iron
• Stone
• Silver

You also have a building in your town called a Vault, which will protect your resources in case of attack – your troops are not so lucky.   The Vault does not protect any silver though.

The game is heavily stacked towards pay-to-win.   Check out the statistics on any attack happening on my town from a typical high-“level” player :

A massive quality boost in just about everything.

To overcome that you would need massive numbers of troops, and guess who has the advantage in building troops ?

Given the following :

1. Most building and knowledge upgrades cost much more than your vault can hold; especially silver, since it is not protected.
2. The game features clans of players, and peace shields that grant your town 100% immunity from attack.
3. You cannot defend your town if you are a low “level” player.

The way to advance in the game is to acquire resources, by either attacking other players (preferably, inactive ones, they don’t fight back), waiting for your town to generate resources, or by farming the tiled resources that appear around your town.   But since you don’t want other (high level) players to take yours from you, you instead send them to a clan member who acts as a bank.

The bank player has a shield up at all times; he can’t be attacked.   You send him your resources, and when enough are available they send them back to you so you can kick off a building upgrade.   Did I mention that building upgrades take some time ?    The current times to upgrade most of my buildings range from 24 hours to 10 days.   I have a knowledge upgrade unlocked that would take 40 weeks to complete.   Not to worry though; you can boost items with time boosts, available at random intervals or as usual you can buy them.

The game works well if you have a group of clanmates who intelligently share their resources with one another.   You want to avoid too much movement; as you’d expect, each time you send resources some of them disappear.    But you need to help each other out.    You can also send your troops to a clanmate, leaving an enemy with a town empty of troops and resources to attack; in other words, there is no damage.

The give and take of getting resources; then sending them to the bank; then actually getting them back from your clanmate; and kicking off the upgrade process; is actually pretty fun.

Just watch your wallet.

Fishing for Whales

Tags

Vikings

I continue to play the Vikings War of Clans android game.

The fun part for me is the paranoid chase to get the next building built; the next knowledge researched; before some guy with more money than sense can come by and smash my town.    Each building at the higher levels costs far more than can be safely stored even though your town is attacked, so the only method of turtling is to use the peace shields.   I have found these to be prohibitively expensive and so don’t use them much.   Many players use them extensively.   Then again, I think most of the players of the game are real whales for the Devs.

Fifty Bucks

Ten Bucks

There are even $100 purchase packs available.    The social engineering on these is impressive, even if ….. disgusting.   The first level is that there are no fixed costs for anything.    You would think I could simply tell you how much gold costs, but no, there is no way to buy the game’s gold for a fixed price in the game.   It costs whatever the current offer says it costs.   But it gets worse (better?).

You start out seeing a selection of $10, $5 packages that you can buy.   They slowly move towards a list of $2 and $5, with one $20 package always available.   I am looking for only $2 packages which is about what I pay for a cold Coke at the convenience store; if it will help me, why not spend at that level.   So when I see one that I like, I buy it.

The game instantly recalculates all of its offer formulas the second you buy one.    Did you see a second offer you wanted to buy ?   Too bad, it’s gone.   Now, a bunch of more expensive offers are on the table, such as the $50 packages shown above.    Now, I find myself waiting again until the $2 offers appear and something I want to buy is shown.

But……. it gets even worse !   The truly disgusting thing is, the offers are MORE EXPENSIVE for each package, the more money you spend.   You get the best value for the gold portion of your purchase, the less you spend.    It seems like you don’t get that much more of the “other stuff” like troops and bonuses, but it’s less easy to see.   Still, I think it’s clear.   I’ve been playing this thing for months, I should know.

Concerns about games being pay-to-win are thrown to the hills in this game; you simply do pay-to-win.    Want to be a tough player on your server ?   Better get smart about your purchases and whip out your credit card.

Now, the mechanics of the game include strange rules about attacking.    It all makes sense in context of a fun game, but it’s a bit weird from a step back.   You can attack special tiles which have resources; your troops sit there and collect them, and are vulnerable to destructive attack if they get caught by another player.    Any attack means that your defending troops that lose, are gone forever.

Attack – your lost troops are gone.    Unless you want to spend gold, of course.   Defend a tile – your lost troops are gone.   Defend your town, and….. your lost troops can be “healed”, just for ingame resources.   This makes “tile hits” something devastating for your enemies, while if your town is hit your troops are kind of safe.     And, guess what happens when you suffer a tile hit ?   Why, of course, an offer to spend money and “Take your revenge !”

Take your revenge ! Just costs a little bit of money….

Me, I try to play the cheapskates way.   I still have a $4 credit from a Google Play card I received for my birthday or something, so I dumpster dive for $2 packages.    Maybe I’ll cut loose with $5.   I don’t know.   But the way I enjoy the game mechanics had better wait for another post.

Statistics, July 2016

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Pokemon Go, Vikings

I’m a little bit late for this statistical review having just returned from Yosemite and parts nearby.    Even in 2016 the Internet coverage for Verizon in the area is really bad.

Vernal Falls. No Internet nearby.

Ingress

Got a bunch of Ingress in and it remains my traveling game.

• 35,284,000 AP.   1.2 million for the month, not bad considering I spent a week in Sketchy Internet Land.
• 2,307 walking kilometers (IE, 1,434 miles), so I added 64 to this badge.   That’s going to take a while yet.
• 1,712 Unique Captures and 3,438 Unique Hacks.   Added a bunch as I traveled.   And yet, not even halfway to platinum for either.
• 1,823,000 MU scored.   That’s 28k for the month, which is really low.

Pokemon Go

In the one month the game’s been out I find myself kind of bored with it, but still playing it.   Great way to kill time while waiting for an Ingress hack timer to refresh.    Level 15; Caught 60 Unique Pokemon, and seen 61.

AdVenture Capitalist

They’ve changed up the game somehow – I think they’ve added additional spots for you to buy higher % efficiency for your angels.   Whatever it is, it’s working – I’m at 4600 newspapers on both Desktop and Mobile, looking forward to 5000 coming at some actual reachable point in the future.

Marvel Heroes

31 heroes at level 60, and passing the cosmic trial on more of them ; Hawkeye has passed as has Black Panther.    It’s all about two things to pass the trial – Good artifacts with Blessing of Hela; and Omegas.    With DCL not having gone live yet I am going to try and pass as many heroes as possible and see where that comes up.    The odd thing is, if they all pass it, I feel like I’ll be done with the game.    And if the trial disappears I might also be done with it.

Surviving the Wallet Warrior

Tags

Vikings

After you remove the stupid combat from the mix…… the Vikings : War of Clans game starts to get interesting.

As usual with all games, first you have to figure out how it all works.   Most of the game elements are things you’ve seen before, but the key to understanding the game is to stay out of combat.    It seems like it’s all about combat, but I am finding I could care less for a few obvious reasons.

Everyone you want to attack has a peace shield up.   OK.   You can’t penetrate that.   For you to put one up, realistically, requires spending money and I’m not going to do that.    After spending forever building troops, you will find your troops smashed flat by the big wallet warriors of the game no matter what you do.    So first, get over the idea of combat.

Got beat up by the Big Man On Server

Notice the numbers there.   I killed 19 of his troops defensively; no idea how many he has.    He killed 1,500 of mine.    I am guessing 10,000 of each Tier 4 troops, plus many bonuses, used to wipe me out.

No combat does not mean not to build troops.   Your troops get you resources, which are required to progress the knowledge and buildings in the game, and which you use to help your clanmates progress as well.    The best troops to build are the Tier 1 guys because they can be built fast, they move fast, and per point of food upkeep have the most capacity hands down.

The endgame starts happening after progressing pretty far in Building.

1. Build a level 21 palace.   (Ready to upgrade to 19, once RSS are acquired)
2. Build level 21 Oracle.   (Research building)
3. Research Tier 4 troops.

The Tier 4 troops are required to have any chance at the combat.   Not only that, but pretty much maxxing out all the various upgrades, weapons, etc plus bonuses.    Perhaps it would work with enough Tier 1 troops too, but you probably need Level 21 in your town to support enough to make it work.

So I’m doing that.   Working towards upgrading all buildings in the town to 18, then planning to upgrade the palace.   And it’s a lot of fun, actually, because I am hunting the inactives and defenseless myself for their resources.

He won’t mind. He quit playing.

Every town was built differently, before the guy/gal playing quit.   Some have good resources, and some have lousy ones.   Some produce fast, and some slowly.   Some are far away from you, and some are close.   And some were raided by your competitors and are thus empty.   This is where the fun comes in for me, knowing how to get RSS from the inactives.   And then you apply the formula.

1. Get the RSS.   Produce it or raid it from inactives.
2. Build a building/do knowledge upgrade.
3. Dump your RSS to clanmates.
4. Hide your troops.
5. Get smashed by the enemy.

That’s the ideal setup – when they come, you don’t let them get anything.   It doesn’t always work out that way, but it was pretty close in the first screenshot posted.    Even better, is to just get enough RSS to do the next upgrade, then you rush the previously built one.   In this way, you have too many RSS for the minimum amount of time.

The tension in the game is you can’t build anything without a lot of RSS; but with a lot of RSS you are vulnerable to attack.   I could care less if my troops die, but losing the RSS, now that’s a real setback.

So progress onwards.   Endgame might come at some point, we’ll see if I can get the final upgrades built.   The amount of RSS just gets larger and larger, and harder and harder to acquire.   Should be interesting.

The RSS Master

Tags

Ingress, Vikings

I find myself still playing the Vikings game.    At the moment I’m in a bit of a slow period with Ingress for the annoying real-world reasons :

• Too much work.
• It’s over 100 degrees outside.
• Too much to do at home
• I have other games to play, too, you know

But the nice thing about Vikings is it’s often available.    I do a couple of things in the game : Build and collect resources.

The clan likes having me because I spread around extra items to a large degree.   I’m useless in a fight – fighting in the game seems to hinge on how much real money you want to spend, so I don’t want any part of that.   Raiding inactives, now, that’s a different story.

My current location

Most of these guys are no longer playing the game – but they still produce “rss”, meaning Wood, Stone, Iron, Food, and Silver.   You need copious amounts of this stuff to upgrade your town, so I send my troops to take as much of it as we can manage.

The other players in the area are doing the same thing, too, but I’m happy with how it’s going for me too.   I have successfully gotten my Palace (IE, my main level indicator) up to Level 18, giving me three more to go until 21 and the maximum.

Once I’m at maximum I’m not sure how interesting it will all be, but the timings are exponential as you go higher up in building level.   The last palace took around a week to upgrade.   Level 19 will be more, I’m sure.    And not only do you build but you also unlock Knowledge upgrades to make everything work better, too.   I think I have more than enough to keep me going until January.

I did not expect to be in this situation.   I had over 14,000 gold from various purchases and it disappeared one night.    They say that I spent it on in-game items.   I don’t think I did, but it doesn’t matter what I say.    I asked for a refund, or at a minimum the 30-day VIP tokens that I really wanted to buy.   They said no.    Guaranteed, with the confusing RMT in this game plus a badly designed interface (that probably had me click when I should have dragged, truthfully), plus a no-understanding customer service attitude means no money from me.    I figured I’d be done playing the game, except it hasn’t happened.

But the game is OK without money for me, so why not.    Waiting three more hours until I can build another set of troops to carry my loot for me.

The Strange Mechanics of Vikings

Tags

Vikings

Vikings : War of Clans is the latest offer from Plarium games, known for interesting games with a definite focus on grabbing cash from their whales.    This one is no different.

Oh look. It’s a sale. Just like every single day.

The game will be familiar to any player of web-based “Build up your town” game players.    Food, Wood, Stone, Iron.    Plus silver for in-game currency.    Make your little town great by levelling it up – and they do a nice job with the graphics.   Each of my buildings changes every time I move it up in level.

A piece of my town, you have to scroll to see the whole thing.

Where it starts to get stupid is in the expected gameplay, versus the reality.

Plopped into a semi-random spot. Right ?

A fairly empty map with a fair amount of travel time from one town to the next.   Send your troops off to march and destroy another player’s town, and they’ll take a certain amount of time to get there.   (For extra fun, there are resource nodes and mobs that you can also hit).    So that should be a fairly fun and even game, for a casual phone game, right ?   You can defend yourself against attacks as long as you log in occasionally.

The Hive !

Instead, this is the reality.   Each clan buys items called relocators.   You can buy a random one, or one that lets you choose where to go.    So the first thing that happens is every clan bands together.

If someone from the outside tries to attack, your clanmates have plenty of time to react and reinforce you.   Their travel time is in seconds or one minute.   So clans are almost impossible to attack.   Sounds like a defensive stalemate, right ?

Wrong.    The relocators are apparently too cheap – I own 3 and have purchased 4 already.   War is waged by teleporting your town over to an enemy “hive”, or group of towns in a clan.    Then you smash the hell out of an enemy that can’t react, and add a peace treaty (no attacks shield) immediately afterwards – or you teleport away immediately again.    My clan is getting smashed by another clan at maximum level with these tactics.

It’s not all bad when you get attacked.    A bunch of your resources are shielded in your vault, so you can keep construction going.   Attacks don’t disrupt construction, just kill your troops.   This would make sense, again, in the intended gameplay.

Now, for even more stupidity.   When my troops die defending the town, I can “heal” them – bring them back just by playing the game, using food and other resources and time.    If they die on the attack, you have to use premium currency (gold), or just make new ones.    Training new troops takes a fair amount of time.

Now, combine these mechanics and you find yourself doing this.   I could care less if my town gets attacked – because my upgrades continue.    And I can simply start a new one even if my town gets sacked.    My troops are hiding (reinforcing) another clanmate with a peace shield up so they don’t get killed, and I transport all my resources above the vault limit to other clanmates, at a 40% loss for each move.

The only thing to do in the game is 1) Attack other players 2)Attack “Barbarians”, or 3) Hoard resources by claiming the nodes.   If you claim a resource node, another player can attack you.   Guess what happens to your troops ?   Yup, they’re dead unless you spend gold to revive them.

So all I’m doing is watching timers tick.   Fun.

The updates are showing the team working on the barbarians/invaders/NPCS you can attack for giggles, so hopefully they find better ways for us to play.   Right now, all the NPC’s are level 4 or 5.   I have to research to unlock the ability to attack them, and I’ve only unlocked level 2.    You guys screwed up.    This is something they can fix.   I highly doubt they’ll fix the town relocation, that’s the kind of thing that usually stays around forever.

The other interesting mechanic is the gold offers.    They clearly tailor them carefully to each individual player.   How much does gold cost ?   It all depends on what pops up as an ad for you, each package is different and hard to price.   Come on, give in to the IMPULSE BUY !

I went for it.   For $2 I’m going to complain ?    I got to speed up a bunch of my buildings and I’m a much more formidable player.    Suddenly, I’ve never again seen another $2 bundle.    Now the lowest they get is $5.    Armed with a $25 Google Play card I got for free, I went ahead and spent $10.    I now find the packages are $20 all the way up to $100.   I can see where this is going.   I’m not spending my relatively-useless Google Play credits that badly, I’ll wait until (If !) another $2 pops up before giving them another dime.

Then again, they got $12.   They’re happy.   I spent $2 in reality money so I’m not salty.  If you have nothing you want to buy with Play credits for six months, at some point you just go for it.   I’m glad I did, I learned something.

The only real question is how long until I get bored.    I’m filling up my town with Level 12 buildings and will go after 13 once I”m pretty much there.   The maximum is 21, but each level takes longer and longer to unlock.   The level 3 troops take a week to research, so lord knows how many days to get from 20 to 21.