Why I like 'Age II' better than 'Age I'.
Troop upkeep: food issues
-Troop upkeep went down about 50%, archers went from 9 to 4 upkeep.
-You can still farm LVL5s and 10s, only have to send missions on longer trips, but this is negated somewhat by hero speed (up to 100% speed increase)
-Free resources from FaceBook
-Up to 25% food increase from achievements
-Free +25% food (plowshares) from FaceBook.
-Free 5% reduces troop upkeep from FaceBook.
-Draft food from NPCs/players when you have a Historical City.
-Up to 25% reduced infantry/cav/mech cost via achievements.
-Lower losses from LVL10 farming (also free war horn from FB) on top of 25% cheaper troops.
-Vesta's blessing from packages from friends or yourself, 50% reduced upkeep for 24 hours.
-No more instant troop refuge, they go into refuge camp first. You can go a very long time without food, before you'll actually lose your troops. Takes off the pressure of food issues a bit.
Historical Cities
Simply brilliant. They are fascinating and simply a great feature in Age II. No real need to convince people of this.
One of the things I haven't heard about them, is that they are a great way to crack 'unbreakable' cities from endless solo farmers; the ones people complain about who lock up themselves in their cities with millions and millions of troops. You can just capture a Historical City near them and draft 10% of his troops. You can force them to take initiative. Historical cities reward inventive proactive players and punish the lone farmers.
Historical Heroes
Another great feature. They add a lot of fun on top of the normal boring inn heroes. Also no real need to explain. People do complain that you need to spend money to get them, which is not true. If you know how to play the game, you can get a 45-50 cents from the Quests, so 4 free Historical heroes for everyone. This does mean you should not spin the wheel whenever you have cents, and then complain on the forum that only coiners get H-heroes. You can also get them from Commission quests, and win cents from more than 1 free amulet per day. People complain they have to advance port to get them, but forget the simple solution of building a HUB on 1 mile from the Historical heroes.
Time Management
You do not have to be online 24/7 anymore to compete with the very best. You cannot lose your cities anymore, which takes off the pressure of having to be online 24/7. No more need to farm all day long, if you actually know how to play Age II.
The 8 hour suppression / uprise system is quite excellent. It means that people who work (yes, people actually work!) get a fair chance to defend their cities. You can even sleep 8 hours per day, without fear of being colonized.
Normal people work 8 hours, sleep 8 hours and have 8 free hours. I believe the uprising/suppression system is tailored to this.
Time is money. All the kids in their mom's basement do not realize this, but time actually is money. With the extra time you can spend away from the game, you can actually get a job! With that job, you can earn your own money (yes I know, it's a strange concept). People who state that they WILL NOT pay for anything in the game, but do spend their lives playing 24/7... they simply have no clue. Time is money people.
Queen Quest
In Age I, you were promised a Queen; in Age II, you can actually get your Queen. Excellent feature of the game. It's also a very good way of teaching people, forcing them to think about LVL8-10 farming and from there on, LVL12-18 capturing.
Achievements
Excellent feature again. It gives another an extra purpose in the game and a ton of great achievement buffs that make this game even easier and nicer to play.
NPC farming
Next to the resources/item, like Age I also has, you can now also find gems and stumble upon Historical Heroes in them. NPC farming is now a lot less boring.
Also, no more huge LVL5/10 fields, which even makes it impossible to port to some states on certain servers. We complain that we hate NPC farming, but complain even harder when something is done about it, that's not 100% to our liking.
FB gifts, wall, visit empire
Free troops, free items (even amulets from wall and from Prinzessin players), free buffs. It stimulates teamwork. 20 Free speed-ups per day possible, that's 5 hours of speed ups per day. Great for leveling up small level buildings if you don't have much time to spend on Evony. You can also visit empire, which allows you to easily see how your alliance members are playing, and you can also keep an eye on eachother's food, when people are offline for an extended period of time. I.e my ViceHost went away for a while, I just looked at what cities got close to 0 food and send food to those cities.
Colonization
No matter how hard people whine about getting the attack button back, the colonization system will make sure that noobs will not quit the game as fast. The thing they hate the most, is losing their pretty little cities they've built from scratch.
Heroes cap
No more need for endless LVL5/LVL10 farming, because heroes are capped. No more insane high attack heroes, fair chance for casual players to get top10 attack hero. Add free anabasis on top of that, and getting a top10 attack hero is easier/more fair than ever. No more instant troops, which is madness of course.
New Features
Age I was getting boring, no more surprising things, everything was figured out. All of the new features add unknown factors in the game. People have to experiment to find out stuff, tons of new guides can be written.
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I could probably come up with a lot more reasons, but I know it won't convince anyone anyway. The age I players will just keep chastising themselves and not see the beauty of Age II. I just felt like after being a bit cynical about Age II myself at first, I'd create this thread. I used to like Age I myself better, but realized that humans are just crybabies when it comes to change, when they have invested so much time in how it used to be.
Allrighty, that is all. Age I trolls, feel free to flame. Good luck with your attack buttons :)
(yes tl;dr)