As far as I can tell, the newer players in this thread are sill missing the point.

Yes, creating fields of NPCs to farm and building enormous armies was a bizarre optimal strategy. And its fine to change the rules every now and again (more notice would be nice, but sometimes things happen suddenly in the real world, i.e. earthquakes and hurricanes).

So the rules changed. The top players changed. I can still farm an excess of 200M food per day over and above the 20M food per hour that my army eats. The problem is that there is no longer any point in doing so. There is literally nothing left to do.

I can't build more buildings because my cities are all maxed out.

I can't do more research because my research is all maxed out.

I can't conquer more cities because I'm limited to 10 slots.

And now, with this change, I can no longer battle with other big players who have reached similar levels of development.


This change, in concert with the development limitations, has effectively put a "finish line" on the game. Once you cross it, there is nothing to do but retire.


The remarkable thing, is that it would be trivial to remove that finish line. Even without undoing this latest change. Just allow buildings and research to go above level 10, and allow players to control more than 10 cities.

Do that, and things become really exciting for the established players.

Do that and the noobs are left alone because the established players have something to work towards and others to fear.

Do that and the NPC problem goes away too, because even if level 10 NPCs are easy, maybe a level 28 NPC would be really hard for anyone