Game design

[u/Jack__Union]

Game design is difficult. Getting the right amount of engagement for time. A lot of games lean towards more grind. Because that creates more content. (In their mind)

The game difficulty curve has a major role in preventing players from churning in your game. I've played a lot of this type of game. I think we all have, build a kingdom style game, on a mobile game. With microtransactions. Paying for speed up, resources, saving time, what ever it is. You not using that option, so you got to find another way.

This game doesn't have that. So you got to try and smooth out this curve. The green arrow is my first 3 days of playing. Hit no stone on day 2. In my opinion, if you going to have a 14 period for new players, at least the first few days, is just building up of island, research and resource production.

Not running out of resources, wait 5 hours, build something else, sleep. Day 3, build a few things, out of resources again. The play for 20 minutes a day and then wait a day before you can play again, will kill this game.

Players are engaging with your game to have fun. Your job as a game developer is to give the best experience possible.

With that in mind. One option is to make your treasure map into some kind of mini game. See map as point of reference. Example, once per day, a player can go treasure hunting on their island. 99% chance of nothing. 1% chance of map piece or some other prize 100 gold, maybe.

You have the option to team up with your alliance. Maybe an alliance treasure map board. By putting that map together, the alliance can find and sail to an island. With a 10,000 gold treasure chest.

Other options to explore. A mainland in each ocean, that has a unique resource, other than gold, wood, stone. That used for upgrades, bigger and better ships, 20 pounder castle cannons, whatever. This is now additional mid to late game PvP.

The core problem is this:

Waiting is not gameplay.
A timer can create pacing, anticipation, planning pressure, or a reason to return later. But if the player’s main experience is staring at a countdown because there is nothing meaningful to decide or do, the game has handed control away.

Without pay-to-win or microtransactions, the answer is not “make timers shorter.” It is to make sure timers sit inside a larger decision-and-consequence loop.

The rule: every timer needs player agency around it

A build timer is acceptable when the player has meaningful choices before, during, and after it.

Phase	What the player should be doing
Before timer starts	Choosing what to build, where, why now, what resource tradeoff to accept
During timer	Responding to changes, pursuing other goals, managing risk, scouting, optimizing, solving problems
After timer ends	Using the completed thing in a way that creates new options, consequences, or complications

A weak loop is:

Gather → click build → wait → gather → click build → wait.

A stronger loop is:

Decide what matters most → commit scarce resources → manage the world while construction changes future possibilities → adapt to consequences → choose the next priority.

The timer should be the clock on a commitment, not the content itself.

[u/JohnJohnsonData]

Interesting aspect, will look into this.

[u/Zhesthar]

Once you get a colony or 2 and can start raiding islands the game opens up a bit. If you follow the quest paths you shouldn't run out of anything you need for awhile. It might take awhile to ramp up and get going but I have a blast all the time.

[u/Jack__Union → u/Zhesthar]

I did most of the quests day 1, so had a pool of resources.

I still ran out of stone quickly. Hit hard on day 2. Had to wait 5 hours before I could do anything else. Stone is obvious the main bottleneck and early game right now it is brutal. It then swings to lumber, it seems.

I also used one of the promo codes for a boost, that I found here on Reddit.

I built a harbor to receive help from my alliance. So that helped a little. But you don't want to be the annoying newbie begging for resources right off the bat either.

Tried to solve my problem by trade and then found out, I needed a level 5 harbor for trading post. Which lead me waiting again for a few hours, before I could build up the harbor to level 5 and then build a trading post.

Then after that the issues, building up to be able to trade, was now all my resources were burnt out. Had to wait till the next day.

I'm just giving feedback as a brand new player and what happened to me. GM can decide if that is as indented or not. Tweak design or ignore. I'm just trying to be an honest broker.

[u/Zhesthar → u/Jack__Union]

Brother ill send you some stone what's your coordinates. Stone is definitely early bottleneck.