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Edited: the update is now live; please get version 1.15 on the Play Store (App Store will be updated within the next few days). Hi all, A fairly large game-changing update is about to be released and will affect the core land capture mechanics. It's now available on the Play Store/App Store yet (I will post again once it's live), but because of the fact that it's a pretty massive change to the way things work I thought an advance "heads-up" is on order. Before I list the actual changes I wanted to explain "why" these adjustments are being made. in my continuous effort to make things easier to understand I've come across a number of issues & frequently asked questions that many players are struggling with, such as: When is a new land captured and when is an upgrade performed? How far does a land's "upgrade influence" extend and how far do I need to go to capture a new flag? How to merge level 100+ lands and what priority is given to more than 2 lands occupying the same space? How far do I need to go from a level 200+ center to capture new land? And last, but not least: How do I get rid of those pesky level 1 lands scattered across my level 100+ land? To answer these questions and to solve the associated issues I've decided to give players a bit more "control" over what's going on an eliminate many of the "invisible radiuses" causing so much confusion & frustration currently. Accordingly: The "500m upgrade radius" no longer exists. Lands will extend as far as their circle and that's it. This means that you can plant as many small lands next to each other as you want, and an upgrade will be performed only if you're standing completely inside this land's circle or target that land using the "Remote Upgrade" manually (the smaller "Flag" button on a land's tooltip). If you're standing inside a level 1000 land (or any level 100+, for that matter) you will actually have to go beyond its visible border to establish a new land. No more "nested lands" (circles within circles). Lands of any level can now be merged. This means that a level 3 land standing next to a level 2 land merges into a level 5 land as soon as their borders touch (+- 5 meters). It is no longer possible to keep upgrading your land if it touches or is located within a larger land. E.g. a nested level 5 land located inside a level 20 land cannot be upgraded and will display the appropriate message. However, its parent level 20 land can merge the aforementioned level 5 with itself and become a level 25. There are two ways to merge lands now: 1. Using any of the Flag buttons ("Remote Upgrade" or the big "Capture Land" flag on Earth View, if you are standing inside the merging land). If you target a land that contains or touches a smaller land, next upgrade that you perform will merge such lands with their parent, one land at a time. I.e. if the land contains 5 nested lands within, 5 upgrades will be required to merge all of them. Please note that the parent land has to meet all the building requirements for the level it's about to become before it can merge one of the smaller lands (i.e. you'll have to upgrade your sandbag walls and towers before the merge can begin). Merging lands in such way will trigger the 15 minute upgrade timer, generate & collect resources nearby and provoke actions by the Ai (where appropriate). 2. Using the new "Magnet" button located on each land's tooltip. "Magnet Merge" can be used on any remote lands (it does not require you to be within 500m from the targeted land), it does not start the 15 minute upgrade timer and can be performed multiple times in a row. Additionally, "Magnet Merge" attempts to merge all of the smaller & adjacent lands at the same time (instead of one by one), which is useful for consolidating level 500+ lands with dozens of smaller lands within. However, it does not trigger resource collection, no new resources appear after using "Magnet Merge" and the Ai won't notice a thing. Upgrade costs: Because of the fact that high-level lands can now be merged with any number of smaller lands at any time, it is now required to pay an "upgrade charge" for every merge resulting in level above 100. Cost to upgrade a level 100+ land depends on its resulting level and equals to 1 Money and 1.10 Supply per level of land. I.e. to upgrade a level 100 land to level 150 by merging 50 nested level 1 lands you will have to pay 150 Money and 15 Supplies. It doesn't cost anything extra to upgrade lands below level 100 (e.g. a level 49 and level 50 lands together). If you are using the "Magnet Merge" a pop-up displaying the associated merge costs will appear before the actual merge happens. However, if you use the "Flag" button the merge will be attempted straight away, so make sure to check the "Magnet Merge" window if you're unsure whether there is anything around to merge. The auto-merge has been added primarily for users of the pre-1.15 apps that won't have the "Magnet Merge" button and will be stuck with non-upgradeable lands otherwise (unfortunately, too many players download game updates weeks after their initial release). I understand that this is quite an impactful change and a lot of information to process, but I hope that in the end it will make the land capture mechanics a bit more apparent and manually manageable. As always, please do not hesitate to post if you have any questions!

Hi all, Just wanted to let you know that I am aware of the current "lags" and overall slow game server performance (after release of 1.15); this issue is being investigated and will be resolved ASAP.

Ok guys, first of all - feedback heard and noted! As I said on multiple occasions in the past, I'm doing my best to find the perfect balance in the game, not make this game impossible to enjoy (despite what some of you may think). Having reviewed the real-life merge examples performed in the last couple of hours I agree that the merge cost is a bit too steep; as a TEMPORARY solution I've slashed the upgrade cost by 10 (i.e. all merges should cost 10 times less now). However, following your feedback I have a couple of ideas for a better formula which may scale better for lands above level 500; we'll try it out next week. I am a bit disappointed that the requirement to place new flags within larger lands is perceived as such an important game element (possibly *the* most important element?). When this update was designed I was under impression that having the ability to check-in in a larger variety of places (due to the 500m invisible upgrade radius removed) would be the key feature of the update, making localized travels a lot more diverse (and outweigh the inability to check-in within level 1000 lands). But once again, I hear what you're saying (looks at @Riylan ) and I will have a think about ways to shift this balance. In my opinion, the game shouldn't end whenever you can't place a flag on an already captured piece of land, but enabling this ability isn't the right solution either (it just doesn't make any sense! Sub-countries within your own country? ) and other game features should replace this process. I have a few ideas of how this could be improved and will work on that next week! I don't say this often, but I must say that I am sincerely offended by your petition and comments. Do I not always respond to every single bit of feedback and suggestion? Was there ever a case when I ignored our players' opinions and did things my own way despite negative feedback? Please remember that I am not a corporation, I am one person; a player just like yourself, trying to make a fun game for everyone. The fact that this game has no ads and there are so few ways to spend Unobtainium is my way of saying "this is not a cash grab". However, it costs over $1,000 per month to run this game and pay for the associated hardware and software, so I have to sell a minimum amount of something. What I'm trying to prevent here with this update is over-expansion of higher-level players with no "sink" for their accumulated riches that makes such players an impossible obstacle for newcomers. There's just nothing you can (or need to!) spend in-game resources on at high-levels at the same pace you're earning them. Anyway, I'm afraid I'll have to continue this discussion later / on another day, as (once again) a mortal being that I am I have to return home and spend at least some time with my family before getting back to development (that I'm actually not being paid for, believe it or not! 100% of our profits go towards hardware maintenance and online ads).

I think this is very expensive considering that you might had to pay several times for the same lands/levels. For example if I merged a level 100 land with a level 50 land which is than big enough to touch another level 50 land I had to pay 300 Supplies and 3,000 Money. So basically I would pay for the first level 100 and level 50 land to times but for the second level 50 land only one time. I think it would be nice to only pay the merging fees for the littler land.

I suggested a sort of 'maintenance cost' in order to make not too easy to have big lands. So I cannot dislike this upgrade. We are all shocked because there was no cost before and there is now. If the game was this way since the beginning it would have seemed just normal. Big lands come with more resources inside, so you have increasingly more resources to pay for increasingly bigger lands. I also think some big players (and myself) have some disadvantage, but this logic may help smaller players in comparison. I see as a bigger problem the one about the things we cannot do when we are at the base, or at the center of a lvl100+ land. We cannot enlarge the lands anymore, and more options will be available in the future. That's fine, I'm waiting for those more options because otherwise the game is quite boring. In am confident that in some future release there will be enough to play, let's say, one or two hours at a time even if I stay home. Adding some sort of guilds, online chats and the like would be already good enough I think.

That is just it. This game is not a democracy. Even if you have spent a lot of money on unobtanium, the game is fully owned and all decisions made by MR. D. We are here raising our concerns and asking him to take them into considerations, not make demands or threats. Hh has the right to leave the game as is, just as you have the right to not play...

So, I have been dreading an update like this for months now. I don't travel far to go to work(around 2.5 miles). I don't travel farther than that for pretty much anything I do during the week. Sunday I go to church, and spend a couple hours there, and maybe an hour getting food with my family. Every few months my work sends me on a business trip for a day or so. With this update, my growth(AKA the reason for me to play) is effectively reduced to around 5-10m/day. Which I don't think will be enough to keep me playing. If this is the way you want the game to be played going forward, I believe the potential player base will be much smaller, and a large portion of your current players will quit. Just my 2¢. I won't be quitting until I play with the new mechanics for long enough to know for sure that I don't like them, BTW.

I have to agree that the cost seems backwards... paying for bigger land every time will quickly become discouraging...

Hmmm whIle I understanding the idea, I just upgraded a land and it costed me 15000 gold... it does not seems feasible to do that for all the lands in my land (nor do I really see why I would do it). This seems way to much, I cannot even pay for another merger while I had maxed out most of my resources. Also I do see the downside that I really cannot do that much most days and have to play when I travel, which is sometimes. Thus in stead of playing daily I would play once a week? I am not sure how long I will keep a game that i play once a week...

I don't think it's perfectly balanced, I'm just presenting my arguments in support of a theory that Unobtainium threats are greatly over-exaggerated. However, if I start receiving reports from Unobtainium victims and evidence that this functionality actually causes harm I would be happy to review it (and any suggestions are welcome).

I have another idea about this. What if the attack time (at least the time before the first wave) depends on the distance from the base? It would make sense that I can attack the land close to my base easily, maybe even with no waiting time if it is at 0 distance. However if the defender is far, I would have to wait much time, and he has the time to organize a defence. This might be a way to incentive a regular distribuition of players in the territory. This would make the position of the base an important thing. Now it doesn't matter much. What do you think?

The first in the Top Game Supporters list has a value of 6690. Is that Unobtaimium quantity? Is that a real player?

Makes sense, I'll see what can be done!

i click on 3lvl land and get this message. After that i click 424lvl. And 424 merge.with 3 lvl and this cost me almost 5k.money. Wtf?