Mr. D

Sorry guys, looks like the OSM server providing the Geocoding services is down! The issue is still there, but will continue happening in an intermittent manner. I'll post again once we have a more permanent solution.

This is exactly what I asked for and I'm glad to say that *some* of these items have already been addressed in the new designs. We'll discuss the rest, so keep them coming if you have more comments!

Hi all, As mentioned in our recent News announcement we are currently working on the 2.0 version of "Domination: Earth", which is planned to perform better, look nicer and feel less confusing. Making "the already incredibly confusing game" (TM @Republic of America ) less confusing is one of our top priorities, but as the definition of "confusion" depends on your perspective and level of DE experience we really want to ask for your opinion on what you think the biggest problems are right now. This may be the best opportunity to influence the direction in which the future DE is developed, as it will be late to change many aspects once we have a fully-functional beta in place. So please do not assume that we can read your thoughts and do share any thoughts on things you'd like to see changed; don't keep any rants to yourself. However, please note that this is not a thread to suggest new features (i.e. no proposals for new buildings, additional diplomacy features etc.); I'd like to only discuss things that made it hard for you to start playing / understand the existing mechanics or UI elements, or complaints that you heard from other players on the same topics. Any posts with ideas that are not related to "de-confusing DE" will be moved out of this thread. Other than that... any feedback is very welcome!

That is the plan theoretically, yes! I don't know if it's going to happen in this or the next version (no promises!), but the current list of perks wasn't intended as 100% final.

Wow! Love the mountains and all the wildlife! Awesome!

And we really appreciate all your ideas and suggestions. We do have a lot of alternative data points to consider, it is possible that streets or other labels will replace the establishment names. @Irrelevents raised a very good point that we don't want to create a backdoor for spam in our game, but at the same time name diversity has to improve without losing its meaning (i.e. randomly generated names by us would bring zero value to motivation of travelling somewhere far ). Anyway, leave it with me; as soon as we have some concrete solutions I will post about it for further discussion!

Not if we don't use them. I don't fully trust that database (it is editable by anyone even more freely than Google's!) and it's not as "compete" as Places or FourSquare, i.e. there aren't enough unique locations to make it entertaining globally (yet).

Exactly. * sigh * That is an alternative we're now considering, but it's still a bit pricey compared to our original setup. So for now we'll stick with player-named lands, but perhaps we'll find a solution before the 2.0's launch. I do agree that it was pretty awesome to collect rare places and even travel to distant/unreachable spots in the middle of nowhere just to see what they can possibly be associated with.

I must admit I did not expect such a negative reaction to the explicit base names, as with the rumours going around about people getting confused with the base name duplicates I thought it's going to be a positive change. But I'm nothing if not flexible; everyone's bases have now returned to the original values!

Sure, I can reset your base names; it's not a problem. Just PM me your username and either the lands title or display name, please! No need, just found your account; bases renamed. The name will only represent your current geographic location (i.e. nearest village/town/area), not a nearby establishment (banks, cafes etc.). It's not random, but will be taken from the OpenStreetMap database. We'll have a chat about that with my colleagues, but at the moment I don't have a definite answer. It is possible that one/some of the renames will be made free in the future!

Nope, sorry; otherwise that would potentially create some unwanted trade-based scenarios allowing to create bases in remote locations. So only regular & remote upgrades do the trick!

It's not a glitch, this is deliberate and related to the following update: As soon as you download version 1.19.5 you will be able to rename bases to a custom name of your choice for 1 Unobtainium. Newly created bases will no longer look like this though, as these names are what's left of the Google Places API (that we've now discontinued). If these names are really bothering you though I am happy to rename them to their original value (i.e. name of the city where they're located).

Hi all, As some of you may know, Google is switching to a new "pay as you go" pricing model on the 16th of July, which unfortunately turns several "Domination: Earth" services unaffordable (Google Geolocation and Places API price raises by almost x40). Because of that we're forced to perform an "emergency release" switching all Geolocation services to OSM and disabling Google Places API entirely, which means your newly captured lands will no longer be named using the nearest restaurant/hotel/landmark name obtained from Google (this does not affect any of the existing lands). Please note that this is a mandatory upgrade; we will be forced to deactivate Google Geolocation and Places on the 16th of July not to incur additional charges, so all versions of "Domination: Earth" older than 1.19.5 will stop functioning after the 16th of July. Version 1.19.5 is now available on the Play Store and will automatically appear on the App Store in the next couple of days. Push & upgrade notification will follow as soon as the app appears on both stores. On a more positive note, this update introduces one new feature: ability to rename all of your bases and lands manually to anything your heart desires for only 1 Unobtainium per change. More than one rename of the same land or base is allowed. As always, please let me know if you have any questions!

I can see your point; will add this to my list of things to review!

Exactly. I forgot to mention this before, but we've decided to keep this element of game mechanics as is because the terrorist army is currently too weak and non-threatening, so at least this way they can surprise you with towers and missiles out of the blue (as let's face it, they never get to reach level 3+ with their lands; our peacekeepers are doing their job too damn well ). There is a fairly low chance of this happening though, so just make sure you target these lands first!

Hi! Sorry to hear about your trouble, I'll do my best to help! I'll PM you the details.

Yup, that's because I released a fixed version! Glad you managed to install it just in time!

Right, Android 5 is acting up again! Will fix that.

That is accurate! Resource stations only spawn whenever your base upgrades to the new level, whenever someone else's base does the same or when a new base is established in the region. Finally, there's a tiny chance (<5%) of them appearing whenever you capture land, but that doesn't happen too often. And just to confirm: this element of game mechanics hasn't changed since it was introduced initially.

It is entirely possible, yes. We haven't discussed things that far in the future, but I can't see any arguments against beta so far!

There are some very interesting ideas, @Grizzlyfilms! I won't be able to comment on each of them individually, but I like the direction of "more stuff that needs visiting in person" as all of the remote captures & bonuses are making us lazy (and motivation to go outside is slowly slipping away ). Defending your lands in places where you don't have a base yet also came to my mind recently... it is something we need to consider. And certainly, if we finish the 2.0 on schedule and get a bit of free time we'll be happy to include some additional graphics and maybe customize FOT a little bit. Can you elaborate, please? Do you mean achievements that link into the game (i.e. forum activity that affects your in-game progress) or just generic achievements for posting on the forum? The former would be a bit of a problem (and hard to say if it can be done before the 2.0 is complete), but the latter is slightly more possible if you can think of any good achievements!

Hi all, Version 1.19.4 is now available on the Play Store for Android devices of version 4.4 and above! Apologies to users of 4.3 and below, but our app framework made this decision for us blocking all older versions (which is another reason why we look forward to "Domination 2.0"; it is planned to support all Androids 4.+ ). iOS release will follow separately. This is a minor maintenance update featuring the following changes: Trade offer, army mobilization and similar sliders now feature a numeric input allowing to enter the exact value of resources offered / troops recruited etc. "Action cost" is now displayed for each building in the "Construction" building before it is built. "Nano Source" subscription is now available offering 2 Unobtainium weekly. As always, please post if you have any questions.

Until we add any real 3D graphics (which is really not even planned right now ) I think we should be ok, Unity engine on its own isn't known to drain battery more than our current platform. Most of the drain comes from active geolocation (i.e. whether the GPS chip is used, how frequently does your phone connect to a different cell tower in the process of obtaining network-provided coordinates etc.), but that algorithm is not going to change (nor there is much we can change ). So I'm hopeful that battery-wise things will stay the same or even improve a bit (as we are getting rid of some old problematic code of the framework that I used to build DE).

"Stable" is a very broad term, but I would say that our revenue looks a bit like a stock market chart (high one day, non-existent another). Micro transaction based games are a bit like that; very unpredictable. So of course, if you are interested in some Unobtainium we will only be grateful.

Yup, sounds like what we have in Flamefrost! That is a classic guild model that I'm very familiar with and was thinking of introducing to DE in a fairly similar way!