2.7.9 Land visibility filters

[Mr. D]

Hi all,

Update 2.7.9 is now available for download from the App Store and Play Store, as well as being deployed automatically to the existing devices via the in-app updater facility.

The following changes were made in this version:

• Earth View: "Enemy Lands" filter has been removed and replaced with 2 new filters: "Lands of AI (Terror)" and "Other Players".
• The new "Other Players" filter is disabled for all players by default and needs to be switched on manually.
• My Profile: you will find a new land visibility setting at the bottom of the profile settings window, allowing to hide lands that haven't been interacted with for more than a day, week or month. Disabling this setting shows all lands from the beginning of time.
  The default value set for all accounts is "Month".
  
  Please note that this setting applies to both yours and other player lands, i.e. selecting "Day" will hide all lands captured and interacted with by your allies and enemies before today.
  However, the land visibility setting does not apply to the Force of Terror lands, which are always visible unless the "Lands of AI (Terror)" Earth View map filter is disabled.
  
  "Interactions" that count towards refreshing a land's activity are:

1. Land upgrades.
2. Building upgrades and repairs.
3. Army invasion into that land by an enemy.
4. Remote strike by any offensive structure from that land.
5. Trade offers.
6. Construction of utility structures and regular buildings.
7. Army recruitment (for bases).

As always, please post if you have any questions or feedback!

[Олег Поленин]

If both features are implemented as above, I believe the second feature (hiding inactive lands, incl. enemy lands) should allow you switch the default of the first feature to actually show other player's lands.

Most of enemy lands will be invisible anyways (players will not have their screens full of flags), yet players WILL do see enemy towers and launchers once they attack.

Otherwise, I'm afraid new players will get confused, not understanding where the enemy fire comes from. But nonetheless, they will still be confused why enemy flags/towers keep appearing so quickly, overwhelming them a lot.

Perhaps another solution: always show all flags of enemies that are at war with you - and when at war, show all your own flags too.

[Mr. D]

This won't be a problem for new players, as until their base reaches level 10 there are no combat interactions possible with other players anyway.
But by the time level 10 is achieved after a few weeks of gameplay most players are usually familiar with the available settings, map filters and Discord already, which reduces the chance of confusion.

Showing all flags of a particular enemy at a specific time in a non-optional manner is not a good solution, as one of the key problems we are facing is the overpopulation of certain areas with flags by a single player. There is at least one in Brisbane (I will avoid pointing fingers ) and there is a number of such veterans in the US.
Playing next to them is really, really hard as the number of flags accumulated by these guys in the last few years is capable of single-handedly overloading and crashing specific devices.
Accordingly, I would like for the choice to see "everything" to remain an option controlled by the players (depending on their device's capabilities).

If one of their old guard towers happens to attack you it will pop up on the map (and will be very easy to spot on its own as opposed to the current situation, where individual structures can be very hard to find in the "forest of flags").
And if there is a large number of such flags appearing in a short period of time I doubt that it will cause much confusion after all; at best the opponent will try disabling the visibility filter (to find out that the attacker is, in fact, a well-established veteran with an abundance of flags), at worst they will raise a complaint in here or Discord with their suspicions and we'll be happy to address these enquiries outlining all possibilities. 🙂

I think having this discussion happen once in a while is going to be much better than losing players due to the inflexible slowdowns of Earth View caused by thousands of flags forced in their face.

But as always, I will continue to observe the situation, of course, and if a more elegant solution presents itself I will not hesitate to adopt it. 😉

[Luna]

Is there any chance we could get a filter by player? It might be a bit clunky for the UI, but the ability to essentially turn off certain megalands would be very useful.

[S Keillan]

I suppose that I should leave some feedback as I was mentioned when the original idea emerged on Discord. The separation of FoT from "other" players is a nice feature. I wonder if someone complained that I kept sending alliance requests so that I wouldn't accidentally attack them when I hunt for FoT. 🙂

The filter for lands, however, might be useful for some players but not for me. My style of play usually requires knowledge of lands in the immediate vicinity. Otherwise, I might accidentally upgrade a land that I prefer not to. I often desire to plant a land next to an existing land for merging purposes as that makes base point acquisition more efficient and generates Travel points. An invisible land from over a month ago would be difficult to account for.

A preferred filter would be to limit visibility to either a certain distance from a designated position (current position or camera position) or perhaps the nearest given number of lands (say 100). I suspect that isn't as program friendly since the data would be dynamic rather than the static interaction date of a land, but it would agree with my style of play while reducing rendering time.

Just my thoughts.

[Mr. D]

23 hours ago, Luna said:

Is there any chance we could get a filter by player? It might be a bit clunky for the UI, but the ability to essentially turn off certain megalands would be very useful.

Will have a think about it! 😉

You are right though, this will require a brand new alliance-like UI.

22 hours ago, S Keillan said:

A preferred filter would be to limit visibility to either a certain distance from a designated position (current position or camera position) or perhaps the nearest given number of lands (say 100).

Noted, will also have a think about what could be done here!

Thank you for the feedback, guys!

[S Keillan]

OK, a few more thoughts. It turns out that there's some utility with the time-based filters. I specifically use it when I'm relatively stationary and on a level 100+ land, so when it is set to Day, it renders just what I need without having to switch between map filters, especially when I go after FoT.

Based on that, I would recommend a minor UI change. I feel the time-based filters would be better if it were in the Additional Options menu, adjacent to the Map Filters and Map Style buttons. When traveling, I would switch to disabled mode, and it would make sense to not have to open Profile and hit Save when I do.

Just more thoughts.