Really loved the game prior to this latest update. This latest update is just...oppressive. In idle/incremental games the only real goal is to click on something to get an update to something. The balance is just way off now. One of the prime examples of things that are off now is land oppression. The players aren't intentionally buying millions of units just to buy them; we're forced to buy them due to the exponential curve of requirements. Identity is a great example. I *have* to buy 800,000 School Systems in order to afford exactly 10 Collaboration Tower Grids. In effect, we're doomed from the start now because all of those tier 1 units grossly inflate our land footprint, which is now untenable. This update just makes the game not fun anymore, as there's nothing to do. Lower tier units just don't have any real impact on the game and they can't be avoided.
Like I said in my update, I'm sure there is a negative impact on some of the later stage games but I haven't had a chance to tune for that. Could you send your game to games@hexsw.com so I can see the impact it had on you?
I had to race over 1 million times before I could find my first sponsor, who also happened to be the kid that threw my newspaper into the puddle in front of my house on my 500,000th day of racing.
Comments thus far: 1) Great game. More of a strategy game than an idle game, requiring resource balancing. 2) Medicine is pretty much *the* money maker. It inflates the amount of food you need to produce at the benefit of getting a *lot* of money. 3) Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but to get over 100 genes I'm going to have to run the game for roughly 30 days. The gene growth is excruciatingly slow. 4) I'd like to see which resource depends on what other resource. 5) I thought I'd have knowledge limits, but I'm more limited by money in the mid game. 6) The only thing older people contribute is demand for medication. Kind of sad really. Overall it's a very good game and contrary to your notes, you *can* find entropy in the game provided you can generate enough food.
It's a very well done idle game. I think it's a little heavy on the clicking side of things, as even the evil side clicking trumps idling. I'm assuming this was intended, as being active in a game should always produce better results. I just wish there was a way to have the active clicking effect without having to break a finger or run some type of mouse macro. The factions aren't perfectly balanced, although it's very difficult to produce something that's perfectly balanced. As someone else said, in the late game (over 1 billion gems) demons trump pretty much everything. I'd prefer that rather than nerf things you buffed things that are underpowered. Let's face it, it's a flash game and flash games don't necessarily gain months worth of attention from the gamers that visit them. On a side note, I find it very sad that people cheat in these games just to see their names on the high score board. It is mathematically impossible for anyone to have all of the trophies at this point.
I really enjoyed playing this game until the save bug utterly destroyed the game. I exported before closing, opening back up puts me back to where I was before I started the session. Importing my exported game gets me back to where I was, but refreshing the browser sets me right back to where I was before. Endless cycle. Saves worked for me for the first few days. Now they do nothing. Not worth dealing with. Fix that bug before you do anything with guns.
Make sure you use bigger than a 32 bit value for money/army/tech or they'll roll over to negatives (as they have in my game.) I currently have negative 2 trillion money since it's probably a signed 32-bit integer. Overall a decent start. It needs some depth.
A couple notes: A) The timer bars don't reset between IPOs. B) While the game is a good start, it suffers from being way too linear. Comparing it to AdCap (probably a fair comparison due to the similarity) the reason AdCap was so wildly popular was because of the achievement modifications. X achievement affects Y property. There were people setting up scenarios to find the best break-even points for things. KoC has none of that variability, causing it to just be linear. I won't suggest adding a similar achievement style as AdCap, since that would make it even *more* similar. Compete is sort of unique, but it only affects the first IPO really, and it's extremely taxing because you have to not idle to use it. I'd challenge you guys to think outside the box and find a way to differentiate yourself from AdCap.
It's not a bad game, but in the end, the game devolves into a cycle of whip demons, buy a single demon, whip demons, buy a single demon, ad nauseum for eternity. Reset when it makes sense to get more souls, then repeat the whole process. You can't exactly idle in the game either because the bars move so slowly you won't make enough money while idling to pay for anything. The only minion that makes enough money to move you forward are demons and because the bars move so incredibly slowly for the demons, there's no real reason to ever buy other minions as the speed increases pale by comparison to the whip/buy mechanic. I'd challenge the dev to think a bit outside the box on the idling front and incorporate something different into the artifact/soul mechanic. Right now you can gain all of the artifacts after about an hour playing the game, then the only thing moving you forward is gaining souls.
Just added an artifact that should put things back into balance (the "anti idle is better than idle" thing was an unintended side effect of "being able to use more than one artifact"). I'm still working on a big update coming soon :)
MRCABOOM: I reported high scores being broken a few days ago. lactic is exactly right, they don't update after the first update. I've been running the game constantly since you released it. I have 2.322p ascension levels and it just never updates. You might want to look at the code you think updates every 10 minutes because it's not working.
My recommendations: (1) Just eliminate anything except for mail. I don't make anything but mail because it's generally not economical to do so. (2) Allow a single click upgrade to the next tier of ore. As it stands, I click 5 times on the forge right arrow, then click on each of the right arrows for smelting and ore. I never deviate from that pattern at all. (3) Similar to selling, allow enchanting lower level items first. (4) Allow selling highest quality ore first (to help my OCDness when I accidentally move up and it's too slow so I have to move back down in ore!) -- Overall it's a terrific idle game. I've been playing it since the day you released it while working at home and I coddle it to make sure my ascensions move in a timely manner. But I've been reluctant to ascend lately because it just takes too long to reset everything.
arigold16, Simon's got it pretty much right. I can tell you that at the Infinitium + levels I'm swimming in ore and bars because I can't forge them fast enough. The key to success here is watching your ascension levels and ascending as often as makes sense. Early on I was ascending roughly every time I doubled my previous ascension levels. If you're getting to the point where your ore intake is low, ascend so you can earn those critical levels and power options. They change the entire game and balance it out. At infinitium +32, I'm unable to keep up with enchanting at anything beyond the infinity +4 level. I'm literally swimming in bars and ore (with all upgrades purchased).
I'm pretty sure there's a bug somewhere in here that's not properly uploading high score information. I highly doubt I have the high score, but my ascension is far greater than the currently uploaded ascension high score on the high score list here. I'm guessing everyone else is probably having the same problem.
I'm on Easy Mac level 32. I don't know why I'm still playing. I was hoping it would end at some point, but it just keeps going.
As far as ignoring defense is concerned, you can generate more money and scraps by balancing both your offense and your defense, but near the end of the game scrap generation is the only thing that's really important. You're generating money just to generate a higher scrap multiplier.
In the end, the game is completely not balanced. The only thing that really matters is improving your sword and armor. Everything else is just fluff. Attack, defense, and trinkets are useful early on, but about a quarter of the way into the game they become pointless due to the scaling of swords and armor.
It's a pretty decent first effort. If you're interested in generating a version 2, you should read through a lot of the comments here. There are some very good suggestions that have been made.
@igcbg - Great comment. I've been doing similar, but my newspaper upgrades are still in the septendecillions still. This is an oddly addicting game. I'd love to say that with a few more tweaks it would be completely golden, but I highly doubt it's anywhere near golden yet. The developers are too busy adding continually great content for it to be anywhere near golden. This makes me (and apparently many others) happy.
You might want to adjust the time played record for all time. It's current 99,999,999 minutes, which in earth speak is 190 1/4 years. I don't think you made the game in 1823. Although I suppose you could be Mr. Babbage reincarnated or something.
The game has depth. It's not completely polished, but it's very good. It kept me entertained for 6 hours, which is an eternity for Flash games. There are some rough edges, such as: (1) Wood costs way too much to purchase, (2) Resource collection is slower than I'd care for, but that's what led to the longevity so it's a tough balance, (3) I'd really like to have quest "teams" which includes research items. It just takes too long to assemble a quest team. (4) Because of [3], I just stopped doing quests and built my city instead. That led to smithing being kind of bizarre. I'm assuming at some point during quests you get recipes or something because otherwise there would be over 11000 possible recipes in a 15 choose 5 combinatorial calculation. That's a whole lot of clicking.
All in all I enjoyed the game and would probably rate it in my top 25 Flash games I've played. That's saying a lot too because I've played a whole lot of them.
It's definitely not commercial quality, but if it was written to learn or as a project for school it's not bad. That's what I'm assuming it was written for.
As a rule, work on game depth rather than pixels. Game depth pretty much always wins. I don't specifically mean complexity, but building a game that people want to come back to is always a win.
 "First Empire"){kind=icon}
 "RCM"){kind=icon}
 "World Idle"){kind=icon}
 "Realm Grinder"){kind=icon}
 "Blackmarket"){kind=icon}
 "Clickilization"){kind=icon}
 "King Of Cash! Business Simulator"){kind=icon}
 "Overlod"){kind=icon}
 "Idle Blacksmith"){kind=icon}
 "Knightly Idle"){kind=icon}
 "AdVenture Capitalist"){kind=icon}
 "Idle-Tower"){kind=icon}
 "Guild Dungeons 2"){kind=icon}
 "World War I - Pixelated"){kind=icon}
Like I said in my update, I'm sure there is a negative impact on some of the later stage games but I haven't had a chance to tune for that. Could you send your game to games@hexsw.com so I can see the impact it had on you?