Android Games Catch-All

dewalist wrote:
Zaque wrote:

I've been playing a bit as well and would be happy to join a guild if anyone knows a good one.

If you're still looking, and want something low-key, I'm in Casual Elders. They're really nice and helpful people, and not pushy about playing.

I've been playing (too much) for over a year, but I'm not sure for how much longer. I was enjoying the hero collection aspect - I have a nearly-complete collection of 1*/2*/3* that are fully leveled. I have a decent number of 4*/5* mostly leveled. I only have a handful of buildings remaining to bring to max level. But I have no interest in the score chase of PVP rankings. So when I run out of mats to level anyone, and my buildings are all complete, I don't see myself hanging around grinding for mats and waiting for the last few heroes I need.

I'm still obsessed with Empires and Puzzles, and I'm not overly concerned with the PvP/raid stuff. I really enjoy the wars, just because seeing 25+ opposing teams there and trying to figure out matchups is the kind of tactical thinking I really enjoy, and weighing the defensive capabilities of the enemy teams vs. what teams I can build for attack is what's really got me. I re-arrange my attacking team based on whoever's on the enemy team, and there's that level of planning that's hooked me. I did my first random pull in a couple months yesterday and hit a home run out of RNG, but, for the months before that, just the whole tactical aspect is what kept me going. It's the first mobile game where I genuinely have to think and plan before doing all sorts of things, and that's what's got me. Fun for me.

Anyways, if you want an alliance that's . . . casually serious, for lack of a better term, I'm in Deceiver of Fools. Weird name, nice people. A lot of the higher-level alliances require use of a Line channel to direct strategy in wars, and require all tanks to be of the same color in war (which forces you to eventually play a weak color). None of that with these people, the basic rule is hit the Titan and either use all of your war flags or opt out of the war, and that's it. Taking out 8* and occasional 9* Titans, which leads to better rewards. Current requirement is 2000 trophy cups, but I could probably convince them to temporarily lower it for an active player.

And thus, my evangelizing of E&P continues . . .

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I started playing recently and I feel like I have gone as far as I can go without spending money. I'm at level 9, but I'm out of materials to level heroes and the drip feed of those is becoming annoying. My food production is at a halt because I am at capacity and don't have anything to spend it on because I have no mats. I wouldn't mind throwing a few dollars at it but I know that's only going to be a handful of hero levels. I think I'm going to have to move on.

The game rewards balance - like keeping plates spinning. Level up your production too much, you run out of storage before you can spend that resource. Focus on buildings too much, and your heroes will remain lower-powered, causing you to miss out on better rewards from PVE levels and events. In your case, I would shift away from leveling heroes for a bit in order to increase your building capacities. Use gems to expand your hero storage so that you can let them pile up a while. Always try to be building something if you can.

That being said, I think VIP is worth the $5/mo, in order to get your bang-for-the-buck value on time. Without it, things move very slowly, and I just didn't want to wait that long to get to the "end". But there will still be times when I can only afford to be building one thing at a time. Considering how much time I put into the game daily, I do not regret VIP at all.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I'm still obsessed with Empires and Puzzles, and I'm not overly concerned with the PvP/raid stuff. I really enjoy the wars, just because seeing 25+ opposing teams there and trying to figure out matchups is the kind of tactical thinking I really enjoy, and weighing the defensive capabilities of the enemy teams vs. what teams I can build for attack is what's really got me. I re-arrange my attacking team based on whoever's on the enemy team, and there's that level of planning that's hooked me. I did my first random pull in a couple months yesterday and hit a home run out of RNG, but, for the months before that, just the whole tactical aspect is what kept me going. It's the first mobile game where I genuinely have to think and plan before doing all sorts of things, and that's what's got me. Fun for me.

This will horrify you but I have never done that. For months, I didn't even know there was such a thing as my "defense" team. I have my best heroes on my main team, and I use them for PVE, wars, defense - all of it... I do reasonably well at Titans and wars - usually in the top 5 for both, but we are only fighting 5*/6* titans. But that's one of the great things about this particular game: you found some aspect that you really like, yet the game doesn't require everyone to have that same interest. My main interest is in hero collecting - which doesn't impact your enjoyment of wars. It is very well balanced in that regard - many games lean too heavily in one direction or another.

dewalist wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I'm still obsessed with Empires and Puzzles, and I'm not overly concerned with the PvP/raid stuff. I really enjoy the wars, just because seeing 25+ opposing teams there and trying to figure out matchups is the kind of tactical thinking I really enjoy, and weighing the defensive capabilities of the enemy teams vs. what teams I can build for attack is what's really got me. I re-arrange my attacking team based on whoever's on the enemy team, and there's that level of planning that's hooked me. I did my first random pull in a couple months yesterday and hit a home run out of RNG, but, for the months before that, just the whole tactical aspect is what kept me going. It's the first mobile game where I genuinely have to think and plan before doing all sorts of things, and that's what's got me. Fun for me.

This will horrify you but I have never done that. For months, I didn't even know there was such a thing as my "defense" team. I have my best heroes on my main team, and I use them for PVE, wars, defense - all of it... I do reasonably well at Titans and wars - usually in the top 5 for both, but we are only fighting 5*/6* titans. But that's one of the great things about this particular game: you found some aspect that you really like, yet the game doesn't require everyone to have that same interest. My main interest is in hero collecting - which doesn't impact your enjoyment of wars. It is very well balanced in that regard - many games lean too heavily in one direction or another.

Nope, doesn't horrify me at all, I didn't do the wars/PvP stuff for quite a while. I just did the kind of generic match-3 mode for what passes for a "story". Eventually, I built up enough heroes to where I had a few solid teams, and started up the war stuff once I joined my current alliance. Now, I find that part absolutely fascinating, and I reconfigure teams every time I do a match just to try to optimize, and optimizing is one of the things that really gets me going in pretty much any game of any sort. Once I realized that, if I stack 3/4/5 of the same color of heroes (preferably what's strong against the enemy tank), I could be a lot more efficient, and playing around with that particular little sub-system of the game always intrigues me.

And, yeah, there are a lot of ways to play the game, which keeps me interested. There's lots of stuff to do.

I started playing Empires and Puzzles. I was having fun but could feel my progress slowing down once I hit double digits levels. So I used some credits I had to buy the cheap VIP pass they offered last month for a couple bucks. Almost immediately logging in to claim my benefits felt like a chore and the grind didn't go away.
I have several characters upgraded as far as I can with cards and indicating that I need to unlock the Talent Grid. I don't know what the talent grid will do for me, but it unlocks at lvl 15 and I've been grinding away re-running campaign missions and slowly crawling through Lvl 14 all week.

I've tried several approaches to building my attack team and it feels... Arbitrary? Maybe it's because I'm relatively early game only a month in, but looking at raw stats and abilities there doesn't seem to be any reason to field a maxed two star character over a three star. And it is entirely possible I'm missing some core mechanic with the troop/character pairings, but the differences between the various types seem slim enough that I could find no incentive to do something other than just use the highest tier, regardless of stats.
My campaign progression is basically stalled at stage nine and my main characters haven't grown because the game wants me to buy rares. Or I'm missing some team building synergies that would make monochromatic opponents more manageable

tl;dr After a month of playing Empires and Puzzles with a VIP pass I'm not sure I'm having fun.

What am I supposed to do with all these emblems and troops I'm amassing?

The emblems can be traded for a character draw every 100. I believe. Decided to look it up. "Class Emblems are used for acquiring a hero's class talents and are found under the General tab of one's Inventory. Emblems may only be invested into talents when a hero is fully leveled, ascended, and has their special skill maxed."

The troops can eventually be upgraded similar to the character cards once you unlock a convert feature. I missed that one initially and ignored it, but basically you build a core building and then pay to convert it to a barracks where you can merge troops for tiny stat boosts.

Once the hero hits max level, the talent grid opens up, and you can put your emblems on as further upgrades; it's the "upgrade plus" feature once you hit max level. As for troops, you can build a farm or something and click on it and convert it to a barracks, and use that to level up your troops, which are slight boosts to the heroes they're attached to. The game always assigns your highest-leveled troops to whatever heroes you're using, so it's actually kind of a nice feature of convenience.

You can take your emblems off heroes and re-assign them to better ones with a certain token (which are semi-common) or, of course, through gems. Basically, I wouldn't bother embleming anything that wasn't a 4*. It doesn't really matter much early, it's really more of a thing for obsessive dorks like me.

Is there a SimCity buildit gwj club? I only see one called kgwjg with one person in it.

Also are the clubs cross platform?

Ok I made one, it's called GWJ Lounge. The entry reqs are minimum possible. I set it to private, I'm GMT+11 or 10 I forget, so if you request to join in the morning US time, it might be approved overnight.

Dunno how long I'll be playing this or if anyone is still playing this game. Not interested in war and I dunno if getting the weekly club chest or whatever will be possible but may as well give it a go.

Onmyoji is a fun little F2P. Different art style, better story telling and animation. I like it.

I've been playing It's Literally Just Mowing and having a pretty good time. The game's title is very accurate in that you do literally just mow. It's a relaxing diversion. I'd recommend it, especially if you need something very relaxed in pace.

FridgeGremlin wrote:

I've been playing It's Literally Just Mowing and having a pretty good time. The game's title is very accurate in that you do literally just mow. It's a relaxing diversion. I'd recommend it, especially if you need something very relaxed in pace.

How are the ads and IAPs? Looks interesting otherwise...

troubleshot wrote:

How are the ads and IAPs? Looks interesting otherwise...

After the brief tutorial I mowed two lawns and watched three ads.
Edit: Just played another session. So the ads must trigger either at the beginning of a street or when you start a session. I was able to mow 5 lawns with only two ads playing in a single session.

So the title is a lie then.

BadKen wrote:

So the title is a lie then.

It's Literally Just Mowing Also Ads

I've played through half of Tiny Bubbles today. It's popping bubbles gameified.

Gwent is now available on Android.

Any suggestions on 4+ person board games to play with remote family?

Monopoly

Mixolyde wrote:

Any suggestions on 4+ person board games to play with remote family?

My family has been playing bingo and Yahtzee over video calls. It works surprisingly well. We happen to have the bingo balls/spinner, but you can find that online or as an app. Cards can be found online for free - either to use digitally or print.

Mixolyde wrote:

Any suggestions on 4+ person board games to play with remote family?

Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and, in a fit of irony, Pandemic.

Oops, wrong thread.

Randomly stumbled across Transmission today. Free, no IAP, created for the UK Science Museum. Also available on iOS. Starts out super easy for quite a while, then gets gradually more challenging.

This video says it's for kids... I don't think whoever made the video played very far into it!

BadKen wrote:

Randomly stumbled across Transmission today. Free, no IAP, created for the UK Science Museum. Also available on iOS. Starts out super easy for quite a while, then gets gradually more challenging.

This video says it's for kids... I don't think whoever made the video played very far into it!

I remember this! I found it when looking for a game or something to help me learn electricity - which I've had the basics explained to me many times, and have done plenty of wiring, but I still don't really "get" it. I do think it is a very good game, but - like you - I didn't get far into it. I just reinstalled to try again. Thanks!

I think some of you may like Minimal Dungeon RPG. It's kind of a tapper mixed with a dungeon crawler mixed with text based adventure. There are no real graphics, just a map of the current dungeon and everything from enemies to areas to loot are represented by squares with text in them.

It's early access so some or all of that could change. Monetization doesn't appear to be added yet except for ads.

Anyone playing anything new they like? I'm on vacation and was looking to dig into something. Hexonia was my last big Android game...

Trashie wrote:

Anyone playing anything new they like? I'm on vacation and was looking to dig into something. Hexonia was my last big Android game...

Not new, but I bought Through The Ages and a while back and it's replaced all my other phone gaming.

also not new, but while i was visiting family i picked up Night of the Full Moon and enjoyed it. card game, story is small but interesting, game play is decent. not a bad time passer and i don't regret paying for the extra classes or removing the ads. first class is free and you can get most of the story without paying cent and if you like the general game play, the extra classes give you new decks, card options and VERY different play styles.

Golf on Mars is really good and relaxing. Really simple and well made.