Taking London

Normally, I would only address technical aspects of a game review. However, now that the developer of this game has identified me in response to my fiancé, Wyddershyn's review. I feel that I have been misrepresented in a way I do not appreciate. Firstly, when leaving this game community, I had requested not to be brought into this conversation. Now that I have been referenced directly in response to my fiancé Wyddershyn's review, I can see that my request has been ignored. When I first joined this game's Discord server, I felt that the community was welcoming and was pleasantly surprised. I felt hopeful that I had stumbled upon a friendly community in the wilderness. There is an introduction channel in Discord that I used. I stated that I was pleased to find a friendly community and mentioned that I started playing this game because I had seen my fiancé playing it and was interested. Later, after a very heated discussion between the developer and my fiancé, one of the more active players brought up my introduction in a form of gossip about us, which made me realize I had made an error in judgment. It was a disconcerting feeling to see people talking about me as if I were not in the channel. Two days ago, the developer of this game stated in the game’s Discord channel that he believed I was a bot account to help my fiancé, Wyddershyns, achieve the level of success they had in this game. This was a hurtful thing for me to hear, as I had interacted with the developer directly as well as other members of the game in the Discord channel. I felt dehumanized, and I clarified that I was a real person shortly before I left the Discord channel. The developer is not the first person to have a conspiracy theory about how Wyddershyns achieved their success; the top player in this game, ironically named Overlord, who gained a dominating advantage by abusing either broken or later nerfed mechanics, postulated that a player we never interacted with was “feeding Wyddershyns.” Wyddershyns, my fiancé and I have put a good deal of time and effort into this game. Wyddershyns has spent even more time playing than myself and has made sound tactical decisions. I have created spreadsheets to help organize data using formulas I created to overcome some of the rougher aspects of navigating the game. To have the top player and developer of this game try to justify the success we had achieved thus far as abusing or cheating left a sour taste. I am normally reluctant to bring gender into a discussion when I game; however, the developer has misidentified me as a male. I am a female, and this is just another example of my feelings of being misunderstood. The developer patches this game frequently. Many of the imbalances or flaws that were exploited have been adjusted. However, Overlord player maintains all of the resources that they obtained, and now are so far ahead that there is no hope of anyone else “catching up.” After the disagreement between the developer and my fiancé transpired, this player said, “I’m going to wipe that hoe out,” meaning my fiancé. Considering the huge advantage he has, there is no hope of protecting anything he wishes to attack. He wasn’t just threatening my fiancé (which is bad enough); he was also threatening all that we had worked for together. I would roll with the punches on a situation like this if the playing field were level, but it is most certainly not. This made me never want to play this game again. After I had clarified in Discord that I am, in fact, a real person. The developer and Overlord were quick to assure me that I am welcome. I feel like it’s necessary to state that it takes more than just saying the words to make someone feel welcome. The behaviors and responses leading up to this had already made me feel unwelcome. It was also stated that I apologized for my fiancé’s actions. I did no such thing. I would never apologize on behalf of someone else, and for the developer to make this claim is decoupled from me as a person. Upon my exit, I did not state my exact reasons why I felt unwelcome, only that I understood why I was. It felt unproductive at the time to delve into the reasons. However, now that the reason for my leaving has been used in response to my fiancé’s review, I would feel compelled to clarify. The developer referred to me as a “beloved member of the community.” [b] To reiterate, I was called a bot, gossiped about, had my guild threatened by a player who has an unfair and dominating lead, and have now had words put in my mouth and been called a man. I do not feel beloved.[/b] It’s especially worth noting that two players who have been near the top of the ranks have had a falling out with the community over the imbalance issues so far. I feel that their arguments regarding the imbalances have been disregarded because they have both resorted to anger. I also think it’s worth noting that they were in the best position to see the discrepancies created by the early exploits. I do not think that their points should be utterly disregarded because they did not say it nicely. After these events, I felt that I had made an error in judgment about the community. It is more cliquish than I originally realized. The number of players in this community who seem eager to jump into the “drama” they have no part in is distasteful to me. The idea of politics in this game at first seemed appealing. I enjoy strategic games that employ politics. However, the entire politics of the game has been completely corrupted by having a player so far ahead that no one could come close to threatening them. The situation is political, but it is not the sort of politics that I wish to participate in. Quoted from the game description, “You start out as a rising member of Parliament — until you realize your party only governs for the same old crowd. Broken promises, shelved reforms, silenced voices” I did not realize I was signing up for an RPG experience

I am a Dull Man from Dull Men's Club. I saw the developers post, which was created by his wife and had to try the game. I can say after over 20 hours (lots of idle time), I really enjoy the game. It is a great game and fills the void for a cheap, idle base builder. At the price of 3$ it cost less than a StarBucks Coffee, honestly what do you have to lose? A big thank you to the developer, I wish him the best and hope he continues with this game!

Played a lot of tribal wars, ogame and travian back in the day, was looking for something similar but without the p2w. If you enjoyed those games but hated the p2w then this is the game for you. Server 2 opening soon so good time to start. Recommended

Game is very fun , i like how there no sign of P2W , having a great time climbing rep , cant wait to see what else they put into there game , for the price you cant complain and if you do "Bro its 2 quid" highly recommend if you enjoy games like tribal wars

Great strategy game with no P2W and a responsive dev.

For a game that is based on visible timers it's shocking that none of the timers are accurate. If I start a 1 hour project at 7PM there's no excludes for it not being completed at 8PM.

(Context and disclaimer: This is my first negative review of a game, ever. Every quote used in the the review below is sourced with a screenshot. The systems of this game are, as I understand it, lifted from the legacy version of Evony; I have never played Evony.) Taking London is-- without exaggeration-- a scam. The developer has knowingly skirted the Early Access tag in order present a game that is not only riddled with bugs and non-working systems, but the titular goal of the game was corrupted well within a week by abuse of poor balance, unchecked exploits, and rapidly established collusion. London fell within the first few days. Quote from the developer: "There's also the fact that *I'm treating this server as early access* (emphasis mine), as the goal of the game on this server is corrupted. I concede I hadn't put enough thought into the fact that most players aren't really willing to partake in a playtest capacity and all they see is that they've invested time into a flawed game without much communication from the dev if you aren't on Discord." And: "...It's my fault for poorly balancing the game, but I'm not really in a position to ret-con peoples' achievements. Think best-case scenario is Overlord (exploiting player) benefited from being first to find an exploit and doesn't blast people below him in the interest of general enjoyment of others on the server and over the next weeks, months. As his gold dries up, the playing field will level." Also quote: "...with all of the bug fixes and patches that need doing, it's extremely easy to overlook the damage done to specific individuals.... the game probably should have been released in early access... that was my original plan but unfortunately Steam's definition of Early Access is 'the game is not yet compete' rather than 'the game is theoretically complete, but there's a high chance of bugs' " Did you get that? He ISN'T IN A POSITION TO FIX IT. Except that statement is literally the opposite of true. That is precisely his position. Gold no longer 'dries up'. Thus, this exploiting player can now hold that position in perpetuity. And they still do. In fact, a look at their Discord will show you pages and pages of favoritism with this very player, both in his ascension, and maintaining of the stranglehold at the top. And that framework that was "suggested" by the dev? Meaningless. The exploiting player did, in fact, make threats and conduct attacks against the strongest players on the server (see another review in this thread by Pandermoanium, who experienced similar), including myself. If someone becomes too big and difficult to control, they are subject to culling. And it doesn't stop with him. This developer plays the game, as well (a choice already a conflict of interest). Being a member of a guild, this developer has *actively fed* another one of his fellow guildmates with access to enormous sums of gold at no cost. From said guildmate: Quote: "...Pink Pegasus (developer) wanted to see how easy it was for me to grow by draining the gold reserves of the NPCs's in our alliance." This player just candidly admits that the developer was feeding him gold-- the most valuable and difficult to acquire resource in the game. This would be bad enough on it's own. But during my own play experience-- during which I received no assistance whatsoever, everything I gained was through my own investment of time and my own systems optimization-- any time I encountered a setback and reached out to the dev, fixes either came unjustifiably slow, or not at all. And compensation was either unbelievably small, or non-existent. During one particularly ugly stretch of game for me, the developer "fixed a minor bug" that was preventing NPC's from retaliating against players who attacked them. You see, Many of the systems in this game are opaque; they are only learned through trial and error. And then a refinement of approach and engagement with those systems by the player, afterwards. Before this particular event, I had no knowledge of what the potential lashback would look like. This event was, in the history of my gaming experience, the worst experience I have ever had with any game, ever. Literally the day before this occurred, I had gone on conquest against nearby NPC's to try and get them to join my alliance (unlike the player above, I had to actually work to gain access to these NPC's wealth). I conducted something in the neighborhood of three dozens attacks in a series of coordinated marches over the span of 48 hours; The minimum amount of time necessary for something like this. Here, I encountered a bug that made the NPC's unable to correctly join my alliance after a successful attack; due to the laziness of this developer, many, many of the NPC's had duplicate names. (For additional context, when I reached out to him about this, his response was essentially "Well, are you doing it correctly?" His presumption was my incompetence. And when I finally explained it well enough for him to understand what the issue was, his response became, quote: "Quite impressive how you managed to have such a high rate of hitting NPC's that both have duplicate names, and the mailing system defaults to bugging out on" -- do you see the hidden implication, there? That the fault isn't really his; it's mine.) All of this built up to the evening this 'bug fix' occurred-- my cities were subjected to OVER TWO HUNDRED attacks from NPC's over the span of 24 hours. Two hundred. Essentially all at once. An absolutely staggering number for a game like this. Insane, actually. Neither before, during, nor after this did I receive any word from the developer about the attacks. But he did finally manage to fix the name bug with the NPC's (by opting for the predictably lazy solution of adding a string of numbers to the end of each name). I was offered no compensation for not only being deprived having access to the NPC's at this time, but having had to also be attacked by them during his 'fix'. His response was simply "Well, it should work now. Just send them a message and invite them." Again, do you see? What is being indicated here is that I should have to do additional work for his broken system. Again. This is just a small sample of the countless instances of self-indulgence, laziness, and intellectual dishonesty of this developer. A developer who does not value or endorse free and balanced play. Who chooses to push out new (extraordinarily poorly balanced) content updates over fixing the still-broken in-game systems. Broken systems which include, but are not limited to (and again, none of these are exaggerations in any way shape or form, and I have experienced all of them): - Server updates that erase progress earned over hours of play - Map nodes that bug out, disappear, and reappear - Systems that require an unconscionable amount of work from the player to compensate for his poor implementation - Content that skews more and more heavily toward wildly-imbalanced toward the end-game - Prioritization of new content over fixing broken systems - Timers that are misleading (read: you have less time than it shows allotted) in a way that can be devastating if replied upon - A lack of transparency about how systems both do, and don't, work - Tool tips that show flat-out wrong or obsolete information - Flagrant nepotism - A dev who doesn't even understand the balancing of the very systems he has in place Who, before I left, was indicating to the remaining player-base that he thought I was cheating. That HE thought *I* was cheating. Despite my having played legit, against the odds, and having found success. People spend significant time investing into games. Particularly with games like this one, where the satisfaction comes in the form of a growth of power and accomplishment from the time spent. This developer has no respect for that. None. Here, there is no Taking London. London takes from you.

Much better than the web based equivalents - strong ethics and principles from the developer to stick to a core game model that supports the player community. Good community too.