My city has been moved to an empty map

[DeletedUser8814]

My city has been moved to a nearly empty map.
And I have received the following message:

Dear olgusha,
Your city has been moved to better position on the World Map. Your World Map progress is not affected by this. You now have new active neighbors and more active trading partners.
Your Elvenar Team

Is that a joke? how come an empty map is a better position than the old one, where I had nice neighbors to help to each other and to trade? Can I be moved back, please?

 

[kimkimkim]

you can kindly ask support to move you back, although i do think it would fall on deaf ears....this most likely happened because you had your automatic movement option in your settings checked, in near future you need to uncheck this option if you don't want to be moved.

 

[DeletedUser8814]

Thanks for the response, kimkimkim!
I forgot about this option and I guess I did not uncheck it because it promises to move to a "better position". But now unchecked.

 

[Deleted User - 341074]

I'd leave it checked. Really it can't get worse.

 

[kimkimkim]

I would have to agree with SoggyShorts, what's the worst that can happen, you either would get moved to another inactive part of the map or they will move you to a more active part of the map....50/50

 

[DeletedUser3097]

you can kindly ask support to move you back, although i do think it would fall on deaf ears

Support would not be able to move you back as the moving system is an automatic one. It's not that they don't wish to help, it is that they cannot help. If it was possible to move you back however, you might find that your more active neighbours had been moved as well.

The spaces around you will fill up as other players with the right boosts are moved in. When you move to a new area, you will not have the same regular players who you visit so it will seem like there is no-one active around you. A good plan is to visit everyone around you to trigger off reciprocal visits and establish trading partners.

Unticking the 'move' option will ensure that you are not moved, but if others around you have 'move to a better position' selected, you might find your active neighbours are moved away when a better position becomes available.

 

[RainbowElvira]

Looking at olgusha's map, I'd say there is a bug in the movement system. It is the purpose of this system to move active players out of such areas. Maybe you should file a bug report.

 

[Pauly7]

Well first of all... I didn't think that anyone had gotten moved anywhere since the second half of 2017, so to one point this means some kind of progress, though that's not any help to @olgusha.

If people are indeed being moved then why are they not moving all the inactive cities towards the edge of the map like promised? Like the ones near me that have been inactive for 2 years.

But back on topic... @Dizzy Lizzie I'm sure what you say is true, but that doesn't mean that they can't now step in and fix their error by forcing a second move to put @olgusha into an actual better position.

 

[Pauly7]

Supplemental - I've now gone and unchecked my auto-move box for the first time as I'm worried the same thing might happen to me.

 

[DeletedUser8814]

Looking at olgusha's map, I'd say there is a bug in the movement system. It is the purpose of this system to move active players out of such areas. Maybe you should file a bug report.

I agree it must be a bug, will try to report it then. And if it's not a bug, the auto-move box shouldn't promise that it will be a "better position". It's hard to imagine a worse position.

 

[DeletedUser5976]

My city in Winyandor has also been moved (maybe 10 clicks south if some old neighbours are any indication) together with a few neighbours but not all. Result is less trading partners and just as many gold mines.

I can't remember a promise about moving inactives to the edge. We have been asking for it from time to time, but I have never seen a positive reply to that suggestion.

 

[RainbowElvira]

I can't remember a promise about moving inactives to the edge. We have been asking for it from time to time, but I have never seen a positive reply to that suggestion.

This is my knowledge, too. I was moved once, when the movement system was new and worked as advertised. In my neighborhood, quite a few big cities went inactive and won't be moved. What happens, is that small dead cities (most of them 1 workshop, 1 residence) get removed. A few hours later, the void is filled with another 5-minute-gameplay city. Repeats every few weeks. Very rarely a new city develops.

It has been pointed out multiple times by the playerbase that you cannot move the active players to the center without moving inactives to the outskirts. This is so obvious, that I'm sure it is not intended to concentrate active players at the center. I think it's about balance, imagine 100+ people visiting each other - they could easily save themselves a few workshops. Trading would be very easy at the center, and impossible at the periphery, which would not be really fair. New players would be placed at the edge, giving them a terrible experience. These might be the reasons why the movement system doesn't work the way we expect. I think players get moved in such a way that they have a set amount of active neighbors (10 - 20 % ?).

All the above is speculation. In any case, I hope that olgusha's movement is due to a bug, and not some new algorithm moving players out of "too good" neighborhoods.

 

[Deleted User - 341074]

If people are indeed being moved then why are they not moving all the inactive cities towards the edge of the map like promised?

I can't remember a promise about moving inactives to the edge.

What they said was that active players would be moved towards the middle and inactives would move outwards.

The actives moving in would be a deliberate thing that the devs did whereas inactives moving out would be a natural side effect. Better phrasing would have been "Fewer inactives will be in the middle"

I'm sure it is not intended to concentrate active players at the center. . I think it's about balance

Perhaps, but that would mean that CMs and Timon have both directly misinformed us because they claimed that moving actives together into the center was indeed the goal.

Balance might be a slight concern, but really if 100% of dead cities were removed and every active player clumped towards the center, then I think 99% of player's situation would improve even if those on the periphery improved by less.

This is so obvious

Not realizing that a huge chunk of inactives are "foreverdeads" due to having bought diamonds or reached chapter 4 is exactly the sort of thing that the devs would overlook.

 

[Deleted User - 341074]

From March 28:

Inactive cities have always been an issue and we do have specific criteria which is followed for the deletions

We have put some new rules in to effect which is helping draw the numbers down, and we do hope to be able to make additional changes as well in the future. Since Mobile was introduced, it did increase our inactive numbers from players who start the tutorial and never return. Those accounts can now be removed in a much shorter time that the previous 30 days if the player never returned to enter an email address. After the email address is on an account we still do have the 30 days of no logins criteria.

The other change is that previously, as @Ashrem said, players would not be deleted if premium was ever purchased or if they had reached Chapter 4. That has been recently adjusted and the oldest of those previously 'safe' cities have now also started to be removed. Hopefully we will be able to shorten the time frame we need to allow those players to remain on the map in the future, but now we do have a start.

To me it just sounds like they needed 2 years to address the issue once it was pointed out to them.

 

[DeletedUser2920]

Perhaps some system whereby everyone gets to move and perhaps choose where they move to would work.

 

[Deleted User - 341074]

Perhaps some system whereby everyone gets to move and perhaps choose where they move to would work.

I don't know how that could work. Really hard to implement&execute I think. I mean if I want to move next to a powerful active player, but they don't want to be next to me since I don't do map visits, who wins? and what if those around you stop playing? You can move again? How often?

*********************************************************************************************
The most equitable thing would be to run the algorithm in reverse so that any player who hasn't played in X days is moved to the next hex with identical boosts further away from the center.
Repeat until all players who haven't logged in in x days are further from the center than all of those who are active.

Then run the algo forwards starting from the fringe and move all players who are active to the next closest(inwards) hex with matching boosts.
Repeat until there are no open hexes closer to the center that match an active player's boosts.

That's it. Forget about that crap where "a player can't be deleted if......"
Let em all stay in the game, and if they ever log in again then they go on the "active" list and move inward next time they do a sweep.

 

[DeletedUser2920]

I don't know how that could work. Really hard to implement&execute I think. I mean if I want to move next to a powerful active player, but they don't want to be next to me since I don't do map visits, who wins? and what if those around you stop playing? You can move again? How often?

*********************************************************************************************
The most equitable thing would be to run the algorithm in reverse so that any player who hasn't played in X days is moved to the next hex with identical boosts further away from the center.
Repeat until all players who haven't logged in in x days are further from the center than all of those who are active.

Then run the algo forwards starting from the fringe and move all players who are active to the next closest(inwards) hex with matching boosts.
Repeat until there are no open hexes closer to the center that match an active player's boosts.

That's it. Forget about that crap where "a player can't be deleted if......"
Let em all stay in the game, and if they ever log in again then they go on the "active" list and move inward next time they do a sweep.

Sure, no one is ever going to be happy.

Someone has bad neighbours, like me, then they might be unhappy. They want to move. Or they have good neighbours and they don't want to move but they get moved.

Forge of Empires had a system of changing things up with the groups you were in all the time. Mostly I was unhappy with this as I ended up with bullies, but there's no attacking in this game.

 

[DeletedUser7309]

I guess this is a pc thing as I’m mobile only and can’t find an auto-move box to tick or untick. I’ve never been moved to my knowledge

 

[DeletedUser5976]

I started on mobile, when I first logged in on the PC I found that the box was default unticked. Don't know how it works if you play only on mobile as they also can't send you a message telling you, you've been moved.