Possible under-the-hood optimization tweak for Neighborly Help...

[Sir Derf]

So, when I do a world tour of NH (on mobile, but I assume the below applies similarly on browser), I open the map, start at the top, and snake my way back and forth, row by row, top to bottom on the map.

The process is...

1. Click on a city. Map shifts focus, wheel of options appears.
2. Click on the NH option. Pop-up with city-specific NH choices appears.
3. Click on a NH choice. Pop-up disappears.
4. Repeat by clicking on a city to the left or right, or if already at the edge, on the edge one row lower.

I'm guessing that during Step 2, the app queries the server about the available NH choices in that specific city, in order to populate those choices into the pop-up. This action can, depending on the internet, cause a perceptible delay.

My optimization suggestion would be at step 3 to perform speculative queries on available NH choices on the cities to the left and right of the currently selected city. This can be happening in the background while the user is performing the next step 1 and 2. If you're at the edge, then speculative queries would be conducted on the adjacent and lower edge cities.

I similarly wonder if, with Fellowship members, if speculative queries can be conducted on the Fellow above and below the one you are currently NHing. Or alternately, if the entire Fellowship could pre pre-emptively queried once the dialog has been opened.

 

[Solanix]

@Sir Derf not everybody does the Neighbourly Help the way you are doing it. Also there is no wheel of options in the PC version. There you click on the hands and all available buildings show hands. You then select which building you want to polish (or motivate/donate).

 

[Sir Derf]

While I appreciate the response...

1) Not everyone does the Neighborly Help the way I am doing it. So? How many? 100? 1,000? 5,000? 5%? 10% 50%? 75%? Without numbers behind, your response, I can't tell if this is simply a knee-jerk contrarian response or is actually based on real knowledge of the player behavior.

2) The better question is, how many people are dong it the way I'm doing it? There could be tens of thousands who don't, and yet be tens of thousands who do. There could be 80% who don't, and yet the 20% who do could still number in the thousands. Even if we're a minority, it could still be an improvement for a large number of players. When operating with a large pool of participants, it's not always useful to describe opposition because of "many people", or that it only effects "a minority percentage", as a fraction of large can still be large.

3) And, if the change were made, might that improvement cause a shift in behavior among the people who wouldn't initially reap a benefit? Would those people who use the mobile map to do mass NH shift to doing it side-to-side, top to bottom?



Out of curiosity, I would like to conduct a poll. When you do a world tour of NH on the mobile map, how do you progress through the map? As I described above, I start at the top, work side-to-side across a row, and when I finish a row, I move down one row and continue side-to-side in the opposite direction, snaking back and forth across the rows down the map. Do you instead go up and down first? Or in diagonals? Do you spiral outwards from your own city? Or start on the outer edge and spiral inwards? Am I making a major assumption that most people do their scouting out in expanding shells, and that most people have scouted in a giant six-pointed star extending 50 hexes outward from the center?

 

[FieryArien]

work side-to-side across a row, and when I finish a row, I move down one row and continue side-to-side in the opposite direction, snaking back and forth across the rows

When I do the map visits (not a frequent activity in my case) I do it the same way. I just usually start at my city, choose a direction (right and then down, or left and then up) and do half a map line by line in a zig-zag style. Also it’s easy to click the “get me to my city” button and do the other half if I really really want to. ;-)

 

[Gargon667]

When I do the map visits (not a frequent activity in my case) I do it the same way. I just usually start at my city, choose a direction (right and then down, or left and then up) and do half a map line by line in a zig-zag style. Also it’s easy to click the “get me to my city” button and do the other half if I really really want to. ;-)

Exactly like that to the dot

As to the suggested improvement. Not sure it would make things better. It would send zillions of entirely useless queries to the server if I understand it correct? I mean if you sum it up over the entire server not just for one town? Might that not lead to the game in general running slower than before? I don´t know of course.

 

[Sir Derf]

Actually, I don't think there would be many extra, useless queries. Nearly none. Unless you did a prolonged sequence of random NH on the map. Which I maintain, is not what most people do when they go to the map to do NH.

Say you're moving left to right. Well, the app should know not to request the left neighbor, since it already knows the cooldown timer is counting. And the right neighbor, you're just querying 2 steps earlier. Same thing when you get to the end. If you're working you way down, the app would know not to look at the upper edge city, and only query the lower edge city, again 2 steps earlier.

 

[BlueBlou]

I like doing diagonally. It is also a line,

 

[Autumn Goldleaf]

I reciprocate NH firstly through Notifications, to give my active neighbours help first, then I do the snakey wriggle, exactly as you described...

 

[DeletedUser6472]

I would like to open the map, press the icon of neighbourly help, which would be situated under the icon of scouting. Then choose the priority of help, ie builders first, if not available - culture and MH and press the big green button "Help all" and ta-da, all neighbours are done .

 

[Gargon667]

I would like to open the map, press the icon of neighbourly help, which would be situated under the icon of scouting. Then choose the priority of help, ie builders first, if not available - culture and MH and press the big green button "Help all" and ta-da, all neighbours are done .

That would be a much better solution to the problem I agree But what happens when you reach the max of your gold/supply limit? All goes to waste? If not, the programming for this will get much more complicated. I personally can live with loosing the rest. Just have to make sure to visit the wholesaler before doing the NH.

 

[DeletedUser6472]

But what happens when you reach the max of your gold/supply limit?

This would be just an additional feature to our current neighbour visits. One could, for example, start offering help as usual, until max capacity is reached, then spend supplies and/or coins and do the rest automatically with "Help all" button. I have around 350 neighbours, so that's about 42m of coins from all visits, so I can regulate when to use that feature. Also for the quests with N help one would use the current option, if for example, there are a few such quests that have to be completed in a day.

 

[Gargon667]

This would be just an additional feature to our current neighbour visits. One could, for example, start offering help as usual, until max capacity is reached, then spend supplies and/or coins and do the rest automatically with "Help all" button. I have around 350 neighbours, so that's about 42m of coins from all visits, so I can regulate when to use that feature. Also for the quests with N help one would use the current option, if for example, there are a few such quests that have to be completed in a day.

Of course it would be additional, not replacing the current system.
But the point is once you hit the "DO ALL" button all will be done. and you get 42 mio gold in one go, if you have less than 42 mio space in your MH you will loose the rest. If you have only 5 mio space when hitting the button you will loose 37 mio gold.

 

[DeletedUser6472]

lol, then "Are you sure???" button to be added to the feature, after you hit "Help all"

 

[Gargon667]

lol, then "Are you sure???" button to be added to the feature, after you hit "Help all"

yes good to have, but I know I will hit the are you sure automatically anyway lol.
Anyway as I said I am fine with loosing the rest. i will still get more gold with the button than without the button, because without the button I rarely can be bothered to help my whole map. I do the notifications every day, the map maybe twice a month?

 

[Gargon667]

I would like to open the map, press the icon of neighbourly help, which would be situated under the icon of scouting. Then choose the priority of help, ie builders first, if not available - culture and MH and press the big green button "Help all" and ta-da, all neighbours are done .

Thinking about it I would make it even simpler (in terms of programming) no options or ordering necessary.
Just a "do all" then I click "builder" it will do all builders possible.
Click "do all" again (all the ones that couldn´t get a builder), then I click culture or MH. etc

 

[DeletedUser6472]

Thinking about it I would make it even simpler (in terms of programming) no options or ordering necessary.
Just a "do all" then I click "builder" it will do all builders possible.
Click "do all" again (all the ones that couldn´t get a builder), then I click culture or MH. etc

This would also solve your problem of forgetting to spend excess coins, since not that many neighbours have builder available .

 

[Gargon667]

This would also solve your problem of forgetting to spend excess coins, since not that many neighbours have builder available .

exactly what I thought, but didn´t say

 

[Solanix]

@Regina8 I must admit that I would fancy such a button too, but would this not mean again playing the game via a little bot?

 

[DeletedUser6472]

@Regina8 I must admit that I would fancy such a button too, but would this not mean again playing the game via a little bot?

This kind of features that promote social interaction between players, exist in every game I played. It might be lives or building materials that players have to send to each other once per day, and in all of those games this process is automated. As I mentioned, I have circa 350 neighbours, even on the new phone it takes me over 10 minutes to visit all of them, I have 2 cities, so that's over 20 min of a very mind numbing activity. On the old phone, it took over 20 min for each city and I almost never visited all of my neighbours then. In every game, where player's free time is respected by developers, this process should be automated. This is not playing the game, but getting those daily rewards that we've earned by scouting provinces on the map.

 

[Gargon667]

@Regina8 I must admit that I would fancy such a button too, but would this not mean again playing the game via a little bot?

I would say it means a lot of people that never get helped on a map will get help a lot more often. Not sure how central inno thinks NH is, for me personally it´s not a big deal, but I would assume for many, especially small and new towns getting help from neighbours could be motivating, of course the coins are a nice bonus, but I guess the "emotional bonus" might be more important for retaining the little ones... It might also make them more likely to do NH right away and therefore create more interaction betweeen towns as a first step to maybe convince them to join a FS.

The bonus to myself will be rather small, I obviously don´t do NH on the map, because I don´t need the gold, getting more gold isn´t really going to be a big advantage for me. So the bot argument is a bit off. It is more an added function rather than making things easier (because I don´t do them at all right now).
Since it isn´t benefiting me as much as the game I think it would be smarter for Inno to add the option as it would potentially create a higher player retention for them, the programming investment if done in the above way should be rather simple and not cause a lot of costs. As far as I can tell anyway.