Ways to address the imbalance of ham and food

Ideas & Feature Requests
1

Ever since I’ve started this game I’ve noticed one thing: you never have enough ham. From leveling up heroes, to ascending them, to embleming them, to building weapons, to leveling troops and now LBing heroes there is never enough ham. Ever. Not to mention those using AL and some levels for HA now too.
On the other hand, iron is always plentiful. So much so that many players run out of materials before running out of iron. I’m always out fo nuggets to make nadoes, always out of lumber to make axes and dragon attacks and so many more. When you’re done maxing all your buildings… There really isn’t much else to use it for. Sure, embleming/LBing heroes uses some but not nearly on the same level as ham.

Would love SG to add options to help players who are always food poor and have too enough iron.

How would you like Empires and Puzzles even out ham and iron usage?

  • Have troops use iron instead of ham.
  • Create a building where we can trade iron/ham at a 50% loss for the other.
  • Other (what are your ideas?)
  • Nothing, I’m good with my ham and iron
  • Significantly lower ham in maxing heroes or embleming cost.
  • Iron for ascending heroes instead of ham.

0 voters

2

Rising the advanced buildings limits would be a good start.

7 Likes
3

Agreed. Would love to have more than 3 farms at advanced, the extra ham is always welcome.

3 Likes
4

Any of those would help. Never enough ham.

2 Likes
5

Everything needs ham…to the point where making an iron or bone (?) harpoon requires ham to make it. Iron is so underutilized after a certain point

2 Likes
6

This is a long overdue topic and I have lately been thinking about posting a thread here along the same lines as yours.

I’m going to share my personal perspective:

I’ve been playing since october 2018, which I think gives me quite some perspective as a long term player.

At the very beginning of the game, in the early days, when you have barely no heroes and find it hard to even come up with the troops or materials to train, it’s the other way around: food stacks and piles up whilst always short on iron to level your base.

However, few months into the game the tide changes and it’s the exact thing you point out.

When I first joined empires the sources for spending food were: Training, hero leveling/ascending, troops leveling and battle items. That was pretty much it.

The ways to obtain food were the same: chests, tower, and 9 farms.

Since I joined the following features have been added: Emblems, advanced battle items (Hunter’s lodge, although I don’t even have that building), Hero academy, Alchemy lab, level breaking heroes and the path of valor (the POV isn’t that significant, but we can’t forget there are milestones the likes of “craft XYZ” or “level up a troop” or “use XYZ battle item” that sometimes cripple your food planning. All of that ON TOP of an already scarcity built food scheme.

What food improvements did we get since? 3 advanced farms that produce about 216K extra food per day in total (or about feeding 1 troop to another every day).

I am always short on food and my mines (of which thank god I only have 2) are always full.

TC20 I’m running 2, which is a cost of 297K per day.

Hero Academy 20: 1 per week at 1200K is another 171K worth of food every day.

That’s fixed cost, we are already sitting at nearly 500K per day in food expenditure, then add all the other things…

I think it’s about time we address this. I’m all in for a building that let’s you trade food for iron and vice versa, and it would be nice if a stronghold level 26 were added and all farms could be made advanced.

9 Likes
7

Great idea. I imagine the shortage of food is like it is, so that those food offers for real life money keeps being appealing though.

So I suspect it’s here to stay.

But I’d certainly like a way to get more food and less iron :100::slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
8

People in my alliance will merc for extra food.

Not something I can be bothered with but the fight for more ham is constant

1 Like
9

Ham is foooooooooood

10

I couldn’t agree more with you. The way in which we can use food only goes up (as you’ve mentioned, AL, HL and now with LBing heroes, all which can be very very good expensive) but there hasn’t been an increase in ways we can get food. Food harvester was a good idea…but ended up quite useless. Farms produce the same and food bundles (most of the time were you buy it) is the only way which they’ve improved that aspect. However, many players, me included don’t want to spend money on those types of things… So that leaves the question… How can we get players more ham after adding so many avenues in the game that use more ham? Would love to see a new stronghold where we can advance ALL the farms, that would be a great start!

11

Yes, I’ve met many players who do that too. But there are many alliances usually in the top 100, who don’t particularly like their players mercing. I used to a little bit a while ago, but that still wastes a lot of resources: weapons on titans and flasks for flags. Some higher players have lots of both, but it reaches a point where that is unsustainable. Not to mention the reduced loot when it comes to rares and returning to your alliance is quite unpleasant.

12

I think just making food and iron bundles more prevalent as rewards through the multiple avenues of towers/quests/tournaments/etc rather than just giving food and iron as raw material rewarded like hp. I feel I’m constantly balancing out spending so that I don’t waste rewarded iron and food. If it was just rewarded as bundles, players could just accumulate a bunch of bundles to use as needed. No need to not be eco-friendly and cut down on waste in an imaginary world, right SG?

1 Like
13

I have a problem with the bundles thing, I’m the “hoard til apocalypse comes in case one day you actually need that” kind of player.

I have over 15 food bundles of each size, I seldom use any, just in very urgent situations :rofl:

So that to me is a death end.

1 Like
14

i like this idea.

they could also just give players the option to package already collected resources into bundles, both food and iron.

  • players can be level-restricted on what types of bundles they can package (e.g., need to be player level 4 to start, player level 10 to get to medium, etc., or restrict it based on stronghold or whatever).
  • players won’t be able to bypass resource capacity restrictions because new buildings won’t be able to be built or current buildings upgraded unless you actually have the required amount of food/ iron currently in storage.
  • SG can offer it once daily for free (either once each for food and iron or once overall, regardless of resource) and offer players the ability to purchase additional packagings per day.
  • it doesn’t change the game economy. it’s just adding an additional method of managing an already-collected resource in a way that’s actually intended to be storage, and not quasi-storage through overstocking the queues of training camps, Alchemy Lab, certain HA levels, etc.
2 Likes
15

To add to Razgriz, I also think that if we currently look at it the mystic Titan, the rates at which food and iron bundles are given and applying that to all other events… It still wouldn’t make a significant increase. Top 1% gets the 500k bundle, 5% gets the 250k bundle etc. In that current system for mystic titan. Apply that to all events and most players still wouldn’t see a great increase in those bundles, sadly.

16

SG says no free rides.

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17

Bumping this. There should be a way to transmute iron into food, at least. The usage difference between both is just silly.

6 Likes
18

The title is a bit erroneous.

Ham is food, and ham is rich in iron. :wink:

1 Like
19

And the road is already paved, we have an alchemy lab

20

Alchemy Lab uses ham too. So makes the gap between ham and iron usage even more, not paving anything with that. At least I’d AL used iron, then it would help.