Not what it seems 👎
I was drawn to this game by the idea that it would be kind of a blend of Simcity and Civilization: economic strategy, city design, and historical challenges to overcome as you pass through the ages. The first disappointment came on realizing that it has no real historical aspect and entering space age is little different than stone age except for aesthetics. Most seasoned players never leave iron age because why bother? There’s an exciting sounding “expedition” every week to explore “new areas” but all you do is move down the same path repeating the same two dull challenges over and over. The second disappointment was realizing there’s not much economic strategy or history based city building. Players can stay in the very first age because cities end up being just a jumbled collection of specialty buildings earned through seasonal contests or bought, no regular buildings at all because the specialty stuff is all you need and easy to get. Eventually I figured out that the real focus of this game is beating up on other cities, every other aspect of it is mind numbingly boring. So there are guild wars, city vs city wars, and if you’re bored for a minute you can attack a random unsuspecting city and rob them. War makes the devs a lot of money as players open their wallets to make sure their team wins, a coincidence I’m sure. But since I want a game with a brain and not just mindless violence I guess I’ll keep looking.
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Response from developer
This looks like interesting suggestions for future development of the game. Thank you for your feedback!
Unpaid real person review.
I did not find this game on a mechanical turk site, i am not being reimbursed for the time i take to leave this review in any way. I am literally just some random person who came across this game looking for a mix of city builder and Civ VI.
Some of the negative reviews, as with all phone games, say pay to play. This game is NOT a constant flashing brain rot screen to keep you mollified. This is a game where you wonder what your imaginary citizens are doing while you're in the meeting with the real life people you don't like.
Planning ages ahead for good production is vital. A lot of the whiny reviews talk about the fact that you can't tetris the buildings into any configuration you want. When you start playing, you'll appreciate that such is not the case. It's a challenging mechanic that grew on me almost immediately.
This game doesn't require money to "get good" in. You CAN spend money, and the rest of us that don't will sure appreciate that you do, but my strategies work over days, not minute. I probably spend 30-60mins a day collecting stuff and checking in.
If you're from generation brainrot, this is not your game.
Some of the negative reviews, as with all phone games, say pay to play. This game is NOT a constant flashing brain rot screen to keep you mollified. This is a game where you wonder what your imaginary citizens are doing while you're in the meeting with the real life people you don't like.
Planning ages ahead for good production is vital. A lot of the whiny reviews talk about the fact that you can't tetris the buildings into any configuration you want. When you start playing, you'll appreciate that such is not the case. It's a challenging mechanic that grew on me almost immediately.
This game doesn't require money to "get good" in. You CAN spend money, and the rest of us that don't will sure appreciate that you do, but my strategies work over days, not minute. I probably spend 30-60mins a day collecting stuff and checking in.
If you're from generation brainrot, this is not your game.
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Response from developer
Thank you for your review, AUProspector! We're happy to hear that you're enjoying our game!
Ads freeze the game
The system still crashes when “Unity Ads” are played, which are numerous, a real shame as otherwise fine, for the love of all things holy, stop using Unity Ads!
I’ve just updated the game, and it still does it! Now it says I haven’t viewed the ad and that none are available! Sort it out guys, come on.
I’ve just updated the game, and it still does it! Now it says I haven’t viewed the ad and that none are available! Sort it out guys, come on.
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Response from developer
Thank you for your feedback. Please contact our support team, they will be happy to help you solve this problem: https://innogam.es/FoESupport
Forced Micro-transactions and limited development
I’ve been playing this for only a few short weeks but one of the first ‘story’ missions was asking me to spend my actual money on in-game credits which I find unacceptable. Ive never played a game (on any platform) where a spending real money was mandatory as part of a story mission to complete it. As for the development of the city, it’s tedious, with mission pay out being uninspiring and insufficient. Battling neighbours armies only get harder and harder, yet your army never improves. I feel that there needs to be a linear line of progression and improvement and so far, nothing of the sort. A massive thing which would make a big change, but I know the devs are too lazy to implement are rotatable buildings.
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Response from developer
Hi! Forge of Empires is a completely free game and entire content is available free of charge. You can get every building and get to every possible area without spending anything :]. You of course can purchase premium currency in order to speed everything up, but it is in no way required or needed to progress through the game.
Great game
I have been playing this game for years and never paid any money towards the game and I never get tired of it, but recently there have been a few annoying things that make it not so enjoyable. On one of the little games that come up regularly, every time I pressed the icon to play the game it crashed. I tried several times to get in touch, but whatever was suggested never worked, and I never played that particular game. I thought it was only a blip and carried on playing it until yesterday when I tried to log in and it came up on the screen “Sorry. Something’s gone wrong.” Since then I have not been able to get into the game at all and nowhere to get in touch except on the review. So it looks like I will not be playing this game again unless someone can sort it out. So that is why I have only given it three stars.
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Response from developer
Thank you for your feedback. Please contact our support team, they will be happy to help you solve this problem: https://innogam.es/FoESupport
Game changes
Been playing fir a lot of years and the changes are many fold. Recently fragments as prizes are a real pain as it takes so long to collect anything useful. The rewards in GE are a lot less than they were. Rarely get diamonds as as a higher era player very few decent prizes. All these can be sold in the Antique Fair but that takes a long time and some are only worth a few coins at best.
Expansions are only few and far between which as your city grows becomes a real problem. I used to think that as I progressed I could delete older stuff and replace with newer buildings but because of no new expansions thus us virtually impossible.
I still enjoy playing but it is not as good as it used to be. Many of the events are ok but prizes are difficult to achieve and never revisited.
And finally the developers don’t really listen to the playing community that well or these issues I’ve mentioned would have been resolved and avoided. I still play largely due to the guild I am in which is not only supportive and helpful but a lot of fun as well. Without it I would have stopped playing sometime ago.
Expansions are only few and far between which as your city grows becomes a real problem. I used to think that as I progressed I could delete older stuff and replace with newer buildings but because of no new expansions thus us virtually impossible.
I still enjoy playing but it is not as good as it used to be. Many of the events are ok but prizes are difficult to achieve and never revisited.
And finally the developers don’t really listen to the playing community that well or these issues I’ve mentioned would have been resolved and avoided. I still play largely due to the guild I am in which is not only supportive and helpful but a lot of fun as well. Without it I would have stopped playing sometime ago.
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Response from developer
Thank you for your review! We will look into possible improvements in this area.
Change isn’t always good
I’ve been playing FoE for 7 years now. I used to LOVE this game but in the last year INNO seems to be more focused on making this a rich persons game. They rarely do diamond discounts anymore, quest rewards during events are getting minuscule so if you want to get event buildings you need to use diamonds, GE only gives you diamonds during a blue moon and the kicker…GBG diamonds increased 40% but even though they said diamonds would not show up as much but given the increase we’d still collect the same amount of diamonds they grievously exaggerated!!! If you do 500 battles you can count yourself lucky to get diamonds twice at best.
As if these changes and the plethora of ads weren’t enough to put a sour taste in your mouth INNO did an upgrade to their servers 6 months ago or so. Sure! Then why is there a MAJOR lag within 5 minutes of the push for GBG that never used to happen before their upgrade?!
I do love this game but at this point I play more for the connection of friends I’ve made in FoE. I’m hoping that some day INNO will start listening to people’s concerns rather than just pushing out changes regardless of what people say about them in beta 😢
As if these changes and the plethora of ads weren’t enough to put a sour taste in your mouth INNO did an upgrade to their servers 6 months ago or so. Sure! Then why is there a MAJOR lag within 5 minutes of the push for GBG that never used to happen before their upgrade?!
I do love this game but at this point I play more for the connection of friends I’ve made in FoE. I’m hoping that some day INNO will start listening to people’s concerns rather than just pushing out changes regardless of what people say about them in beta 😢
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Response from developer
Hi! Forge of Empires is a completely free game and entire content is available free of charge. You can get every building and get to every possible area without spending anything :]. You of course can purchase premium currency in order to speed everything up, but it is in no way required or needed to progress through the game.
Game has been ruined!
I’ve been playing this game for a number of years and spent plenty on buying diamonds to help me progress through it. As a disabled person it has been a lifeline for me, a chance to hang out with friends and spend my day enjoying the strategy and city building.
However, they have introduced some sweeping changes to the central Guild Battleground which I was very active in which have totally ruined the game for me and many many others. i haven’t found one single person who is happy with what they have done to the game! Now, instead of being able to play the game multiple times per day and get involved with many fights, due to the changes I am finished in 15 minutes due to the high attrition wiping out my troops and then nothing more for me to do until the following day! I have lots of time on my hands and this game used to fill that time beautifully but now, I am being forced to start looking for alternative games and I will take my spending with me elsewhere. No point spending any further money on a game that is now offering me so little in return compared to previously.
Such a shame and I hope they realise what they have done and revert it to the fun, enjoyable game it previously was
However, they have introduced some sweeping changes to the central Guild Battleground which I was very active in which have totally ruined the game for me and many many others. i haven’t found one single person who is happy with what they have done to the game! Now, instead of being able to play the game multiple times per day and get involved with many fights, due to the changes I am finished in 15 minutes due to the high attrition wiping out my troops and then nothing more for me to do until the following day! I have lots of time on my hands and this game used to fill that time beautifully but now, I am being forced to start looking for alternative games and I will take my spending with me elsewhere. No point spending any further money on a game that is now offering me so little in return compared to previously.
Such a shame and I hope they realise what they have done and revert it to the fun, enjoyable game it previously was
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Response from developer
Thanks for the feedback!
The grumblings of a 4 year player
The city building aspect is quite fun - the social/online aspect is a problem: The game is full of old people with no ambition or energy left. New players are tediously and incessantly told to level up their Arc to level 80, without being given a reason why, which turns off alot of new players. No one wants to actually fight eachother in Guild Battlegrounds - all anyone wants to do is farm/sector swap. No one wants to fight eachother in Guild vs Guild. The world I'm playing in (Noarsil) is run by about 5 greedy guilds who all cooperate with eachother to push away all the other guilds to maximise their already high forge point income. Guild Battlegrounds could be a fun part of the game if it wasn't ruined by greedy, tedious nerds. The game is also becoming more pay to win but I can't be bothered to go into that.
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Response from developer
Thank you for your review! We will look into possible improvements in this area. We are currently testing an update to Guild Battlegrounds on beta, you can read more about the update on our forums.
Recent changes decreasing quality of life.
This used to be easily my favourite game and was an incredible experience and a lot of fun with the right guild, within the last year however the game has gone downhill. The ads were a disappointing addition however were done well to not be too intrusive. Since then however, more costly tiers have been added to event rewards giving even greater advantage to those willing to spend large amounts of money, the new event buildings are massively better than any old event structures making many old ones redundant until they eventually get an upgrade which you will likely need to pay 30 quid for. The recent events are also much more tedious and require a lot more micromanagement and aren't as enjoyable as previous ones. The recent UI change of hiding quests inside with just the one profile on the left doesn't improve the UI except confuse players and lead them to focus less on daily and event quests as they have a less obvious reminder visible. You really need to slow down on chasing the money or you will lose large amounts of regular players.
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Response from developer
Thank you for your review! We will look into possible improvements in this area.
