Ministers

Having to be up at the right time is a constraint.  Part of the fun and challenge of Illy is planning around constraints.  For example ... person X lives in the wrong time zone and can't be up to launch their army.  Therefore they have to set person Y as their sitter in order to do this.  But wait, person Y is already sitting two accounts that are crucial for this operation.  We must find another way.

Both sides of this argument make some valid points. I tend to come down on the "yes" side of this suggestion, but just barely. I work 10 hours a day and drive 40 minutes each way, yet I still have time to log in at least a few minutes a day. It is true that a new city tends to lag behind because queues run out but that isn't some "I'm abandoning because it's too slow" thing for me. I do think that any way the game can potentially make more money while keeping the "pay to play" genie in the bottle is a good thing, so over all, I support this.

Here's my thoughts, for what they're worth on each individual minister:

A building minister would be acceptable to me. I agree that it wouldn't really be much use for cities above a certain size. That sort of makes it more palatable too.

I do like the war minister idea but a time limit seems logical, however I do not like the "pick a landing time" process. In my opinion, any changes must keep the need to time it out or it will loose its level of difficulty and become too easy. For me, timing is an important and satisfying process.

I think production queues are good as they are. The only thing ministers would change would be the ability to build further into the future using resources you don't have yet. I do not like that idea but I can understand how some would.

A defense minister sounds like a bad idea to me. I think that's just my warmongering attitude though, because I don't want my enemies to be able to dodge an attack without actually being there and seeing it coming.

I'm indifferent to the ideas for the Cotters/Gatherers. I haven't harvested something in a looong time, so I just don't care much either way.

for the building minister, four queue slots ought to be sufficient; 2x seems more than enough advantage. the moral hazard of this is that players who rarely visit the game would visit even less often. it also offers players the opportunity to misqueue and spend even more nonrefundable resources on things they shouldn't have built in the first place. :P

i don't mind a war minister that queues a launch, maximum of one queued launch per town. i agree that it ought to work on departure time rather than arrival time. if illy gets into the business of calculating departure based on arrival, that ought to be available to everyone.

production minister may need more thought. this one seems as much hindrance as help, as it could easily change from an advantage to a disadvantage if a player were suddenly taken away from the game by rl with unsustainable production defaults set. i think a page showing idle production buildings across all towns might address this issue better. (a quartermaster, though, which would take control of vans made available to it in order to keep certain inventory levels in each town and ship excess to hubs...now *that* would be worth paying for.)

defence minister seems to reach into the very point of the game. i don't think this is fun or workable.

cotter/gatherer...all i can think of is the "you stole my kill" conversations. could we also have a forum minister to post our outrage for us?  ;)

There is no need at all to get a War Minister to do your sending for you during a War or Tournament, because the game already has an instrument for that if you cannot be online at the time.

Dragons?........ Ministers?