Update: Auto-Recruitment & Tool Production!

Dear Community,

We would like to present to you our final update for 2016;
Automatic Recruitment & Tool Production!
After thorough testing and a number of iterations upon community feedback, we would finally like to introduce to you the Automatic Recruitment and Tool Production feature.
The demand for a more efficient and comfortable way to recruit units in a consistent manner became very clear for us through your feedback, pairing this with the necessity to reduce the use of third-party software within our game we believe this is a great step in providing our players with a safe and fair playing environment.
Our overall goal in redesigning this feature was to:

• Allow players to recruit/produce more units/tools with far less clicks
• Reduce the requirement of returning to the barracks/workshop interfaces to restart recruitment and production processes

We made two major changes to the dialog:

• We added new mechanics to the slots that can be filled with units/tools
• We updated the interface for selecting units/tools

The new recruitment dialog

New recruitment and production system

One production-slot; five queue-slots

Recruitment and production lines
The basic recruitment/production mechanics have not changed.

• Up to five slots in the barracks/workshops can be filled with a stack of units/tools. Recruitment/production of these stacks will begin automatically after the current process is complete
• The capacity of recruitment and production slots have been greatly increased! Instead of a maximum of five, you can now place up to 80 units/tools in a single slot!
• This means you can place a huge number of units/tools into recruitment/production lines, without having to frequently return to your barracks/workshop!
• The capacity of a recruitment slot depends on the level of the barracks. The higher a barracks’ level, the larger the slot-capacity and the number of units you can recruit overall
• Workshops have a fixed production slot capacity of 80 tools per slot, so don’t hesitate to produce lots of tools!
• The new interface is available in all barracks, workshops for producing offensive and defensive tools, and in the Berimond auxiliaries training ground.

Slot-capacity counter in the barrack’s info card

• The recruitment/production process itself has not changed:
• A stack of up to five units/tools is taken from the first slot in line and moved to the process slot to the left. A timer will appear below the slot and the process will begin automatically
• Once the process has been completed, the newly acquired units/tools are available, and the next stack of units/tools is automatically moved to the process slot. This process continues until all recruitment/production slots in the line have been completed

• There are two new buttons which allow you to change the order of your recruitment/production line:
• Complete slot: Recruit/produce all units/tools from the first slot in line before starting on the next slot.
  Select this option if you want to complete many units/tools of the same type quickly.
• Slot after slot: Recruit/produce units/tools from each slot in the line in turn.
  This allows you to recruit or produce five of each unit/tool type in rotation. Select this option to get a balanced mix of different units/tools.

• At the top of the overview you will also find counters showing the total amount of units/tools in your current recruitment/production line, as well as the total amount of time required to complete the entire line.
  Keep an eye on the timer to know when you have to return and refill the line with more units/tools.

Total units in line; total recruitment time for queue

Cancel recruitment/production
We moved the cancel-button, but its functionality is still the same.

• Click on a recruitment/production slot, then confirm the warning-popup to delete the selected slot.
• Keep in mind that you can now cancel the recruitment/production of a very large number of units/tools at once!

Doubling units/tools
You can still double units and tools.

• Click on a recruitment/production slot and then click the doubling button
• A new confirmation dialog has been added to clearly display the costs of doubling units/tools and help prevent any miss-clicks.
• You can still double a stack up to three times
• Doubling also increases the amount of unit/tools that are automatically moved from stack to the process slot
• Alliance-help now applies to doubled units as well, so you can get even more units from your alliance-mates now!
• Doubled slots are marked with a doubling-icon

Confirmation for doubling units recruitment

Alliance-help for recruitment
The alliance-help is also still available, albeit with some changes. Of course with all great power comes great responsibility (according to Uncle Ben), and this is why we have considered the parameters of this new feature carefully. We understand that the 1+1 was a very effective way to recruit troops, but it was also easily exploitable and for that reason we have chosen to rework the functionality of it.

• One convenience is that now you only have to click the button once to send out help requests for all the slots in your barracks! This will help you save time and effort!
• If your alliance members have answered your requests, you will receive one additional unit for each five units you have in a recruitment!
  
  For example, if you have 50 units in a recruitment slot, the alliance-help will add ten bonus units to that slot.
• Alliance-help does not work for slots containing less than five units.
• This means that there will be reduction in recruitment speed in the short term, but you will be able to recruit more units in the long run.

New unit & tool-selection interface
Selecting units or tools for the slot was rather cumbersome and required too many clicks. The new system makes this process more comfortable for players.

• Click on a unit/tool to select it
• Instead of a popup, all information and interfaces will now appear directly below the selected item
• Here you can find the buttons and sliders for selecting the quantity, while a max-button is also available
• The display also features a counter for recruitment/production time and costs, as well as other requirements.
• Additionally, there is the confirmation-button. Click it to start the recruitment/production of the selected unit/tool. Now you can quickly click to fill your line with a large number of units and tools!
• The interface works the same way for units and tools, and also for buying premium tools

Recruitment interface - all controls are directly accessible

Troop Recruitment Build Item improved
The troops-recruitment build item, which increases the maximum amount of units per recruitment slot, has been reworked.

• The first level of the item now grants a bonus of 16 additional troops per recruitment slot in line, the highest level grants a bonus of 80 units.
• These values mirror the bonus values granted by the previous version of this build item. The item still grants the same relative increase in slot capacity as the old system. For example, the first level of the build-item increases the slot-capacity by 20%, the highest level doubles the slot-capacity.
• The capacity of the active process slot is not affected.
• The full bonus of the build item will apply, no matter the level of the barracks-building it has been placed in.
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Other changes

• The recruitment and production overview panel in the HUD has been modified. A click on the units/tools tabs now opens the barracks/workshop window.
  This change was necessary due to technical complexities and performance issues.

Even more minute-skip storage!

• The storage capacity for any minute skips above 5 minutes has been increased to 180