@krinid

I gather the level version you are playing now is level revision 7. I played Australia with this design and it took me over a fortnight. The gameplay was about the same - start with a bunch of power ups - slow crawl - then a huge outburst with mercenaries that were worthy enough to inspire - then crawl again. Playing Netherlands now and it looks much more balanced. Making a good steady progress. Hope that I will be able to say this again a few days later.

Just be patient, the next level you start will be much more playable.

@SubLunar, this is me being suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper patient (see how long it took me to respond? That's patience, LOL - this duration also coincides with the length of time it took me to finish the level with proper daily interaction).

From the time of my last post I estimated it was another 4 days to finish ... and was grossly mistakenly: it was 9 days, despite renewing the +20% army bonus on mobile every 4 hours and continually building robotic arms (most expensive item) and upgrading my army camps until the lowest upgrade was >5y (reminder order is -KMBTEPZYR) to get my army earnings to 463K/sec, but it's just not enough.

So finally finished it @ 18d8h with the following stats:



So the 9 days from 9d10h through 18d8h it continued to just be a slow slog despite having used dozens up powerups. And with that I think I'm going to have to conclude that perhaps this just isn't for me. The beginning of the level was fairly slow, the middle was painfully slow due to not being able to afford any mercs, then the end was super super super slow. Capturing a handful of territories per day just isn't working for me, so think I will hang up my Idle hat.

That said ... I see that Hospitals have now been added ... so got me curious. Added a new level as well which is kind of exciting ... but kind of worried that it'd just be an even longer slog. Maybe I'll try redoing one of the earlier, shorter levels to test out hospitals ... hmmm.

On an interesting note though, with the stats it is clear to see the value of Joint Strike @ ~33% savings throughout the entire map.

@ krinid

Such a patient player you are! And also a lucky one because I was completely wrong about the next level version. That is even worse - After a quick start (power ups) and reasonably steady progress the gameplay turned to a crawl and I, I'm sorry to say, lost my patience and used all of my IM power-ups (and those I found along the way afterwords). Now I'm stuck and it will take me ages to finish Netherlands. So you were lucky to skip this version. Although to be completely honest I always replayed older levels to gain more APs and since I did not do this when the super powerful cache fluke levels were around my advancements were supposed to be much more upgraded to play the current level. I think that may be the main cause of this snail crawl.

You can try older levels, they probably will be totally different compared to the last time you played them.