I think you have stumbled on why there asre so many castles that are left unattended permanently. This game is fun and a blast til you reach a certain level then everything takes FOREVER or cost a ton of gems. I get the game is trying to make a profit however the dynamics on this one seems like they want to make all money invested back in very short term. I know for a fact a few months back when they changed the rules on OBS lots of players demanded refunds and got them some to the tune of thousands of dollars. This game could be way more successful if the game was changed to make it affordable to play for AVERAGE person. Most cant afford to spend 500 to a grand a month just for basic play.and as most level 85+ will tell you by the time you reach their level your are still fighting to get ale which you either use up as soon as you get or by the time you need it its gone because your negative 5k ale so its dropping like 10 pts a second. The game cost too much and too many of the normal options one may want to purchase are too expensive and most don't put as much thought into it as the previous person posting. They see oh poop its gonna cost me this much to be able to make them and take this long to make them.. forget it . then they go looking for another game and find one (easily) that takes much less of a daily/weekly investment to stay strong and then money has longer benefit. I mean seriously outside of upgrading walls and turrets and the stone guards NOTHING is a permanent boost or benefit in this game. the concept of game is attractive  the basic play is fun and easy to learn and grow. but when it cost so much for units which are mandatory to game and then those units which can be considered cash are so easily lost.... no wonder only a few want to make serious attacks or add such large forces to obs or their  own castles or send them to the aid of a clan member.. Defending a castle from strong player can be throwing 20-50 bucks worth of units away.. until they fix that dynamic this game will slowly fade away. plently of new players and drones to help people reach the friend requirement(level 15for the new account) then the accounts stop playing. or real people that want to try the game and give up early on because they realize only way to grow and be strong is to spend your childs college tuiton on the game

I never even spent a cent on this game, but i do understand Plariums motive to "Sell magic for emeralds". And i think that is pretty legit. However - if they offer it they should at least take a moment to check if it's worth it. I mean it makes really no sense to spend 50 emeralds more PLUS fish PLUS mushrooms to get magic (actually 20 magic less) that you have to spend waiting 2 hours for a unit when you can just buy it at the black market for 110 emeralds, saving the 50 emeralds, saving the fish, saving the mushrooms and saving the waiting time.

I bet there actually ARE a few people who were dumb enough to exchange emeralds to magic, but probably just a few and we all know they were drunk or have the IQ of a rock. I mean this is (or rather: "could be") one of these "premium" features that makes people burn emeralds even faster, but i guess it was never tested and noone thought much about balancing it.

I'm not even complaining about all the waiting and that once you maxed out your fortress and blood pacts (or close to it) there's not much more than raiding once a day and chatting. I mean if that's too boring then you'll quit much earlier like obviously many people do. My point is just that some stuff like the recruitment speed skills simply don't make sense for magic based units since on one side you can't produce enough magic to get your queues full of these and on the other side it doesn't make sense to buy the magic if you can just buy the units cheaper. I don't condemn the principle of buying magic and stuff, i just rant about how obviously noone at Plarium ever really played the game - otherwise they might have noticed.