Its one of those stupid wait-in-real-time for stuff to construct/unlock deals. Its 23 MBs, download it and see for yourself. Its clear in the first 10 mins. Also no music or sounds.

Pay-to-win/not grind.

Avoid like the plague.

Typical browsergame style city building game. This means: Everything takes ages. And then more ages. And then a lot of ages. And then you decide to quit before everything takes even longer. DLC is far too expensive. But for that price you get some bonuses that make the game a bit less unplayable... timed bonuses, of course! Yes, you can invest roughly 500 Euro (without the initial 75p discount) to get bonuses that last for up to a year. For that price you get over 40 times the Skyrim Legendary Edition on sale, or still 16 times without a sale of which each one lasts for up to a year also if you play for several hours every day. With the difference that Skyrim actually is good.

An example: You build your building in a minute. Then you upgrade it in an hour. Then you upgrade it in I think three or six hours. Then in 24 hours. And that is only if you have enough people.
Wait, what? Yes, you need free people to upgrade buildings. Which you get - surprise - by building and upgrading certain buildings. If you have partial people, the upgrade takes longer.

Then there is science, which works pretty well so far, except everything takes ages. The first science thing is done in an hour. Then if you upgrade your buildings science goes faster, but you can't upgrade enough in a reasonable time to make it worthwhile.

The "innovative" system that makes you not grinding is - you guess it - resources trickle at a ridiculous small rate (since you'd need to upgrade buildings to get more resources) while you're offline. You can use them then to upgrade buildings and build armies. At which point you probably rather want to play through Ride to Hell: Retribution, Secret of the Magic Crystals, Rambo, Kane & Lynch 2 or even E.T. 2600 because you have more fun there.


EDIT: Just found an official screenshot that demonstrates how long this game takes. You need ONE YEAR real time for a research later:
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/290730/ss_7fd489353b52c1ff006af97340b652cbca85c70f.1920x1080.jpg?t=1410965823


EDIT 2: I received a developer reply in the comments on 8 October 2014 which is reproduced here:
Arbash [developer] Just now
As proceeding in the game you will be able to accelerate science not only by building and upgrading more alchemist labs, but by applying various magic items. And keep in mind - the objective of the game is not to build and to study everything there is, but to fight and/or ally other players.


EDIT 3: I just found you can't even get all achievements without paying a lot of real money or completely ignoring quests. Things like completing 150 quests in a row extort you by adding timed quests where you need to buy stuff with the real money currency. So you either farm that ingame, completely ignoring quests until then, or you pay with real money. The instant you click on the quest menu, the timed quest is started. Very annoying!

Great game for uninstalling!

Do not play this game, It's extremely pay to win.

Their are huge amounts of buff that will dramatically make this game P2W favoring all the people who spend over 20$

Just started the game and i know i dont have many hours logged, but once you finish the tutorial which takes about 10mins you are overrun with wait times unless you P2W, even premium is somewhat overpriced.

If i wanted to spend 20-99$ on a game i would be buying me a brand new AAA graphic game that will be well worth my money, not some free to play game that trys to extort money.

Belongs on Facebook with all the other 1000 of other games just like it.

I like this game, it is basically a FB game as everyone else's reviews have been about. The thing I like most about this one though is you control how long or fast the building will be produced, higher population equals more workers/builders which means faster time to produce resources or a building. The only thing that seems to take forever in real time is research which again the more you have buildings that produce research and people to run those buildings the faster it will be. I don't know about it being a pay to win game there are gems which is RL money but people have been saying you'll be able to find them in game however not that far yet. Only thing I can truely say is if you want something to pass the time and like fantasy time games try it out. If you're more of the now a day generation where if it doesn't have a Frostbite 3 engine you won't try it....well then don't try it..

Well thats the first time i see a browser game in Steam.
Ok i've played it long before it found its way here and let me make a few things clear.

1. Its not Pay 2 Win. If you're actually good at the game you're going to make more prepaid currency (Black Gems) than you'll ever need from fighting NPCs.

2. You can then turn the Black Gems into real cash and send it to your PayPal. Yes, you can actually get money for playing it... this is as far from Pay 2 Win as it can get. Ofc you'll need to get good at the game in order to do that.. and a little lucky.

3. Its by far the best game of its type (the browser massive online strategy games). Its pretty deep in terms of units, development, managment, movement etc.

4. What i dont like is that they didnt rly seem to bother much with the transition from browser to launcher. Theres no music, no voiced dialog or any of that stuff that you would expect from a downloadable game.


So all and all i would reccomend it IF you're into this type of games.

I’m currently playing this game and am excited about its Steam release. Hope to see more updates and new quests soon. Also have to admit that the game speed is also an issue.

It has long been playing in the browser version of the game , but only steam I was able to enjoy the game with foreign players .

1) Go on store page for this game (if you aren't already there);
2) Scroll down to reviews;
3) Choose "Positive only" tab;
4) Press "Load more reviews" on the bottom of the page;
5) Look for reviewers with 1 review on account and low amount of products on account (3 or less);
6) Open some of these accounts:

• either no playtime("0.1h on record") in the game or actively idling ("Recent Game Activity" = "total time on the record in this game").
  For example, the guy who played it "for over two years" has all the playtime in it over past two weeks:
  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=321551847
  
• other games on account (if any) are either f2p or were given away for free in the past
  
• no other content on such accounts: no friends, no screenies, nothing.

7) ?????
8) Say "Hi" to developers' alts!

P.S. I have no opinion on the game itself since I didn't play it.
P.P.S. I got developer's reply to this review here in comments, you can also check his/her opinion on this.

Seems to be a good F2P real strategy game;
Unique graphics, I quite enjoy the style.
No music (I don't really need it as the longer you play this game the less you have to be on because building times and such get higher and higher)
Some people are falsely claiming that you have to wait 3 days for a building to go from Level 2 to 3 what's totally wrong. You can adjust the laborers you have who build your city and adjusting the amount of laborers changes the build time. I have to wait about 2 hours with 320 builders to achieve level 3 Castle.
Microtransactions; Seems to be evened out quite nicely, no massive P2W stuff except that you can buy higher production rate what gives you an advantage over other players.
I have yet to explore the attacking part of the game.

This game makes a nice break to the day and doesn't require heavy micromanagement. There is no endless clicking of buildings to collect resources like other games; resources automatically collect in your warehouses. I prefer that much more than other RTS games where you have to log in exactly when buildings are full to manually collect resources. While the game is light on the micromanaging, it is not light on strategy. You need to think and plan in advance to outsmart other players that want what you've got and are scheming how to take it. You might find yourself staying up scouring the internet for strategies and guides, and each one leaves you with multitudes of ways to achieve your goals, but not all of the ways will be best for your race, hero, and play style. The best thing I enjoy though is the hero system. Each hero class is unique and customizable at higher levels. The NPC monster ruins that pop up provide an addicting hunt and kill component, and if you are good enough, eventually you will find and conquer ruins with monster bosses which can reward you with hoards of loot.

The game is designed so that keeps the tension and the desire to outdo their rivals. In short very best game. Starting to play and develop their tactics. Main stramlenie and you will do it.

The game is just awesome! All of the RTS should be like this one ^_^
Played a lot on the UK server and never regretted about decision to start playing.
Almost all of the game parts are perfectly done from conception to game balance and "old school" graphics.
And Steam realese was a nice surprise for me :)
Well done, Elyland, well done!

this is my first reviw of any game.. and i have been around steam for a few years...

i rait NO to My Lands Black Gem Hunting.. for several reasons.. and i have over 145 hours on this game

1) the player base is 75% russian.. that in it self is not a bad thing... but 90% of the in game mails you send to people.. answer back "no english"... ok as i speak only english that is my problem i know.... but as a vast majority of the high ranked players are russian... when you finaly claw your way to the top ranking....you dont stay long.

2) i played on both servers... at one point soon after steam release... there was aprox 9000+ players on each server..
now there is aprox 3500 and at any given point 700+ online... and the stats for active kingdoms keep falling..

3) this game was released back in 2011.. it is 2014.... it almost plays like a Face book game... without the face book.. the cost for Black Gems. if you buy them in real life cash..... is heartbreaking... the devolpers claime that the Rank 7 ruins have up to 100k black gems in them.. i am at the stage where i can kill rank 5 ruins (with about 5% losses and much planing) i have not found a rank 7 ruin yet... but the rank 6 ruins have about 3x the troops that a rank 5 does.. and about 20-30 Black gems in them....

THEY WANT YOU TO SPEND REAL LIFE MONEY on the game....

so yes... i am a bit upset that after finally making 5 star rank... i get totaly destroyed by a whole allaince attacking me ..
they send therir lower ranked people to kill buildings and defensives.. and as a higer ranked player you cant do anything to stop them but hide your troops and try to rebuild... but that is a loosing proposition... so when you try to fight back.. the players that are the same rank as you.. (remember thy lower ranked has alread devistated your defenses) the attack and kill off all your troops... now you have to rebuild EVERYTHING all over...

since this game is based on ALL attack... all rankings are based on wining attacks... there is nothing based on trying to defend... no defensive states... and no real defensive stratagies except for staying small and not letting the ranked players attack... at that is the real reason i give this game a NO.... the game has no balance

This game makes me think.
Cool strategy game LOVE IT :)

TL;DR : Nice Concept, Poor Execution. No Sound, Microtransactions. Quite fun to play as a break. 7/10

FULL REVIEW.

This game is interesting to say the least, but somewhat lacking in it's delivery.

Let's start with me turning the game on, quick download, quick start up, Simple graphics, but not terrible. However, no sound.
I first thought it was a bug or something but after checking a few times, this game dosent have sound files. At all.

This game looks and sort of plays like a Facebook game, but it is more easily compared to Travian, in which you create homes, on a hexagonal area, build up resources and expand to different areas. At time of writing i have only played about an hour.

The game is ported from a mobile game (as clear in some text documents) but they have changed the interface to make it more PC gamer friendly, and I commend them for that. A nice simple tutorial quest system that goes on for about 20 minutes before you were considered to be in charge of what you were doing, which is nice.

The combat system is good at a glance, simple RTS but on a longer timescale. Creating troops and having them fight on a different area. It reminds me of the Total War series, but backwards. You manage a city and what buildings appear, but then have a larger map view to move armies around a hexagonal area. These hexagons have different boosts to different units and make an intresting combat system.

Like all facebook games it seems plagued with micro-transactions. Which in my opinion are not an issue. They are not predominant on the screen and you have to go through several clicking to speed up a process. It's there, but not directly advertised. Besides, a free to play game has to make money somehow.

As I sit here waiting for my population to rise so I can build more buildings to gather more resources, I am pulled in by a strange charm to this game. It feels a bit like alot of other games, but has a much better combat and fighting system. I can only reccommend you at least try this game, just to see if it intrests you.

To see more Free-To-Play reviews visit my profile and check out my other reviews.

www.twitter.com/Xelforce

Really crappy game. The only reason I can think of that would explain all the simple "I recommend" reviews would be some sort of review reward campaign they did (Which steam should do something about...). Didn't play it much, but its very poorly designed, another one of those pay2win (And from reading up and looking at prices, its pretty insane on the amount their requesting) games where in order to build anything late game, you have to wait 2 weeks unless you want to put down some money to have it done instantly.
Eh, what did I expect, another free to play strategy game.

Very interesting game that makes you ponder decisions. And the victory over the enemy, brings an unforgettable experience.

Super good game!!!