I have been playing the game for a few months now, lvl 33, here are my thoughts...
The main issue for me is there are too many different tiers of waiting times.
Once a day fields and water needs sorting and provision house managed.
2 or 3 times a day buffs need to be applied to gold mines etc
At various increments of time from 1min to 4 hours prospectors are sent out
At 6hr or 12 or 24h explorers need to be sent out
Generals being sent out takes 30min
From ordering a general to attack a bandit camp to their return takes 4-5min
The process of getting all units needed for adventure to be delivered to a zone requires dealing with a series of 30min waits.
I understand some aspects of free online games is tedious tasks and time sinks. The problem for me is the game isnt something you can sit down and play for 1 hour a day to get the most out of it, nor is it something you can just log in for 2-3min a few times a day. Why not? Well due to the way adventures work and the way prospecting must be done for the various types.
Adventures are really rather poor experiences in my opinion. I dont mind the home map and city building/management being a bit tedious if the adventures were an exciting reward for all that effort, but adventures are fantastically tedious, many, many 30min travel waits and 3-5min fighting waits. Then the nature of units required for each fight, that is also tedious and lacks any play enjoyment. I stopped watching the battle reports a long, long time ago, even they are tedious experiences, completely predictable and too much timing between each phase.
My suggestion would be to rework the adventures to play fluidly without silly and rather pointless time sinks. When my general is off to a fight I want to be excited not bored with the tedium of watching him take 2-3min to get to the fight! The time sink is our main island management, let adventures be fun please!
I would also rework buffing/prospecting/exploring so they are easier to manage.
I would also add the wording of all text from quests to adventures to mail to enemy tool tips etc is rather dull and a little awkward, maybe directly translated from another language. Could do with spicing up. This text is a major part of the games character and it can be improved dramatically.
I understand the game is designed at first to hook you in with the reasonable level of pace of first 17 levels and then more and more layers of tediousness are added, which the goal being to entice people to pay real cash to buy things to reduce this tediousness to more manageable levels BUT even if you did splash the cash there is nowhere within the game to enjoy some real fun. Adventures even with all the gem generals are still going to be predictable, slow and dull.
So with no real fun to be had all we are left with is as a possible motive to play is beautification of our home map. I would suggest adding more ways to personalize our Island. Being able to manipulate land, maybe add rivers to the game and allow players to change their course or damn them to power windmills or divert them to irrigate farms. Some genuine land management would be fun. Also allowing people to give names to their buildings. Could be fun, naming the Brewery after your personal favourite beer.
For me as it is the same is just so tedious its painful and I am glad I resisted the urge to buy gems as having played a little longer I can see this game is not going to offer much in its current state.
Yes the game is free but my time is of value to me, this game tries to rob you of that time until the point where the urge to open the wallet is too great. I dont mind paying good money for a good game, but this game is just dull and the only reward for actions is just more dull tasks. I didnt have to write this, I could have not bothered but I like the company behind this game based on previous games and think feedback is always of value. Ultimately this game feels like it is set up as a sting, designed to bore you into submission and pay cash. I dont think long term this type of game adds value to a company. I'll be less likely to buy a future game from them based on this experience.
In summary... The game is tedious in every aspect. Real money can allow people to reduce some of the tedium BUT still as it stands even with large amounts of cash investment the game would still give back very little. Please make some aspect of the game less tedious. Make adventures actually fun and pleasurable and keep the gem/cash aspect of the game to the main map. The devs have over cooked the tedious factor to generate income, reduce the tedium in some areas and the game may have a longer life span for customers.