Is there a better way to get people to focus on all aspects?

I'd say a better way to get people to focus on various aspects of the game, is to make those aspects worth focusing on.
Rather than tasks to be repeated or chores to be done daily, make it something the player would WANT to do, rather than something the player NEEDS to do.


Timers as a solution?:
Timers are the WORST of the worst of bandaid mechanics, they literally say "I put a timer here because I couldn't think of anything better".
Even resource gathering/acquisition is a better mechanic (and is in the most technical sense a timer)
Think about it. You need 10 wood and 5 stone to build a hut, wood gets produced at a rate of X per hour, stone gets produced at a rate of Y per hour. Transportation of resources from the production place to storage and from storage to the buildingsite takes Z time per distance.
Its really just a timer - but rather than 'wait 5 minutes' its a progression bar that fills up as requirements are met.
Moreover, its a variable progression based on your own decisions and efficiency.

Build more resource production? -> You can support more ongoing builds.
Build efficient and logical roads? -> Your logistics will function at a faster pace.
Build in logical locations and closer together? -> Less time will be needed to get stuff from A to B.

It adds a layer of depth aswell as something for the player to do as they have to put down new stockpiles and/or resource hubs to handle this.
All of which can be implemented in various ways to either allow the player full micro-management or in a more behind-the-scenes method by allowing followers to set up these buildings in accordance to a well-designed algorithm. It can even be tied into other mechanics such as settlements, because a builders settlement or miners settlement would indirectly become a hub for such resources automatically.

Without ever really adding much tasks to the game, you are effectively embodying the "timer" with realistic mechanics, and you're doing it in such a way that a thrifty player has control over it to make it more efficient. While a casual player can just go for the straightforward approach.
This would ultimately result in a better balance and shorter timers, unless the player is a complete idiot in how they play. (Insisting on building randomly all over the map...)

Belief/resource Gathering:
Belief gathering ties into a similar such mechanic. Rather than FORCING the player to collect belief to advance, give the player something to do that the would enjoy. If the player has powers that are *fun* to use and that get you somewhere. Then this ultimately results in the desire to want more belief. Subsequently you make the belief mechanic less tedious and have it tie into the activity of the player.

For example, an active player will leave a "presence" around for his followers.
As a follower, you're more likely to believe in a god that you've seen do stuff around your place - by promoting active play, the followers remain loyal and automatically generate belief.
An inactive player on the other hand will need to "earn back" this loyalty, by more tedious tasks.
They would need to take a more active hand in earning back their belief, be it by direct interaction with followers or by having a representative do it for you aswell as by simply applying your powers for good.

Here you end up rewarding the player for playing the game, rather than punishing them for NOT doing so. (carrot versus stick...)

Alternately, and this works for belief, wheat, ore and other future resources.
Allow the player to 'clump' together sets of plots and make them work together.
I don't mean like a settlement, but simply make them connected.

A group of fields could get the farmers to "cooperate" and share their labour.
This would tune down the need for individual farmers to pathfind (resulting in improved performance) aswell as lowering the tedious chore of collection for the player.
Its also aesthetically pleasing if you get these nice quilts of fields stitched together - especially if in the future wheat gets expanded to include various other crops (mostly a cosmetic change).
Mines and other resource production could function in similar ways.

We already see this partially in the statue for belief collection, but again we're seeing a bandaid solution. Not a worked out mechanic with eyes on the future.
If Settlements are your "big" social and industrial hubs, then these connected clusters of buildings and workplaces are villages, towns and other localized communities.

Beautify, Swamp and overall godly - or groundskeeper?
This directly ties into another problem. That of Beautify and Swamp.
Astari were pointed out that they couldn't deal with swamps, one suggestion was to give them their own deity that would cast beautify to remove the swamps.
I'd propose an alternate solution - being that this magically created swamp is going to revert back to normal after some time (the wet bog would be reabsorbed into the ground, nature takes its course).
Similarly beautify only remains for so long untill nature takes back control.

This also means that beautify and swamp by becoming active powers rather than permanent transformations would get a change in mechanic. The cost would need to be adjusted to reflect this aswell as potential effects.
A player would 'want' to use beautify on their area. I also think that a bigger brush (upgradeable powers...) would do wonders to promote the player to want to use it on their area.


Speaking of powers, Holy Forest is just wrong, bonsai tending isn't exactly a "fun" or "engaging" task, while some players take delight in tending their world into the most minute of details, this kind of aesthetic play takes away from the core gameplay.
I'd recommend splitting up this power into an actual "forest" power, resulting in the growth of a forest or other flora/fauna supporting environments, this could even be further expanded upon by making use of the water/springs mechanic.

A forest that gets placed somewhere would need a source of hydration and can't be on barren soil, if you provide this, the forest will flourish providing a habitable zone for wildlife.
Alternately, if woodcutting ever gets introduced into the game, the forest power could be used as a quick and dirty method to convert some belief into wood-resources for your followers.

Note again that you can either use this as an immediate action, cutting down the entire forest. Or you could create a sustainable forest that slowly regrows and then slowly cut down as new trees come up - a slower, but sustainable source of wood.


Meanwhile the Holy Forest power is an Aesthetic power, one that serves a different purpose.
Its more expensive, but also more powerful. In many ways its a weak version of the gifts buyable by gems. I think that the cost scaling is currently off, but the mechanics carry value.

Renaming it would seem apt, as its a single tree and not a forest. And subsequently expanding on this to reward the player for using such aesthetic powers would also seem recommended.
Future expansions on this could include micro-transactionable aestethic options aswell as a set of basic options accessible to everyone (take a cue from League of Legends and such, cosmetic skins are big business). Allowing players to theme their homeworlds would not only result in having different looks based upon decisions and playstyle for the individual player.

But it also makes it so that your play is less of a tedious chore and more enjoyable overall.


Goals - why does the player WANT to play this, what will the player achieve?
All of this ties into an overall goal of making the player WANT to play the game.
By providing the player with decisions that matter, by providing underlying mechanics that actually DO something rather than serving for the sole purpose of meaningless expansion.
The best way to get a player to play your game is to immerse them, not to force them.
Make them want to do something, rather than preventing them from doing what they want to do by putting roadblocks in their way.

Obviously this mentality also ties into other aspects such as hubworlds and voyages - tie them into the core gameplay. Make followers take an active role in the world of the player.
Make the player more of a god, and less of a groundskeeper.

Right now, the solution is to close the game down to pass timers.
If I find myself "tending" to a game, rather than playing it. I quickly stop playing it alltogether.
I like games, I dislike chores. Chores aren't good entertainment value.
This is why I never play facebook games for a long time, they can be interesting for a week or so, but then they lose their charm and it becomes tedious to repeatedly have to keep up the chores.

So then what is the alternative?
Start at the roots. Take the mechanics that are there and the mindset that is there.
Mobile players don't want micro-management, so provide mechanics that do not REQUIRE micro-management to the extreme.

The Settlement mechanic is a perfect place to start. Right now we have miners/farmers/builders who go out and perform their job where the player targets them to.
This is a very labour intensive mechanic requiring the player to handpick every single one of them.
On top of that, it requires seperate lines for each existing and upcoming resource.
I propose a slight alteration.

Unify all settlements - but provide a tier-based layering. Initially houses clumped together to form a settlement will form a social hub.
The settlement will be the basis for most (if not all) of the future expansions on your empire, barring exceptions such as the gifts.
Once your settlement reaches a certain critical mass (for the sake of argument I say 50 inhabitants) it becomes ready for industry.

You can designate one industry of choice, be it farming, building or mining (limited to what you have unlocked from the timeline) - and this can be expanded in the future to include alternate industries.
This new industry building will be tied to the settlement by a road-network to designate its "connection" and to function as a supply-line.
Houses and plots within the influence of this new industry building would/could fall under the service of this industry (this can be done automatically to reduce micro-management or manually to provide the player more control and allow for freedom).

This not only creates a unified and expandable mechanic for these resources without requiring a ton of individual micromanagement of plots and followers. But this subsequently also ties into the performance issue.
By having the dedicated professions tied to such an industry building "cooperate" you can generate workforce entities.
Instead of 5~10~20 individual farmers, they will work together under a single leader and work as a unit. Fields will "stitch" together creating a more aesthetically pleasing look.
The entire mechanic not only becomes more manageable from a player standpoint, but also requires less processing power behind the scenes.


Renewable versus sustainable?
A while back when the springs and dynamic water were first introduced I heard suggestions for it to be used as a "buff" or for irrigation.
This would be a great mechanic to expand upon giving the player something to do for both aesthetic and practical purposes.

Farms near hydration would perform better, mines (by virtue of getting flooded) would perform worse.
But what about alternate future resources?
I proposed setting down forests rather than individual trees, a forest supplied with water would start to grow.
Allowing wildlife to form, but also providing a sustainable source of lumber.

This is another mechanic that can be expanded upon in the future as its quite modular in its application.
By providing a "resource node" that the god can place down (and some might spawn naturally in the world) aswell as providing certain boosting elements.
You provide a way for the player to not only aesthetically alter the world to their desire, but also provide the more technically alligned players a way to improve their game.

Example: You place down a forest, this is equal to a dozen or so trees. These trees can be cut down or left alone.
Trees left alone in the wrong area will die, trees left alone in a suitable area will either remain or slowly expand, trees left in a prospering hydrated area will grow and expand faster.
These "forests" are nodes for lumber, they can also be a node for wildlife. Alternate "nodes" can be created around different resources in the future.
Spawning a node seems a particularly godly thing to do (as opposed to planting a single tree), subsequent terraforming by clever combination of various godpowers is similarly godly.
Waterdynamics would become more integral to the game, from both a practical and aesthetic point of view.
Providing basic means for casual players and advanced tools for 'core' gamers.

A player focused on rapid expansion and consumption would focus on belief generation and would become very "active", spawning in new resources when they needed them.
While other players might let the game just run its own course and casually doing their thing.
And others again would choose to carefully balance the ingoing and outgoing resources, to create a thriving society.

By setting up such mechanics and supplying a logistics network between settlements and across the players world you also give the player a reason to WANT to come back to older locations. Rather than just going fire and forget or forcing them to come back.



A final conclusion:
While I realize that this is quite an elaborate plan, I'd like to point out that almost all of it is modular.
You can break it down into component parts and build it up slowly.
Rather than a loose set of components, it takes what is already in the game and expands on it.
It ties disjointed mechanics together and it paves the way for future alterations.

All the while it leaves open enough space for alterations and additions aswell as unforseen circumstances and as such would fit perfectly within iterative design as used by 22cans.
It takes on the individual problems that homeworld is facing right now, and breaks them into manageable parts.
Allowing the developer (and thus ultimately the player) to deal with them at a manageable pace.

It also deals with the distinct performance issue that Godus is running into due to exponential growth, by utilizing cooperation rather than individuality you create a semblance of free-will and activity without having to generate each individual action seperately.


Moreover, it allows for future expansions on this with commandments, with desires and wishes for followers (they might desire a more varying food or specific architecture, they might desire space or more companionship etc etc) Its entirely expandeable without binding the developer down to a specific path completely.