To put it simply, Strategus is currently kinda boring. If you're in a clan, generally you just sit your ass in a village, grinding troops or crafting items to pass onto someone else. Then when your clan eventually (hopefully) attacks someone, you get to fight.
If you aren't in a clan, you're pretty much shit out of luck. There's nothing really for you to do.
I think we should introduce classes into Strategus. Different classes will give you benefits/penalties that will help with a specific play style. Here are a few that I just though of.
Warlord: Increased chance of recruiting troops, can support the most troops, decreased movement speed, increased sight range
Raider: Supports the least amount of troops, reduced movement penalty in rough terrain, reduced cooldown on quick march, shorter quick march duration, increased profit on selling goods, increased cost on purchasing goods, less efficient crafting
Trader: Supports medium amount of troops, crafting more efficient, decreased cost on purchasing goods
So the Warlord is the main attack force. With his increased chances of recruiting troops he can get up and running much faster. He can also support an unlimited amount of troops. With his slower movement, it will be more difficult to sneak up on people, but with a larger sight range, it will be harder for people to sneak up on him. I'm hoping that this would help promote more fights.
The raider will max out at about 50 troops. His movement penalty will be reduced in rough terrain which will help him in sneaking up on people and escaping. His reduced cooldown on quick march along with the reduced duration means that he can quick march more often, but can't do it as long. This will help him to make quick attacks and escapes. They would also make good scouts for clans wanting to guard specific areas of the map.
The trader is pretty self-explanatory. I'm figuring he'll max out at around 75 troops. This guy will be the main moneymaker, yet he can also support a decent amount of troops to help fight off raiders.
There's also one other thing that will REALLY help bring this idea together: roads and waypoints. I know everyone has been begging for waypoints for a while. So, can we get those implemented? Then we could put in roads that would grant a movement bonus. Players could then choose the faster, riskier routs or the slower, safer ones.
So, what do you guys think? Good idea? Bad idea? Ways we can improve it? Really, I just want to make Strategus more than the boring grind fest that it is currently.