just to build on a few ideas.. i posted long ago about anonymous participation in strat fights, and i think the trick is to make it only possible to sign up anonymously for AI factions; if it is player vs player then no anonymity... it still takes some policing in player vs AI though as some of the player factions friends could sign up anonymously for the AI and subtly sabotage more easily than it is already, maybe the devs can see who is actually signing and just swear to secrecy, but can take action if people are signing up and sabotaging AI.
as for playing crpg to earn gold in strat, this isnt a bad thing, but it also leads to leaching in crpg and it gives an even bigger advantage to large factions that have crazy amounts of players... the only thing i can suggest to maybe make it ok, is perhaps set a cap of how much gold can be earned through playing crpg in a day, say each day a player can earn 500 gold, and depending on the multiplier they get it could take 100-500 minutes of playing to achieve.
but overall, despite chadz intention to make strategus something other than a war game... us NA players want a war game, and hopefully chadz can accommodate us a bit better, just let us build up our forces a bit quicker so we can run around fighting each other without putting us so far behind the peaceful guilds as to make it impossible to recover. right now there is too much of an advantage for factions that can secure all their lands with little to no fighting and then remain peacefully stockpiling for long periods of time. I would be really interested in seeing the dynamic of warfare change in strat so that it is less about complete annihilation and more about border conflicts and small gains here and there, but so far 95% of wars are to the death, which inevitably leads to a mega alliance "winning" strat as they run out of competitors.
