Lets talk about what it takes now to field an army in Strat

[Beans]

We've had a lot of changes happen in strat since the 3.0 map opened up, but lets focus on what makes this game actually fun for most people. The battles. They are what draw people to play crpg in the first place, and why they maybe then get interested in strat.

If in 2.0 I had to pick an average size for armies made for battle/sieges(not just moving dudes around)I would say around 2500 is a pretty good number. So with that in mind lets look at what it costs in 3.0 to equip that force.

2500 * 107.16(Studded Leather Coat) = 267,900
2500 * 31.76(Nasal Helmet)                 = 79,400
2500 * 11.56(Leather Gloves)              = 28,900
2500 * 6.12(Sarranid Leather Boots)   = 15,300
625 * 26.16(Falchion)                          = 16,350
800 * 30.04(Old Heater Shield)           = 24,032
625 * 30.16(Two Handed Axe)            = 18,850
625 * 5.08(Pitch Fork)                        = 3,175
625 * 34.84(Short Bow)                     = 21,775
1875 * 6.44(Arrows)                          = 12,000

Total:                                                    487,682

That gear is about the bare minimum I would go to actually spend money on equipping people and expecting the gear to actually do any good. I suppose you could cut the boots, helms and gloves to save ~125,000. Also there are no catapults or anything. Maybe cut some more and just give everyone 2h axes and pitchforks and let them wear trash bags.

So how long is it going to take clans to start assaulting fiefs and stuff? Well I guess it depends on what the most profitable trade route is for your clan and how many people you have. If you have 50 people in your clan, it will take them each earning 266 gold every day for a month to make 400,000. You'll have to get the troops via magic because that is with all 50 going full for gold, 0 on recruiting.

Of course if you lose I imagine your clan will completely quit because no one is going to do that again.

[Aseldo]

Cudgels for life

[Turboflex]

Yeah current gold production seems way too low...

[SeQuel]

Exactly my point, I don't wanna play a browser game. I want to play in battles and fights, not to mention how much money it takes to equip a army is only encouraging people to not go to war and either save there money or get more for better equipment.

It's come to a point where clans will be too scared to lose all there money and there pixels.

[Digglez]

what you fail to take into consideration is there is no more scaling.

previously you could have an army of 4500 defending a castle and each spawn would cost 8 tickets, so your army isnt anywhere remotely close to that size

[Beans]

what you fail to take into consideration is there is no more scaling.

previously you could have an army of 4500 defending a castle and each spawn would cost 8 tickets, so your army isnt anywhere remotely close to that size

I am not currently by a castle or town but from my understanding they have the same number of defenders as strat 2.0, which means attacking a castle with less than 2,500 would be a complete disaster and waste of money. Scaling or not.

[Tydeus]

More like: Less people will be found inside a fief. You won't have as many people inside fiefs passively farming gold/troops(At least not as much on the troop end). This is because, while you can still farm troops, there's no point having a load of troops if you don't have the gold to upkeep/outfit them. Thus you'll have fewer people doing the troop farming and more in the gold area. So don't think about trying to keep the troop:gold ratio the same while recruiting troops at the same speed, you'll never keep up. You have to go the more efficient rout and drop a few people from the afk troop farming section, and move them into the raiding/trading section.

[PhantomZero]

Then reduce the troop number and gold amounts of the AI villages/towns/castles, everyone gave their suggestions when it was still largely based on last strat. Building up a large enough force to tackle a town could take well over a year.

[PhantomZero]

what you fail to take into consideration is there is no more scaling.

previously you could have an army of 4500 defending a castle and each spawn would cost 8 tickets, so your army isnt anywhere remotely close to that size

It sounds like you don't understand what scaling was.

Previously if you had an army of 4500, you still had to equip every single ticket with weapons/armor/horses/etc it was simply a measure to shorten the game times. Not only would each spawn cost 8 tickets, 8 of each equipment you spawned with was consumed. I would hate to see a 5000 vs 5000 battle now without scaling, it could last an entire day.

[Digglez]

It sounds like you don't understand what scaling was.

Previously if you had an army of 4500, you still had to equip every single ticket with weapons/armor/horses/etc it was simply a measure to shorten the game times. Not only would each spawn cost 8 tickets, 8 of each equipment you spawned with was consumed. I would hate to see a 5000 vs 5000 battle now without scaling, it could last an entire day.

Oh you mean like a REAL siege?  If World of Warcraft has/can sport more comprehensive meaningful battleground sieges (Alterac Valley, first incarnation) than this game is in trouble

The point is, you wont see 4500 man armies now, because 500-1000 will represent the same sizes roughly.  And devs still dont have a meaningful route system

[Overdriven]

I have to say it does seem like fief numbers are too high. They should have far less troops/gold than they did before, because clans are not going to be able to field armies large enough/well equipped enough to take most fiefs atm.

Also yeah...equipment costs are far to high. Right now everyone is going to be fielding small armies of peasants but not actually attacking anything.

[Varyag]

Any1 of you played Silk Road MMORPG? Well, this is what current strat looks like.

[Hrafn]

Equipment should be expensive, I dont want to see tincan wars like in crpg. But AI armys should be weaker, so the most boring part of the game will finish faster.

[Erasmas]

The point is that this most boring part decides how the map look like. So if it is difficult (and I agree that it is too difficult now) to take the village, you need to get organized first. That means that this round of Strategus may be a long one. Which is good.

Battles. There will be battles. At the beginning - between players - for goods. After some clan become richer - for villages. And only after that wars between clans. This game is called WARBAND not KINGDOM.

My suggestion - increase a BIT direct trade range, increase a BIT the goods availability, and for f#@ck sake decrease a bit cost of the army in field, cause this is a killer for any army.     

[Tydeus]

Any1 of you played Silk Road MMORPG? Well, this is what current strat looks like.

WOW

Please do not compare crpg to a game I rolled back in '05. Kill 1000 flower creatures, then do it again? Yeah strat is nothing like that game. It has trade "caravans" WOOO! THE SIMILARITIES!

On the subject of neutral territories: I think their numbers are too high, but the ratio of troops:gold is still appropriate.