I am having the most fun I ever had in strat this round.
I did operate a small 4 man bandit operation for a while, ended with 350 armed troops and 80k gold. Threw the army at Keshian because he annoyed me, took his village and stole his army he hid in there. Now I am fighting a glorious war of independence for proud Fenada.
You do not have to have a big clan to have fun or be effective in strategus anymore, just go and fuck diplomacy and go be a bandit. Or a trader. I made more than 1 million cRPG gold so far.
You guys are just playing a boring game of security, safety and even more safety. Go and take a risk. Anyone remembers the first strategus round? Nearly all landowning EU faction were in the templar block, except DRZ, Nordmen of Fenada and the Mercs. 22nd, Nordmen & DRZ got bored and just started a war against all odds, slowly gaining allies as new factions emerged and joined up or others left the sinking templar boat. We didn't sit there and complain that we can't fight a war because everyone is allied and we might lose. We took the risk, and we won.
If you complain that you can't beat them because you don't have troops, go and recruit them. All castles are still neutral. Gold missing? Raid their caravans. I am sure there are some non UIF factions out there that let you craft in their fiefs for a small fee, maybe even for free. UIF got too many players? You need a max of 60(?) players for each battle, with some discipline you can easily get that number for the most important battles.
Strategus it not just getting 10k troops and buying equipment to throw them at the enemy until its over anymore, disrupt your enemies trade, disrupt their reinforcments. Much more possibilties for small clans to try and keep the man down or atleast try to offer a resistance. I am still surprised that for example the Mercs not take 100 or 200 troops and hide in some neutral castle along the DRZ trading routes and try to get some loot there to pay for their main defense. Or just use the raiding feature and annoy the shit out of their villages. Go and hire some neutral mercenaries (hehe) to inflitrate their land and open up guerilla warfare.
Don't complain that you can only craft the most expensive stuff, go and play with cheaper stuff in cRPG for a while to get cheap stuff. My 4 man bandit squad could easily produce nearly everything we needed for our army (Tribal Warrior Outfits, Mail Shirts, Nomad Sabres, Kite Shields, Bamboo Spears, MW Crossbows, Darts, etc..), extremly cheap. We didn't plan it, we are just not in cRPG 24/7 tincans. If you put some thought in there, you can easily get cheap equipment.
Maybe I missed the micromanagement you complain about because my army slowly grew, but honestly, I think that was your missmanagment because every leader tried to outfit the whole army by himself. Why did you try to do everything yourself? Go and get other people involved, if you want to outfit an army of 1000 man and still need the equipment set up production quotas and assign production leader roles (1 guy organises 1hand&shields, one guy poles&2hand etc) to various members. If someone can't fit the deadline you can still start to panic and take direct control. You just can't instaoutfit an army in 1h anymore.
Strat is not thought to be played by the 20 faction leaders while all lowly members just farm coconuts. Get people involved.
Strategus diplomacy is taken way to personal all the time, seriously guys. Taking personal disputes into strategus is fine, fight it out. But don't make new personal disputes in strategus. My bandit party raided the Caravan Guards, chased them over half the map on multiple occasions, but we are still cool (aren't we?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzpndHtdl9AThe bug suck, can't argue there. Strategus is still in a very raw form and seriously needs some urgent and long overdue interface improvements.
TL;DR: Stop whining, go fighting. Maybe you win, maybe you lose. But everyone just sitting there going "no war is boring" is kinda stupid
(this post is my opinion as an active player this strat)