Not because of the Fenada deal, that was planned as going out with a glorious bang when we retired from strat.
If Strat is so wonderful why are you going out with a bang?
Now onto my thoughts
Pros over Strat 2.0- Terrain implemented. I still think the really mountainous areas should be proper barriers (like cliffs and rivers) aswell but at least it adds a bit of thought to the game and some planning.
- Slower pace. A bit too slow but still better than before imo
Cons over strat 2.0- New game but old allies. Everytime Strat restarts it just increases the advantage the major alliances have and allows them to refine their opening moves and strategy.
- Too many pointless battles. Whenever you look at the battle list, half the battles involve attacks against less than 5 troops. A lot of them are against 0 troops and some againmst 0 crates as well.
- Economy is Inverted. You get money for doing nothing and the more people you have in your faction willing to do nothing, the more powerful your faction is.
- Distance bonus encourages carebears. The further you go the more money you make and the more land your alliance controls, the further you can safely travel.
- No reason to attack Castles and Towns Once you have control of all the villages in your area you already control the economy so there is no reason other than e-peen to attack a Town or Castle. Unfortunately, the villages are also the easiest to take and the least fun to defend so this has made the issue even worse.
- NA/EU split encourages non-primetime battles. Before the NA/EU split nighttimes were mainly used to stop your alternate server neighbour from attacking you during their primetime. Now they are used to avoid primetime battles altogether.
- Arbitrary and inconsistent admin actions. The Fallen were punished for seeing a bug (being able to attack their own fief) and using it to their advanatge. I don't disagree with the punishment which afterall removed less than what the Fallen actually gained from the exploit and it just rebalanced the upcoming dusturil battle. However when Leiknir saw the FCC guys being disconnected constantly by a bug, he took advantage and spawn capped them, yet there has been absolutely nothing done or said, that I know of, to reverse this and rebalance Leiknir vs FCC. I'm not saying Leiknir should be punished as there probably wasn't much else that could be done, but where are the flying carpets and fireballs to remove the extra troops and equipment gained from the battle? Whether the exploit is deliberate or accidental doesn't matter. If you rebalance once you have to do it every time.
Simple solution to all these issues - there is none and no amount of tweaking will help either. Strat needs an overhaul and if you want inspiration for how to do it then just look at the single player game. There's plenty of ideas flying around that are doing this and i'll prob add one of my own sometime soon.