I like the sallying forth option, however...keeping the reality in mind that both EU and NA have their prime times at completely uncooperative hours, I think the only and easiest way for that to be a reality would be to split the EU and NA communities into separate strategus maps. There's a 24 hour headsup for a defender to become aware of an attack, make it so a sally has lets say a 3 hour window. Obviously that wouldn't work with an NA clan versus an EU clan. EU clan could attack for 1 pm eastern time and NA could sally forth at 8 pm eastern for an 11 pm battle. very few of the EU members would be up that late. For a sally to be realistic within the whole community, the maps would need to be split.
Just to clarify on the whole Siege Camps thing...
Siege Camps do NOT equal Siege Battle
Siege Camps are just the first step. You initiate the typical 24-hours-later-battle from a siege camp, as an option of the siege camp's owner.
Sallying Forth also abides by the 24-hours-later-battle rule. It is not an immediate thing.
I didn't care to touch on the Splitting issue, as that's more of a policy issue than a mechanical issue. On a personal note, I agree with a split right now, but the mechanics proposed here attempt to eradicate many of the problems that have led to making a split desirable.
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On the "grind" issue. The mechanics provided
explicitly state limitations on production-from-playing to prevent excessive playtime from offering additional benefits by means of a "production cap". That "cap" cannot be exceeded by time- but note that it is a TIME cap, not a resource cap. You can produce more resources by improving your fief's production rate through improvements (and perhaps other ways!).
Current Strategus 100% encourages grinding through the Under-31 rule of the chadztext-Crafting system. Again. I hate it. Hate hate hate it. I am a casual player, I'm far less valuable to my clan because of it.
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As to the "What is Strategus meant to be?" issue.
I don't think the developers ever intended Strategus to be like this:
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loginMaybe though. If that's the case, then consider this not a suggestion on how to change Strategus, but a suggestion on how to abandon the old concept and adopt a new and better one in the humble opinions of the author and those who have signed on so far. However, I think it's pretty clear that they wanted a game that balances the skill-based and tactical aspects of Mount&Blade/cRPG with the strategic aspects of Singleplayer campaign.
Why? Because it hasn't been done before. Because it'd be awesome.
MMO-RPG-Strategy games have been done. If that's what you're looking for, the link provided should offer limitless browser-based pleasure. Enjoy. Strategus is something new and great.