Troop farmers are the most important resource in Strat. Fix it.

[Smoothrich]

Game is bad unless you have 30+ active troop farmers.  Strat 2 you were able to get troops by culling population of villages you controlled on top of regular recruiting.  This meant two clans one much larger one much smaller but with a similar amount land ended up having closer levels of production.  Recruitment also slowed down if you had too many players in one village.

Instead the only thing that matters now in Strategus is how many Troop Farmers you have in your clan or alliance.  My faction has been about 15 highly active and successful Strategus players.  We were able to get more gold then we'd ever need (without duped bugs like most clans now lol) but the lack of troops is a massive handicap compared to almost anyone else in the game. 

I mean god damn, 15~ people is a decent size to begin with, and we took over and held on to a decent amount of land.  We should be rewarded by being land owners (and increase the Strategic value of villages) by getting extra troop production from it.

Its not just about buffing small factions, or at least land ownership.  Unless you are in a mega-carebear thing, it is way too costly to actually attack shit and get armies killed.  It takes months to build several decent sized armies from troop ticks alone.  So every clan mass recruits or does the alliance stuff.  Its all very bad gameplay and a big problem with Strategus.  Makes the stakes too high.  Less fun.

In short, buff troop production based on land ownership maybe.  Find some way to discourage zerg hordes mass recruiting.  Funny enough the way it worked in Strat 2.0, LLJK was a massive zerg horde and we had much less troops then people thought we did, because the game wasn't that influenced by how many AFK farmers you had.  Then the objective the past two strats was about making the AFK farmer less of a tool then it used to be.

Now the AFK Troop Farmer is the most important resource in all Strategus, and needs to be fixed.

[Matey]

I agree with the problem you identify being a problem; however, your solution would most likely make things worse; if land were of such an increased value then larger groups would be a lot more aggressive in pursuing land. The old system did work in the sense that you could only effectively recruit troops from so many fiefs depending on your clan size, but you were able to take over land and kick out anyone you didn't like in order to deprive them of troops thus making it far harder on smaller groups to get troops without aligning themselves firmly with a large group.

I think there is room for improvement, but I don't think gaining troops from villages is the right solution.

[SoA_Sir_ODHarry]

Why not connecting Trooprecruitment with Renown or just change the way u gain Stratticks.Renown/Stratticks should be the Indicator for the Activity of a player in Strategus.This Indicator is raised by all kind of Actions like ,attacking, defending and other stuff might aswell.(not sure about what other actions could increase this Indicator).The Indicator should be just connected with Stuff u do in Strategus....so MassFactions simply not work.If a small Clan that is very active in Strat ,so all its Members got a very high Indicator ,the Gap too the MassFactions with too much inactive Members would be closed i guess.This would work without touching Things like Fiefs.

[Butan]

I think its fine atm.

It would become unbalanced only if large amounts of troop farmers went out from their retirement and handed a large part of their harvest to one side, without payment.

[Sandersson Jankins]

Game is bad unless you have 30+ active troop farmers.  Strat 2 you were able to get troops by culling population of villages you controlled on top of regular recruiting.  This meant two clans one much larger one much smaller but with a similar amount land ended up having closer levels of production.  Recruitment also slowed down if you had too many players in one village.

Instead the only thing that matters now in Strategus is how many Troop Farmers you have in your clan or alliance.  My faction has been about 15 highly active and successful Strategus players.  We were able to get more gold then we'd ever need (without duped bugs like most clans now lol) but the lack of troops is a massive handicap compared to almost anyone else in the game. 

I mean god damn, 15~ people is a decent size to begin with, and we took over and held on to a decent amount of land.  We should be rewarded by being land owners (and increase the Strategic value of villages) by getting extra troop production from it.

Its not just about buffing small factions, or at least land ownership.  Unless you are in a mega-carebear thing, it is way too costly to actually attack shit and get armies killed.  It takes months to build several decent sized armies from troop ticks alone.  So every clan mass recruits or does the alliance stuff.  Its all very bad gameplay and a big problem with Strategus.  Makes the stakes too high.  Less fun.

In short, buff troop production based on land ownership maybe.  Find some way to discourage zerg hordes mass recruiting.  Funny enough the way it worked in Strat 2.0, LLJK was a massive zerg horde and we had much less troops then people thought we did, because the game wasn't that influenced by how many AFK farmers you had.  Then the objective the past two strats was about making the AFK farmer less of a tool then it used to be.

Now the AFK Troop Farmer is the most important resource in all Strategus, and needs to be fixed.

Timmy the madbaddadladkuyakfad has roughly 9.4 million gold from all of our duped gear being sold.

He has not checked strat in about 2 weeks, to my knowledge.

The only three clans I know of that have admitted to being subject to this duped gear bug are us, templars (who seemingly only got a shit-ton of eastern armours) and coalition (who put all the gear/gold on a guy just like us).

You should stop being a bitter nerd. These snide comments you make on the side just make you look like a class A jackass.

[Pentecost]

if land were of such an increased value then larger groups would be a lot more aggressive in pursuing land.

It would also be harder for larger groups to effectively control more land than they do now, because the size of their faction would not be as much of an advantage as it currently is. All of the larger NA clans can easily generate 400+ troops per day, and I imagine that the EU mega alliances can generate over twice or even three times as many in the same period. How is any individual or small group, no matter how competent they are, supposed to initiate and sustain a good war under these kinds of circumstances?

The worst part, though, is that the majority of the people just generating troops on the NA side probably don't have the knowledge or desire to learn how to do anything on the map beyond "raise your troop cap and check back every two days to put troops in the town". I would have no problem with a mechanic that rewarded larger groups for being larger if it at least required all of the members of the group to be reasonably informed about/active in Strategus, but the current system doesn't do that.

As such, I would be all for any kind of change that lessens the need for people whose job is to do nothing and sit around generating troops in order to be competitive. To offer one possible alternative, why couldn't troop acquisition be handled like the acquisition of trade goods is? Consider:

1. Population functions like S&D. Troops are bought with gold from the population of a town, castle, or village.
2. They regen at a rate based on the prosperity of the town, castle, or village.
3. Their price is determined by the size of the population at the time of purchase; large population = much lower cost per troop while small population = much higher cost per troop.

Something like this would mean that size is no longer a limiting factor for smaller clans if they know how to make money effectively, and it would also mean that population and villages are actually important to the success of a war effort (they currently are not).

[Sandersson Jankins]

It would also be harder for larger groups to effectively control more land than they do now, because the size of their faction would not be as much of an advantage as it currently is. All of the larger NA clans can easily generate 400+ troops per day, and I imagine that the EU mega alliances can generate over twice or even three times as many in the same period. How is any individual or small group, no matter how competent they are, supposed to initiate and sustain a good war under these kinds of circumstances?

The worst part, though, is that the majority of the people just generating troops on the NA side probably don't have the knowledge or desire to learn how to do anything on the map beyond "raise your troop cap and check back every two days to put troops in the town". I would have no problem with a mechanic that rewarded larger groups for being larger if it at least required all of the members of the group to be reasonably informed about/active in Strategus, but the current system doesn't do that.

As such, I would be all for any kind of change that lessens the need for people whose job is to do nothing and sit around generating troops in order to be competitive. To offer one possible alternative, why couldn't troop acquisition be handled like the acquisition of trade goods is? Consider:

1. Population functions like S&D. Troops are bought with gold from the population of a town, castle, or village.
2. They regen at a rate based on the prosperity of the town, castle, or village.
3. Their price is determined by the size of the population at the time of purchase; large population = much lower cost per troop while small population = much higher cost per troop.

Something like this would mean that size is no longer a limiting factor for smaller clans if they know how to make money effectively, and it would also mean that population and villages are actually important to the success of a war effort (they currently are not).

Good thoughts, I would enjoy if fiefs perhaps could have a value upgradable with production points, titled something like "conscription potential"

The ancient Greek city-states are a good example. You could say that Sparta's production points were put into troop production and equipment, where other city-states such as Athens had production points invested into goods production and...culture n' shit.

This would add much more depth to warfare in Strategus. Capturing a fief at the moment is almost more of a symbolic victory than a logistical one. Of course, it's good to defend certain fiefs, but most villages are rather shit-tier to defend and are given up easily. I reckon if a village was specc'd into something vital for military matters, such as troop production, enemies would both attack it more readily and defenders would fight tooth and nail to keep it.

[Matey]

how many people within a faction actively run around doing trade runs? not that many... if you made troop production function in the same way, you would just have a couple of guys handling all the troop production. the current system is satisfactory; one thing people need to keep in mind is that many players are content with producing troops and fighting in strat battles. i can't really think of a better way to handle it then what we currently have.

[Lt_Anders]

You can always buy troops from me!

[Smoothrich]

1. Population functions like S&D. Troops are bought with gold from the population of a town, castle, or village.
2. They regen at a rate based on the prosperity of the town, castle, or village.
3. Their price is determined by the size of the population at the time of purchase; large population = much lower cost per troop while small population = much higher cost per troop.

Sort of the idea I'd prefer, but I think S and D function can be taken over by Population entirely.  This gives villages, castles, and cities all different caps to AFK farm up to, and I think villages should probably generate troops faster.  Or this could be something PP is spent on to specialize.  Raise troop cap, raise population generation.  Some villages are marketplaces others are recruitment centers, most a little of both.

The town could consume gold not just for its garrison upkeep, but require gold to fill population back up.  Respectable amounts.

Also having players in fiefs should have more of a direct effect on things then where they AFK to spend their strat ticks.  This is a real kicker.  Lots of players jammed into a castle or town (the situation people are afraid of when it comes to long term sieges on shitty maps) could have significant penalties.  The actual players themselves can start increasing the upkeep of garrison/population while slowing down troop generation of everybody.

Ideally things like this can be tweaked to increase the Kingdom Building element of Strategus with more strategic decisions while facilitating faster gameplay with less top tier equipment.

The game would be best with 5-10 times more troops being produced and half or less comparable gold once inflated for those troop levels.  Entire armies should not be decked out in full plate but this is mostly a problem of gold production being so much faster then troop production that there's no reason to invest in full plate for everything.

These values need to be balanced so only a fraction of your army is in full plate, and only some of your horses are heavy cav.  Another idea I had to address this is to make Upkeep be effected by equipment value of the army.  Shiny army gets way more upkeep.

Basically I think the major problems with Strategus is Too Much Gold, Not Enough Troops.  Not enough battles that are too high risk, not enough troops for smaller factions to manage, too much gold so everything is a plate grind for the people with all the troops to begin with.

Our idea with Hero Party was to have smaller amounts of troops but invest in higher levels of gear to accommodate our better mercs, high gold income, but low troop production.  Unsurprisingly other factions have many times more troops and they are all in full plate, even if they own less land. 

These are all problems that could be fixed rather easily and make the game way better, imo.

[SoA_Sir_ODHarry]

Lol that would mean more Peasent slaugthers which are boring.Ofc. its add more depth too major Strategys and Tactics but it will cause that less peopel want too actually fight in Battels and will lower the Motivation for Peopel too iniciate Battels as everyone loves too have the best Gear and Advantage they can get.That would lead too really annoying Tactics i believe.
I agree with that Fiefs must be more specialized and so their Strategic Valour.Like said before:
Citys=Trade
Village=Troops/PoP
Castels=Military (Equipment,TroopStackpoint)
But that needs major rework of the Map+various Changes/New Game Mechanics...+its much more complicated with sandbox Diplomatics.

The major Problem of Strat is that the FactionPowers are thus not realisticly represented in terms of activity and numbers of their Members.....If this is not fixed directly by nerfing inactive/semi active Faction Members/Supporters it will be the same resulte.
Probably u could add new ,and tune the depth of Gamemechanics till inactive Members/bigger Faction "memebers" got less important ,but it would be just more complicated.
So the simpel way is most of the time the best and smartest......

15 skilled and active Players MUST HAVE the Worth at the Map like 15 active Members +100 inactive Members ,otherwise the greater Number will always outweights the smaller.

[Tayzzer]

I feel as though you have valid concerns and it was something I was even pondering today. So lets get some brain storming in and keep the ad hominem to a minimum.

Our problems to address and keep in mind when thinking of solutions are (I'm sure there are more[add them])
1. Decrease the reliance on members who do not participate in Strat.
2. Make money more important
3. Doing so in a way that does not gimp large or small clans.

My initial idea would be something for strat 5, as introducing any huge change mid round would be a disaster. I propose that all the fiefs have a garrison ( population), troops, and Residents. A player must claim a home in a fief. Each player home inside a fief reduces the residency cap. Players attract followers through strat ticks.The home is essentially just a designation point for where the followers spawn and become residents.

 The active players, traders, generals, pack mules or w/e gain more more followers per tick. While the players sitting at home get less.  Also should probable add something where the noble that owns the fief gets the same bonus as the players running around as they will have to stay active as well. The actual troops would come from recruiting residents for x gold, and the idle residents Produce S&D. Villages would have the lowest residency cap while towns have the highest. PP could remain the same only adding the option to expand fief (aka reduce the handicap each player inflicts) Replace prosperity with productivity (how much S&D each resident produces) and Something that reduces the recruitment cost.


 This method makes the fief owners stay active to recruit troops because excess residents would be lost, Active traders are essential as they not only potentially produce more troops but they are needed to recruit them as well. It would force large clans to own more land to stay self sufficient. and yet smaller clans would be able to specialize to in trade or troop production and trade one for the other with other clans.

[GOBBLINKINGREATLEADER]

Yes, it would be a terrible disaster to introduce changes mid-round to this divine, fair Strategus that has seen tens of thousands of troops lost to a broken website and tens of millions of gold appear magically because of bugs. That sure would corrupt this otherwise perfect game.

Just playing.

[Turboflex]

We had same problem, we had 10-15 very active players, very well organized trade so tonnes of gold, but the small troop generation base was a huge bottleneck.

I think there should be some formula for bonus troop generation based on your current army vs. gold reserves ratio. So if you don't have many troops but like a million or two gold you recruit quickly.