The biggest reason for me why I never played strategus is that it seemes to be some kind of organized farming/grinding browsergame where the biggest clans wins automatically due to sheer economic and quantitative advantages. And it's a source of endless faggotry, e.g. 4 a.m. attacks, battle applications where people don't show up on purpose, multiaccounts, etc.
Another thing is that it never feeled like the medieval war cRPG should always have been.
I hope it's okay if I hijack this thread to post a few things which would have actually made me try strategus. It's not a complete suggestion like the OP, as I am neither experienced nor interested enough in strategus, but perhaps there is one or another idea which might inspire someone. Who knows?
So here are a few things I would like to see:
- Time limitation: depending on a few time zones (NA, EU) strategus is only playable during a few hours in the evening. Outside that time window the game "freezes": no movement, no economy, no orders, nothing. This is to prevent people of having to look into strat 24/7.
- Economis limitations on faction: economy is faction based, not player based. This means that a FACTION is always generating ressources, not particular players. This means that clans with more players don't necessarily have an advantage over faction of small clans or even single players. Economy is mainly generated by owning fiefs. Still having more players is benefitial, on one hand because of better micromanagment, on the other hand because certain players can have secondary skills which help improving the economy or winning battles.
- Bots. I know a lot of people hate bots, but I would implement them as a replacement for players if you can't come up with enough of them. Due to the fact that a player is always to be preferred over a bot, I think they would be used only in certain "emergency cases". My idea for bots is basically to be enother ressource next to the well known "troops" (= tickets). Before a battle start the commander can assign a certain amount of bots to a player. In the battle the player can then command those bots like in single player. The amount of the bots on the battlefield is calculated easily: amount of slots on the server minus amount of players connected. The rest if being filled up with bots, proportionally to the participating factions and their party setup. Which can indeed mean that a team of 800 men fighting against 1600 men would only be allowed to have 34 players on the server, while the other party would have 66. (Rounding always in favour of the underdog). This is to prevent factions of only few player screwing up large factions with a lot of players. It's like single player: if your party is too small, you will have a hard time against the enemy. Players can decide when their dead bots are going to respawn by calling in reinforcements. If the players die the bots follow his last order until he respawns again. The bots are different troop types, like in single player. It's up to the developers how they want to design them. If bots participate a battle, but no free slots are left, they start spawning then the player spawns are depleted. If their commander can't spawn any more, another player on the field receives the command, until all player spawns are depleted and the bots keep on spawning with the "charge" order until they are depleted as well.
- players should be able to create bandit or mercenary factions as well. Those factions follow certain rules which allow those factions to reenact real bandits or mercenaries and fill the strat world with life and variety. It's also a nice way to play as a single player rather randomly and without big time investment. Especially if you allow bandits to place a hideout somewhere on the map, which would logically be somehwere in the woods or mountains, where you are unlikely to be encountered by enemy scouts.
- Secondary skills. For example tactics, which can influence the player slot relation mentioned above. All tactics skills for each party get added, and the procentual amount of skill one party has more than the other gets added to their slots. So if the smaller party has an overall tactics level of 24 and the bigger party a level of 20, the small party won by 20% and gets this value added to their slots. 20% of 34 is about 7%, so the new relation would be 41 vs. 59, and not 34 vs. 67. Already better.
Another idea are medical skills. I don't know which one of them it is, but the more and better medics you have in your party, the more lost tickets and bots are regained after a battle. Not that the additional effects for more and better medics decrease exponentially, until they reach a certain value, about 10-20% recovery at the max, I would say.
Then we need path finding, spotting and tracking. This is to encourage players of sneaking through enemy territory and creating the need of setting up patrols and scouts.
A leadership skill could be used to determine whether troops start fleeing or not. Once a certain amount of casualties is reached, the game starts comparing the percentual casualties of both teams. Once a team has considerably more (percentual) losses than the other one, morale starts dropping and eventually troops start rooting, reducing the tickets slowly (or fast, depending on the morale level). Rooted troops return to the faction's fiefs or parties on the field after some time, but are lost for that battle. A high leadership value can reduce that effect or completely stop it.
Of course other skills like trading, crafting and so on could be needed.
- NPC leaders can be hired. Depending on the money you want to spend, those NPCs have certain secondary skills which help your faction. For example I'd say you have three quality levels, where the skill is either 3, 5 or 7. While it is easier to have an NPCs with a secondary skill of five, it would still be preferable to have a player to the job, although his skill might be lower, because after some time the player might even reach skill level 8, 9 or 10, which no NPC can. But it's again a good option for factions with only few players.
- The map having influence on the war. I don't know how far this is already implemented, but there should be good and bad terrain, improving your movement speed or reducing it. Same goes with visibility. Perhaps you want to move your army through a forest towards the enemy castle? It will move way slower, but the enemy scouts won't see you either, and the enemy won't be able to send reinforcements.
- Sieges should need time to be set up (don't know how far this is already implemented), and you should also have the option to siege someone until they starve to death. You should also be allowed to sally out and make surprise attacks. On the other hand players whould be allowed to try surprise attacks on castles, either surprisingly rushing through the still opened gate with cavalry, entering in disguise or some of those mission impossible actions where fighters climb up some ropes or the abort during night. I don't know how to implement this, though.
- You should also have to set up a camp before being able to fight a field battle properly. The game tracks who clicked first on attacking the enemy/following the enemy party, and depending on this flags one party as attacker and the other one as defender. The defender needs to set up a camp so that the fight will be an open field battle. If the defender fails to do so in time (e.g. because the enemy light cavalry and the player with high path finding and spotting skill attack surprisingly from the near forest), a "defend the treck"-map is being loeaded, where the defender spawns in the middle of the map and the attacker at the corners. There are several destructible waggons in the middle of the map, and every destroyed waggon reduces the tickets/bots/goods that party is having by a considerable amount. So better don't let the enemy surprise you while marching.
- complete rework of the fief system. I think when strategus starts there should only be some villages scattered around the map. These villages can be claimed by factions randomly spawning on that map. Once a village is owned it can be improved and fortified by the factions, depending on whether they want it to be a city (better for economy) or a castle (better for defense and recruiting troops). Like in Medieval II, I think that seperation is quite reasonable. All fortifications can be improved further. It works like this: an amount of siege maps is being created, for several cultures. For the western culturea castle could start with a wooden castle, the next map would be a stone house, then a small stone castle, a stone castle with moat, a stone castle with moat and inner defense ring and finally a stone castle with moat, inner defense ring and keep in the center. The better the fortification is, the more difficult it is to conquer. I wouldn't make them necessarily "bigger", because this means it's more difficult to protect. Just give them more loop holes, bottle necks, etc.
- Of course some economic improvements can be made on fiefs as well. I don't know how this is implemented already, but I can think of basically everything: mines, wells, merchant/craft guild houses, toll posts, churches, schools, theater hosues, grain elevators (increases time before starvation kicks in in sieges), apothecaries, etc., the amount of possibilites is almost unlimited. Castles can also have different training grounds, tournament places and other stuff which allows you to recruit the different bot types and increase the generating of the common player ticket troops. And all fiefs can have garrison quarters, which can basically be extended unlimitedly, but for exponentially increasing costs.
- If a lot of money is spent, a faction can found a new village on the map (name must follow certain rules and has to be approved by the devs). This is a huge hit to the treasury of a faction, but will definitely pay out on long term.
- Assassination feature: factionless players or players of a bandit/mercenary faction can be hired as assassins. They receive a certain amount of gold upon murdering a certain player. Once the victim is reached by the assassin, a battle is sceduled. This battle doesn't have tickets, it's more something like a duel between those two players. Still I think that there could be the option to have both players being supported by other players or bots. For example the more fiefs a victim owns, the higher the rank in his faction and so on, the more and better bodyguards he will have. And the more money the customer pays, the more helpers the assassin will have. If the victim or the assassin (or both!) die in that battle, their characters get reset and lose all money, items and troops. They are dead.
That's basically it. Sorry for that wall of text, but somehow I felt the urge to tell my ideas. Interestingly enough, a lot of those ideas are actually combinable with the OP, or at least try to achieve the same (e.g. reducing the - sometimes enormous - size and power differences between factions)
Edit: TL;DR version
- Strategus only playable at the evening during a few hours. Rest of the time the game pauses.
- economy is faction based, not player based. This means no matter how many players are in a faction, 1 or 50, all factions generate the same ressources (under same circumstances).
- bandit faction and mercenary faction features.
- implementation of AI driven bots, commandable on the map as NPCs or in battle as soldiers. Don't hate on this, this is to help factions with few players.
- secondary skills: pathfinding, spotting, surgery, trading, weapon smithing, leadership
- no more even teams when the armies are not even. Instead proportional teams, which means 2400 tickets vs. 1600 tickets => 60 players vs. 40 on the server. the secondary tactics skill can change that (in both directions)
- routing: if the proportional losses of one team are much bigger than those of the other team, the losing team suffers ticket depletion to represent fleeing troops. Those tickets are added later on again, but are lost for the battle. Leadership secondary skill can prevent this.
- surgery secondary skill allowing "regeneration" of lost tickets after a battle.
- map terrain having influence on economy, movement speed and sight distance. E.g. sneaking up to a castle through a forest. Makes scouting and secondary skills like path finding, spotting and tracking important.
- improved siege system with surprise attacks on castles, undercover actions, and simply siegeing until the defenders are starved to death.
- improved battle system: your party must prepare for open battles or will be caught marching by the enemy, who can attack your supplies. You don't want that. Good way to make fast vanguards or professional rearguards important.
- all fiefs start as villages, and players can advance them to castles or cities. All fiefs highly customizable. The amount of money spent on the defenses determines the map which is loaded in case of a siege.
- possibility to place new villages on the map by spending a shitload of money.
- assassination feature: players can get hired to kill another player. Initiated battle is without respawns and only with those two fighters, but with the possibility of bodyguards and helping hitmen participating as well. Dying in this battle means losing all money, troops, items, etc.
