would be pretty dumb if a tiny faction could take on a large faction -_-
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no it wouldnt. From the way the game was cosntructed from start it always amassed to the thinking , bigger is better ^^. I dont like that. I dont want to become a fucking huge faction so i can keep up with the economy race and even if 100 players wouldnt be afk but actually all playing crpg and strategus, it is a nightmare for all other clans then to keep up.
Find a sweetspot of perhaps 40 to 70 people max as limit towards the balancing is directed. Everything above will be lowered in effectivness and efficency.
Same when i see a few clans ruling the servers, other players either join those or get discurraged and stop playing as it is sometimes quite unsettling with this crappy banner ballance without an actual balance or do you want to tell me that you never saw the hate on the servers when one clan is winning round after round after round. That i call bullshit. Instead of having a system which works for smaller clans best , so people can befriend each other and get a team going to their liking and then eventually also evolving into a medium or bigger sized clan, i see Byz/Merc on eu1 and GO/HRE on eu2. Also dont get me wrong i dont dislike big clans perse, Wolves in strat 3.0 have had 120 members , that mostly for the reasons to keep up with the economy in Strategus. Later i knew i made a mistake to become that big as lots of the personal touch was lost from the beginnings.
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Again i didnt say they would be equal , the smaller and the larger factions/clans.
Larger clans/factiosn still have the potential to have more active people(how unlikely that sometimes but seems to be)
When you want balancing for higher level players i also would argue for narrowing down curves to the end of progressions, so the high level player with sometimes extrem builds wouldnt get ahead too much. The same pretty much counts for economy in Strategus.