Main problems with the current round:
1.) There is too much gold floating around. Every battle being a plate/armored horse extravaganza is good for xp but makes the battles in question extremely unpleasant to play after a while.
2.) Troop generation being linked to the number of players in a faction (rather than the number of fiefs it holds) greatly limits the ability of non-megafactions to sustain offensives until comparatively late in the round.
3.) There is no incentive to defend fiefs unless they are castles or towns.
Possible solutions:
1.) Just reducing the amount of gold in the system would only increase the amount of time factions spend turtling ("building their economy") until they have full plate and armored horses. Consider implementing caps on the quantities of high grade equipment that a single army can spawn with based on its size. This cap would only prevent you from spawning an entire army in full plate and plated chargers; it would not not prevent you from carrying or looting an entire army's worth of full plate as crates.
2.) Troop acquisition is handled in a similar fashion to trade good acquisition. Example:
a. Population functions like S&D. Troops are bought with gold from the population of a town, castle, or village.
b. They regen at a rate based on the prosperity of the town, castle, or village.
c. 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.
3. The proposed solution for the problem of troop generation above would also make defending villages a worthwhile endeavor.
Other things:
*Please add an option to drop gear while in the field.
*There has lately been an issue in NA strat battles with being able to get 50 players for both sides. If the reset does not do anything to regenerate the NA population, please consider lowering the maximum roster size for NA battles only.