I'm a dumbass and posted in the wrong damn thread.
Anyway, the 2 major gripes I have right now are:
A. The fief voting system. I believe the AI owning the fiefs first is a much better system.
And B. The economy, but as I hear that is being reworked.
1. Please this! If you are worried about the clans that abused it (cough UIF cough) - add feature allowing admins to be able to tweak roster at any time before battle initiated. The rest of us had a lot more fun building up to taking our first village and then later castles and cities and it limited the economy a whole lot more and since so few fiefs owned at beginning there was a lot more cross-fighting over them. Voting system made the economy far too easy to build up at beginning and made camping far more viable with population just being given to you - hence why this was the worst strategus ever for camping fiefs. Those AI battles really got people that had never fought together to actually merc on the same side and was a lot of fun.
2. Also, the economy just needs a limitation on prosperity growth through exponential increases in production points cost that way we wont have such massive amounts of S&D and then increase the price scaling at a quicker rate for equipment so lightest weapons and armor is 1/2 the price now, medium gear about 2x and heavy equipment is 8x the current prices. Caravans should not be able to buy 10K horses and move faster than a 200 mana rmy with 0 horses when carrying 10K goods, they should slow people down more with more goods. Otherwise the trading setup is fine, just needs these limitations. - Would also encourage more caravan attacks.
3. By the way autohire feature still broken this strategus where it hires 1 person and then once that person is hired no one else. If that person retracts it then hires everyone who applied up to that point at the turning of the hour. Autohire should just hire everyone who applies for that side every 3 hours even if it already has someone hired.
4. Increased xp to balance out the less expensive gear used ina more balanced economy - should average 1 to 1.5 million xp for a 1.8K v. 1.8K battle
5. Also PLEASE PLEASE look at this thread of all the current strat bugs that need to be worked on before next strat
http://forum.melee.org/strategus-issues/collection-of-strategus-issues-the-thread/6. Offer fixed bonuses for controlling regions like in risk the board game - so say owning 3 or more snow fiefs allows reduced prices on nordic type gear, 3 or more khergit/steppe territory reduced prices on mongolian/steppe style gear - would create a lot more vying for certain areas to be able to get your style gear.
7. Have a chinese map as well with half as many fiefs as current NA (australians and chinese would likely be more than willing to convert a server over to strat fights) - this is actually a huge segment of the community completely being ignored - there are quite literally hundreds of players that can hardly participate in strategus right now but are more than willing.
8. Have the na and eu map be the combination of the 2 current maps but with the line being drawn like in strat 3, so its not crossing the end of the map itself but just a small border zone - would bring in more interaction between the 2 groups. EU needs NA's dynamism to not grow too stagnant and old world. (actually wouldnt mind having a completely new map just using the same places names and fief maps if you need to - I know you mentioned this possibility at the beginning of this strategus. Lot more contention when people dont have exact same location as they have had for 4 strats.
Really hope we can incorporate some substantial changes to make strategus more enjoyable again and less of a frustrating bug-ridden experience.