Anyone who knows me knows my strategy is: wait til people get bored of strat, take some AFK fiefs, use the stolen money to build some armies, fight until people come back, and, when things start going shitty for me, have my character die. It's simple but effective, but I thought there should be a few ways of making the game require a bit more thinking. Right now the only strategy in strat is bigger, better rosters and simple wars of attrition. There's not much you can do about roster size except have a lot of friends, which some us just can't do, and attrition means nothing when your enemies just keep coming back to life with an unlimited source of ticks to recruit.
So, with a few of my own ideas, and a few I pilfered from others, here are my ideas:
I'd be 100% behind a 50/50 chance of capture if there was a better guarantee of roster balance. I think there are plenty of players out there who don't care what faction they fight for, and in fact are hesitant about joining either side due to fears of making enemies.
But, when the prof is there, he can make it so people can switch sides, or go from spectator to a side. If it were automated, or the Prof was forced to attend each and every battle, it would be nice anyone who wasn't for or against either faction just joined in spectator mode, then the team commanders took turns picking mercs until the remainder just joined the smaller roster.
But with capturing, there is a chance strat will end and won't fall into it's usual periods of stagnancy. In a game that is really only based on attrition, its hard to win when there are basically limitless troops.
To prevent multi-accounting and people just hiding out til the end, I'd also suggest the soldier cap be set by renown. 0 would be 250, 1 would be 500, 2=750, 3=1000, 4=1250, 5=1500, 6=1800, 7=2100, 8=2400, 9=2700, 10=3000. Thus if you cap your village, castle or town you should have enough renown to protect it from the average marauder. People who don't cap fiefs could trade or take the risk of attacking caravans (I never thought there should be 10,000 man caravans anyways; its ridiculous). In these little battles I think most people would free their captured enemy, probably for a fee a la native single player. With troop caps, the ticks earned for silver should pay a little more so at least people can eventually get money if they have a run of bad luck.
These small raider/traders, should they be aggressive and lucky enough, would eventually gain enough renown to command large armies, which would attract the attention of the landlords. But currently, being a landlord is a profitless endeavor. I think taxes should be a minimum of 20%, plus each fief should pay rents based on its population. This way the land holders would have the money and therefore a lot more control. They could hire mercenary armies to fight for them (or if they are they are willing to lose it all, try gain their own renown) or buy troops off the merc armies to garrison their holdings.
This gives the 'lone wolf' players a chance to get ahead. Through mercing, selling troops or trade they could eventually get the gear necessary to take their own fief.
Get rid of discounted armour and XP based on the value of the gear. We have too much shiny, and people don't bother signing if they don't think the XP will be worth it. There should be X amount of XP divided among each player on each roster, so being on a low roster would get you much more XP. In real life you get much more experience when outnumbered I should think. And with these 70% discounts there is no quantity/quality decision to be made. A small, wealthy trader might equip his 200 men with plate, while an army of 2000 might prefer to equip with haubergeon grade for the same price and only 30% less body armour.
Prosperity should be linked to population size. With tax at a minimum of 20%, and money made by rents from the population, there will be good reason to keep your peasants healthy and hale, and better reason to keep your enemies' peasants dead. In war, it is always a good idea to take out your enemy resources, and in an agrarian society, the main resource is the peasantry. It would be very profitable to send raiding parties to attack villages, and very unprofitable to not bother defending them. Plus, if you are in a good trading area, you might convert troops to population. But, if you are desperate for men, you should be able to transfer population to troops. You'll lose income, but hey, if you're desperate you're desperate.
Get rid of garrisons and arms in villages. We all know the dangers of giving peasants weapons- they get all uppity and start demanding some basic human rights. They can use their pitchforks and sickles to defend themselves. If a village is attacked though, a person should be able to reinforce them. The attack switches from the mainly defenseless peasants to the reinforcing army. Once the reinforcing ticks run out, the battle restarts against the villagers with peasant gear but the same amount of time, and the poor peasants can only hope to run out the timer. Doing this would cause people to go for more field battles than risk losing their precious, money making peasants.
Change the raid. Everyone with a modicum of self respect hates raids. It seems like an accidental glitch, but yet here it is. Raids should be quick attacks on the population, and not just walking in and taking cartloads of gear. A raid should be when an army attacks a non garrisoned fief and gets a set time to kill villagers. The time would be based on the relative sizes of the army and the villagers. In a raid, reinforcement of the village wouldn't be allowed (but you could attack right after of course). If all the villagers are killed in the set amount of time, the attacker gets however much SD is in the village as goods. And he just destroyed the money making abilities of some enemy lord for some time. This would have obvious strategic value, plus it would force some more strategic field battles which are sadly lacking. People would have to patrol their neighbourhoods, plus factions would want some cohesion to their lands to make it easier to prevent incursions.
Put Europe and NA together. With raids and slaughtering peasants a major factor, there will need to be sets of eyes on the map at all times. Sad to say, Eu and NA would have to work together. Battles would be split into 2 12 hour periods, with Eu primetime battles on the Eu server and NA primetime battles on the NA server. I would advise a freeze in the odd hours that suck for everyone.
Oh, and have merc recruitment only happen an hour before battle time. That way you actually know who's there without roll calls.
And I think that's it. I was rambling for quite a bit there, but to me these are all genius plans. I have no idea how hard they are to implement, but something should be done. People still find the battles fun, and I think the game could last a lot longer if we remove the cancer and have some 'end game' in sight.
TL;DR All my ideas are brilliant.
