First things first: you know I couldn't resist ;)
so anyway, here is the real reply:
About battles - will there be capturable spawns in all battles? If yes, what happens to the losing side, once all their spawns get captured? Do they lose all of their tickets and stuff, or do they simply lose a part of their equipment or something else?
I am with PTX. Is there thought of a way to counter the inevitable advantage of ranged due to tickets?
That means conquerable spawns with forced retreats etc. And then what happens to the losing side who had tickets but lost its spawn?
Men will have a lot more value in the next strategus. It will be (at least in theory) be much harder to acquire men. Men also will take food every day, so you need to bring resources with you.
To the question: yes, there will be capturable spawn points. You can select your spawn point as the owner, and disable enemy spawn points. We hope that this will give matches a more... tactical touch. Once you've captured all enemy spawn points, the enemy will retreat. This will definately come with a penalty, but it's not yet sure how hard this penalty is. You will definately lose some equipment. You could lose all equipment. You could also lose some men. Truth to be told, the detail about this can only be established once the game is running, to see how it goes with real players. But you will definately not lose your whole army, because that would be highly unbalanced.
Then, the question about the ranged: I don't really like how ranged was in the last versions of strategus. We hope that the capturable spawn points help - if not, we will take actions so ranged isn't the only class viable for strategus. We hope for a lot of melee skirmishes. And there might special ranged nerfs for strategus until melee are more important than ranged.