Few suggestions

[Valorgamer]

That's exactly the kind of well thought out suggestion that gets noticed by the devs I love that idea and it's also believable that if you know your going to get attacked some of your men will want to charge out and counter attack

[Kaleel]

Wow, thanks for all the great responses!

@Vasasalo: I like your suggestion of maxing out the city size as a pre-requisite for guerrilla recruitment and training. I ddin't bring it up before because with a population cap of 23,778, a fully-maxed out city doesn't leave much room for growth.

So.... how's this for a thought?

• This is a new quest by Aurora: Once you max out your city on all structures, you will be awarded with an increased population cap of, say, 27,000 and the ability to upgrade your Farm from LVL25 to Bonus-LVL30 and City Hall from LVL30 to Bonus-LVL35.

• You also gain the ability to recruit Guerrillas (and there can be a series of smaller quests that have to do with commanding 100 guerrillas, 250 guerrillas, etc...)

• Here's the catch: If both your Farm and your City Hall fall below pre-bonus level standing (e.g., either due to demolishing or enemy attack), then you lose your bonus population boost and the cap falls back to 23,778. This freezes your troop production and you can't recruit anymore. You will have to rebuild Farm and City Hall to standard-MAX to regain the higher limit, then building up both structures to Bonus Levels to support your population:
  
  • Farm LVL26: allows 24,500 max population, but pre-requisite is City Hall LVL 31
  • Farm LVL27: allows 25,000 max population, but pre-requisite is City Hall LVL 32
  • Farm LVL28: allows 25,500 max population, but pre-requisite is City Hall LVL 33
  • Farm LVL29: allows 26,000 max population, but pre-requisite is City Hall LVL 34
  • Farm LVL30: allows 27,000 max population, but pre-requisite is City Hall LVL 35

• This creates a new level of strategy, because all your attackers will now be building ballistae in order to damage two specific targets: Farm & City Hall. In response, you'll be rushing to create Guerrillas so that you can ambush their incoming siege engines and destroy them before they can reach your city. And just to make it relatively fair, it doesn't matter if your walls or resource production fall to below max due to enemy attack. You just have to focus on keeping City Hall and the Farm at Bonus-level standing.

• However -- although you may retain your bonus population cap if you keep up the Farm and City Hall, the ability to recruit guerrillas can only be activated when your city is in at least MAX standing. Hehehe... wow, that's evil of me.

Scenario:

1. You attain MAX standing. You unlock bonus-level City Hall and Farm. You unlock Guerrilla recruitment.
2. You upgrade City Hall and Farm to max bonus-levels, while also recruiting Guerrillas.
3. You are attacked. Your City Hall and Farm are damaged to LVL33 and LVL29, respectively. You still retain the higher population cap (at that level) and you retain the ability to recruit Guerrillas.
4. You are attacked again. Your City Hall and Farm are just fine, but your wall falls to LVL20. Because this is below MAX-standing, you lose the ability to recruit Guerrillas (but you still retain control over your existing Guerrillas).
5. You build up your Wall to LVL 25 and achieve MAX-standing, thereby reaquiring the ability to recruit Guerrillas.
6. You are attacked again. This time, your City Hall is cut down to LVL25 (standard MAX) and your Farm is damaged to LVL27. You can't upgrade your farm until your City Hall meets the pre-requisite of LVL 33. Your city is also overpopulated at this point (26,812 / 25,000), so you can't recruit anymore troops. The only room for expansion at this point is to rebuild your structures.

...did I make it too hard?

Either way, this should breathe new life into the game for those experienced players who might be stymied at the "find at target, throw target into chaos with fake attacks, hit with 5x waves of scholars, rinse & repeat" routine. Also, it forces the advanced-level player to actively defend their high-value targets. Flooding a city with the support of lancers & sentries just won't do it anymore. Now you have to planned a time response to the incoming attack because the risk of loss is higher.

Thoughts?
-Kaleel

[Rimple]

You said it would add new strategy to the game for people to attack the farm and city hall, sorry but if you are at war with someone you are, in my opinion, an idiot if you don't start with their farm and warehouse! This is Tactics 101. In principle this idea seems good BUT it is countered SO SO easily it is a waste of time and energy putting it in!

Let me tell you about it...stud. Sorry lost my train of thought. Okay I want to attack someone who I suspect to have guerillas, I send 25 attacks at them, 24 of which are fakes, obvious tactic again, which one are you going to send your guerillas at? Counter number 2, I send 25 fakes at someone, if none of them guerilla'ed then immediately send my army! If they do get attacked, wait 12 hours and try again until the person is sleeping.

In concept I rate this as a 4/5 for well thought out-ness
In application this would score maybe a 1/5

Too easy to counter! Too much hassle to use! Too much relies on luck of being able to use it! Why not just use the new found ~ 4000 population to create ~ 4000 troops.

And let's face it, the first time it was used for realzies, the owner of the huge army would only whine that there is no counter for it (assuming the owner of the big army doesn't know any tactics) so instantly people will scream out for a counter guerilla troop, for the farm limit to be raised to 40000000000 to allow for this new 'death star' abomination the people will scream for, oh the men will cheer, the women will swoon, but no one will be happy! And why you ask! Let's look at it in politics terms, okay so labour are in power for 12 years, they truly, truly f**k up England, so everyone decides to vote conservatives, oh how they will change us, oh how we will have a golden age with a million children each and no taxes or pigeons! But nothing changes, no one thinks in the long term, they do one thing badly, then do nothing for three years... Awesome, how much money did you waste on your degree? Cool!

That roughly sums up how bad this idea is to me!

[Kaleel]

@Rimple: You say that only an idiot doesn't start with targeting the farm and warehouse when attacking a target? That this is Strategy 101? The irony here is palpable.

I argue that there is more than one strategy that can be applied it attacking a target, depending on what your goal is. Not to belabor the point, but in my guild, we go after 20,000-point targets BECAUSE they are 20,000-point targets. It makes no sense to reduce such a high-value target to rubble and drop the point rating to 5,000 by demolishing it's farm and warehouse. By then, you'll have conquered a crippled target that can neither keep resources nor produce its own defense. I'd rather have a small network of 8-10 cities that are fully developed at 30,000 points than 50 cities that are each stuck at 8,000 points because I crippled each target's warehouse and farm during takeover -- where's the fun in that?

As for your rant in the final paragraph using politics as an analogy... I have no words.

-Kaleel