Few suggestions

[Rimple]

Here are a few suggestions I think may improve the game

1. Choosing a race/ faction. The option for this would allow specialisation to how you want to play the game. For example, one could be faster building times so you could top the scoreboards, or better attack to allow you to pillage better, other options could be plausible to allow for balance.

2. Heroes. I know what you are thinking, I just want a mobile version of travian, but you are wrong! The addition of heroes would mean your army fighting with full morale, giving any army a boost that could be the difference. Between a win and an annihilation. Also perhaps more of a reward in resources for using your hero, to prevent fake attacks and people focused on defence. This for me would just make the game have a little more of a personal touch, allowing you to get more involved in the game

3. Counter for scouts, maybe a building or a troop type that can counter the effect of scouts, or even give them false reports (either telling them too many or too few troops, dealers choice) the counter for making this idea render scouts irrelevant is make it expensive and work on a percentage rate (5% per building level or something like that say upto a maximum of 80) the counter counter could also be for every scout it negates perhaps .25 or .5 percent of this effect, meaning the scouter must balance their army to allow for this effect and so must the defender on farm resources.

4. Air units/defence this just to add an additional aspect to the fighting (perhaps a flying hero, see point 2)

5. Commandos. Infiltration units that are similar to scouts but can do alot more, for example they could have a percentage chance of doing negative things in an enemy city. Here are a few examples of the f**kuppery I am thinking of. 5% chance of destroying the farm by 1 level. A 1% chance of opening the gates when you attack, negating the walls effects. A 10% chance of killing upto 100 enemies (depending on troop type). To counter the overpoweredness they could be very expensive or cost about 15 farm resources thing.

I hope I have gone into enough detail of how I think these things could work. I'm sure I will have a few more ideas soon

[Rimple]

Edit: commando's would also potentially make excellent heroes

[Wrecking]

You really thought this up? Lol

[Rimple]

Why wouldn't I have? Do they seem faked or something. I would like to see what devs think of my ideas

[Tooltip]

Currently scouts counter scouts. The strategy is in the logistics. How many? Where? Attack or Support?

I think we need more backstory before we can have heros.

Commando should be renamed to be era-appropriate: saboteur, spy, assassin, infiltrator

[Rimple]

But why not add another layer to the strategy,

And I only called them commandos as it is a name we all can relate to.

As far as Herod go, think specialisation, you build a troop, and you train it into a hero, any troop type. But you need additional bonuses for each troop type to prevent the guardian spam. For example, lancer gives 15% attack bonus to non mounted troops. Commando (that's right) gives an additional 1% chance on each option. And so on

[Kaleel]

I was reading the thread on archers and how they should be classified as rogues, and then I thought, "What about Guerrilla fighters?" They'd be unique because:

• They can only be deployed once you receive a report of an impending attack.
• They can only attack incoming forces, which means that they have to march out to meet the enemy.
• Because they use guerrilla tactics, the attacking army won't receive any warning that they might be encountering guerrilla resistance. In essence, the guerrillas would ambush the attacking army before it arrives at the target location. For this, it should be faster than knights, but slower than scouts.
• Because their main purpose is offense and catching the enemy unawares, their attacking force should be substantially higher than guardian.
• However, to balance the playing field, they should be totally useless if attacked while in the city (like the scout) and should exhibit with minimal defenses (with the logical argument that the constraints of being under siege in a city decreases their offensive ability).

I recommend the following stats:

• COST:
  
  • Lumber: 200 (more expensive than Guardian)
  • Clay: 200 (more expensive than Guardian)
  • Iron: 200 (more expensive than Guardian)
  • Population: 4 (same as Guardians)

• ATTRIBUTES:
  
  • Attack: 200 (higher than Guardians)
  • Defense against infantry: 5 (like Barbarians)
  • Defense against cavalry: 5 (like Barbarians)
  • Speed: 5 (slower than Scout, but faster than Knight)

• REQUIREMENTS (same as for an Academy, but with max Stable):
  
  • City Hall: LVL 25
  • Barracks: LVL 15
  • Stable: LVL 20
  • Forge: LVL 20

How it might work:

• Your city receives notice than incoming attack is eminent, to land in about 4:00 HRS at 15:36 PM VT.
• You highlight the incoming attack but instead of choosing to "reveal incoming troops", you have an option to "deploy guerilla fighters".
• Just like launching a normal attack, you are taken to a page that shows estimated travel time (say, 2:00 HRS) and ETA to the incoming forces (14:16 PM VT). You won't know the make-up of the incoming forces that you are ambushing unless you use "reveal in coming troops" or until the after-attack report (depending on how many troops survive -- see below).
• You click "Confirm" to launch your forces.
• They head enroute to meet the incoming forces and duke it out.
• You receive an attack report once that happens, and the results are based on how many of troops survive, similar to that of scouts:
  
  • If 75% ~ 100% of your guerrillas survive, then you receive a full report of the incoming troops (as if you had used the "reveal incoming troops" feature) including how many were originally deployed, how many were killed, and how many enemy troops have survived and are still enroute to your location, as well as their army's attacking morale and where they came from (point of origin).
  • If 50% ~ 75% of your guerrillas survive, then you receive the same report as before, but without the point of origin.
  • If 25% ~ 50% of your guerrillas survive, then you receive the same report, but without the point of origin and original army size.
  • If 1% ~ 25% of your guerrillas survive, then you receive the same report, but without the point of origin, orignal army size and morale report.
  • If no guerrillas survive, then you receive a null report (like usual).

• RESTRICTIONS:
  
  • Because Guerrillas have no real defensive ability, you cannot send them as defensive units to other cities. This means that you cannot send them away to "dodge" an incoming attack. So if you have Guerrilla forces in a city that is being attacked, then you have to "use them or lose them".
  • Because Guerrillas are specialized attack units that can only attack incoming troops (including scouts!), they cannot be used for direct attack against another city.
  • If you launch your Guerrillas too late against an incoming attack, it is still possible for them to engage the incoming troops; however, the Guerrillas will be at a disadvantage because they did not have enough time to prepare for a proper ambush, so their efficiency is lowered (e.g., akin to their "morale" being lowered). The amount of efficiency points lost is a function of how little time they had to prepare (e.g., if they normally take 1 HR travel time to engage with an incoming attack, but you deploy them only 30 minutes away from the incoming forces, then their efficiency may be lowered by 25% points).

In this way, they are not some uber-troop that replace the need for the other troops, and instead add a level of complexity to the strategic gameplay (e.g., they take up the same population units as Guardians, but having 500 Guerrillas on hand is only useful if you can respond appropriately to an incoming attack; otherwise, you've just wasted 2,000 population units that could have gone towards 666 Knights for offense or 250 Lancers & 750 Sentinels for defense, etc).

For this to work, however, I think we need to raise the Population from 23,778 to 25,000 to allow for the extra troop type, and I understand that this is a whole other consideration...

Just some thoughts,
-Kaleel

[Vasasalo]

The last post is a good though but I'd recommend making the requirements maxed. This actually gives us a reason to get maxed out cities. As for races and heroes that's almost direct copy of a different like game. If you want that I'd suggest playing that game which is probably where your ideas came from.

[Karkarn]

I like kaleels idea of having guerilla troops available to slim down incoming attacks. Being able to intercept armies would be an awesome feature!

[Wrecking]

Yea. This would ad more troops to the game. Only 9 ATM...