I believe there’s a compelling argument that the protection disparity between attackers and defenders is unbalanced. Providing the attacker with less protection negates the purpose of the CLI, which aims to prevent pre/retail and castle passing. Therefore, the balancing needs to favor the defender. The defender receiving the same protection as the attacker after 24 hours seems to effectively address this issue.
Another argument I’ve encountered revolves around the growth advantage the attacker gains during protection, which increases their chances of defending because the defender can’t catch up before the attacker’s army returns for retaliation. However, there are several challenges in balancing this to ensure the defender has a chance. Giving the defender protection after retail while simultaneously providing another retail to the attacker would slow down the game’s progression and reduce it to a one-on-one battle. I genuinely enjoy participating in wars as a province. The pre/retail didn’t feel toxic to me; it was always the dreaded “just part of the game,” but it certainly made attacking extremely dangerous and safer for farming. Therefore, to address the concerns raised about the CLI, I propose a boon for the defender that enhances their training abilities, enabling them to muster their army to defend their retail in a safer manner, allowing them to still engage in attacks.
** Enraged by this brazen attack on your kingdom, you have issued commands to your Generals to bolster your reserves so that we may punish this villainous kingdom that has dared to take our lands! **
While coordination with your province to strike when your target emerges from protection can still occur as it should, we must maintain the “let’s go to war!” feeling. However, we should also provide the defender with a small boon to assist them in this effort. Another idea would be to allow a form of reinforcements from your province mates, but only while you’re under protection, and only a percentage from a single province mate to prevent abuse.
I’ve spent the entire day contemplating this issue, and I have a few additional thoughts, but I believe these are the most promising ideas I’ve come up with.
Reading these forums sometimes feels like a travesty, both for the players and the developers. This is a great game we loved playing in our youth, where we made friends and enemies. We are passionate about this game to the point where we revert to childish bickering behavior, and both sides are at fault for this. We come at the developers hard because we love this game, but they do have a lot on their plate and are revamping the game with as much passion as we are playing it.
Developers, thank you for what you’ve done so far, and I hope you continue to improve the game. We really do need better forums than this jumbled mess of randomness. I understand that you get frustrated with players hearing the same things over and over, but you have a responsibility here to set the tone for your player base. If we are hounding on something and disagree with your ideas or implants, you need to see it for what it is: a passionate player who wants to enjoy this game, your game. You should be happy they are willing to give you this feedback, even if it is tedious and you’ve heard it a hundred times. Maybe we should bring the idea of a CLI to the table and see how we can improve and balance it to a more sustainable future for the game.
Hope you enjoyed my wall of text.
