Wow, that's a lot to digest. I think I would need a few more read throughs to take it in. But I like the ideas.
Some people talked about making attacks more of a "long march" type of deal before (maybe you posting initial ideas about it, idk can't remember), and there were some detractors that didn't like losing the instant gratification from seeing results right away. I don't think that's good enough reason to dismiss it though, it has some good merit and big potential.
I like the idea of changing attacks playing out in this style because it opens up a huge opportunity to make the entire 24 hour attack process interactive. Like at each point of the attack there could be different actions available on either side:
Assume it take 10 hours for a standard army to reach the enemy castle, 3 hours for battle, 1 hour to loot, 10 hours to march back.
-For the first 3 hours the attacker can send additional armies that will combine to support the first army (3 hour battle timer, 3 hour window to receive additional support troops).
-In the last hour of battle the attacker can be given a warning if they're going to lose badly "carrier pigeon from the front lines indicate we're losing badly", giving the attacker a small window to call a retreat, which saves -50% casualties on both sides.
-In the first 8 hours the defender can receive aid of troops for as many spaces available in their GT, assume it takes 2 hours to receive the aid and then no troop transfers once battle begins.
-If a defender has generals out on attack when they get notice of an incoming army attacking them, they can call off their own attacks to bring their armies home. This could be used to buff defenses if an army hasn't matched too far away.
-In the last hour of battle a defender could call a retreat, reducing their casualties -25%. Or order a "fight to the death" causing an additional 25% casualties to both sides.
-A retal could be used against the attackers army, which if won would give the defender back the lost spoils.
Lots of cool ideas to be had with it, this is just some spitballing.
The other thing is, IDK if it has enough to fully replace CLI. I get there's a lag time where the defender would have more options to mount a defense, but there'd still be the core issue of people running pre-re, or castle passing to prevent pre-re, it would all just be staged to happen slower. Maybe if we only let retals happen against the traveling army then it would be good enough to replace CLI, so the defender that lost a castle wouldn't be able to gangbang the attacker. But then it would mean the defender only gets a small window to retal - maybe 6 hours or so if we say they get to march at double speed or something, people sleeping would be unhappy. Maybe we could increase the attack window to 30 hours to compensate and give a 10 hour retal window.
