The biggest issue to me pre-cli was pre-re, basically if you weren't in a big group, attacking first usually led to getting pre-red, which would always result in a net loss.
The biggest issue post-cli, which everyone (myself included) likes to accuse everyone else of doing, is castle passing/utilizing other mechanics for supposed infinite protection, though it is entirely possible that half of the supposed castle passes we all accuse others of doing are legit defend pro. It is a small player base after all.
I have to take partial blame for the increased pro times, as I believe it was my suggestion that led to the 24 hour defenders pro change. I didn't account for the slow down in the game when I thought of it, the suggestion was born of frustration of being hit repeatedly before I could mount any sort of defensive army.
Now since we can't rely on players playing "honorably", because lets face it, our group of nerds that are playing at browser text based version of Age of Mythology are generally the type of people to look for ways to optimize success in the game, we have to look at mechanics to put into place that don't incentivize this "dishonorable" play.
I think that solely relying on adjusting protection times is going to come off with trade offs one way or another, whether that be in the form of more pre-re or less overall action. Perhaps we have to look at something else other than just adjusting CLI/defenders pro/retal timings.
If our current biggest concern is castle passing for defenders pro, then I will say something here that I suggested in chat a couple times (though global chat is a terrible place for balance/game change discussions), that if you somehow limited the maximum amount of your army that could be sent on a single attack, castle passing becomes that much more difficult. The big issue with that method though, is that it becomes that much harder to hit upwards, and therefore would promote more hitting down, which we don't really want to encourage. I think this would be a band-aid.
In my opinion we need to drill down as to why people feel the need to stay in pro all the time, and I think it's because defending an attack is essentially suicide. The game as it stands basically devolves into hit/be hit, eventually lose all your army because you got caught out of pro, spend anywhere from a day to a week rebuilding, and repeat. Or stay in an infinite protection loop, whether that be from protections granted from offensive spells, or castle passing, or whatever.
Now, there is a strat that is supposed to help with this, it's our good old friend Quick Retreat. However, QR on a smaller kingdom defending just results in an army wipe anyways. That strat needs modification, as it only serves to benefit the top 10 kingdoms on defence. Can't remember where it has been suggested, but I will throw it in here too, we need to change it to have the person on QR have only 50% of their available army fight (so like 40% on defence once you factor in defenders amounts, dependant on castle numbers). That way retals can be taken more effectively, and attackers have to be wary that if they send too much and their opponent is on QR, the retal is coming in swift and hard. Conversely, if the attacker thinks the opponent is on QR but they aren't, it could result in a bounce and disaster. Adds another layer of "what if" to attacking, and allows for quicker bounce back from attacks.
The other thing I would suggest is modifying the battle script in two ways, though I have no idea what the dev workload would be like for this
1) Make it so battles don't go all the way to 90+% losses on one side or another in every fight. I would say if a battle got to the point where the difference in losses in a phase grew greater than 25% (say, defender is getting smoked in ranged phase, loses 50% of their army while the attacker has only lost 25%, then the battle is declared a loss for the defender). This does shift battles heavily in favor of earlier phases of fights though, which is why it should be coupled with:
2) Have the battle phases run multiple times. Instead of all of the LR units fighting in ranged, then all the remaining fighting in SR, then the remaining all fighting in melee, split it up so the phases get run 2/3 maybe even 4 times. For example, using a 4 round battle:
25% of each kingdoms army fights in LR, then it moves to SR, then to melee. Would need the 25% to be an even split of the units in a kingdoms army, to maintain total army composition ratios the same.
Then it repeats, run the same cycle 3 more times.
When combined with #1) above, the losses sustained in a battle will be a lot less, while not completely favoring every single battle in the LR phase. And I think the losses trigger for a battle to be over should match the maximum amount of army that fights in a phase. This would level out a lot of the OP units (I'm looking at you Shadow Warriors) as while LR damage is the most important damage type, the way the stats of units work out a properly teched orc can wreck almost anyone in SR.
The only downside I can see to applying that sort of battle calculation would be that people can't run mono damage type armies as easily anymore. Can anyone else think of any other issues with this approach?
There is also incentivizing people to play in the same province, and while I think restrictions to send aid (with the market bypass loopholes closed) is a start, I don't think it would be enough, as you could still just run two provinces who can share resources amongst themselves/pass with the other province. Needs some more oomph on that regard.
On to protection time adjustments
1) I don't see any benefit/downside to CLI being granted for land hits, as that really should only be in play in the first week or so of the round anyways.
2) I think the whole idea behind CLI is to prevent pre-re, so retal time needs to be locked to the same time as CLI. Perhaps we just get rid of the tech train for it as a whole, and make it a single tech? Might also be some fun we could do with the choose your own tech paths.
3) Defender pro reduction to 20 hours seems fine, I do think it does need to be as long or longer than CLI
4) I don't think this will change anything personally, it would just speed the whole current process up. Plus it would incentivize transport more to leave the travel times the same, as with transport your army could be back in your protection window on a defence.
5) Are you referring to retaling in the first 4 hours of pro? If so, wouldn't you only get 15 hours of pro from CLI anyways as the attack would break your pro if you won?
I guess this all boils down to the issue of, is the issue too much protection in general, or castle passing resulting in too much protection? I'm not sure how the changes to the protection time windows would change anything to do with castle passing if that is the issue we are trying to tackle, other than changing timing of when a person has to pass.
