I've got a bone to pick with the game
These are not questions, I already know the generalities of what happened and why it happened. What I am going to say is what happened to me earlier today.
There was this guy who just came out of BP and attempted to plunder my second city. I had my force on an attack on an inactive town near me and so I couldn't stop him. So, his attack was successful. Later on, my troops come back, so I spy on the guy and notice his defenses are very shoddy at best. I sent my force, which I could say was decent for a new guy. It succeeds and I loot almost all of his resources, because I sent some transports as well. I get my troops back, send another attack and go off for a while to get some food. I come back, and the guy has teleported away and my forces got smashed by a lvl9 flat that was there. The force was almost 4k pikes and my force, which was less than half of that, not all archers, goes good-bye.
My bone to pick here is that the flat turned into a lvl9 flat. I know the explanation, but if a person knowingly occupies a lvl9-10 flat and they are attacked, they could teleport away and smash their enemies forces. It could be a rather bad exploit, and I think it should be changed. While I do not believe the game would be generous enough to give me my troops back, since I did not foresee something like this, I do think that this is something to think about going forward. Why not make the flat turn into lvl1 if a person teleports away?
Second, I have a bone to pick with what happened to my second city earlier. I like to have my tax rate at 100% when I'm around and I normally keep my loyalty no lower than 95 either. So, I am building some resources, and then realize my labor force is greater than my population. No biggy, right? My population trend is upwards, so my pop should go up. No, though, it seems that despite the fact that I have a happy populace, nobody else wants to come to my city.
This is my second bone to pick. I think this should be changed. It shouldn't matter what your tax rate is, because if your loyalty is high and your pop trend is upwards then your population should go up regardless. Now, I realize that it probably wouldn't happen like this in real life, but if your population goes up when the there is idle population and you have your tax rate high, then why doesn't the population go up when there is insufficient population and your tax rate is high?