Quote Originally Posted by Stevren View Post
Here's a thought: maybe the original idea involved less attacking players cities and more fighting for control of valleys? Given there's the option of reinforcing valleys (which no-one ever uses), maybe the devs were expecting us to value our valleys enough to put troops there.

Maybe one solution would be to increase the value of valleys? One way could be to increase the production bonuses they give and/or have some/most resources stored in the valleys instead of the cities. Maybe you could have each valley generate an item, relative to it's level, at a random time each day. Maybe keep a log of how many valley-levels each alliance owns.

Give people something to fight over other than their cities. New and casual players will feel comfortable behind their walls. Hard-core players and alliances will have something new to fight over, and a new way of deciding who's "the best". And valleys will have troops in them, which means you stand a better chance of getting medals
When I started this is more along the lines of what I expected. I figured valleys and their bonuses would be a big thing to fight over. I thought if you wanted to conquer someone it would involve weakening them by taking their valleys, killing some troops in fights over them, and then eventually making it so you are in a dominant position and could take one of their cities.

Then I realized the game was all about who farmed the most NPCs without needing to control any valleys or even build up their resource fields.