I think in the low levels 17-19 the camps we attack are ok. There should be some sort of struggle and to some extent that struggle should continue the higher the level you go. But the struggle should not increase exponentially on all fronts which is what it feels like to me. When I get better at something and my level increases I like to feel a little bit more powerful. Feel like I’m better at doing things and able to progress quicker and achieve my goals in a much more targeted way. Currently I don’t get that feeling at all. If anything I feel like every time I conquer a sector I’ve just lost a weeks worth of progress and all the reward I get doesn’t advance me it just gives me more things to try and manage and scrimp and scrap resources together to build or organise so I can attack the next camp after the last one.

I can grasp the need to loose either all or a good part of my army when I attack a camp. But would like it so there was more chance of being able to put some extra effort into the battle and come out without loosing whole waves of troops just to lower the hit points of the enemy first. What I do find frustrating is building up an army, charging into the camp loosing half of my army then getting +50 bronze swords. I’ve just had a major victory and I feel like I’m back to square one again. If i defeat a leader I’ve most likely got another level and +10 licences so now need to use the +10 licences to manage the new builds I can now build. Rather then what I want to do with them which is go back and stabilise and improve my level 7 and 14 building/unit output. But instead I end up doing what I was doing since the beginning, putting down buildings waiting for the new resources to collect then building a new unit up with the new recourses. It feels like I go back to the drawing board each time I win.

Something I thought might be nice would be after a certain level, say 20 every camp you take over gives a 1 hour buff to all buildings that produce things. When you take over a sector it becomes 6. The villagers are celebrating a major victory and you’re rewarded with faster production because they see your war efforts and are encouraged by it to work better. The reward doesn’t need to be just ‘here’s some resources back’ I’m sure there are other creative ways to make it feel like we achieved something and haven’t just been punished for doing so.

My belief is the problem with the game is how we progress in it. The players level/experience has been put into the same progression path as what the player can build and manage while then focusing it all into the army and what we attack.

What about being able to use our army passively like a charging buff? We can send it off to defend a village near a bandit camp on a peace keeping exercise. The longer we stay there the longer the villagers give us an hourly reward like +5 coins. The negative impact is we loose -10 swords as they need to keep training while sitting around doing nothing. I’m sure that is either to much or little but that’s not the point. The point is it would be nice to have other options, other paths to take that separates rewards, exp, new buildings and units, level ups and ideally our army, where it don’t get slaughtered. Something we are more involved in and can make strategic decisions with. Do we want to build and grow what we have? Do we want to attack and expand? Do we want level up? I believe separating these would make things much more interesting. Sending off an explorer to find treasure and reward us every 6 or 12+ hours while better then nothing is so impersonal and un-engaging. There is so much more that could be done that doesn’t necessarily make the game go faster but at least makes it more interesting with a number of things to be doing while you wait for something else to finish. Like for example off the top of my head we could instead of having the explorer go off to find treasure and bring back +100 stone have it scout a bandit camp and find out where all the troops are positioned. This gives us a 10% modifier when we attack it. But the explorer then takes the rest of the day off and needs a few beers before he will work again. Or we can send it out and instead of finding treasure send it out to find rogues who they persuade to join our cause. When we use a rogue on a camp not only does it scout all the enemy’s positions and gives us the 10% attack modifier but it has a chance to stealthily kill 5% of the camp before it gets kill itself.

Another thing that would be nice is to take an economic path to advancement. Like with the gem shop where from early levels we can place down silos, recyclers along with noble residence, it would be nice to be able to channel a build up of resources into certain helpful buildings outside of the current levelling process. Super farms that have a stable built in. The number of horses we get don’t need to be comparable to a proper higher level stable but it allows us to decided if we want to spend the extra resources now so we have a better head start when we can make cavalry. Or a foreign recruitment barracks. This gives 1 recruit once every 2 hours but takes no settler slot or other resources to produce. The cost to build it would obviously be a fair amount. I don’t know what the buildings should be. I’m simply saying it would be nice to have other ways to gain access to new buildings that isn’t all dependent on our army.

Just because something might need to take a while to do doesn’t mean the player needs to wait 6 hours before they can do anything! Putting all our progression into the army severely limits what else we can do while we wait to build it back up. It’s better to do 10 little things that each take an hour then 1 big thing that takes 10 hours. At least with a game like this.

I’ve played MMORPG’s and generally speaking in order to get to level 60 you need to fight mobs that give you xp that let you go up a level. The higher you go up a level the more xp you need next time. So by the time you get to level 40 it will take you 3 days to get to 41 where as levels 1-30 took the same time. This I can respect even if it’s annoying. It’s the way things work and how it’s generally always done. In TSO it’s the same. To get from level 1-16 takes a couple of days. To get from level 16-17 takes a couple of days and so on and so forth. It grows exponentially harder to level up each level. The problem though is in a MMO there are other things you can be doing while you wait for your level to go up. You can collect materials to make a cool potion for when you next attack a big spider. Craft a nice piece of armour to protect you better. Or go run through a dungeon to improve your chars gear so you can defeat the spider more efficiently and take fewer potions or need less down time between each spider kill. In TSO though because the army is tied to any form of progression it’s the equivalent of having a char in a MMO only able to keep killing spiders and that’s all. And each level the spider just gets bigger and tougher so when you reach level 40 you have to let yourself die a thousand times before the level 40 spider does. We need more things to channel our time into other then an army to help progress ourselves. Leaving the army to give us exp and higher levels works to a point. But we should be able to do other things while were waiting for our army to rebuild that also feels like were doing something worth while to progress ourselves, not necessarily just by increasing our level, but things like our economy or ability to fight, things we can manage and have more control over and make tactical decisions on.

Just my 2 pence.