Some Expansion Suggestions
A couple of game design suggestions. Some of these may have been on the forums before, I haven't been particularly active on the game forum for this game yet. But...
(1) It would be neat (and consistent with the storyline) to have random bandit drops on the home island. The bandits should be relative to player level, of course, and should drop camps along the cost, randomly distributed with a weight towards doing more damage. When they camp, any building within their influence range could be damaged (at a minimal repair cost, but only after the bandit camp is removed of course). While damaged, the building doesn't generate resources.
(2) Contingent on (1), let the players build fortifications. Moats, Watchtowers, Walls, etc. These could impact the ability of bandits to damage buildings in their influence area (moats or walls), or give troops manning those fortifications attacks on the bandit camps, etc. Give us something to do with the Longbowmen after we unlock Crossbows. You could include new unit types (Trebuchets, Catapults, Ballistae) that need to be deployed on the home island but will attack bandits in their encamped area. Encamped troops would require no general; effectively the fortification acts as the general.
(3) Create a port, that enables players (especially those in a Guild) to establish auto-trades. Every N hours, Player A will trade X of resource foo to Player B for Y of resource bar. Auto-trades would have to be enabled by both players of course. This gives a big advantage to guilds, as players that need to go inactive for a while could still participate in the guild activities, by funneling their resources to other members of the guild.
(4) Also contingent on (3) (or at the very least a potential different type of port), create satellite islands off the coast of the main island, on the home map screen. You could make these difficult to conquer, of course. One island could have exotic wood trees... one could have a granite mine... one could have a titanium mine, or a bat cave (saltpeter). To maintain game balance, of course, these could all be expensive to acquire and maintain, but having your island stuck at the whims of probability when you're running 1-5 adventures a day and continuously not getting granite or ewl wears on the higher level players. I'm sure they'd generally take to paying the cost to establish the resource chain on the island.
(5) Charge surtaxes on trades that are well outside the bounds of what's going on in the Trade Office. This would be a disadvantage for in-guild trades, where guild members try to help out the newbies, but it would cut down significantly on alt players, which I'm absolutely certain are common in the current setup. The price of copper alone shows that there are a number of accounts that are established by players that just feed copper to their main account. Just judging from the islands I visit, level 5 bronze sword makers are way more common than level 2 copper mines. That copper is coming from *somewhere*, and it ain't from players that are trying to level up.
(6) Add some more magic, baby.
(a) An Alchemist, a new type of Tavern recruit, who requires an Alchemist Workshop. At level one, you can convert stone to marble more efficiently than in the Provision House. At level two, you can convert stone to copper. At level three... etc. Again, price the upgrades to the building (not to mention the cost of the Alchemist) accordingly.
(b) A Warlock, who can summon 1 elemental per day. Elemental type by the level of the building. Elementals are troops that can be added to armies. Rig the cost of summoning accordingly to the effectiveness of the unit. Give the players slow units with splash damage (water elemental, fire elemental) or other neat combat capabilities that are currently not available.
(c) An Artificer, who can build golems.
(d) A Cleric, who requires a Temple. Again, upgrades to the Temple unlock abilities. Builds troop buffs, probably ones that require adventure drops of resources to acquire at the beginning, at least. Buffs are applied to Armies, giving various advantages. Some of these buffs might not work on some battles on some adventures (I could see, for example, a "protection" buff working on IotP, but when attempting to attack a Witch Tower, it fails...)
Oh, and let us move the Mayor's house. Its current position makes every OCD nerd freak out every time they log in.
