I really want to give my feedback on this.
This new feature was discussed multiple times in the German forum and there have always been two groups that didn't come to a real conclusion. The only conclusion made (that I could see) was that this is an extreme game changing feature.
One group, persisting manly of former Tribal Wars (1) players and I think the more active player base, had the opinion that this would destroy the strategic component of this game. Especially bigger tribes with only small fronts for each player could relocate troops nearly all the time and when two tribes do that while fighting against each other this would probably lead to a never ending fight without losing villages.
In my opinion it is currently possible to conquer villages in 3 ways while two good or big tribes (or two good or big players) fight each other (where big is of course not equivalent to good):
- A player is not that active and didn't see that huge collected army running on this village (for example 50 attacks). Therefore he didn't send or ask for enough support. For me this is a way to inactive player who don't take this game serious enough.
- Attacker and defender play this game like a poker game. The defender loses this game because he got the fakes of the attacker wrong and loses a village with few troops in it (because the other troops are in other villages). This could also be a second player after the attacker faked the first player and the second send all troops and then got attacked too. This is one part of what most people call the "strategical component".
- The defender doesn't know that his army doesn't need to fight all the time. This is why he don't send his army back from a village with a huge attack wave without nobleman. He loses not only his wall but his hole defending army (possibly the nearest deff units he had) and cannot defend the later attacking nobleman. This is also part of the "strategical component".
Some players said this would lead to a "tactical fiasco" (if this can be translated to English like this^^) or a fight of pure mass, because it would give the defender the chance to send new troops from one village (far away) to another to another to ... and finally to the front. When sending troops this way they have a short period of running time, because all troops are send one village nearer to the front so there are always new troops nearby. It was said that this could make the gameplay even slower and cumbrous (I hope this is the word I mean).
The other group was happy about this idea, because it would make it a lot easier to defend villages when other players attack. Also some said it could make the game faster, because they would easier have a full army to attack other players and this would lead to a more tactical gameplay. Although they agreed it would be possible that this is done by both sides of a fight which causes an endless loop, some again said this would be great and fair, because nobody could lose villages as fast as they now do.
I think this group persists of players that I just listet in my 1. and 3. way to lose a village. Otherwise I cannot see why one could think this is great.
As one might see, I am part of the first group. I don't want this feature.
In the world I play, I am part of a small tribe with around 7 players (5,4 mio points), fighting big tribes with at least 50 players (currently one with 50 mio points) and even players that have way more villages and points than every one of us has. And even though they are bigger, we never lost a village and took a few from them. Now with a new ally on our side we can start a counter-attack when we all got a bit more time to plan and execute this plan. This is only possible because they
cannot relocate troops and they lose their villages because of one of the three ways I listed before. But when this feature is now added to the game, they constantly have full offs and deffs near our villages and can easily defend any attack we send them and send us more and more troops, even when we play the better fakes and they would lose at this moment.
So in my opinion this feature supports players that would normally lose villages and are
- not as active as others or
- have a bad strategy or
- didn't yet understand the game enough to be successful.
My experience is that most players of this type of players prefer conquering barbarians to attacking other players (that could defend themselves) and stop playing when a good player attacks or when there are no barbarians or inactive tribe members left. With few exceptions these players are only part of the starting and middle phase of the game. As soon as aggressive players appear they leave the game.
I hope this is not the player group Innogames tries to face this way. This would completely destroy my current gameplay and will likely make me stop playing (or at least playing seriously, I don't know yet). I would prefer other ways to teach such players instead of giving them this feature.
Comments welcome.