Very interesting topic.

I wonder what the dedicated fighters will say, and the ones, who maybe are the same people,who say this isnt farmsville?. It actually is whether you realise it or not, well at least I think it is.

If everyone in a new kingdom had never played the game before, and started off with an equivalent standing, I believe there would potentially be a different answer.

In some respects, at least from your own point of view, I think you answered your own question.You are finding that it isnt worth your while.

In order to make it worth your while you have to be gaining more than you are loosing,certainly its beneficial to gain hero experience points but at what cost?

Can you build your account faster by spending on infrastructure which isnt lost, or soldiers which are vulnerable?

If you were running two accounts, more would be a better test, you could try farming against fighting, and see which you can advance quickest, which best suits your style of play, and your pocket.

You are only going to get resources,on winning, if you are attacking unshielded towns, which likely means lots of teleports and shields,which will cost you what?

Attacking occupied tiles will cost the same,but without the resources, unless you just want to take it over, and risk being counter attacked.

An enlightening response.. 

food for thought

...or  silver, iron, stone and gold for thought.

How important is the influence stat?....or is just a reflection of how long you've been farming / spending and upgrading? This seems to reduce various troops to agricultural workers and politicians rather than notional warriors.

?? Wheres the GLORY  ??

Thanks for your reply.

I believe the influence status is nonsense,in the fact it would seem to be totally meaningless, apart from the fact that the game uses it to assess your  combat league and opponents in battles, which is in fact meaningless in itself, because it doesnt tell you anything really, for instance a clan is doing well, but has no Stronghold, they build one and their influence rockets, they get promoted, but they are no better players than they were before,and fair less well than they did, players get bored and leave the game, there could be as little as one player left, but the influence of the stronghold outweighs everything else, so the clan gets opponents it cant win against, unless its another dying or dead clan.

Your influence doesnt tell you how good a player you are, because influence is affected by how much permanent building and research you have done and how many soldiers you have, which is transient.

Haha...right ok

No braggin rites here  ! ....and so probably dont need to worry about that then.

Its just a yard stick of where you are at and how many troops your holding. 

Then again, why attack at all?

Why not: Put up a Shield, Follow the Clan Rules, and harvest resources for the clan?

I guess my original question came from an imagined viking way of enjoying a player vs player war game. The reality is something other. I haven't tried being a Clan member/ resource producer as yet but ill give it a go.

What kind of rules are you expected to follow? No fish on a friday ?!

So no other voices/opinions as yet

It seems to be then that it is not worth attacking other players in the early game.

What changes as the game progresses?

Does access to higher tier troops make it worthwhile raiding other players for resources?

or does the cost benefit equation never stack up?

In response to your last two posts. I hesitated answering the first of these. 

Unfortunately, the forum is pretty dead at the moment, the only time people post in numbers is when Plarium  are running a competition.

There doesn't seem to be much discussion these days, and so even if I hadn't jumped  in and perhaps ruined things, would you have got mountains of responses? I don't think so. 

Its unfortunate that your expectations of battle simulations hasn't been met, is the concept even possible?

Unless someone is going to jump in from the fighters side and defend things,from their perspective,which seems unlikely,I don't things are going to go much further.

It is of course possible that there is some real exciting aspects of the game but they are unwilling to divulge those aspects and tactics on the forum, because it will undermine their advantages in the so called battles.

As far as I can tell there are only the battles that happen when, someone attacks a tile that another player is already yielding from, or when someone attacks, or is goaded into attacking what seems to be a treasure  trove, which in fact  it is not.

So that is what has been described elsewhere as a sneaky attack, or falling for a trap, as the only battles in the game,which are not really battles at all in the real sense of the word.

Mostly the outcome is a foregone conclusion,based on the game algorithms.

The only real battle would seem to be to get everything done faster than other players, in the supposition that you wont be attacked, and if you are you will win.

Glory, there is no glory in attacking someone when you know you are going to win , because the player you are attacking is much weaker than yourself , because you know how the game works , because you have played it before, because you have been playing it for longer, because you have the time to spare and have more troops and skills because you can afford to, because you are filthy rich. 

There may be glory if you have outsmarted someone of similar standing.

You will get more insight into the game ,and more benefits if you are in a clan, but you need to be in a clan with a good chief,one that doesn't leave the clan high and dry by skulduggery or quitting the game.

The clan rules can vary,but are often determined by how old the kingdom is, and by who is running it.

If you can find truly dead towns it is worth raiding them, but as previously mentioned, you need to find them, and preferably be near to them, which means teleporting around,  or attacking from long distances, which is extremely slow and potentially unproductive.

Higher level troops cost more resources to both unlock and strengthen, they carry  more , but are much slower to move and more to feed and cost more points to the opposition if they are killed.

Players tend to brag about battles they won, but seldom, if ever,mention the cost  to benefit ratio, or how much resources they got from the town.

 I know that players will attack a town and loose more in resources than they can steal back.

Perhaps this is not an important aspect to them.

Perhaps its the influence and the experience that matter, and as quoted, they like to see towns burn.

Cheers for the reply and the insight..

You are welcome, hope it helps.

Opps, I forgot the battle for the Place of Power, I always wondered if they mistyped this, but this is a different kind of battle,and it is dependant on lots of other factors, given certain circumstances, its an anachronism , a relic from how the game used to be played,or was intended to be played(?)

Nowadays it seems to be the source of verbal battles and their consequences.

Enjoy the game.

According to which pill you took.

Duly noted....Thanks again for your input. Though i can already see that with ever increasing development times....hours, days and weeks... the potential for rust  is high. 

  Feeling happy with a few recruits only to see them all wiped out.....irksome...i can only imagine it gets worse the deeper down the rabbit hole you go. 

Its unfortunate that you havent really been given other opinions apart from mine.

However, I think most might agree, with you about "deeper in the rabbit hole", that it is true, that you build  or research something to obtain a particular goal,to find that the next direct or related step requires not only more of the same, but more of the same, but hasnt given you much of a leg up in the game.

Sounds like you are the chief,which is a nightmare in itself, worsened by self inexperience, but worsened  more by the inexperience of others, especially if you have little time for your own account as a result.

No,no just a beginner....i recently joined one of the bigger clans in our area to experience that thing...its ok...  a few benefits and the notion of being able to reciprocate support with others adds something else to the game.

I can see bones of the game now.... i guess if progression was quicker everyone would just arrive at the same point creating a giant stalemate.....its obviously something you have to be in for the long haul or not be bothered about spending vast sums of cash on . Fair enough....it is what it is.