Shade towns

While this idea sounds cool at glance, it has serious flaw which prevents it's implementation. If we will not remove towns after they are deleted, they will take valuable spots on the world map, where other players willing to settle (fertile plains, seashore, etc.), thus corrupting the world map. The player can abuse this to quit playing himself and make the game worse for his rival neighbors. If you have paid attention, the quest locations are always placed on cells where towns cannot be settled - hills, forests, mountains. Same with global resources. It was done for a reason.

bubble busted!  LOL!!!   but i get the reasoning behind your explanation.  so how about ghost towns as  quest locations? maybe one of the quests could be related to conquering zombies so you can take a nice sized herd back to your town for extra protection after dark?  and if they bite the opposing army, that subject would "turn" and become part of YOUR town?  yeah, i like that idea......   :)

I changed my mind, I'd actually prefer having those Shade Towns rather than a few extra quest locations. It would probably be more fun in the long tem for the current Alpha players than some new quests you'd blitz in a few days

While this idea sounds cool at glance, it has serious flaw which prevents it's implementation. If we will not remove towns after they are deleted, they will take valuable spots on the world map, where other players willing to settle (fertile plains, seashore, etc.), thus corrupting the world map. The player can abuse this to quit playing himself and make the game worse for his rival neighbors. If you have paid attention, the quest locations are always placed on cells where towns cannot be settled - hills, forests, mountains. Same with global resources. It was done for a reason.

Why not make it something temporary then ? Like, after the usual ~7 days of inactivity, the player's town becomes a shade town. After another 7 days of inactivity, the town is removed from the map. During this time, players can freely attack the town, and feel less frustrated about not being able to use their big armies in times of peace :D (and maybe if a player reconnects during those extra 7 days, he can also choose to take back the town)

In a more advanced version, the town would be controlled by an AI that would also retrain troops (hence being able to target military buildings with catapults becomes cool)

I changed my mind, I'd actually prefer having those Shade Towns rather than a few extra quest locations. It would probably be more fun in the long tem for the current Alpha players than some new quests you'd blitz in a few days

Please do not speak for everyone when you have a suggestion. I would prefer some new quest location. We have caves and monsters for bored player and their armies.

Well most likely you have already beaten those caves already. My point was that adding caves & stuff only gives very limited time to enjoy, whereas those shade towns would keep spawning because there are always players leaving. And players would be kinda excited because they would have just a few days to deal as much damage as they can to the shade town before it disappears.

I am more and more interested in this idea because it would give a common goal to achieve for the players. We've reached the point where players start getting bored and start leaving alliances & the game. Players that are not so much into war against other players but that still enjoy having an army just feel frustrated because this army is no longer useful.

Having some "common" enemies between players would help stimulating the game a bit more. I mean if you are just thinking of amount of fun per line of code, this is definitely something that is worth thinking about, because the amount of fun generated would be a lot more than just a few random caves or some quest location that becomes useless once it's beaten.

I'm just voicing out the thoughts of several players in my alliance. Sorry if you don't think that way.

Why would you need ghosttowns for that? The whole map is full of targets:)

Sadly I have still not found the time to visit many caves :) It is still on my to do list.