New concepts that could add depth and help fix the economy

Ok, let me start by saying that these ideas are not simple or easy to implement but this is largely because I think big when it comes to properly solving problems. I want to show a few new concepts that would both add a fair amount of depth to the game while also helping stabilize the game's economy.

I first want to start with an analysis of the economy to show why I believe that most server markets suffer from massive deflation. I'm sure some are aware of the cause but I'd like to reiterate it here as it is useful in fully understanding how my solution would help fix the problem.

Let's start by examining the inflow and outflow of money in the system.

Inflow comes from 3 sources:
1. Hunts. The money from these grows as players grow in size and increase their armies.
2. Forts. This is relatively small but it adds up.
3. Coins. When the markets crash it is cheaper to buy money than resources in terms of the value of the purchase.

Outflow:
1. The only permanent money sink is market trading. 10% of transactions is destroyed through the market trade fee.
2. Technology upgrades also act as a money sink; however, this sink only lasts until players have completely upgraded all techs. At this point, any additional money coming into the system is only lost through trading.


Now let's examine the inflow and outflow or resources as the economy is a balance between the value of money and the value or resources. Both must remain stable and valuable to prevent massive deflation/inflation.

Inflow:
1. Resource buildings - A constant source and after the initial investment has been paid, continually floods the game with more resources.
2. Oases - Much like resources buildings their income is a constant flood into the market.
3. Forts - The income from forts is capped by the number of forts in the map; however, this has been covered before but forts introduce huge amount of resources into the economy.
4. Coins - probably mostly insignificant seeing how if anything it is cheaper to buy money with coins and buy incredibly cheap resources from the market.

Outflow:
1. Building upgrades - Much like technology does for money, building upgrades serve as a one time resource sink that ceases to extract any additional once a player has maxed out his buildings.
2. Resources lost to players capturing resources and going over the warehouse cap.
3. The only permanent resource sink is building/rebuilding an army. Naturally all players want to minimize how often they want to rebuild making this sink discouraging to take part in removing resources from the economy.

The key problems outlined here show many inflow sources for both money and resources and only a few ways that they flow out of the economy. A balanced economy requires rarity among the goods to keep prices higher. The game needs to encourage players to remove resources from the game rather than flooding the market. After all, if you have no use for those resources you are selling than who does? What use is the pile of money you get from selling those resources if you have nothing to spend it on?

With the economy breakdown outlined I can now present my radical suggestions as a way to help solve these problems while adding a bit of depth to the game. I am also trying to tie in other suggestions as a way to build on the idea with future versions.


Introducing the Blacksmith!
The blacksmith would be a new building in town that could offer unit upgrades. The basic principle is that players can spend additional resources to upgrade their units weapons to increase their attack or to upgrade their armor to increase their defense.

The idea being that this building would enable players spend resources, thus taking some out of the economy, to increase their units effectiveness. Upgrading the building would enable the new weapons and armor to be produced more quickly and additional technology would increase the maximum potential of the increase.

Implementation could be challenging or it could be simple depending on the desired approach. The simplest method would be to make the benefit universal, that is to say that purchase x new weapons would increase all units attack by y%. The number of weapons required to increase the value by some amount could scale with the total number of units in the players army thus requiring larger armies to produce more weapons and armor to supply their army.

An example: I have an army of 2000 infantry, 200 cavalry, 50 archers, and 100 catapults. To reach the maximum boost of say 25% (obviously this could be adjusted as needed for balance and could scale with the tech level of the blacksmith) I would need (2000 x 1) + (200 x 4) + (50 x 2) + (100 x 10) = 3900 weapons where the scaling factor requires more weapons for the more advanced units (equal to their crop consumption).

The equivalent would apply to armor for boosting defense. Maybe even implementing trinkets to boost lucky struck chance. The blacksmith will add an additional resource sink that encourages players to remove resources from the market. This is opposed to the only other permanent resource sink which players are trying their best to avoid (losing troops and having to rebuild).

The stockpile of equipment wouldn't be permanent. Instead, weapons could be lost as soldiers are killed or as armies perform actions. If your army attacks a fort you may use up a fraction on your reserves thus requiring more to be produced if the maximum bonus is to be maintained. For convenience, it may be possible to stockpile more weapons and armor than is required for the bonus so that a few can be kept as spares. As in the example above perhaps a player could stockpile 5850 weapons (1.5 x the required amount) so that they can keep extras so they only need to replace them once every day or two.

So to summarize the benefits of introducing the blacksmith, we have added depth through being able to provide temporary buffs to your army by providing better equipment. This equipment buff would add a resource sink to the economy to give high level players something to spend their excess resources on rather than flooding the market and driving prices down.

With proper balancing, a player will have to make a choice between weapons or armor as increasingly large armies would be very expensive to provide both weapons and armor. This provides players the ability to specialize their army. Combat will become more interesting when you have the added variable of the opponents equipment added in. Whether they have equipment or not and where it is focused, offense or defense, could significantly change the outcome of a battle.



Now continuing on I have another suggestion to attack the other end of the economy balance, the value and proliferation of large piles of money.

Introducing the Training Grounds
If you were perceptive of my previous suggestion you would have noticed I made no mention of units' speed or range. Seeing as how significant speed and range are in battle I felt that the training grounds would serve as the proper place to modify these stats.

As with the blacksmith, the training grounds would serve as the building to temporarily buff your unit's speed or range (speed for infantry/cavalry and range for archers/catapults). The big difference here is that unlike the blacksmith who produces weapons and armor using resources, the training grounds enhances the units by paying the soldiers (and the trainers if you really like the role playing aspect of it) a bonus salary for their time spent in training.

Implementing this feature would be much like the blacksmith but players would instead invest money to increase their units effectiveness on the battlefield. Also, as with the blacksmith, players would have to invest more for larger armies so that sustaining the benefits would be more difficult.

One way to make this more interesting would be to act a counter-balancing feature: units who fight a lot maintain their combat training skills for longer (though their weapons and armor may need replaced more often) but units who spend their time hunting will have their combat skills decay more quickly although their weapons and armor last for longer.

What this does is to diminish hunting and fort farming. Maintaining weapon and armor buffs requires resources which you gain from forts but attacking the forts reduces the number of weapons and armor. Maintaining the combat skills buff requires hunting for money but doing so reduces the combat skills by leaving the soldiers a bit rusty. The idea being that these feature act to provide a soft cap on fort farming returns and hunting so to reduce the effect of the rich getting richer as their earnings will face diminishing returns if they try to maximize all of the buffs.


Maintaining all buffs completely will only be possible in the short term. A player who stacks all of them for a big attack may have great success but at the cost of being weakened for short while his economy recovers from the large investment. This leads to a balancing act between building a bigger army or investing in improving the one you have.

In the end these ideas will help balance out the economy by giving the higher level players (who are the ones who flood the market with resources and drive down currency values by massive hunt income) something to spend all of their money and resources. These will remove it from the game preventing the massive deflation in money's value and the massive quantities of resources flooding most servers' economies.

I would love to hear your thoughts on these ideas and I will respond and modify the suggestion based on feedback. I've been thinking of this for a week or two now but this is the first time I sat down to formulate them into something usable so there may be some rough edges that need fixed. Perhaps I will add a few more examples to clarify the idea if they are needed to get the point across. Thanks for reading!

Many players know how to deflate the market purposely. Many will do this to make their stuff cheaper which also will limit the amount of players that can make the money to have high level techs. Meaning the ones that don't buy coins will have to wait much longer to get decent techs.

perhaps the highest level of equipment that you can make with the blacksmith should be dependent on blacksmith level and the level of equipment that your general is holding. If your general is holding a lv 8 horse then nobody in the army is holding any lower or higher if your blacksmith can make that kind of addition to the horses the army uses. This would be useful bc I like to take off my horse and manual when I lock down players or if I know someone doesn't have high level turrets and i want my archers to have sub 300 speed so that one move forward doesn't get me slaughered by catapults that stay in the back row.

I'm thinking that to use the training ground, you have to have troops that are scoutable in your city or have a way to know if the units have trained recently by that showing up on the scout report. This addition to the game could make things really rough for players that don't use money a lot because many do use money. This addition would also make it less likely for people that buy little to no coins to attack people, you'd have no idea how powerful their small army is.

I think that the speed increase should just be for endurance and speed of travel. Meaning that it takes the army much less time to reach their target. The extra bonus for range would also make the same problems listed above. It's a great and deep thought, but it would make everyone less likely to attack out of fear. Though it may stimulate the economy if the items people bought for their army did depreciate over time. Maybe either the higher the blacksmith level the less time it takes for the items to depreciate or the higher the blacksmith is the higher level of items for the army he can make. Though to implement this system so that it applies to how much you buy for each peice of your army would be quite difficult.

Many people already have to pay a lot of crops. Now the frequent replacement of equipment would likely just make the equipment hit the price floor as well if the general had to replace equipment. Perhaps the equipment for the army has to be made, blacksmith, of course taking into account that the general determines the equipment the army has equipped and he must buy these items still from the market which are specifically made not to deteriorate.

In order to add all of these hidden boosts, there would need to be a way to know. Like a spy tech where either scout reports or attack reports show exact buffs relatable to who has the highest spy tech. Though this info wouldn't show the equipment that the general holds.

I'm open to thoughts as well.

i like the idea quite a bit and even if the economy was not helped to much by this it would be nice to have two separate armies were one is focused on attacking and the other could be used to defend your city

Many players know how to deflate the market purposely. Many will do this to make their stuff cheaper which also will limit the amount of players that can make the money to have high level techs. Meaning the ones that don't buy coins will have to wait much longer to get decent techs.

This idea will help prevent deflating the economy by giving players incentives not to do so. Sure you could deflate the economy by flooding it with resources but doing so means that your army won't be as strong as it could be since you can't spend those resources buffing your troops. You may end up in a stronger position technology-wise but you will be weaker in raw stats if your opponents take advantage of the cheap resources to produce more weapons and armor for their army.

perhaps the highest level of equipment that you can make with the blacksmith should be dependent on blacksmith level and the level of equipment that your general is holding. If your general is holding a lv 8 horse then nobody in the army is holding any lower or higher if your blacksmith can make that kind of addition to the horses the army uses. This would be useful bc I like to take off my horse and manual when I lock down players or if I know someone doesn't have high level turrets and i want my archers to have sub 300 speed so that one move forward doesn't get me slaughered by catapults that stay in the back row.

You seem to be looking at the armies gear much in the same as the gear a general uses. I like to think of the equipment is a scalable buff. Lets say that for a given army size the maximum number of weapons that the blacksmith can stockpile is 10,000. Your army would get an attack buff based on perhaps some base amount scaled by the tech level of the blacksmith and the fraction of weapons owned.

So for example, for a given tech level the maximum attack buff is 10% and you owned only 5,000 weapons than the army would receive an attack buff of 5%. If you produce more weapons that buff would go up but if you let it deteriorate then it will go down in time.

Your concern about adjusting stats on the fly could be made possible by making blacksmith made weapons and armor trade-able in the market. If you wanted to drop your stats you could put up equipment for sale temporarily and removed it later if you decided you want them back for your own use.

This would add another balancing factor to the market. If resource prices go down, players would be encouraged to buy (thus raising prices slowly) the resources to produce weapons and armor to either sell on the market or for their own use.

I'm thinking that to use the training ground, you have to have troops that are scoutable in your city or have a way to know if the units have trained recently by that showing up on the scout report. This addition to the game could make things really rough for players that don't use money a lot because many do use money. This addition would also make it less likely for people that buy little to no coins to attack people, you'd have no idea how powerful their small army is.

Hmmm... a valid point I suppose. It would be possible to add features to scouting reports to indicate the training level of enemy troops. It could indicate whether the troops are fresh recruits, moderately trained, well trained, or veteran soldiers to indicate what approximate level of training they have (0-24% buffed, 25-49% buffed, 50-74%, or 75-100% of maximum buff). One thing to remember is that even now it is not possible to know exactly how strong a person's army is because scouting reports do not indicate a general's equipment nor do they tell you the level of the player's attack/defense tech.

Player's who don't use real money will be at a distinct disadvantage against players who do regardless of this implementation or not. Although it is true that players who spend real money have the ability to gain a greater advantage by spending more money, the balance of the system should be such that it is not possible to sustain all buffs for very large armies indefinitely without spending large sums of money.

There should be trade-offs much in the same way that armies face with feeding troops with huge crop supplies. A player could choose to take on a huge negative crop income to support a large army, spend many resources to increase their army's attack/defense, or spend money to increase their training but not be able to do all three simultaneously. This could add some tactical edge to combat because unless you go scout to check, a player's 1000 cav army attacking could be a small but buffed attack force or it could be a fairly weak unit of a much larger force that is sustained by buying large amounts of crops.

I think that the speed increase should just be for endurance and speed of travel. Meaning that it takes the army much less time to reach their target. The extra bonus for range would also make the same problems listed above. It's a great and deep thought, but it would make everyone less likely to attack out of fear. Though it may stimulate the economy if the items people bought for their army did depreciate over time. Maybe either the higher the blacksmith level the less time it takes for the items to depreciate or the higher the blacksmith is the higher level of items for the army he can make. Though to implement this system so that it applies to how much you buy for each peice of your army would be quite difficult.

Whether the extra range would be a significant debalancing factor is all in the balance of the individual buffs. Sure, an extra 10% range would be a huge buff against a regular army but if their cav/infantry had a speed buff to counter their opponent then the armies would be on even ground again. The idea is that it gives an advantage but not one that can't be countered by another buff or army choice that would work well to counter it. After all, catapults with 10% extra range would still suffer against a cav army with a speed and defense buff.

Technology could be added to affect the maximum stockpile size and/or depreciation rate. The goal as I see it would be to keep the depreciation rate somewhat constant so that it is more and more difficult to sustain a given buff for larger armies. Perhaps it is really easy to sustain a 10% buff for 3,000 cavs but it would be near impossible to sustain a 10% buff for 30,000 because the number of weapons/armor required would be 10 times as great and the depreciation would be as well but the production time would be the same per weapon/armor. Sustaining such a large stockpile would require a large investment and may be easier to just maintain only a 3% buff instead or to cut back on troop numbers so that less resources are devoted to crops and more can be spent on weapons/armor.

Many people already have to pay a lot of crops. Now the frequent replacement of equipment would likely just make the equipment hit the price floor as well if the general had to replace equipment. Perhaps the equipment for the army has to be made, blacksmith, of course taking into account that the general determines the equipment the army has equipped and he must buy these items still from the market which are specifically made not to deteriorate.

A high demand for army equipment would make prices go up which would encourage players to spend their resources producing more weapons/armor and selling them rather than flooding the market with wood/iron/stone. I mentioned earlier in the post that the army equipment would be very different from the general equipment. The army equipment would be a number listed in the blacksmith (Ex: Weapon stockpile: xx,xxx. Armor stockpile: y,yyy. Army attack buff: 13%. Army defense buff: 4%) and would exist must like a resource whereas general equipment are treasures and are treated independent or the army's gear.

In order to add all of these hidden boosts, there would need to be a way to know. Like a spy tech where either scout reports or attack reports show exact buffs relatable to who has the highest spy tech. Though this info wouldn't show the equipment that the general holds.

Naturally the scouting reports could have equipment status added much like training status was mentioned earlier in this post. Another tech (the spy tech) could be added but I think it could be just as well kept under the scouting tech. As I just mentioned above I would like to keep the armies equipment distinguished from the general's equipment which should each be their own entities (the former being like a new resource that exists as a number either tied to the city or universal to your kingdom like money/tech and the latter being a treasure that is equipped by your general for a stat boost which may end up functioning slightly differently from the army stat buffs).

I want to reiterate the main goal of this implementation is to provide a level of depth while primarily balancing the economy. These buffs exist to prevent the market economy from being flooded with either resources or money by giving players something to spend their excess resources on rather than just selling them.

If the numbers are chosen properly a young server will have no use for the equipment because resources will be too valuable to spend on temporary buffs when there are so many more important things to spend them on (increasing army size, upgrading buildings). It will mainly serve the older servers where many players have already purchased all of their building upgrades and have armies nearly capped by crop limitations. At this point the buffs will be enticing since widespread resource availability will make the buffs worth the investment.

This will enable players who join a server later in its life to have access to some of the money floating around because the market won't be flooding with cheap resources and leave them unable to gather the money together to buy nuggets and other upgrade items.

As with virtually any update, this would have to be implemented very carefully. On newer servers, this would work without a hitch because everyone would be starting out on the same page. However, there would be problems with established servers. The top players on those already control resource price and monopolize treasure, which gives them tons of money. Adding this update would force the regular players to spend even more money on buying and maintaining troop buffs in addition to trying to scrape together the money to buy level up treasure and upgrade techs, both of which are astronomical. Basically, if this were introduced to a current established server, the rich would get richer while the poor would get poorer.

The top players on those already control resource price and monopolize treasure, which gives them tons of money. Adding this update would force the regular players to spend even more money on buying and maintaining troop buffs in addition to trying to scrape together the money to buy level up treasure and upgrade techs, both of which are astronomical. Basically, if this were introduced to a current established server, the rich would get richer while the poor would get poorer.

I disagree with your argument. Although it is true the top players on established servers have an advantage due to having a stockpile of money to work with, not all of the top players collude to control the server (at least from what I've seen on my server).

Competition between players at every level will rapidly encourage spending on the new resources (weapons and armor) in an effort to increase military might over other players who do not adapt to the new features immediately. This will quickly extract resources from the market as players produce the equipment for their already massive armies. Prices will rise drastically for the first few days/weeks. During this time younger players will have a great opportunity to make money selling resources to players looking to stockpile their initial collection of weapons/armor.

The higher prices on resources will eventually reduce as money is spread out through the economy, spent on technology, lost to trade fees, and spent on troop training. A balance will develop where players juggle the marginal returns of paying the increased cost for resources to make more weapons/armor. The numbers will affect where this point occurs. Will it be worth paying 0.5 per iron to make that extra 1000 weapons required to boost your army attack by another 1%?

Eventually prices will be balanced so that the money going in to the system balances the money leaving the system. Currently, high level players will just hoard money since there is little left to spend it on. Once techs are maxed the only thing left to do is collect it and by up tons of crop to feed massive armies or buy up massive resource stocks in order to quickly rebuild a lost army.

With massive deflation of resource value the price of resources drop and the money removed from the system drops since the market trade fees are a % of the transaction amount. With increased cost of resources more money is removed from the system with each trade since trade amounts will be larger. This also helps reduce the massive deflation of money.

Young players trying to buy level up treasure will have a much easier time when resources maintain value throughout the game. Currently on my server, nuggets are valued at around 30k which takes approximately 300k wood, 900k stone, 600k iron, or 900k crop sold to get the money for it. If the prices of the resources increased by a factor of 5 to 10 then it wouldn't be unreasonable to save up enough money for the nugget in day just from resources produced by the buildings.

This assumes that the prices of nuggets and other level up treasure won't change with this implementation, but the price of the treasures is controlled by supply and demand of them which should not change significantly. Large armies will continue to produce these treasures from hunts and the same few new players will be looking to buy them.

The main difference is that these younger players will have access to a greater portion of the money supply by being able to provide the now desirable resources. Currently these resources have little value to high level players who largely control the monetary wealth on servers. The buffs provide the desire to purchase the resources and sustain prices at a reasonable level.



Let me add further clarification. These buffs would be directed largely at the higher level players who have wealth (both in resource production and in monetary generation) to spare on their army. Currently, there is a limit to army expenditures by crop supplies and how often troops are lost to battle (once an army hits a certain size no more troops can be supported simply due to lack of crop generation and starvation). Any excess resources or money collected by these players end up on the market en masse at really low prices because they have no use for them.

The blacksmith provides players a place to divert their resource reserves to for a small military strength boost when they have no need for the money they'd get from selling them. In other words, it encourages higher level players to remove the resources from the game economy effectively cutting the overall supply. Reduced supply increases prices which benefits anyone who actually needs to get a hold of money for reasons other than hoarding.

I should probably tell you that market prices are based on the average price sold. The more that is sold, the more people will try to undercut. Thus drowning the market for that resource. The idea appears to me as a double edged sword. Low levels might make this a particuliar focus to bait higher level armies, but higher levels who likely enough have more money, will likely have a higher boost. This whole idea, as you stated is directed at higher levels. Haypi made prestige in a way so that if a higher level attacks a low level, the higher level can't just overwhelm them by making a weighting coefficient multiplying the losers losses. If the cost of this is to be enough to make players want to counter the market and raise prices so they can make these buffs, this can also hurt the lower leveled players even more. Higher prices, everyone saving their money for boosts instead of spending them on the resources the players are selling, players being ridiculously overpowered if willing to spend coins on buffs for a hit... this might be too much. THough, as you say, the counter to that is it's limited duration, but even then, nobody is going to do this unless they have a hit.
This would seemingly add a chaotic element to the game and might make everyone too scared to attack each other without a fully buffed army. As of now, low level players can use individual troop advantages to take down higher leveled players, I have done this. This would potentially negate that benefit. This benefit i'm talking about is where archers outspeed catapults or where cavalry can nearly reach the other side of the screen in 1 turn. Your addition to range will also make every field bigger I hope you realize. You'll have no idea of predicting how big a field will be even with a scout.

It would be a ton of trouble to add in this benefit of timed additions to stats that can increase field range, counter benefits to troops, and potentially completely unbalance the game and you'll have no idea until you actually battle and notice that your cavalry with 825 doesn't go nearly as far as it should or your catapults have to be in the center of the field to hit anything and they have been hitting you for several turns. The turn limit may need to be increased for cases where the basic units in oasis's and forts to actually be able to hit you if you boost. Part of the hardness of beating a fort comes from the infantrys potential ability to reach the back row before you hit them. Yes it is temporary, but do you mean the boost that people are buying is for one battle?

If implemented, these boosts would have to be somewhat minute so the system doesn't have to do a complete makover, which would take an insane amount of time.

I should probably tell you that market prices are based on the average price sold. The more that is sold, the more people will try to undercut. Thus drowning the market for that resource.

The market is all controlled by supply and demand. I am suggesting this to increase the demand for resources which standard economic theory will tell you that this will increase prices as the resources will now have value unlike now.

The idea appears to me as a double edged sword. Low levels might make this a particuliar focus to bait higher level armies, but higher levels who likely enough have more money, will likely have a higher boost. This whole idea, as you stated is directed at higher levels. Haypi made prestige in a way so that if a higher level attacks a low level, the higher level can't just overwhelm them by making a weighting coefficient multiplying the losers losses.

Again, lower level players will always be at a disadvantage when trying to fight with higher level players. Looking at two different level players is not a proper comparison though. I am not looking to even out military power, I am looking to level out economic power a bit. Right now, low level players can't leverage any because the only significant source of income they have is resources which are currently worthless on most servers.

One thing to consider is that if the deterioration is balance in such a way, lower level players, with smaller armies, could have an easier time sustaining a full buff because a smaller army requires fewer weapons and armor than a large one. Thus the balance will become how large of an army can you sustain with the full buff until it just becomes overwhelming and you have to do with less than the max (because the number of weapons/armor becomes so large that it simply isn't possible to produce/buy enough to meet the max needed for a 100k unit army for example).

If the cost of this is to be enough to make players want to counter the market and raise prices so they can make these buffs, this can also hurt the lower leveled players even more. Higher prices, everyone saving their money for boosts instead of spending them on the resources the players are selling, players being ridiculously overpowered if willing to spend coins on buffs for a hit... this might be too much. THough, as you say, the counter to that is it's limited duration, but even then, nobody is going to do this unless they have a hit.

I am not quite sure what you mean here. You need to clarify this part if I am to respond to it properly.

This would seemingly add a chaotic element to the game and might make everyone too scared to attack each other without a fully buffed army. As of now, low level players can use individual troop advantages to take down higher leveled players, I have done this. This would potentially negate that benefit. This benefit i'm talking about is where archers outspeed catapults or where cavalry can nearly reach the other side of the screen in 1 turn. Your addition to range will also make every field bigger I hope you realize. You'll have no idea of predicting how big a field will be even with a scout.

As I said previously, lower level players could have the advantage if the numbers are chosen right. If the lower level player is clever enough he could take advantage of buffing his small force being more affordable for small armies which would give him a bit of an edge over the larger player who would need to spend many times more money to support an equivalent buff. For this reason I think fear will be less of an issue. I don't understand why you think fear is such a problem. Even now there are unknowns as far as army size/strength but that hasn't really stopped much combat. Besides a revamp to scouting could eliminate at least some of the unknowns.

The field will be bigger in absolutes but if range increases proportional to speed for the other units than the outcome will be the same if the armies are at equivalent buffs. Comparing anything else just isn't fair. Naturally someone with a huge buff going up against someone with nothing would be expecting to win by a large margin.

It would be a ton of trouble to add in this benefit of timed additions to stats that can increase field range, counter benefits to troops, and potentially completely unbalance the game and you'll have no idea until you actually battle and notice that your cavalry with 825 doesn't go nearly as far as it should or your catapults have to be in the center of the field to hit anything and they have been hitting you for several turns. The turn limit may need to be increased for cases where the basic units in oasis's and forts to actually be able to hit you if you boost. Part of the hardness of beating a fort comes from the infantrys potential ability to reach the back row before you hit them. Yes it is temporary, but do you mean the boost that people are buying is for one battle?

If implemented, these boosts would have to be somewhat minute so the system doesn't have to do a complete makover, which would take an insane amount of time.

You seem to be looking at this one-sidedly. The buffs don't exist for the attacker or defender. Both can get the buffs equally. If just one has the advantage, yes it gives them a large advantage, but this is the whole point. A low level player who uses it fully could turn a victory from a higher level player who overlooks it or cannot support a large buff due to overextending his army size. It is not valid to call the buff broken unless you consider it as equally accessible to all parties which it is. In fact the buff would be more accessible to players with small armies (typically lower level players) because it is much cheaper to maintain.

When I said I was targeting the higher level players I meant it as a focus for a resource sink. The numbers could easily be balanced that a small investment would enable a low level player to maintain a complete buff for relatively little investment since the upkeep would be tiny for such a small army. The large investment for a large army is why the higher level players would contribute most to increasing the value of resources.